Tipping over. Trellis. Surrender to heat.

Travel

12 Jul

After the Solstice is well past we begin tipping over into fruit. The moisture in the spring soil gives way to the burgeoning heat of summer and moves through the plants into fruit and seed formation. In the language of biodynamics this is a fire process. The plant’s life cycle starts with roots in the earth, sprouting up in spring with leaves full of water, flowering is an air process with fragrances and insects flying in, and fiery fruiting — development of proteins, sugars, fats, chemical reactions, and finally falling to the earth again.

Fruit begins to spill and swell, fall and crack open. We notice it as we start eating zucchini and cucumbers, green beans, and soon the first tomatoes — all fruits containing the seeds for the next cycle. Leafy watery greens like lettuce and spinach are done. They no longer hold much appeal to the palate either. Salads change their character. All I want to eat are versions of these two salads.

Niçoise Salad.

Green beans dropped into boiling salty water until al dente, about 5 minutes

Boiled egg, peeled and cut into rounds, sprinkle the yolks with salt

Olive oil packed tuna

Bruise-colored Niçoise olives

Boiled new potatoes drained and sloshed in olive oil

Maybe a firm, crunchy summer lettuce, a Romaine. One of the finest is Forellenschluss — an upright maroon and green spotted romaine-type, the name meaning Speckled Trout Back.

Assemble on a plate or platter drizzled with more olive oil, black pepper, and sea salt crystals crushed in the hand.

Greek Salad

Red onion cut to a similar size, sprinkle with salt and red wine vinegar and let sit a few minutes

Best first summer tomatoes — could be cherry or the midsized Early Girl red or hunky ‘heirlooms’. Cut into cubes no bigger than one inch

Cucumber cut to the size of the tomato

Feta crumbled

Black olive such as Kalamata or other Greek variety, possibly oil-cured Moroccan

Dress with olive oil, salt and holding your thumb across the mouth of the bottle, dash the red wine vinegar.

All this fruiting needs support. In the gardens pole beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash threaten to take over the world. One zucchini leaf in my small patch is fully 16” across. They need some kind of structure to hold the fruit off the ground, away from slugs, allow air to circulate to prevent powdery mildew, and to make space for the corn and peppers and winter crops coming along behind.

Here we make the simplest bamboo tripods and trellises: three-legged structures tied with twine with cross bars running at about 6-7’ high. They are easy to disassemble, store for winter, composting the jute twine tangled with dried tendrils after harvest. A 25’ row of pole beans 7’ tall I can simply cut down and bundle off to the compost come October. Tomatoes require a structure made of T-posts and wire and each plant hanging from a string attached to its base, spiraled around the stem, then tied with a slip knot to the wire. The string can be reeled up and re-tied to support the fruit as it grows heavier and heavier.

Trellis ‘technology’ needs to be simple yet sturdy. In the vineyard, the grapes get their precious shoots (all 15 acres of them) tucked by hand between two wires that are hooked onto posts spaced about 10’ apart. The wires are tensioned at the ends of the rows through little clamps. This work takes all of May, June, and July. Where that much labor is concerned there needs to be economy and efficiency. Beans, tomatoes, and cucurbits, whilst not as labor intensive, still require training and pruning, twining and almost daily harvesting. The simplicity allows the work to go smoothly without much thought or fuss.

When it’s hot — these days we’re seeing temperatures over 100F — this streamlining is essential. You surrender to the rhythm. Up early, rest in the afternoon, work more in the early evening. The great consolation is being saturated in fruit. Tomato, sweet corn, peaches, raspberries — the jewels of summer.