Port Potager

I’ve been doing a lot of freelance writing lately, and one of the places I write for is Fast Growing Trees , an online nursery based in South Carolina. One perk is that they sent me a free tree, our new Winesap apple:  It’s huge — bigger than me, and much bigger than Jonas, as you can see. In the past, we’ve always gotten bare root sticks, so this tree is definitely the biggest we’ve ever gotten in the mail. It’s also packaged with its rootball intact (and in dirt), so it saved me the trouble of heeling it in .  We’re definitely  planting these trees this coming weekend. Now that the weather is supposed to be a little warmer, and we have a supply of compost from the city yard, and  we have all the trees, it’s time to break out the shovels and get these in the ground to complete the orchard renovation .  I’ll definitely be interested in seeing if the bigger tree fruits faster, or if it just means that there’s more of it to acclimate and ...

We've been talking about it on and off for several months now, but this week we finally committed to plans for revamping our orchard. Now that everything is bearing, we've been able to see which varieties are doing well and which leave something to be desired. But what really gave us a push in the direction of making some choices about our trees were the losses we sustained last season. Our stunted Granny Smith was completely buried by the blizzards of 2015 , and it was broken beyond saving. We also lost our best peach tree to insect damage , and the other peach and nectarine can't be far behind. Despite our efforts at sheltering it , two very harsh winters in a row kept our fig tree from ever taking off. And even though our apricot is a fine- looking  tree, we've eaten a grand total of one apricot in the past five years . So we decided to cut it down and try something else, even though the tree itself is healthy. It's no small thing to cut down a tree, whic...

This is the best time of year in the garden, because just about everything is ripening at once. It makes from some excellent eating in August and September. To wit: The burger was great, but the salad? This might be the best salad ever. It's at least the best salad you could make with all seasonal produce in the waning days of summer.  To make it, you need a bed of young (and therefore less peppery) arugula and beet greens. Thinly slice a fennel bulb, a couple radishes, a small red onion, and a small apple (we used our last Summer Rambo , a variety that ripens in August on our heirloom 4-in-1 tree ). Drizzle with olive oil and garnish with fennel fronds.  That's all there is to it — no dressing required, really. It's so flavorful just the way it is, and it's crunchy, juicy, and awesome. We're looking forward to repeating it with other fall apples (I picked a Macoun today!), so this is likely to be on our plates until we run out of fennel.

The kids had their first day of school today —  before  Labor Day, which is an unfathomable act of cruelty in my book. Since I don't start until next week, I have a couple days to myself this week. I'm trying to wrap up the projects I didn't get to this summer, but I also needed to get through some piles of vegetables to preserve them. After freezing some extra eggplant and okra, I decided to do something with our early apples:  These are Snow (an heirloom variety on our 4-in-1 tree) and some windfall Galas that are ready early. They are pretty tiny, and some have blemishes (organic growing and all), so I decided just to sauce these up. I only had 1 1/4 pounds of apples, so this is a nice, manageable batch to work with. First, quarter (or halve, if you have teeny-weeny apples like some of these) apples and remove the stems, and cut out any blemishes if necessary.  Next, put the apples in a saucepan and add just enough water to keep them from stickin...