Three steps to making a pie: crust, filling, topping.

Step One: Pie crust

1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 stick butter
3 tablespoons ice water (chill 1/2 cup water with three ice cubes and let it sit 5 minutes)

Mix the flour, salt and sugar in a food processor. Cut the butter into
chunks and add to the flour, pulse until mixed well. Slowly add ice water
until the dough begins to ball up. Form it into a disc, press to flatten slightly and wrap in
waxed paper. Refrigerate for an hour or so. When ready to roll, let it sit on slightly flour surface for about 5 minutes, then roll out to desired thickness, and several inches larger than the pie dish. Transfer to the pie dish, trim and crimp edges.

Pie crust waiting the rhubarb filling

Step Two: Topping

1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp. cinnamon.
1 /3 cup softened butter

Before you clean out the food processor, blend all these to combine. Or stir together with a fork. Will be a crumbly consistency. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside.

Rhubarb blended with lemon, ginger and sugar and a dash of rum.

Step Three: Filling

8 stalks Rhubarb
¼ maple syrup
¼ cup sugar
1 Tablespoon grated fresh ginger ( or 1 tsp dried)
1 lemon, zest and juice
½ cup flour
¼ cup Dark rum

Harvest the rhubarb, remove the leaves and cut into 1 inch chunks. Will yield about 6 cups. Place in a large bowl, and combine with the rest of the ingredients. Toss to blend.

Rhubarb Pie with crumb topping, ready to bake.

To Assemble:

Preheat oven to 375*
Fill the crust, sprinkle with topping,( If the butter chunks did not blend, as in this photo, they’ll melt.). Place on a flat sheet tray to catch drippings. Bake 45 minutes or until it looks done. Cool slightly before serving with vanilla ice cream.

The Paintbox Garden design from The Complete Kitchen Garden book.

Salad greens are high in nutrition, and rank the highest nutrition per square foot of space used in the garden. In a single square foot you can grow several whole salad bowls worth of greens, while one tomato plant takes up three times that amount. Salad greens are relatively free of pest and diseases, while tomatoes succumb to blight easily and quite frankly, are not as beautiful to look at as a bed full of greens.

My love affair with salad greens started in 1980, when a friend brought me a packet of arugula seeds from her trip to France. I struggled to read the French planting instructions, yet in good faith, sowed the seed in a long row next to Black Seeded Simpson and summer Bibb lettuce.  In less than a week, the row was filled with tiny green leaves, and by the second week it was ready to taste.

Eat your Greens! Photo Credit: The Complete Kitchen Garden

That first sharp bite and bitter flavor left me wondering why anyone would savor this harsh bitter salad green?

I left it to grow for another week, meanwhile looking up recipes for a sweet creamy dressing that might tame the bite, that only increased as the leaves matured. To my surprise, the piquant greens took on a completely different personality once coated with dressing, and suddenly, I could not get enough. The search was on for more European salad greens, and the more unfamiliar, the better.

Since many salad greens are fragile and can barely survive the trip from the garden to the salad bowl without wilting just a bit, I’ll often make the salad dressing ahead of time in the bowl, before I dash to the garden for a bouquet of herbs, green and aromatics.  Salad greens thrive in our cool Vermont summers, so I’ve grown just about everything I can find; Claytonia, Good King Henry, Mache and kale, several types of arugula, radicchio and puntarella chicory, shungiku and bok choy and every mustard invented.

I adore the spiky hot flavors of chervil and cress, blended with the crisp aromatic leaves of fennel and lemon basil, smoothed out by a few leaves of soft butterhead. I rarely make the same salad twice, which makes it hard to repeat the good ones.

Tapestry of lettuce in Ellen Ogden’s garden.

Every dressing needs to be carefully balanced so it does not overpower the subtle flavors, and brings out the best in the tender leaves.

Growing a garden can take time, and requires learning a few things about how to prepare the soil, how to sow seeds, and how to maintain a healthy garden from seed to harvest. And not everyone is interested in cultivating a garden because it takes time and effort. Yet growing a garden can teach us so much about food so I encourage you to give it a try.

