Category Archives: Gardening in Italy

Poor, Sad Olives

19 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by in Food, Gardening in Italy, Italian food, Italian gardens, olives, Rapallo, Weather

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Speedy and I were pretty happy this spring as we watched the olive trees blossoming – it looked to be a good year for olives, something we haven’t enjoyed for the last four or five years.  Then came the summer that wasn’t. Uncharacteristically cool and wet, the hot dry days we expect in July and August never materialized. For the first time since we’ve lived here I did not have to water the gardens at all.

The olives didn’t like it. The first problem is an annual problem, but one that has never been as bad as this year: the Mediterannean fruit fly.

Photo by Jack Kelly Clark, courtesy of University of California

Photo by Jack Kelly Clark

This little stinker, only about 1/4″ long, has an ovipositer that allows her to deposit her eggs in ripening olives. The maggots that hatch dine on the meat inside the olive until they are ready to burrow out, leaving behind a black and mushy mess. We’ve always had some fruit with the tell-tale dots that show an egg has been laid. This year we’ve had ample evidence that the larvae flourished. Why they were more successful this year than other years I don’t know; I think I’ll blame climate change.

bad olives-001

Two other problems, certainly climate related, are a kind of rusty growth on the fruit that is called either anthracnose or soft nose. I don’t know enough about either of these conditions to know which has affected our olives; I just know that either one leaves the fruit completely damaged and useless.

Fruit showing both the rusty disease and puncture wounds from egg-laying

Fruit showing both the rusty disease and puncture wounds from egg-laying

Usually at this time of year, if we are having a good year, we are dragging out nets, olive rakes and sheets for our own particular style of harvest. (You can read about our harvest by pressing here and here.) This year there is no point.

bad olives-003Many of the olives have turned dark prematurely and have fallen off the trees on their own. There’s no telling what quality of oil might lie within the few hardy individuals that are still clinging to the trees. We’re not going to invest the not inconsiderable time and effort to find out.

Ours are not the only trees thus affected. We have heard from friends that no-one in our part of Italy has an olive harvest this year. This is a pity for those of us with trees, but it’s a misery for the people who have the business of pressing olives. They will have few customers this year. Fortunately for olive-oil lovers, we have also heard that the crop in the south is excellent this year. With luck they will pick up the slack for those of us in the north.

One thing that never seems to die is hope – and I just know that next year will be the best year ever for olives.

Poster courtesy of Santa Clara Design

Poster courtesy of Santa Clara Design

First It Was the Apricots, Now It’s the Plums

08 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in gardening, Gardening in Italy, Italian food, Italian gardens, San Maurizio di Monti

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The property we live on came with a bunch of olive trees and some (to us) mystery trees that turned out to be plums of the teeny variety. I’ve had a very hard time figuring out just what type of plums these are (other than very small) – maybe one of you can help?

BEFORE!

BEFORE!

I never gave much thought to plums other than the fact that they came in blue/purple and yellow/green. It turns out there are a great many varieties, from small to large, from early ripening to late. And like so many things in the botanical world, they have wonderful common names: Dennistons’ Superb Plum (it’s ‘reliable’); wouldn’t it be great to be superb and reliable at the same time?  There is the usual smattering of place-name names, mostly British: Warwickshire, Shropshire. My favorite, I guess, is the Blue Tit Plum (‘popular’ (I bet!) and ‘reliable’).*

But losing oneself in the world of plummy nomenclature doesn’t get one any closer to identifying one’s own plums. I never did sort out what we have, other than that they are some sort of very small, early, yellow plum.

AFTER!

In the end it doesn’t matter what they’re called. It’s enough for us to know they make delicious jam.

*Names of plums harvested here.

A Sorry State of Affairs

08 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by in Gardening in Italy, Italian gardens, olives, Uncategorized

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No I’m not talking about Prime Minister Berlusconi’s latest schenanigans… I wouldn’t know where to begin (besides, then I would have had to call this post ‘Sorry Affairs of State’).  I’m talking olives:

Our friend R says the heavy rain of a couple of weeks ago damaged all the fruit.  Our friend E says that insects are the culprits.  As I’m much more diplomatic than our Prime Minister, I’m going to say they’re both right; and whatever the reason, there is no usable olive crop for us this year, or for anyone else we know.  The aforementioned R, who is famous for taking 95 kili of fruit from one tree last year, says he’ll be lucky to get a quintale (100 kili) from his 80 + trees this year. I don’t know if he’ll bother.  We have only about 15 trees, and many of them have no fruit anyway, so it would be a complete waste of time for us to harvest.

It’s a pity, because we look forward to the fun of harvesting and then going to the frantoio with friends and watching our very own olive oil come out of the machines (you can see the process here).  But this year it’s not to be.  We’ll hope for better luck next year, with the olives AND with the Prime Minister.

