Painting With Peppers

I seeded peppers today. This is the year, I've already said that I will grow a proper pepper. Forty nine cells of four different pepper strains. Forty nine? One, two, three, four, fi...but there's 50 cells in that tray! Right. Well, there was just one onion seedling still hanging on in that tray and I just couldn't do it in after showing such tenacity. Forty nine.

Tomatoes will be seeded in a week or so. Late is the order of the season. Nothing will be put in too early. Lettuce? Yes. Soon. Monday?




I went to see the Catherine Murphy showing downtown today, before work. I headed down Crosby Street, where twenty years prior I worked for a gallerist in a part-time, not at all paid position. Such a different place back then, and I was reminded viscerally of those times as I stepped into Peter Freeman's new(!) gallery on Grand Street. It was the scent of old SoHo galleries, their rotting plaster and floors. I do not recall odors within any of Chelsea's galleries, but if there were it'd be polished concrete and a refinished built-in. Floors don't give under your weight in Chelsea, they push back.

Maybe it's the throwback to my formative years, or maybe it's simply the work. Murphy has a way with the thingness of things, and a full appreciation for the abstract in the representation, a mastery of 20th century composition, a compassion for banal coloration, and knows how to load the unloaded.

And no fear of green, either.

Corporate Pepper

I stepped out this morning and discovered the white foam perishables container on my step. Already -they've arrived. I hadn't informed the Sunset produce representative who contacted me that I had blogged about the episode after I lodged a complaint that their peppers tasted like mothballs. Poor form? Maybe, so I won't be able to relay our exact conversation, but I think I can deliver the gist.

First contact was the rather stiff, corporate kind. The rep called it an 'off-flavor' and appreciated that it was brought to their attention. They wanted to have my number for a phone conversation and the original packaging. I couldn't deliver either, so I forwarded the rep a hi-res photo of the package that I used for the last blog post.

Sunset Inc.'s style of communication became a bit more conversational after I sent them the image. Afterward, I was told they were able to get any important information needed from it so that they could do a 'full product trace.' They did believe the incident was 'isolated,' however, they would be contacting the grower to ensure that 'best practices' were 'occurring at the farm level.' They assured me that no other complaints of this kind had been filed.

To 'reaffirm my confidence' in their product, they politely asked if they could have my address so that they could send me a complimentary package of Ancient Sweets. I cannot say enough how much that name gets under my skin, but still I said yes. There was no way they were going to send me another mothballed pepper. In fact, they probably have a locker full of the biggest, cleanest, sweetest, bestest long red peppers just for this type of problem. I placed the quarter at the bottom so you could see how large these peppers are. Incidentally, this new bag of peppers was grown in Mexico, not Nicaragua, as my original package had shown.

In the final communication the representative thanked me for 'allowing them to show their gratitude' and apologized for the 'inconvenience' and 'off-flavor.' Their 'Procurement Team' had been in contact with the grower yet found nothing outstanding that would lead to that taste. New peppers are just about out the door of their 'facility' and I should expect them shortly. And the last sentence from the last email regarding my mothballed peppers:

'As a reminder, always wash your produce with cool potable water before consuming.'

Eating Peppers Temporarily Mothballed

Two weeks ago I was shopping at Fairway. I needed red peppers for a recipe I was making that night, but Fairway didn't have any. Hmm, well I was off to Court Street to pick up something else, so I stopped into the Italian grocery and they had this incredible deal on just the kind of pepper I was looking for. If you can believe it, I bought the last two pound bag of long red peppers for $3.99! Almost too good of a deal for me to trust, but then I needed the peppers.

When I began to prepare the meal I tasted the fresh peppers and I thought there was an odd flavor to them, definitely not pepper, although they were highly sweet as the label said they would be. I kept coming up with manure, but the wrong kind of manure. Yet that never satisfied me, what was that flavor?

Two weeks later I decided to use the rest of these peppers. Boy, they sure held up well in the fridge. I chopped one and tasted the bottom tip. Bang! Mothballs! That is the flavor, however much milder than the mothball-flavored candy my grandmother used to have around the house. But truly, mothball-flavored peppers. OK, not going to use those, but I did google just that. I came up with very little, except a vegan blog post from 2007 where the author mentions the very same phenomenon. A modest number of commenters who googled the same found that site and posted their experience.

There appears to be a Canada connection. Ok, out-of-season red peppers, mothballs, Canada. It's funny enough to mention that I took the above photo to post about what a great deal I got on these peppers in Brooklyn and what it ends up doing is illustrating how these incredibly cheap peppers from Nicaragua via Canada taste a hell of a lot like mothballs - naphthalene or 1,4-dichlorobenzene (guys, you know this one -urinal biscuits).

I contacted Sunset and I will let you know what, if anything, they have to say about it.

Planting Against The Tide

The temperature was 48 when we got out of bed on Sunday, but by the time we reached the farm, it must've been near 60. I weeded. Sweater removed. Vegetable gardens are a little sad at this time of the year. Pulling the old is necessary, but planting new things is important. Take stock. Take note. Keep the growing going.

I noticed these 'stink horn' type mushrooms growing near the chard. I pulled the chard.

The Caribbean Hots are just coming into their own, with many green fruits and flowers.

The generic sweet bell peppers have been granted a stay of expulsion from the garden. One more week, probation, to show us that they can turn sweet, or the very least, warm-toned yellow, orange, or ... We've got about 4 of these, all carrying about 5 fruits.

This is the generic eggplant flower -there are lots of these. The plants are healthy, but unlikely to produce anything with these cool temperatures and the low-hanging sun. They've been spared till first frost -for looks.