Growing a Salad Lover’s Garden , allows the gardener to jump over some of the hurdles that a traditional garden may harbor: seeds germinate fast in almost any type of soil, they are not fussy about sun or shade, and can be grown in a window box in a south facing window, or in a kitchen garden.Harvest is typically 30-45 days, less than a third of the time it takes to grow a tomato, pepper or broccoli plant, so what’s not to love about growing salad greens?

Start with one plant that you really love, such as salad greens. Grow everything that you can find. Completely saturate yourself. And from that you can springboard to the others plant families.

Knowing how to grow food and feed yourself (and your friends) is the coolest thing in the world. Borrowing a concept from Austin Kleon’s book, Steal Like An Artist, it’s okay to copy other gardeners ideas and designs. So go ahead, copy my salad lover’s garden design from my book. You’ll be glad you did.

The ultimate reward of the salad lover’s garden.

Hand carved planting line to get seeds planted in a straight row.

I’ll admit, that when it comes to planting the garden, I like straight lines. For years, I simply used two sticks and a ball of twine to mark the row, but when I discovered that I could use a fancy planting line that also serves as a dibber, I upgraded. There are lots of ways that we can improve our gardening efforts, and in my garden I keep a pretty strict rule: it has to be attractive. So when I met Hugh and Hope Davis at a garden event a few years back, I became a fan.

For Sale: Hand-crafted wooden markers and planting tools.

Last week, I drove to their workshop in Leverett, Mass to see their charming gardens, and visit the workshop where Hugh carves and constructs hand-hewn trellises for fences and climbing vines. The driveway entrance is marked by a carved stone, that reads The Farmstead, which leads through an entrance bordered by espaliered fruit trees, into a series of low stone walls and paths, and an historic 1700′s salt box house. The Farmstead began when Hope got hooked on the author Ann Leighton, author of the book titled Early American Gardens and thought that she’d like to design her gardens to fit the era of their house.

Hugh whittling wood in front of the fireplace.

This led to the design of a cedar raised bed made with a mortise and tenon design, which quickly became so popular they gave the business to their son, Tony, who makes them at his own farmstead in Chatham, Cape Cod. These are the raised beds that I often recommend in my garden lectures, perfect for urban gardeners, school gardens and I recently put up a few at my son’s apartment in Burlington, Vermont ( and received lots of praise from his facebook friends).

The Farmstead Tudor Trellis’

Even though the day was sunny and warm, we enjoyed a cup of tea in front of the massive fireplace, where Hugh hand carves and whittles wood for his garden pieces. It was a Tasha Tudor moment, with the fire warming the room,  surrounded by naturally aged wide pine floor boards, wall to ceiling built in cupboards holding old pewter, flowering plants on the windowsills, and a collection of trellis’s, planting boxes, fences and benches just out side the kitchen door. They were building inventory for a series of upcoming garden show at the Berkshire Botanic Gardens, Tower Hill and the North Hill Garden Symposium.

pansies in front of the potting shed

My favorite piece that Hugh makes is a garden tudor style trellis, which I have in the center of one of my beds. This morning, I stuck in curly willow branches to help the sweet peas climb up the side, and stretched the planting line across the bed, to sow seeds for salad greens. All of the garden tools that Hugh and Hope skillfully craft are based on early American designs. They are both practical and artful, and to me, it’s the best of both worlds and the only way to garden.

sweet peas growing on a trellis

If interested in purchasing: Contact Ellen.

Wooden Dibbers,Wooden Planting Line, Wood Seed Box or Wooden Trellis for peonies or peas.

Key Ingredient #1: Rhubarb

It seems too early to bring out my canning jars and kettle from the basement, but with an abundance of rhubarb, the time is right. Working from a recipe for my favorite ginger peach chutney from my book, I created this recipe for Ginger Rhubarb Chutney. The result is a spicy, complex, chunky, sweet and sour condiment. The fresh rhubarb cooked down quickly, and filled the house with a sublime aroma. In less than an hour, six pints were cooling on the windowsill.

