Blights are fungal diseases.  Fungi are fascinating: without the independent ability to photosynthesize, they rely on live host plants for food.  After a brief life cycle, they spore, sending progeny through moist air (or by careless human hands) from one site to the next.  Like illness, like seeds, they can't live everywhere--but the one that's stuck New York is happy to move from potatoes to tomatoes.  The infected crops have to be destroyed, as composting them with other plants risk keeping the spores alive.  

Late blight, which usually doesn't strike (if at all) until the end of August, has made an early and widespread attack this year--thanks to a few small outbreaks quickly spread by the wet weather of the past seven weeks. What that means for our farmers is that not only are they losing their money-making fruits (tomatoes), but we're at risk of losing a staple over-wintering crop, as well.  Without potatoes, a winter market becomes squash, garlic and hoop-house greens, and potatoes often keep better than squash.

On a personal note, the three worlds of farming I inhabit have been affected, as well.  First, Keith Stewart, the first New York farmer I apprenticed with, had to toss his crops.  Then,  Kira Kenney of Evolutionary Organics had to burn her whole field of potatoes.  If any infected spuds were left, the spring growth of unfound tubers might still carry the fungus (which, remember, will stay alive as long as it has something to feed on).  To prevent it from spreading further, these organic farmers could use copper--the metal makes a barrier that stops the spores from infecting foliage. But it's only as effective as it stays on the plants, and if it rains, that's another application (and more money) down the drain.  

 Meanwhile, late blight had also hit close to home at the Botanical Gardens.  What's interesting to note is that the two sites where I work--and raised my tomatoes from seed in relative isolation from these affected areas--are blight-free.  Both Rooftop Farms and the Howell Family Garden are unaffected.  Knock on wood (and cross your fingers), we'll stay clear for the next six weeks. 

I'm posting on this because now, more than ever, it's important to buy local.  Please--match your diet to what's available, and buy local chard, cucumbers--whatever is in stock.   Tomatoes make up a large chunk of an organic farmer's income, and the loss is surely going to be felt if we turn away from them as consumers.  

 I don't like to admit favorites, but Scarlet Runner Beans have a special place in my heart.  They're a close tie with purple beans (which turn green right before your very eyes under the influence of hot water) for the legume most magical to children.  Scarlet Runner, which vines rapidly and well up anything they can climb, produces long (and hairy!) pods, bright red flowers, and the quintiscential trio of heart-shaped bean leaves.  Tooling around the garden with kids, I'll often ask them to guess the color of the bean seed before we crack it open.  (Most often guessed? Brown.  Go figure.) No child has yet picked correctly that the beginning bean seed will be lipstic-like hue of magenta, while the mature seed develops a bovine-patterned speckling of purple-and-pink.

You can cut these up and boil  them in their pod, add them to pasta sauce, or save and dry the beans to cook into a soup.  The flowers (as all legumes) are edible, as well.  The nodules of bacteria on the roots of bean plants also aid in sythasising nitrogen (from the air) into your soil.  Whether or not your garden is kid-oriented, or your name is Jack (of giant-interrupting fame), I dig these beans, and I think your plot will, too.

And Another Thing…

 The tomato sat on the plate        And it looked like a tomato, like a real tomato      Not like a picture in a magazine             It was red, mostly            But also it was yellow, somewhat            And, in places, orange              And, at the stem end, green.         The kitchen knife sat on the plate             And the tomato cut like a tomato           Resistant, to a degree         Soft, up to a point;          And some of the seeds stayed in       And some fell on the white plate.              The tomato tasted like a tomato,            And I said to the kids, who know tomatoes              As pure red, perfectly round,           Perfectly tasteless            Absolutely uniform wet globes that come in cardboard         And cellophane package all year round       “Kids, time for you to taste a real tomato.”           They did.          And one of them looked at me          And said, “Is that what tomato tastes like?”           Yes, my children, that is what a tomato tastes like. 

 Planting a diverse, alternative lawn helps pollinators and aids in weed control.  If you have kids or pets who spent a lot of time near the earth, playing barefoot soccer, it's worth investigating how deadly the neurotoxins are that you or your lawn company are spraying around.  Rachel Carlson wrote about this in the 1970s, and now more than ever they're a health risk.

I came upon fennel for the first time in an unlikely place: a rabbi's refridgerator. I was house-sitting. A note on the kitchen counter said, "Eat everything perishable!" and following their commandment, I tried--but fennel had me stumped. I'd never grown it--never cooked it--and never, as far as I knew, had it in a meal. So I turned to an old friend, the Moosewood Cookbook.

