by Nan Chase
My childhood memories of walnuts come from California, where my family lived near the orchards and vineyards planted just outside our hometown. Friends of my parents grew walnuts farther north, and some years we would receive a big burlap sack around Christmas, sewn shut with twine and filled with hundreds of husked walnuts ready to shell. Saturated with flavor, they practically melted in the mouth, but we could never finish all the nuts before the last of them would finally go mealy months later.
Years afterward, traveling in the desolate Central Valley in summer as a young adult, I could mark the location of far-off ranch houses by the presence of tall English walnut trees, which provide the only shade in that flat and blistering landscape. How could those enormous trees live through the cloudless heat, like elephants in a drought? (The answer was well-drained soil and the walnut trees’ long taproots seeking the aquifer hidden below.) I came to think of walnut trees as hard, grown by people hard enough to prosper in that difficult land.
Now, living in North Carolina, I relate to the black walnuts instead. They too are hard: hard shelled, with wood prized for its beautiful dusky grain, tight and straight. These walnuts don’t grow in manicured groves but rather scattered through the forests of the Appalachians and the moist lowlands beyond.
One of my neighbors here has a huge walnut tree that looms over the western side of my yard—a raucous dwelling place for birds and squirrels. Another neighbor has a walnut tree too. I find the half-shells from both trees scattered all over my yard; the meats have been consumed by animals and only the lovely waste remains.
Photo © iStockPhoto/Steve Jump.
Marion Cunningham’s Walnut Sage Stuffing
1/2 cup butter, melted, divided
1-1/2 cups finely chopped onion
1-1/2 cups finely chopped celery
9 cups bread, dried and broken into small pieces
2 cups coarsely chopped California or other walnuts
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh sage
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 to 2 cups turkey broth or chicken broth (enough to make the mixture moist, not soggy)
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Heat 2 tablespoons butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add onions and celery and cook, stirring often, until vegetables are soft but not browned.
Place bread, walnuts, sage, parsley, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Add onion mixture and the remaining melted butter and toss well. Slowly add the broth, a little at a time, tossing the mixture. Add only enough liquid to moisten.
Transfer the stuffing into a casserole dish with approximately 2-1/2 quart capacity. Cover with foil and bake 45 minutes to an hour.
Tips: To test the stuffing to see if the moisture and seasonings are correct, melt a little butter in a skillet, add a rounded tablespoon of the stuffing and stir until lightly golden. For a livelier flavor, add more sage, onion, salt, and/or pepper.
Yield: 8 cups, or sixteen 1/2-cup servings.
Recipe courtesy of Marion Cunningham for the California Walnut Board.
This hearty stuffing invites improvisation with fresh ingredients from the garden: try nuts, herbs, and perhaps even late-season fruit. Photo courtesy of the California Walnut Board.
Landscape highlights
Summer shade
Fall leaf color
Edible highlights
Nuts shelled for snacking and baking
Cooked in sauces
Candied for desserts
Where they grow best
In temperate climates with at least 150 frost-free days for nut production, but hardy to sub-zero temperatures
In full sun
In a large yard, spaced at least twenty-five feet apart
In slightly acidic, well-drained soil
How to grow it
As a tall shade tree or pruned for nut production
With a companion walnut tree for best pollination
With no competition from weeds or vines
By pruning only in spring or summer, not when dormant
Without too much fertilizer
Cracking the hull
A thick, tough husk surrounds the nut’s shell, so it’s necessary to break the husk off before using the nuts. Some gardeners build a shallow wooden trough just wider than a car’s tires, which they lay on a driveway. They lay the husks in the trough and let a car crack the husks apart. Keep the messy husks outdoors.
Herbs & Vines
Fruit trees and nut trees, even berries, all live away from the house. Herbs and vines, in contrast, live close by: snuggled against the house or garage, sheltering us from summer’s heat in arbors, lining flower beds, trailing along the porch, or filling the spaces between paving stones, surviving quite nicely in the dead zone under eaves.
They soften the architectural angles of our lives and give the garden a comfortable, lived-in look.
We brush up against herbs as we work in the edible landscape—and stop to savor the aroma. We marvel at their masses of colorful blossoms and their lush foliage, or at their strong upright, twining growth and welcoming shade.
Most wondrous of all are the many foods and beverages that are enhanced by the use of herbs. Herbs and vines give us health not only as foods, but also as medicines and liniments. Since earliest civilization, herbs and vines have figured in religious ceremonies; they are the subjects of prayers and thanksgiving.
Herbs and vines are intimate, warm, and constant. They are close friends, to us and to each other. Where one thrives, the others tend to do well, too, and even in surprisingly cold climates it is possible to nurture some herbs through the winter. With care, we can eat fresh green herbs in winter and add a little greenery to the landscape as well. In high season, look for carpets of blossoms.
