Seeds from Italy News
Vol 8, #3, September 2008
THE NEWSLETTER IS BEST READ ON LINE. THE PHOTOGRAPHS MENTIONED BELOW ARE IN THE ONLINE VERSION. IF YOU WANT TO READ ON LINE, GO TO:
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We publish four times a year (usually) and include information on all aspects of Italian vegetables, herbs and flowers: selecting, growing, harvesting and storing and cooking. We would be happy to receive and if space permits, publish your experiences in these areas.
If you have a friend who is interested in all things Italian (at least for vegetables, herbs & flowers, please feel free to forward this to them.
1. Privacy Policy
2. Garlic from Italy to Arrive
3. Festival that Stinks
4. What is this thing
5. What a difference some sunlight makes
6. Trial Garden Results
a. Koala Bean
b. Novadiamant Zucchini
7. Recipes: stuffed zucchini, vegetable stew & a customer's recipe.
8. Growing tip. Spring onions.
9. Tomatoes on plastic,
10. Winter Squash Trials
11. What else is growing in the garden.
12. How to unsubscribe from the newsletter.
1. Privacy Policy. A number of people on their order forms asked me not to sell or divulge their personal information: address, telephone numbers, email addresses, etc. I want everyone to understand that I take privacy very seriously. I never disclose any customer information to anyone under any circumstances. I have been bothered by too many telemarketers, received too much junk email to do that to anyone else. I don't even keep credit card numbers: a number of customers who reordered and told me to use their credit card number on file were surprised when I told them I do not keep them on my computer, nor do I have access to them from the credit card authorizing service.
2. Garlic will be available this year as usual. It should be here sometime around the middle of September. The garlic order section of the web site is turned on, so you can order on line now. You can also call in your order (781 721 5904) or fax it in to 612 435 4020. This year I will have the following varieties.
Red Sulmona. This is a hardneck from Abruzzo and will do well in most colder areas of the country. It is available in half pound or one pound bags. If you want larger quantities, please call for a price. The price has gone up this year; sorry, but shipping costs from Italy, Post office price increases and the decline of the dollar against the Euro have made it very expensive.
This year, red Sulmona will be $9.35 per half pound and $18.25 per
pound. Shipping charges will be slightly higher also. A half pound
of garlic ($9.35 so normally shipping is $2.95); there will be a one
dollar postal surcharge, so the shipping total would be $3.95. For a full
pound ($18.25 and normally shipping would be $3.95, there will be a $2.00
surcharge for a total of 5.95. Here is a picture of the red Sulmona from
this years garden. 
Bianco Piacenza. This is a large white softneck from north-east Italy. It will do extremely well in areas with warmer winters (say from Southern New Jersey on South or climate zones 6b on up. Good storage and taste.
This year, bianco piacenza will be $9.35 per half pound and $18.25 per
pound. Shipping charges will be slightly higher also. A half pound
of garlic ($9.35 so normally shipping is $2.95); there will be a one
dollar postal surcharge, so the shipping total would be $3.95. For a full
pound ($18.25 and normally shipping would be $3.95, there will be a $2.00
surcharge for a total of 5.95.
Viola Francese. This is a very large purple/white softneck. It is grown all over southern France and Northwest Italy. Beautiful color, great taste.
This year, viola francese will be $9.75 per half pound and $18.75 per
pound. Shipping charges will be slightly higher also. A half pound
of garlic ($9.75 so normally shipping is $2.95); there will be a one
dollar postal surcharge, so the shipping total would be $3.95. For a full
pound ($18.75 and normally shipping would be $3.95, there will be a $2.00
surcharge for a total of 5.95. Here is a picture of some of it that I saw in a market in Provence this summer. I wanted to fill up a suitcase and take it home.
Music. This is a hardneck garlic (porcelain type) grown in upstate New York. Originally from Italy, it has become a favorite in the United States. It is
pink/white, fairly large cloves, vigorous with very large scapes, and is extremely cold hardy. This is the garlic to grow in Zones five and four.
This year, music will be $8.75 per half pound and $16.75 per pound.
Shipping charges will be slightly higher also. A half pound of garlic
($8.75 so normally shipping is $2.95); there will be a one dollar postal
surcharge, so the shipping total would be $3.95. For a full pound ($16.75
and normally shipping would be $3.95, there will be a $2.00 surcharge for a
total of 5.95. This is a picture of my music garlic early in the year and this is some of this years harvest. It is a pretty special garlic.