Chutney is made with fresh fruit, ginger, hot chilies, and spices, and it is simple to make. You can follow a recipe, or keep basic proportions in mind: two cups of sugar, two cups of vinegar, and eight cups of sliced or chopped fruit and wing it. Add grated fresh ginger, raisins or cranberries, and black mustard seeds, to impart a depth of flavor that will elevate the chutney beyond a simple relish.

Key ingredient #2: Fresh Ginger

Good chutney demands more time than creativity, and can take an hour of simmering before it reaches the glossy, thick consistency that signals readiness. Like good wine, chutney gets better with age, and should be sealed and set on the shelf for at least three months before served as a side with poultry or dabbed on a cracker with a slice of cheddar cheese. The ingredient list may seem daunting, but most of these items you will probably have already in your kitchen, so take a deep breath and give it a try. Besides, it’s a good way to use up all that rhubarb that is begging to be picked.

Rhubarb Ginger Chutney

Makes 6 pint jars

2 cups dark brown sugar
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1 or 2 fresh jalepeño
1 large shallot
3 cloves garlic
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon black mustard seed
2 tablespoons yellow mustard seeds
1/4teapsoon each: cloves, coriander, cardamom
2 cinnamon sticks
1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins
1/4 cup fresh grated ginger (3-inch knob) or finely chopped crystallized ginger
6 cups chopped rhubarb – cut into 1 inch chunks

Add one or two tablespoons hot peppers with seeds.

1. In a large kettle, combine the sugar and the vinegar and bring to a simmer over medium heat, until the sugar dissolves. Finely dice the jalapeño, shallot, garlic, onion and mustard seed. Stir in the spices, cranberries or raisins and the ginger. Simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes, while your prepare the rhubarb.

2. Harvest 10 or so rhubarb stalks, and trim the leaves off in the garden and place in the compost. Cut into 1 inch chunks, and add to the simmering pot.

3. Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium-low heat and allow to cook for about 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rhubarb softens and the brine takes on a glossy look. Take care not to overcook to keep the texture chunky.

One Large Shallot = 1/4 cup

4. Taste, and once you’ve deemed the chutney is ready, fill sterilized jars; wipe the rims clean with a hot towel and screw on the sterilized lids. Flip upside down to seal. You may immerse the jars in a hot water bath for 10 minutes, if you think this is necessary to ensure proper sealing. Label the jars and set on a shelf for a minimum of 3 months to allow the flavors to meld and ripen.

Add mixed dried fruits for color, flavor and texture.

Too much Arugula?

Arugula and Quinoa Salad from The Complete Kitchen Garden book.

Quinoa Salad with Arugula and Lemon Vinaigrette

Serves 6

For a refreshing splash of summer, use this lemony vinaigrette dressing on a variety of spring greens; it is especially good for bringing out the tart notes in arugula.

1 cup vegetable stock or water

1 cup quinoa

1 cup dry green lentils

½ cup Lemon Vinaigrette ( see below)

4 cups fresh arugula or mesclun greens, washed and dried

6 scallions or 1 shallot, coarsely chopped

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced into 1/2 inch cubes

1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled (Optional)

1. In a medium saucepan, bring the stock or water to a boil. Add the quinoa, cover, and simmer until all the liquid has been absorbed, about 10 minutes.

2. In a separate saucepan, cover the lentils with enough water to cover them by 1 inch, and simmer over medium heat until tender, about 15 minutes. Drain any excess water and cool.

3. In a large salad bowl, combine the lentils and quinoa and toss with half the lemon vinaigrette. Cool at room temperature or refrigerate until ready to serve.

4. Just before serving, coarsely chop the arugula and combine it with the lentils and couscous, along with the scallions, cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers. Crumble on the feta cheese, and add more dressing, to taste.

Lemon Vinaigrette

Makes 1/2 cup

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

2 cloves garlic, mashed

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a Mason jar with a lid. Shake to blend until emulsified. Set aside until the salad is prepared.

Recipe: Blueberry Zucchini Bread from The Complete Kitchen Garden designs with recipes.