The Best Thing We Ate This Week – Stuffed Grape Leaves

11 Sunday Sep 2011

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Grapes.  Italy is covered with them, and this is the season when they come into their own.  All around Toscana and Piemonte the grapes are being harvested and turned into wine.  The markets are full of plump pale green eating grapes, sweet, succulent and seedy.  Delicious!

About five years ago our friends Rick and Marisa gave us a small vine of what’s called American grapes here – the sweet purple Concord grape from which grape jelly is made.  Every year it grew a little more, but remained rather small.  (One reason it did so is because some critter kept eating the new shoots each year.) Suddenly this year it exploded (as you can see above) threatening to engulf our terrace.

With great excitement we watched as many panicles developed little hard green orbs which gradually swelled and began to change color.  There were so many!  One day I hunted through the vines, mentally counting jars of jam, and, after a taste, decided that the fruit needed one more day of hot sun and then it would be perfect.

The next morning I gathered up a basket and the secators and headed down for the first ever vendemia.  But wait.  Where were the grapes??  With mounting horror I realized that there was not a grape to be seen.  The panicles were still there, their little stems taunting me, but not a one carried a grape any more.  Who was the villain?  We suspect a rat, literally, as they like sweet grapes we’re told.  Must have been a rat smart enough to finally figure out that waiting for the grapes in August was better than eating the new growth in May. But oh, grrrrrr.  I was so annoyed.

But then I got thinking, all is not lost.  We might not have grape jam this year, but the Captain makes wonderful stuffed grape leaves.  So instead of harvesting grapes I harvested a couple dozen beautiful leaves and called the head chef to report what had happened.  He made a detour to the local Middle Eastern food shop and picked up a kilo of of frozen lamb and that night we sat down to a delicious meal.  It has always puzzled us that in this country of grapes there do not seem to be recipes for the leaves.  But thank goodness other cultures have developed them, and that night we were the beneficiaries.


You can find the recipe the Captain uses here.  It is taken from a book called Finest in Middle East Recipes; Exclusive ideas for Better Cooking, by Yasmine Betar.

You’ll notice from the photo that the Captain’s copy of this fine book is the New Edition – 1968 (originally published in 1957).  The author is so modest she doesn’t even put her name on the cover!  The title page lures one on with the promise of “Over one hundred Recipes, Simplified, With suggested menus, Their uses origin and history… Also spicelore and herbs, Some stories of folklore origin.”  The inside of the book is as delightful as the outside:

The illustrations are by Leo Sarkisian, who is well-known as a collector and recorder of African Music.

Ms Betar was born and grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a Lebanese food marketer.  She learned food from her father and its preparation and lore from her mother.

The Captain has altered her recipe a bit, but it is still mostly hers.  If you decide to make these stuffed grape leaves you’re in for a real treat.

What the…. ??

18 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by in gardening, Gardening in Italy, Italian gardens

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Hot as it is outside these days (35 C, or +/- 95F) there is definitely an end-of-season feel in the air.  The birds that were noisily nesting for so long  have abandoned the eaves, the cicadas drone on, but with a new weariness in their thrum.  The sun is setting much earlier, and the shops are full of back-to-school gear.

We’ve been picking and eating tomatoes for a month, and those in the garden which have already set fruit continue to ripen, in spite of the nasty disease that is killing some of their leaves.  No new fruit is forming. The same plight has visited all our viney plants as well – cukes, pumpkins, squash and melons (we have just a few plants of each so each loss is felt all the more).  First the leaves close to the main stem shrivel, then the stem desiccates and the leaves farther along wither and die.  Once the stem dies, the fruit at the end of it stops developing and dies as well.  I don’t know what this malady is, but I notice that we are not the only ones afflicted – all the gardens up and down the mountain are looking pretty sad.

We have had one huge success, though.  The only problem is we have no idea what it is.  A squashy something emerged from the compost pile a while back, and as you can see in the photo above, it is rampaging all around our former orto (abandoned because of lack of sun).  It sure looks healthy, doesn’t it?  No withering leaves here; the worst you can say is there are a few spots of the usual fungus, but even that disease hasn’t been able to get any traction.

Now it is forming gigantic fruits:

They have the size and shape of rapidly growing pumpkins, but the color of summer squash, which we’ve never grown.  I can only guess that this plant is some kind of hybrid born of the alchemy of a compost pile.  And like so many mutts, this item seems stronger and healthier than all the hot-house sissies that are dying apace in our other gardens.  Bah.  The only problem is, we don’t know if we should carve it or eat it.  Maybe both?  In the meantime, we want to wait and see just how big it will grow, and try to come up with a good name for it – squashkin?  pumpkish? Any ideas?