This is where the ichiban eggplants were. They are now in the compost heap. Planted here now, with all sorts of positivity, are the 'Piracicaba' broccoli (thanks Marie) seedlings  I sprouted a few weeks ago. Yes, farming ends in two weeks, but I didn't know that, right? Good weather, and a plastic cover should yield me something from these guys. Positivity.

Nearby is the celery, more tender stalked now than during the heat of summer. More practice with this one.

Our collards next to the freshly-cleared patch of all kinds of small tomatoes of my neighbor, Jimmy, who's brother is in the band Black 47 -this much we know.

Now that the shade of those tomatoes is no more, I used this spot to plant some spinach in nice little rows.

And the snap peas, they're on their way now. Grow grow grow before the snow snow snow. 

 These little guys, umm, they're some kind of salad greens -mesclun or arugula.

Very popular around the greater Ft. Tilden Community Garden.  

And this? I'll explain that to you later.

Rain Farmer

The weather was, well you know -wet. I left the studio for the bus at 4 pm. I got home at 5 pm. I jumped in the van and hit traffic on Ocean Parkway, but still made it before 6 pm. Above, Solidago sempervirens at Jamaica Bay's edge.

I only had so much time. Why was I so committed to planting mesclun mixes, radishes, and arugula in the rain anyway? Because of the letter from Ranger Thaddeus T. that says we must cease gardening on November first. November first? C'mon. Well, my protest is performance, because I well knew that was the end date. Is it silly? Yes. The best way to get good gardeners into these plots is to get a site manager that actually understands gardening. They could then change that silly date to December fifteen.

The garden managers have a never realized dream of tilling the whole acre under every year at season's close. I'm not fond of that idea, but reality is that no one's moving there hardscaping anyhow. They also want to shut off the water -that's the biggest concern, drain the pipes before a good hard freeze. Fine, I say, turn the water off, but let us keep going with the kale, broccoli, and greens. It's usually wet and cool enough to get by without watering at that time of year.

So there's the push to rush those greens seeds in, even though it meant getting soaked in the dim light of an October evening. I planted rather hastily, with crooked rows, and uneven seeding. I was more concerned with the big footprints I was seeing in all my empty patches -the places I seeded cilantro, parsley, and spinach. One really needs fences. Only a knowledgeable gardener suspects a bare patch is planted with seeds at such a late date in a warm season garden gone dismal. But then, why tromp through a garden at all, why not follow the trenches? It's better not to ask.

The old broccoli patch now seeded with different mesclun mixes and arugula.

The bell peppers are having a hard time turning red with all the rain and cool weather.

The collards are beginning to look fantastic without all the 'pillar holes.

Today's semi-ripe tomato haul. There's still another four dozen or so on the vines. Every tomato that rests on the ground has the buckeye rot. If it remains in the air, it has no buckeye rot. Next year -all tomatoes will be off the ground. FYI -the net isn't my attempt at decorating the shoot, although I know you're thinking how fabulous it looks. In fact, it's window screening I had in the van and made a convenient way to carry the tomatoes back home.

Elsewhere around the Ft. Tilden Community Garden:

One of the new gardeners that came in with us has planted Kale, and it's looking good.

My favorite farmer has reaped his amaranth and tackled his corn. This man operates like a real farmer, with two or three seasons of different produce. He planted his corn and amaranth around August one. Before that it was beans. Do you remember this?

Dirt Farm Rocks

We were anticipating anything as we drove to the beach farm after being away for two weeks. The water being shut off was my main concern, but weeds, toppled plants, bugs -who knows. I practically jogged to the plot. When I arrived to see it I had only one thought -dirt farming is awesome!

It must be because I was without my camera for awhile, as I can only find pictures of our beach farm vegetables posted on August 4th. That was 30 days ago, but not that long ago by some standards.

This was our broccoli one month ago.

This is our broccoli today. About 5 heads were five or six inches across.

I brought my mesh and nylon to wrap the heads and was disappointed that they were so large already -I never expected such rapid growth. But the kicker was that there were no cabbage worms -not one. Where did they go? Two weeks ago there were hundreds of worms in all sizes. Have they all morphed to moths, flown away from their childhood patch?

Tomatoes are growing and growing. Because I didn't do the work for trellising, they are spreading horizontally. So it's no surprise that they are showing signs of blight on the lower leaves.

The hot peppers have grown stout -nice.

These Hungarian yellows are very productive.

These sweet peppers are doing well too. I think they are cubanelle.

Here are the eggplants on the left, beans and sweet peppers on the right. In the back, the cucumber trellis.

We weren't around to teach these guys where to go (that's up) and, as is typical, a mildew has formed. We planted three varieties, and 'Salad Bush" has evaded the mildew the best.

The slender Japanese eggplants are producing well.

The Italians are beginning to produce.

The "infill" bush beans are also gearing up. I seeded these wherever another plant succumbed during the first three weeks (recall on again off again watering).

The garden in context.

The 5 broccoli heads and 6 eggplants we harvested. The tomatoes are from the side yard pots.

Speaking of those side yard pots... It really is something else, growing in pots or planters, without a watering system, without endless soil, with the entrenched diseases. I know that I have not set up an ideal growing environment for all that I've tried to grow. However, the cool weather greens have always done well, and the tomatoes always produce -although late and lightly. Some years the beans have done extraordinarily despite small planters, but not this year. The broccoli and snow peas have never been a success.

What I really want in this very public space is a good looking garden, and by this time, with so much outdoor opportunity left, the vegetables in their pots look decrepit. There's little one can do to overcome it, too. I suppose local is going to have to be 10 miles away -not just outside. I'm very excited to have the beach farm and to see it produce so well in a very short time is heartening. Plans are swelling for next season. Swelling indeed.