Conversation with Kathy Morrison delves into persimmons, baked goods and season-bridging salads
The gorgeous colors of fall fruit: pears, apples, persimmons (those are Fuyus) and a pomegranate. We have recipes for all of these in Taste Fall! Kathy Morrison
Fred Hoffman always is a favorite visitor to the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center on Open Garden Days. A lifetime master gardener himself, he'll often flag down one of the Sacramento master gardeners to discuss a seasonal topic, such as worm composting or cover crops or fruit tree pruning, for his podcast "Garden Basics with Farmer Fred."
He and I had a fun conversation at the year's final Open Garden, on Oct. 11, about the latest Sacramento Digs Gardening online cookbook, Taste Fall! Everyone else can listen in Friday, Oct. 27, when an edited version goes live on the podcast home page.
We discuss recipes for all those fall fruits shown in the photo above, as well as Hachiya persimmons. (The photo at right shows some of the still-ripening Hachiyas at the Horticulture Center.) The cookbook also includes recipes incorporating vegetables such as winter squash, pumpkins and Brussels sprouts.
And what about that big salad that's the featured photo in the cookbook? That's our Provence-inspired dinner salad, which we loaded up with everything fresh we could find in a south-of-France farmers market a year ago. Since Sacramento has a similar Mediterranean climate, it's an easy recipe to recreate (or adapt to personal taste) from produce at our local farmers markets. It truly celebrates our long growing season and the range of fresh food available nearby.
Check out Fred's earlier podcasts, too. The Oct. 20 episode with Don Shor of Davis' Redwood Nursery, in which they wrap up the 2023 tomato-growing season, is a must for vegetable gardeners.
Look for Sacramento Digs Gardening's Taste Winter! cookbook in late December or early January, after the holiday rush.
In the meantime, check out some cool ways to preserve fall produce, courtesy of the UCCE master food preservers. This link goes to a 26-page pdf that was part of a recent presentation by the Sacramento County master food preservers, "The 4 P's of Fall." (That is, pears, pomegranates, persimmons and pumpkin. Pesto is a bonus.) Many of the recipes involve drying or freezer-preserving, so you don't need a canning kettle or other gear. Good stuff!
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Garden Checklist for week of Feb. 9
Be careful walking or working in wet soil; it compacts easily.
* Keep the irrigation turned off; the ground is plenty wet with more rain on the way.
* February serves as a wake-up call to gardeners. This month, you can transplant or direct-seed several flowers, including snapdragon, candytuft, lilies, astilbe, larkspur, Shasta and painted daisies, stocks, bleeding heart and coral bells.
* In the vegetable garden, plant Jerusalem artichoke tubers, and strawberry and rhubarb roots.
* Transplant cabbage and its close cousins – broccoli, kale and cauliflower – as well as lettuce (both loose leaf and head).
* Indoors, start peppers, tomatoes and eggplant from seed.
* Plant artichokes, asparagus and horseradish from root divisions.
* Plant potatoes from tubers and onions from sets (small bulbs). The onions will sprout quickly and can be used as green onions in March.
* From seed, plant beets, chard, lettuce, mustard, peas, radishes and turnips.
* Annuals are showing up in nurseries, but wait until the weather warms up a bit before planting. Instead, set out flowering perennials such as columbine and delphinium.
* Plant summer-flowering bulbs including cannas, calla lilies and gladiolus.
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