Italian Purple (maybe). I think that this is actually red Sulmona which was brought to the United States 10 years or so ago. There is a grower in upstate New York who has been growing it out and his description sounds exactly like my Red
Sulmona; from his description, however, it seems as if the cloves are a bit
bigger. Sorry for the high price, but he says this is a very tricky garlic to grow.
I only have a very small amount & it should go fairly quickly. Price
is $10.50 per half pound and customers are limited to one half pound each.
Shipping is $3.95 including the postal sucharge.
3. Festival that Stinks. Speaking of garlic, for those of you who live within driving distance of central Massachusetts, I highly recommend you consider going to the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival. This year it is the weekend of 20 & 21 September. It is a really great time. Music, food, local farm products, local arts and crafts and of course, lots of garlic.
It is a really nice group that attends and I have a great time there I attend every year as a vendor and plan on being there this year. Hope to see you there. This is the link to the festival: http://www.garlicandarts.org/
4. What is this thing. This year I trialed some of the long red and white radishes from Southern Italy that I brought in this year. They germinated well and were ready in 35-40 days or so. Radish were six or so inches long and pretty spicy. Not bad thought I. In any case, I never did pull all of them and then went off on holiday for almost two weeks. When I got back,
they had gone to seed and the green things you see are radish seed pods. I pulled one and tasted it. Very nice. Crispy texture, pungent flavor. (kind of hot actually). Then I remembered a conversation I had earlier with a farmer in New York who was talking about some of my long red radish he had grown; he told me he had made more money from selling the seed pods in the New York Greenmarket than he had selling the radish themselves.
I brought a bunch of them home and tried them on my taster (if my wife likes something, it is a winner). She thought they were too hot (I loved them of course). I then
sautéed a bunch of them and they were very nice. They lost a lot of the heat, but kept their texture and radish flavor. I have been using them in salads, as a crunchy thing to eat, something to add to a dish of
sautéed vegetables, etc. The trick is to pick the pods small. With the lungo sardo at least, when the pod begins to turn color, they become a bit fibrous. However, if you eat them when they are small (2-3 inches) and completely green, there is no fiber and they are extremely tender. I think I like them better than radish.
5. What a difference some sunlight makes. My garden at home is way out back, next to the
wood line. When we moved here 25 years ago, there were some smallish black locust trees around the garden area. I wanted to cut them down, but my wife has never met a tree she didn't like so they stayed. Well, black locust grow pretty fast. They are now fifty or sixty feet tall and the garden which once had full sun now has sun six or seven hours a day.
While it does not make much of a difference for a few things like baby lettuce and arugula, it is a problem for most things. They grow taller, produce less and are later than things grown in full sun. Here is a photo of peppers (frieriello napoleatano or friggitello) and corno di capra in the home garden; here are the same peppers in another plot with full sun. What a difference. The plants are much stockier in full sun and have at least five times the number of fruit.
So what do you do if you do not have plenty of sun and a chain saw is not an option. I wound up getting a couple of plots (800 sq feet each) in the local community garden. While the place is ridden with bugs & disease and the soil is worked out, it has full sun. This year was a pretty good year (except for tomatoes) and next year, with some manure and organic matter added to the soil, it should be much better. Hunt around. There is probably a community garden close to you.
6. Trial Garden Results
a. Koala Bean. I got a five kilo bag of this on the recommendation of the agronomist (GianLucca) at Franchi Sementi. He contends it is the best bush bean ever. I think he is right. It is a french fillet type, so you have to pick them small. When you do, they are very tender and flavorful. They are very early (5 days earlier than my other bush beans)and produce very heavily over an extended period. They are no where near as fussy as the regular French fillet bean like fin de bagnols. While I am not a great fan of bush beans (I really prefer pole beans), these were pretty special and I definitely will grow them every year. I can not get them in packets (Franchi just sells them in bulk, primarily to farmers) so I have to make up packets. The packets are 50 grams and have at least 200 seeds [the seeds are tiny]. The only issue is for organic growers; the seeds are treated with a fungicide and that is the only way they can get them. They will replace the fin de bagnols which was the fillet bean I had been selling.
Here are some in the garden this summer.
c. Zucchini Novadiamant f1. This was another recommendation from GianLucca who says it is one of the best zucchini he has ever come across. I agree. It is early, four or five days earlier than Lungo Bianco which is one of my favorites. It has a bush habit (no six foot long runners) and produces a huge quantity of pretty tasty green fruit with white speckles. Huge is an understatement. It actually seems to produce in clusters of three fruit. I have never seen anything quite like this. The fruit kind of look like the zukes you find in supermarkets, but I think they taste better. Flowers hold very well on the fruit; at least to five inches. While I think its flavor is not quite as good as some of the open pollinated varieties, if you want huge production, this is the zucchini. This is a really good choice for direct market growers. This is definitely a keeper in the garden.
