Bountiful, beautiful meals from your garden

Techniques for planting and growing healthy food

by Anne Mahle

     One of my greatest joys is walking out to the garden in the summertime and harvesting what we will have for dinner that night. There is something self-sufficient and independent about it; something sensual and sacred about a rhythm that involves growing and collecting your own food.

Anne Mahle of Rockland pulls weeds from her garden near the herb borage. The plant’s flowers, which are bright blue and star-shaped, can also be used as a garnish. FRANK M. CHILLEMI PHOTO

     What you grow in your backyard couldn’t taste or be any fresher because you grow your food for flavor and health and not for how well it travels 1,600 miles. Your food, grown by your own hard work and creativity, will contain the most nutrients and be the least harmful, especially if you garden organically.

     Growing your own produce is not only nutritious for you but the exercise, of course is an added benefit. There are ways, however, to make your time in the garden more pleasurable -- less about the weeding and more about the harvest and caring for what you’ve planted. The bulk of my years spent gardening has been on the weekends sandwiched between weeks of sailing on Penobscot Bay. So it’s been crucial that I come up with ways to still be able to see my beloved plants through the weeds when I come ashore for the weekend. The first few years, I must confess, the weeds won the battle. But I’ve definitely refined the process and it works beautifully.

     The secret is mulch -- and a lot of it. In the spring, as soon as I’m able to get out into the garden, I’m weeding the small weeds (before they get to be big weeds) and planting cool crop seeds. At first, I only mulch the pathways and this is done with first a very thick layer of newspaper and then a 4 to 6-inch layer of straw or non-weed seed hay. I’m usually able to find this straw for free by offering to cart away what’s been insulating the base of a neighbor’s house all winter.

     Once the ground is warm enough, usually in the very beginning of June, I lay down a 2 to 3 inch layer of compost (if I haven’t already done this in the fall) and mulch all of my raised beds with, again, a 4 to 6-inch layer of straw. My perennial flower beds get a little fancier treatment by first putting down a thick layer of compost and then composted bark mulch to make a 4-inch layer of mulch. The only drawback to this method is that I don’t get to see many self-sewn annuals return from a previous summer, but it’s a small price to pay for not fighting off weeds.

     Once you’ve mastered the basics of low-maintenance gardening, you will find many lovely flowers you can grow in your garden that are edible that will add beauty to your meals. Just a few are chive flowers, pansies, nasturtiums, borage, roses, lavender, scented geraniums and calendula. Chive and calendula flowers can be broken up and sprinkled over salad or used in biscuits. Pansies and borage are beautiful sprinkled in salads or decorating a cheese platter. Nasturtiums, both leaves and flowers, are again, fabulous in salads. Lavender is an herb we find more in potpourri and bath items than anything else, but long ago it was commonly used in cooking. It is found in Herbs de Provence and used alone, without the marjoram, thyme and rosemary, it’s lovely with lamb or chicken. Scented geraniums and roses are wonderful in an iced lemonade or tea. (When you use rose petals, make sure that they are from unsprayed roses.)

     I like to use all parts of the plants I grow in my garden. Tomatoes are grown of course for their fruit, and there is nothing better than a warm tomato eaten straight from the vine. My children eat them like candy. But I also love tomatoes for their foliage, which ends up in my flower arrangements. Their vines are sturdy enough to create a lovely backdrop for whatever flower of color I choose. Sometimes it’s an arrangement of shades of green.

When it comes time to selecting which tomatoes to plant, you’ll want to choose varieties that mature in less than 120 days. ELIZABETH A. HENKEL PHOTO

     There are many other ways to add interest to your meals and to use every part of the bounty growing in your garden. Garlic scapes, the part of the garlic that you can see growing, are wonderful in pasta sauces, soups and roasted with other vegetables. Carrot tops can be used in place of basil in pesto by substituting 1/4 of the basil with carrot tops. Beet greens, when small, are wonderful in a salad with goat cheese and pine nuts. As they become larger, saute them with a little olive oil and lemon and serve with grilled chicken. Zucchini and squash flowers, day lilies and sage leaves are all wonderful dipped in a little batter and fried. Serve with grilled fish and a soy dipping sauce. Warning: It is only necessary to buy ONE zucchini plant for a family of four. Any more and you’ll become one of those people that Mainers run from in the middle of August as you try to give away your elephant-sized, 100 extra pounds of zucchini.

     When choosing the plants for your garden this year, think about how you can take advantage of the cool growing season in Maine. Grow all of the cold season crops like carrots, lettuce, peas, beets, leeks and broccoli just to name a few, by seeding them early (now is a great time) and then plant another crop in the middle of July for fall and early winter. More unusual vegetables that you might try are salsify, parsnips, different colored potatoes and broccoli raab. It’s possible to get some produce from your garden from the beginning of June to the beginning of November.

     And now to the Holy Grail of gardens: tomatoes. There are several ways to insure that your family has tomatoes by the time August hits in Maine. The first is to start with very healthy plants when they go into the garden. The larger the better. Go for two large plants rather than a six-pack of smaller ones. Putting the plants into the ground early works beautifully if you can find a way to warm up the soil. A cold frame will do this nicely. To create a temporary cold frame, surround your plants with bales of hay and cover with a large sliding glass door or several smaller windows. If you don’t have a cold frame, then the walls of water (found in garden supply stores or catalogs) or simply gallon milk jugs with the bottoms cut off and then shoved into the ground over the tomatoes also work. Tomatoes love heat and so anything you can do to give them more warmth at the beginning of the season, the better off you will be in the late summer. Be careful though about getting too impatient now that the weather is starting to warm up. If you’ve got something to cover your plants and to collect warmth you’re fine, but if you just pop your plants into the ground when it’s still chilly and windy during the days and nights, you’ll find that your plants will actually suffer more for your lack of fortitude. You’ll want to choose varieties that mature in less than 120 days.

Colorful pansies are beautiful sprinkled in salads or decorating a cheese platter. KELLY MICHAUD PHOTO

     Whether you have a 1,000 square foot garden or a container garden on your patio, there are fewer things more satisfying in life than cutting herbs or harvesting vegetables grown from your own labor. Enjoy this pleasure to whatever level your space and property allows.

     For more recipes from the garden that include the above-mentioned herbs, vegetables and flowers, e-mail Annie at recipes@AtHomeAtSea.com. Mahle lives in Rockland with her family and is the author of the cookbook “At Home, At Sea: Recipes from the Maine Windjammer J & E Riggin.” She and her husband own and operate the schooner J & E Riggin.