Herbs have such distinctive characteristics. Some love sun, others shade. Some love poor, gritty, and dry soil, while others like an almost swampy moisture level. Some love heat and some love cold, and some don’t care. Some like their roots good and hot, while others want their roots shaded and cool. But they all do best with organic growing methods.
They can be used in formal or informal settings—grouped together or standing all alone—and in such varied landscape applications as a privacy screen, a decorative accent, or a ground cover.
Vines, especially, require discipline so that they will not become overgrown and lose their productive capacities.
There are too many herbs and vines to describe in a book of this modest size, so I have made selections based on their widest landscape value and usefulness. So, for example, the regal red bee balm, with its tonic health effects and incomparable flower heads, gets left out for two reasons: it can require almost a running stream to keep it alive, and in winter it dies back to the ground and turns to mush.
Likewise the graceful fennel, with its lacy greenery and edible root bulb; this is a summer plant, as is feathery dill, and both are pretty useless in a winter landscape.
I have also left out many tender herbs that are perfect in the kitchen garden but lack pizzazz in the landscape; cilantro is one, basil another.
What remains is a list of herbs and vines that perform well in many parts of the country and that quickly yield quantities of especially useful culinary ingredients.
The sweet bay—or bay tree—is too little used in the landscape and deserves a closer look. Grape vines can last a lifetime and provide juice, wine, edible leaves, and marvelous shade; and grapes can grow almost anywhere. The kiwifruit, in both tender and hardy versions, is relatively new on the North American scene and should get consideration for its lush growth of pink-tinged leaves and its delightful fruit.
Mint, which some consider a scourge, has a role in filling wet, shady expanses, and its uses in the kitchen are limitless. The nasturtium shoots a burst of color into any garden, and the leaves, flowers, and seeds are edible.
The triumvirate of rosemary, sage, and thyme are gard
en classics. Satisfying to the eye, the nose, and the tongue, they add spice to life.
Photo by Lonnie Webster.
Robust in any form—low and bushy, tree-like, or pruned into shapes—bay belongs in every cook’s garden. Photo by Robin Siktberg of the Herb Society of America.
Growing Plants in Containers
Most of the plants in this section of the book, and in the Hot Country Choices section, too, can be grown to bearing size in containers. Container gardening requires using the right equipment and supplies.
One successful hothouse gardener offers some tips for best results: use the largest unglazed containers you can handle (at least five gallons and up to twenty) and utilize a set of wheels if necessary; and, to prevent rot, make sure not to let any water sit in a drainage saucer. Create your own soil mix by starting with high quality potting soil, like Metro Mix, and add pure ingredients to attain correct pH level and soil porosity for each kind of plant (peat, pulverized lime, sand, or even cat litter). Install any plant supports like stakes or trellises to the bottom of the container when filling it with soil. Water the plants frequently and dilute any fertilizer applications. Finally, make sure to leave containers outdoors as many days over 40 degrees F as possible.
Bay Tree
Laurus nobilis, plant of many uses and many names—sweet bay, Greek bay, Roman bay, bay tree, bay laurel.
In ancient Greece and Rome, garlands of the glossy evergreen leaves crowned athletes, generals, and heroes, who then could retire to rest on their laurels. The tree helped ward off evil and danger and promoted health and healing; when a family’s bay tree died, they worried.
The sweet bay belongs in every edible landscape where climate allows, and because the bay grows well as a container plant that can be moved indoors in winter, that’s almost anywhere. Its natural climate is Mediterranean, so it will survive some frost, but ideally the bay tree growing outdoors should not be subjected to brutal freeze conditions.
This plant is a handsome relative of the sassafras and avocado, with naturally bushy, almost stiff, foliage. The dark green leaves grow in bunches, with a lighter mid-rib for contrast. Left to itself, the slow-growing bay tree can attain a height of sixty feet, although many sources report that bay only grows as a shrub, fifteen or twenty feet.
The bay responds well to pruning, so it can be planted in multiples and shaped into a hedge, or cut hard into topiary; examples abound of fanciful poufs atop zigzag or spiraling trunks. But for the most part, the bay simply works as a reliable bit of greenery in the herb garden or across the lawn. Inconspicuous cream-colored flowers and dark blue berries are considered a minor part of the bay tree’s attraction.
For cooks, the fresh or lightly dried leaves of the bay are indispensable. Their role is to meld and deepen flavors, and they are a standard part of recipes for soups, stews, and even some desserts. The flavor has been described as “pungent and complex—something between eucalyptus, mint, lemon, and fresh-cut grass.”
For the price of a few supermarket spice jars of desiccated bay leaves grown far away, the home gardener can buy a sweet bay tree and have fresh, aromatic bay leaves any time at all—and for many, many years to come.
