The top posts of 2012

Happy new year! It's January second, and many of you are heading back into work despite not having quite recovered from the holidays. Fortunately, it's a short week. If it makes you feel better, I spent the afternoon shoveling rabbit poop and soggy compost.

I did take a minute to check the blog stats for 2012 (readers in 47 countries, not bad for a 6 month-old blog) and thought I'd share the most popular posts from 2012. It looks like I should post updates on the ficoide glaciale and the cape gooseberry plants; both are doing splendidly. Although looking at the search engine reports, if I really want to target the most popular search terms, I need to do more posts on "big melons."

The most popular posts of 2012:

FAQ: Ficoide glaciale    

FAQ: Cape gooseberry    

Garam masala oatmeal chocolate chip cookies    

What to do with that leftover pumpkin puree    

Tuna salad, with chickpeas instead of tuna    

Warm kale salad with roasted butternut squash, parsnips, and caramelized red onions    

Fee Fi Fo Fum: scarlet runner beans    

Lemon-thyme-rosemary cake #2

Winter garden

The winter garden is wet and cold, but stubbornly remains too productive for me to just ignore it until the weather gets nicer. Fall-planted peas are forming pods. Salad greens are thriving despite the fact that I don't especially crave salad right now, leading me to look for warm dishes to make with mâche and miner's lettuce and ficoide glaciale.

The last of the root crops are patiently waiting to be picked, most of them still good after all these months. The rhubarb is loving the rain and has unfolded enormous leaves over vibrant red stalks, but I am obeying the Sunset Western Garden Book of Edibles and giving it two full growing seasons to get established before I start harvesting it.

rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum)

FAQ: Ficoide glaciale

What's that plant? and other frequently asked questions.

I lied about the "frequently" part. People rarely ask about this plant. At first glance, it just looks like the kind of fuzzy succulent you see in every drought-tolerant yard around.

Then I snap off a leaf and make people taste it. Ficoide glaciale, or "glacier lettuce," has a lemony, briny taste you don't expect from a land plant. It's not fuzzy at all, but covered with tiny bumps that look like frost and burst open when you bite into it, hitting your tongue with a tiny salt spray.

New in the garden

Just FYI: you don't have to wait until spring to plant your garden. (At least, not if you live in this climate.) Right now is a great time to plant cool-weather edibles.

New additions to the garden:

Salad greens 

The back of the western veggie bed is all greens. So far, we've got six kinds of lettuce, two kinds of spinach, assorted spicy micro-greens, mâche, and two new ones: miner's lettuce and glacier lettuce.

The miner's lettuce, tucked back behind the kale, is a CA native with a fondness for some shade and good moisture. Word has it you can still find it growing wild. Apparently, the gold miners ate it to prevent scurvy. I tossed my first harvest with pasta, topped it with garden tomatoes and some fresh ricotta, and am pleased to report that I am still scurvy-free.