garden, week 2

Orange Blossom tomato plant looking healthy

Today I fertilized with a 2-4-1 fish fertilizer that I bought at Gardenhood. Neptune, I believe, is the name. The working formula is 1 oz per 1 gallon of water, which I am eyeballing.


This week I fertilized everything, herbs and all. In two weeks I will fertilize the tomato plants and any other "heavy feeders", but I will leave the herbs be.

Juane Flamee looking frisky

Cherokee Purple and Mortgage Lifters, bored

All the tomato plants appear to be healthy and growing. I fertilized at inception, so I'm going to try and do this without overfertilizing, which some have recommended to me. Walter Reeves suggests that you avoid the overfertilization, given that it might put the energy of the plant into the stalks rather than ultimately into the fruit.
I do have to admit a concern. Reeves and others have indicated that 10-10-10 fertilizer is the norm. So my 2-4-1 seems...weak.


I have a second concern. No one is clear on how much fertilizer each plant gets. The instructions say basically to soak. So I'm soaking. It comes out to a gallon of water per plot.


Maia's plot is not doing well so far. The pepper plants have all but died, but I'm waiting to see if the small shoot where the jalepeno plant was is actually jalepeno, or just some weed. The cucumber appears to be rooting, albeit one at a time. The eggplant and bell peppers are doing great. Maia's tomatoes (just visible in the back--sweet olive grape tomatoes) are doing brilliantly. Basil appears to be slowly rooting, and the chives pound away.

Maia's plot with miniscule cucumber (front and center--three plants)

Speaking of which, chives will always be part of my garden. It sends up beautiful purple chutes, which I keep in a bud vase. They give the kitchen a fragrant air and shot of color.

deconstructing the screwdriver

The screwdriver, however classic, is so abysmally boring that I can barely stomach it. Of course, if one has fresh orange juice on hand, it can be bright and mildly acidic--something beautiful and simple and even serene. Yet even with it, there is something almost desperate about resorting to the vodka and mixer formula. It seems, like a rum and cola, to be something that you make when you are out of everything else.

Of course, I am out of everything else. I've been buying small batches of bourbon in small bottles once a month, and I haven't even made an April purchase. Almost all my liqueurs are useless without the proper liquors to complement them. My gin is cashed, my tequila despondent, and my rum perilously low. So, short of vodka and orange juice--two ingredients I happen to have--there is nothing to make.

Ordering the Conjecture

So I deconstructed the screwdriver. I'm fairly certain this has been done before, or done in some fashion, but I have purposely not done any research. Suffice it to say that this is as simple a recipe as it gets, and as such cannot be original. But it nonetheless works. I started with thyme-infused syrup, added fee brothers orange bitters (several dashes worth), and then splashed in a little lemon bitters as well. I topped it with Skyy Vodka and added a fat ice cube. Garnish with an orange peel properly zested, or broken, or even flamed.

The lemon bitters may or may not be a welcome addition--it depends on the type of bitters and the character which you are searching for. I would recommend starting without and adding as taste demands. This is what I did, and I am not less happy for the result.

garden--mulching and pepper death

I just read in Walter Reeves's fine book on gardening that tomato seedlings should be mulched immediately upon planting, to avoid having fungus from the soil splash up and taint the leaves. I don't particularly know why I was waiting to mulch in the first place. Primarily laziness, I guess. The tomato plants are all properly mulched with cyprus.

Maia has planted rainbow carrot seeds in the second row (April 23).

The hot peppers--jalepeno and tequila sunrise--appear to be dead. It is possible that the jalepeno will come back, as what appears to be a smaller sprout has survived. I rotated my crops from last year and amended the soil, although it frankly doesn't look very healthy. Will check back tomorrow.

Half-assing an herb garden

The back "herb pots in the ground"

Apple mint, miniature roses in the background

pineapple sage and oregano

Chives, flowering, and Basil

So my herbs are scattered now. Thyme and parsley and cilantro in the front, all transplanted to a makeshift row bordering my gravel walk. Chives, flowering purple, in Maia's plot. Basil too, actually. And in the back, a row of "herbs pots in the ground": sage, thyme, apple mint, oregano, pineapple sage. Spearmint is in the brown pot, another mint (I can't recall which) in the white pot.

Behind the herbs I've planted a rosemary bush that is clearly alive, but not really growing. Next to it is a transplanted hydrangea tree which seems to be coming along nicely. Grown properly, I hope this tree will bring me some height to this plot. Between that and a rosemary bush, I'm hoping we can block out the garbage and recycling cans behind the herb plot.