I made that culinary and landscape investment a few years ago, when I was going through a stage of buying nursery stock that could only marginally be called appropriate for the cold mountain climate of western North Carolina. I was trying to “push the envelope,” botanically speaking, and my ace in the hole was a sheltered, sunny part of the garden where I felt a bay tree couldn’t fail. For the record, the supplier advised that the bay could survive to 0 degrees F, and it did.
Indeed, it grew well near the other herbs in a raised bed in front of the house. When winter came I carefully tucked it in, using a peony cage to hold a stuffing of pine needles. That arrangement kept the elements from the bay tree, and if I needed bay leaves for a recipe, I could push aside the pine needles and snip from the top. When spring came I removed the cage, and the plant perked right up and added new growth.
Modest in appearance, the evergreen bay tree is a valuable addition to the edible landscape. It can grow as a hedge or a specimen tree. Photo by Tim Kozusko.
Bay Syrup
Simple syrup infused with bay leaf can be used for extra flavor on fresh fruit, baked desserts, and cocktails. Recipes are all over the map—literally—with many variations on a common theme that seems to have originated long ago; the one constant is the use of bay leaves, either fresh or dried, or in combination.
To make the syrup, start a day or so ahead. Use two cups granulated sugar to a cup of water, or use some honey as a sugar substitute. Boil until the sugar has dissolved, then pour over 6 to 8 bay leaves in a bowl; some cooks add slivers of lemon peel or bruised juniper berries. Let steep a half hour; then strain through a fine sieve into a jar, cover, and refrigerate.
Pour over pound cake, add to fruit compote or slices of fresh fruit, or use as a flavoring for rum drinks or fruit beverages.
Landscape highlights
Evergreen for year-round interest
Hedge for screening
Potted for container gardening
Edible highlights
Leaves dried whole for stews and sauces
Leaves infused for syrup, used in desserts and drinks
Where it grows best
Outdoors, in an even climate without much frost, like a coastal zone
Indoors during winter where a cold climate dictates container gardening
In sunny but not burning hot or windy locations
In well-drained soil rich in humus
How to grow it
Outdoors as a small, slow-growing tree
Massed as a hedge
Pruned as topiary
As a prolific evergreen herb
How to make topiary
The ancient art of topiary—sculpting plants into shapes—requires patience and imagination, but it is not difficult. Use clean, sharp tools to shear or carefully clip off small measures of vegetation at a time. Gradually shape the plant over several seasons. Water generously and use diluted fertilizer to ensure the plant’s vigor.
Grape
Grape vines have been intertwined with human life for at least six thousand years and have only become more beloved, more varied and widespread, with time. Today in North America there are thousands of choices for grape vines in the edible landscape, all reflecting the local conditions in which they thrive.
Indeed, there is a grape vine for nearly every climate; what they all have in common is the need for sunshine, good air circulation, well-drained and not overly rich soil, and regular pruning. They also share excellent nutritional value, with high antioxidant levels.
In the edible landscape, grapes provide not only fresh fruit for the table and use in wine and preserves, but also shade in summer and architectural interest in winter. Grape vines are forgiving and can be neglected for years but brought back to life with proper care. They prefer sloping ground that can shed frost, and soil with a lot of grit to aid drainage and retain solar heat.
Most of us are familiar with European grape varieties: table grapes and wine grapes with thin skins that cling tightly to the juicy pulp; many of these are seedless.
There are also native American grapes of two general types: fox grapes, which range mostly in the eastern United States and climb high into the trees, and muscadine grapes, the fat, sweet, thick-skinned grapes of the humid South. However, native grapes have also figured prominently in more westerly localities.
The explorers of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–06 had many auspicious encounters with native grapes. Once, a member of the party got separated for nearly two weeks, lost ahead of the others while low on ammunition. “He had been twelve days without anything to eat but grapes and one rabbit, which he killed by shooting a piece of hard stick in place of a ball,” reads one journal entry.
The Crow Indians called wild grapes Slick Bears’ Eyes, for the way “you can just see tho
se wild grapes down by the creek shining at you like bears’ eyes in the trees,” according to writer Alma Hogan Snell. A favorite way of preparing the fruit, besides eating it fresh, was to crush the grapes, seeds, and stems together before making this pulp into patties. These were dried in the sun, and then could be eaten as is or reconstituted and made into sauce.
Grape breeders have mixed characteristics from all kinds of grapes to enlarge the scope of possibility.
Table grapes are pruned every year to encourage fruiting. Still, if left unattended over time they can be reinvigorated without fuss. Photo by Patrick Tregenza, United States Department of Agriculture.
Pickled Grape Leaves
These pickled leaves are best when they have “matured” a few weeks in the jar. Rinse them before using.
Quantities in this hand-me-down recipe are vague, because the number you process will depend on how many young, unblemished grape leaves you harvest. Late in summer the leaves are tough.
2 teaspoons salt in one quart of water for blanching
1 quart water for each jar of leaves