Have you noticed the beautiful 
sassafras flowers along the up-island roads? this is one of the easiest trees to recognise, with it’s shiny green twigs, brown bark, and distinctive root beer taste and smell. Later on it will have three different kinds of leaves, sometimes on the same tree!
Plants & Gardens
Apple Grafting
In 2010 I had the privelege of taking an apple grafting workshop with heirloom apple fanatic John Bunker, founder of Fedco Trees. The workshop was held at the Polly Hill Arboretum and was crowded with enthusiastic students.
Apple grafting is a form of cloning, where you grow a little twig cutting onto a rootstock to form a tree like the parent of the twig.
Why graft? Every seed unique. Each apple tree grown from seed is unique, and may not be anything like the parents. So if you want one like the other one… you have to graft.
In olden days, most apples were grown from seed. People were less interested in sweetness and looks, since they used most of the fruit for animal feed and cider. They were more concerned than we are with keeping qualities, and had varieties that ripened sequentially throughout the winter in the cellar.
Every town had one or more grafting specialists. Some types were named and became items of trade, usually popular in a particular small area.
The old apple tree in your neighborhood may very well be one of these special regional heirlooms. These trees are often 80-100 years old, and yet a young version can be created using a twig cut out during midwinter, and a possibly unique variety preserved.
By the way, pears are the same.
When you plant an apple seedling, you are planting for the future. The wild and domestic apples we pick now were all planted by someone years ago. Do you know who? have you thanked them? Are you ready to pass it on?
Get involved in saving historic trees in your area – it is lots of fun! Talk to Rebecca about grafting YOUR old favorite.
Wintertime Flower Tea
Herb flowers harvested for Rebecca’s famous “wintertime flower tea.”
A Tale of Two Peppers
Here are the stories of two peppers… one sweet and one hot.
Both were selected by Slow Food International for their Ark of Taste, which features foods that should not be lost to our cultures and our kitchens.
JIMMY NARDELLO’S sweet frying pepper is a long, slim, bright-red, slightly wrinkled pepper that looks hot but it’s not. It is just incredibly full flavored raw, steamed, roasted, but most especially fried. Brought from the southern Italian village of Ruoti by Jimmy Nardello’s mother in 1887. Very prolific and hardy.
THE FISH pepper is an extremely ornamental plant, suitable for pot culture on a sunny deck. The variegated, twisted green and white leaves and peppers seem to splash in the breeze like jumping bait. The peppers pack considerable heat and full flavor and are complimentary to seafood, especially shellfish. They may be harvested when pale colored so as not to create ‘specks’ in a cream sauce, or they may be allowed to ripen through orange to red. This pepper has been a specialty of the African-American community in Baltimore since about 1870.
Whatever process Slow Food used to select these peppers, it works. They are fabulous, vigorous, productive plants and yield pretty peppers with flavor that you will dream about all year long. Highly recommended.