Fennel, as it turns out, is awesome. For starters, you can use both tops and bottoms, which always endears a plant to my heart. When raw, the bulb is deliciously wholesome and crunchy, and the soft leaves will make a salad, tea or your breath fresh and sweet. Once I'd found the handsomest recipe and set it on the stove, I started to read up a bit more on this gentle herb. As the bulb simmered in a sauce of orange juice and minced ginger, I learned that fennel is the only plant in its genus (Foeniculum) and a perennial (less work for all you gardeners!) and was once called, in Greek, "marathon." Although no fennel grows in that famous city now, perhaps when the battle was fought and the lone soldier sent off running to announce the outcome, the field he sprinted through was full of fennel, brushing at his calves and releasing the same rich licorice smell now rising up from my pan.

Growing fennel is easily done, and it can be harvested as a whole plant or let to grow out over its second year. If you do allow it to bolt, you can also harvest the seeds and save them as a spice.  You can also buy fresh fennel bulbs at market--and now is the time; I picked some up from Kira just yesterday.

For my recipe, read on!Fennel a la Moosewood (the "adapted" version)

In a pan, heat a small amount of butter (I heat the pan, then run a stick quickly around to grease)

Add 2 tablespoons (one "knob") of freshly minced ginger

Add 1 bulb fennel, cleaned and cut (as one would an onion into rings). Stir with a wooden spoon to coat the fennel with butter and ginger.

If desired, add a pinch of tumeric, garam masala, or other spices, to taste.

Add 1/2 cup orange juice, turning head down to simmer, not burn.

If desired, add salt and black pepper to taste. We also added fresh fennel greens and on the side, a spoonful of banana flavored organic yogurt.

Aaah, if only we were all making such attempts at enlightenment, the world would be in a much better balance. For one, we'd still have all our bees (one third of domesticated bees--and close to all our wild bees--have abandoned their hives, thanks to pesticides and inexcusably loose "science" legalizing their use), bats (they eat mosquitoes, whom we spray with neurotoxins) and birds (they eat seeds coated with herbi-and-pesticides, too). We'd have lawns that looked more like land than astroturf, and we'd have healthier water to drink, too, when all those chemicals sprayed onto your grass were put out of use. Killing weeds--a multi-billion dollar industry--is what makes us hate lawn care. Not weeds, which are really plants just like anything else. Only stubborner. Which really ought to be admired. And thought about, and balanced--not fought--with the same care nature (naturally) uses.

If the definition of a weed is another man's treasure becoming someone else's pest, then there's no better turn of the coin than at the New York City Greenmarket, where our savvy farmers have culled their fields of several "weeds"to make a quick buck. Two years ago, the weed de jour was purslane (purslane1.JPG) a lemony succulent that the New York Times wrote up in a lovely Russian salad recipe, simply tossed with black pepper and olive oil. Last year it was lamb's quarters (lambs-quarters.JPG), a wild spinach with a rough arrowhead shaped leaf and robust "green" flavor. This year, the verdict's still out. Scapes--the flower of the garlic plant, a narrow twist of garlic-flavored greenery that has to be removed from the plant anyway in order to concentrate bulb production--have been sellin' like hotcakes--but that's not really an entire "weed," just a plant part.

When you next rush across your lawn--or public park--or nearby abandoned lot (New Yorkers only!), I ask you to take a second to look at the plants. Chances are, if they aren't sprayed with pesticides, herbicides or rat poison, there's a salad in there for you. I'm not advocating wild food foraging like a nutty hippie, digging through your neighbor's garden at night like poor Rapunzel's husband. I'm just asking why it's necessary to keep the edges so clean and tidy on nature. After all, if Greenmarket farmers are selling "weeds" at $16 a pound while right behind us in Union Square Park, purslane is growing freely (and inedibly, because of the heavily chemically destroyed soil), isn't something wacky going on?

As a vegetarian, I sometimes get asked, "No meat? Then what do you eat?"  What--like there aren't enough great vegetables in the world to keep us busy? Earlier today, wide-eyed in the Seattle Farmers' Market, I found further evidence to prove produce can wow any palate, 365 days of the year.  Dude: check it out.  Sea beans! Sea beans--Salicornia--are a crunchy, salty treat atop a salad or tempura-fried.  As I snacked on a few raw ones (at $15 a pound, it was nice to grab a few freebies!), I got the scoop.  Apparently a marsh-growing plant, Salicornia europaea loves saline environments (hence the heavy salty flavor).  However, Sea Beans are neither of the sea nor beans, but the young stem of a low little shrub.  Forgiving their misnomer, they are well-worth a try. Who knows--they might be this year's fiddle head fern. 

In other news, vegetables are the only plants that floored me.  If anyone has ideas on how to make a Rainbow Rose, let's talk. At $10 a stem and astounding in a garish, can't-look-can't-look-away (think David Bowie in the white catsuit in The Labyrinth) style of romanticism, I found myself both endeared to and horrified by these flowers.