7. Recipes: stuffed zucchini, vegetable stew & a customer's recipe.
So what do you do with a ton of zucchini and french fillet beans. One of my favorites is cooking onion, peppers, zucchini & potatoes in a pan with some olive oil. I love it that way, but you can only eat so much of it, especially since my wife will not touch it [she does not agree with peppers] So, I started playing around with recipes for stuffing zucchini. At first, I did something similar to what my mother used to make (essentially stuff it with things and cook it in the oven with a tomato sauce). It got a bit hot using the oven, so I kept playing around and finally came up with something that wound up getting rid of a lot of zucchini and pleased both me and my wife.
STUFFED ZUCCHINI. Pick some smallish zucchini (five or so inches long, though they can be a bit bigger. I happen to love the lungo bianco (mostly because of the color), but any will work. Boil some water and put the zucchini in and cook them until they are almost tender (5-8 minutes depending on the size of the zuke). Drain & run cold water over them, then let them sit a while until they are cool enough to handle. Cut in half and use a spoon to scoop out the center of the zucchini. Put it in a bowl and squeeze it to drain out the excess water and dump the water. Mince the zucchini pulp. Drain the zucchini shells on some paper towels since they tend to be a bit watery after you have boiled them. Mince about half a medium onion per zucchini. Put some olive oil in a pan and add the onion. Cook until it is part done; add the minced zucchini pulp and cook until things brown up a bit. Add about a quarter cup of plain breadcrumbs (per zucchini) and continue cooking until the bread crumbs are brown.
[Even better than bread crumbs is get a slice of really good bread and mince it
into 'crumbs'] Take the pan off the heat & let it cool a bit. When cool, grate 2 tbs or so of really good romano cheese (or parmesan or whatever you have as long as it is flavorful.) [Actually, for this, instead of using a cheese grater, I use one of those metal graters; I use the 3rd largest holes so that I actually get thin strips of cheese.] Mix everything up and stuff the zucchini shells.
Turn your toaster oven on bake (500 degrees or so) and bake the zucchini until the filling is a bit crisp (five or six minutes). Meanwhile, get a really good tomato from the garden & mince it, skin & all (or mince cherry tomatoes). Toss in some minced basil. Add salt & pepper if you use them. Mix it a bit. When the zucchini stuffing is good & crisp, then remove it from the toaster, spoon on some tomato & basil and put it back in for a few minutes [or eat it as is]. Serve hot or at room temperature. You could even slice them up in smaller pieces and serve them as nibbles.
They are amazingly good. I knew they were a winner when one evening I did not serve them and my wife asked if there were any of those 'zucchini you have been making' Even my sons think they are really special (although this might not be much of a recommendation since they think the best food comes from fast food restaurants.)
Here are a few photos of the stuffed zucchini process.
VEGETABLE STEW. This is another summer favorite and serves to make lots of vegetables go away. Roughly chop an onion. Remove the tips from a half pound of string beans and cut them into two inch or so pieces. [The koala beans are very good in this, but my favorite remains supermarconi because of the texture when cooked] Chop up a couple of zucchini & a large potato (red or a white california one). Pour some boiling water over some tomatoes & skin them. Roughly chop. Brown the onions in some olive oil until they turn a bit brown. Add a pinch of red pepper flakes (a little really heightens the taste and does not make it hot; add more if you like things a bit hot). Add the vegetables & salt if you use it. Cook until the potatoes are done. Serve warm or at room temperature with a tablespoon or so of freshly grated romano cheese.
There are lots of variations. If my wife is not going to eat it, add some of the little frieriello peppers.
Customers Recipe. This was sent in by Sue Workman who really loves the zuchetta rugosa friuli, the ugly yellow squash found all over the Veneto. They really lend themselves to cooking in liquid since they do not get mushy. I didn't grow them this year. After I read this, I wished that I had.
Hi Bill,
Last year we had an abundance of zuchetta rugosa friuli. There was even a 3 pounder. In a mood of attaining victory over vegetable, I cut it up into pieces and simmered it in chicken stock. For vegetarians, use water. Then pureed with a stick blender. This makes a soup base which freezes beautifully. From that comes:
1. zuchetta e risi. Add chicken broth, diced celery, diced onion. Cook until soft. Add arborio rice and more broth and cook until rice is done. Serve with a "C" of extra virgin olive oil.