The row of "herb pots" is most intriguing. The oregano never died, but has produced beautiful oregano all summer and winter. The pineapple sage flowers red and majestic in the late Fall, then recedes before poking out in the Spring. The thyme never really produced last year, but is back with a vengeance this year. Same with the sage.

I want ultimately to raise the bed with the herbs, enrich the soil, and put good landscape lighting in front of them. I have no name for my backyard herb plots, but they have worked out quite well thus far. Much better than my front yard herbs, which are scattered amongst other plants and weeds.

If everything is an experiment in my garden, then the backyard has turned quite pleasant with the regrowth of my herbs from last year. It is not quite a success, but not a failure either. More of a work in progress.

Garden plantings: round two

Went back to the oakhurst community gardens and found a few more plants to put in. Now I have Kevin's Early Orange peppers (planted next to the Barbarella Eggplant), and three "double yield" cucumber plants in my front row. This completes Maia's Patch (or whatever you want to call the triangle patch in front of her window. I have one row left to plant.

Juane Flamee in planter, after one week

Cherokee Purple, west side of row

I scattered some fertilizer in the new plantings, just as I had in the ones last week. Everything appears healthy and hopefully is rooting. Rain this week was good, but I watered yesterday for good measure. There will be no rain this week, so I'll have to water at least on Wednesday before next weekend. I'll fertilize next weekend as well.

Soundtable

After two years, the Soundtable has maintained its standing among the top Atlanta cocktail bars. It may not enjoy the fire it had at its opening, when I could happily report that it had no equal in Atlanta. They have since lost at least one of their fine bartenders and other establishments have risen from the dust to compete. So it is more the crowding of the field than a decline in quality that diminishes the Soundtable relative to its peers. I am just as apt on any night to run to H. Harper Station or Pura Vida for cocktails, and I no longer recommend solely the Soundtable when people ask where the good drinks flow.

But I will always have an affinity for the Soundtable. The location at Edgewood and Boulevard is romantic urban chic, and reaffirms my general aversion to Buckhead and Virginia Highlands. The vibe at the Soundtable is good and the style is both modern and warm, an aesthetic which I find pleasing. I don't like it when crowded, but then again I don't like any bar when it is crowded. (I prefer what Chicago's The Violet Hour does--only allowing as many patrons as they can seat at any one time and forcing any overflow traffic to line up outside.) The service is genuinely friendly and knowledgeable, even if they may lose some marks for speed and efficiency. I have often times waited far too long for a drink there, even when it's not busy. But on the same note, the bartenders and waiters work with you and the menu to find you the perfect match. In the end, I'd rather have an artisanal bar stocked with experts in craft than exemplars of service. Save the five star service for the five star restaurants whose rich patrons probably have no clue what they are tasting or ingesting.

What I am happiest to report on is that the Soundtable can stake a solid claim to being the most subtle purveyors of craft cocktails in Atlanta. Their drinks tend toward the simple, experimenting with three or four ingredients, paying attention to proportions rather than throwing more and more exotic liquors into the mix. Last night I had two rich and dusky cocktails there, both made with fernet branca. Between that and the sweetbreads, my life suddenly seemed remarkably good. The bartenders were in a friendly mood, mainly experimenting with drinks during a slow night (Wednesday, after all...) One bartender was working on a honeysuckle old fashioned, which he let me try. We bantered about ways to craft the cocktail. By the end of the night, he had a pretty damn good concoction. Or at least I think he did. I was pretty drunk by the time I left.

I was there, two years ago, for the opening of the Soundtable--or at least, I was there shortly after it opened. I used to go frequently, or as frequently as my two year old will give me leave. But I hadn't been back in some time, owing probably more to my increasing schedule than anything else. So it's good to check in from time to time, and even better to leave smiling. And not just because a couple of cocktails will make you smile, but because the taste of fernet branca and how it alters with 7 year old rum versus 10 year old bourbon has been comfortably lodged in your head. Well, it was in mine anyway.

scrambling the egg

It turns out there is an art to scrambling. I had, hitherto, treated scrambled eggs much like I treated omelets, cooking them over high heat for a short amount of time with one tablespoon of butter. But research conducted before a Sunday brunch for visiting family shamed me--I've been doing it wrong. The differences between omelet and scramble are, it turns out, great.

Omelets proceed from lightly beaten eggs--no more than forty strokes. Scrambles benefit from aeration, so it is preferable to whisk them into submission. I prefer in both situations to allow the eggs to rise to room temperature before cooking, should time allow.