2. Chicken, barley soup A. For 1 quart base, add 1/2 cup barley, 1 can diced tomatoes with green chiles, 1 can diced green chiles (mild or hot, depending on consumers' taste, the rest of last night's roast chicken or 1 deli roast chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces, enough water or broth to allow for barley cooking. Mexican style cheese optional for serving.
3. Chicken barley soup B. As above, omit chiles and tomatoes, add fish sauce, coconut milk, chopped green zucchini. Season with lime juice and basil.
Plant more zuchetta next year.
Enjoy,
Sue Workman
8. Growing tip. Spring onions. Franchi cippolloto da mazzi are a really nice spring onion. The packet picture shows a long white bulb; here is how you get your spring onions to look just like the packet picture.
The following is based on the assumption that you live in the north and need to use onion transplants. First, start your onion seeds inside about 10-11 weeks before the normal set out date for your area. Here in Southern New England (zone 5/6) that is somewhere in early to mid May. Plant them in a flat trying to space them about an inch apart. They germinate in a week or so and grow slowly so keep them under lights while they are growing. If you live in an area where you can direct seed, just dig the trench and direct seed.
Dig a trench about six inches deep and pile the extra dirt along the side of the trench. Remove the onion plants (a nice size is one eighth to 1/4 inch thick) and plant them in the trench, spacing them two inches or so. As they grow, begin filling in the trench. Everything that you cover will become that succulent white bulb. Keep them well weeded, although pushing dirt in the trench should keep most of the weeds at bay.
You can start picking them after 45-50 days or so. Harvest should extend at least a four to six weeks, longer if you do not mind them getting pretty big. I am still picking them now, August 8th. The photos were taken on the 8th of August. The bulb is still tender and sweet and the green part is absolutely tender and is simply delicious in salad or stir fry.
I almost think the green part is the best part of the onion. They are so
tender and sweet.
This year I did not dig my trench deep enough; I only went down four inches or so. Next year I will go deeper and have even longer white parts.
9. Further adventures of growing tomatoes on plastic. Well, there is good news and bad news. Good news is that growing tomatoes on plastic (red, black, whatever color) results in earlier harvest. I set out my plants toward the end of May. Picked the first cherry tomatoes when we came back from France during the second week of July. Next the Oxhearts ripened, then the St Pierre and Marmande. The Red Pear (my BLT tomato) came in toward the end of July and were really going by the first week of August.
Bad news is that when you have the kind of weather we have had in New England this summer, you are going to have tomato disease no matter what you do. It was dry in June, but from the beginning of July on we have had rain at least five days out of every week. Rain has been torrential thunderstorms. While I saved on my water bill, tomatoes developed leaf spot disease. I had it in all three plots that I grow in and so did everyone else in the one community garden I grew in. Mine was less awful than people who did not grow on plastic, but yield is down significantly and some plants just plain melted away.
Next year it is going to be plan B. I am going to build a good sized unheated hoophouse and grow them in there so I can keep all water off the plants except for my drip irrigation.
10. Winter squash trials. This year I had some extra space to grow on and decided to do some winter squash trials. I have out the Marmellata (Jaune Gros de Paris is the official name), Butternut Rugosa, Napoli, Padana and I think also Marina Chioggia. Squash love all the moisture. The photo below was taken toward the end of July. Some vines have already run twenty feet and the Marmellata already weigh six or seven pounds. Looking forward to a serious squash harvest if I can keep the deer from kicking in the fruit for the seeds.
11. Celeriac is looking good. I put out ten week transplants the beginning of June. You would never know it, they started out in trenches (the heavy rains washed the soil back in). This photo was taken the beginning of August and they are looking really good. More later.
Zinnia. Usually I grow the dahlia flower zinnia, but this year tried the California zinnia. Plant is a bit shorter, but really produces flowers. This little patch, direct seeded in late May, has been cut a lot and still looks good.
Melons. Put out some watermelon, charentais and zatta in early June. They were under remay cloth until the cucumber beetles left the area in mid July and they thrived. Question is if all the rain will promote disease. Right now they are looking pretty good. Oops. Update from August 10th. The melons on one plot seems to have been done in by Cucumber Beetles (or perhaps the unending rain) and it looks like I may get a few watermelons, but no zatta or charentais. The melons on another plot seems to have escaped the beetles which were pretty awful this year.
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Good growing. As always, may your garden be woodchuck and deer free. Also, for those of you who have squirrels get in your attic, may you have a couple of red tailed hawks patrol your yard.
Bill McKay