The high heat used in omelet preparation helps establish shape and consistency in a single omelet. The texture it returns is fluffy, but it is also a decided and whole structure. Even without filling, the omelet still tastes like a sandwich to me, and this gastronomic metaphor actually helps one evaluate omelets. I dined the other week at Murphy's, a Virginia-Highlands mainstay that has usually returned palatable fare during my time in Atlanta. I believe, in fact, that it was the first restaurant I ever went to, back when I interviewed. I ordered the special omelet, which promised Berkshire ham and, well, something else that I can't remember now. The ham was great. The eggs... not so much. It was flat, slightly browned, and far too big. The result was joyless eggs, much like a sandwich on wonderbread. I picked the ham out.

For a scramble, the heat should be medium low. I've experimented with my front burners between 4 and 6, and found that 6 is definitely too high. (Note: try the back burners, where low heat can be controlled better.) Once the butter has melted in the pan (1 tbsp for 2-3 eggs), add the eggs. Then start whisking, and prepare to whisk for 3-4 minutes. As the eggs cook, they will separate into curds. The whisking helps aerate and keep the curds small. The result is not fluffy, but creamy. The texture is something more akin to polenta than an omelet. They are phenomenally good this way, and they can be dressed after completion with butter, chives, or any other herb.

The best scramble I have made so far I did in my metal saute pan. I stuck to metal because it allowed me to use a metal whisk. When I used the nonstick pan, I used a rubber spoon and swirled the eggs. The curds were larger when I did this, and although the eggs were tender, they were not as good.

There are two drawbacks to cooking eggs in this French fashion. The first is specific to the scramble, and is merely the trouble of cleaning a metal pan in which eggs stick. The second problem covers both, and is a problem of texture and taste. Once you begin to realize how heat, applied in different ways, alters the same core ingredient to produce variation, you become aware of how awful most eateries really are. I am reminded of a scene in Grosse Point Blank where John Cusack orders a plain, egg-white omelet at a diner while in a silent standoff with Dan Akroyd, who has just ordered poached eggs. The waitress, oblivious to the fact that the two are pointing guns at each other under the table, asks Cusack what he wants in his omelet. Cusack asks for it plain, and the waitress objects that it can't technically be an omelet without a filling. I can't do the scene comedic justice, but it says something about the quality of the writing that I can only now appreciate its humor fully. Omelets are not about filling. They are about eggs. And my recent disappointment at Murphy's is all thanks to understanding just how different are different kinds of egg preparation. Alas!

Spring Planting, 2012

The weather would have allowed for an early planting this year, but I waited until Easter anyway. The reason may partly lie with work, which has kept me knotted up more than usual, or superstition, as I feared the early warmth was cozying up just to lull us all into a false state of fuzziness just to surprise us with a late-spring frost. But nothing doing. The ground has been thawed for more than a month and nothing will freeze it now--freakish weather aside.

I have tried two different transplants this year. The first is to take my vinca major and transplant it to the mailbox area. It flowers purple in the Spring and seems to take in any soil, so it will make nice ground cover around my mailbox. The second was to take my silver edge thyme and transplant it to the north of my gravel walk. I ultimately want to plant other hearty herbs in a makeshift row there, just to further push back my lawn. The silver edge thyme is so hardy and creeps so wonderfully that I couldn't resist setting it there.

Tomato plants: I planted seven different tomato plants. The big difference from last year to this is that I am no longer cramming my tomato plants into the planters. They will now each occupy their own space. From east to west, the plants are as follows:

Sweet Olive
Orange Blossom
Cherokee Purple
Sunny Boy
Cherokee Purple
Mortgage Lifters
Juane Flamee

So, the row of five starts with Orange Blossom and ends with Mortgage Lifters. I'm trying a variety of heirloom and hybrid seeds, purely speculatively and based on what caught my fancy at the Oakhurst Community Gardens.

Maia's Plot, the rows, and the planter

For peppers, I've planted jalepenos and Tequila Sunset sweet. They are in the back row up of Maia's Plot. I also planted a "Barbarella" eggplant, primarily because it claimed to have beautiful fruit, in the front row. I have plenty of space available there for cucumbers, once I can find any.

The picture is kind of weak, but it gives you an idea of where everything is--if you can make out the tomato cages, everything else kind of falls into line.

In the back, I have planted Apple Mint (where the basil used to be) and Peppermint (in a pot), and I'm waiting to see if the mint in the other pot comes back.

I will fertilize every two weeks. I'm still unclear about how much fertilizer I need to be using for each plant, but I will simply record what I do, faithfully here.