Peter Rabbit Style Garden

There is no doubt that the best way to encourage children to eat fresh vegetables is to let them graze before dinner on tender garden spinach or snack on sugar snap peas, but be warned that eating fresh from the garden is guaranteed to turn then into food snobs. Supermarket produce and frozen peas from a bag will never hold the same appeal again. Planning a children’s garden involves the whole family, and a good place to start is at the dinner table. Discuss what foods can be grown, and how long it might take for a head of broccoli to mature. Kids will appreciate the food on their plate far more when they’ve spent a whole summer nurturing it from seed.

Plan to grow crops that have a “wow” factor, such as giant pumpkins, or carrots that mysteriously grow underground, or Easter Egg colored potatoes. Include quick growers such as lettuce and spinach, that can be easily sown by seed. When kids are young, never allow them to think they are in the garden to “work”. Always keep it fun and full of little games, such as a strawberry picking contest or finding the largest bean or growing the tallest vine.

Let the kids help out with the planting and weeding and simply give up the notion that the garden has to be perfect and neat. In the Children’s garden, there should be plenty of pathways to little feet won’t step in the soil, and a fence to protect the area form roving chickens or dogs. Keep the garden organic, and assign different roles for each family members, so everyone has a job and can contribute to the family meal. And if you have time to start a children’s garden at your children’s’ school, it will help their teachers integrate a natural way to teach math, English, science, art and ecology, as well as a healthier way to eat.

Blueberry-Zucchini Bread

Makes one 9-by-12-inch loaf

Everyone loves blueberry season and since they are ripening just as the zucchini is starting to get big, the two are natural partners for a tasty quick bread.

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 1/2 cups sugar

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup plain yogurt

2 cups grated zucchini (about 3 medium zucchini)

1 tablespoon lemon zest

1 pint fresh blueberries

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Position a rack in the center of the oven. Lightly butter and flour a 9-by-12-inch baking pan or bread loaf pan, tapping out the excess flour.

2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

3. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the sugar and butter on high speed until smooth.

4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Reduce the speed to low and beat in the vanilla and yogurt. Gradually add the flour mixture until combined.

5. With a wooden spoon, fold in the zucchini, lemon zest, and blueberries and stir gently until the ingredients are just blended. Pour into the floured pan and tap on the counter to even the batter.

6. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes.

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Ellen Ecker Ogden is a garden design coach and the author of The Complete Kitchen Garden. www.ellenogden.com

The ultimate reward of the salad lover’s garden.

Each year, I order seeds and plants from a few different catalogs, and this year my largest order went to Wild Garden Seed, who captured my heart with their Wrinkled Crinkled Crumpled cress and Philosopher’s Lettuce mix. “A strictly Romaine melange of perfect forms, pointy headed off-beats, serious Reds, and wannabe flash,” writes owner Frank Morton.

This catalog has everything for the salad lover, from Alexanders ( “a biennial relative of celery and angelica:) to Strawberry Spinach (“Chenopodium capitatum also called “strawberry blite” or “beetberry”). I simply can’t get enough of these hard to find, and savory salad greens.

It’s pretty easy to be in that glass-half-full kind of mood, now that the days are longer, and the tender green shoots of lettuce and mesclun planted a few days ago are starting to emerge. But it’s unfortunate that my obsession with all things salad,  also coincides with two rabbits who recently visited my garden and nibbled the pansy blossoms down to the stem. We’ll just have to wait and see how that goes.

If you crave salad greens as much as I do, please tell me about your favorite. Try to describe the flavor, where you first discovered it, or even share a nice dressing that you like to use. I’ll enter your name into a drawing to win a free autographed copy of my book, The Complete Kitchen Garden. Drawing will be Sunday, May 26th. If you are just getting ready to plant your salad garden, check out my salad lovers design, excerpted from the book.

Photo by Ali Kaukas. The Complete Kitchen Garden.

This time of year I have a special thing for garden tools.  Having the right tool for the job is important, and I like to keep it simple with just a few hard working tools. No need clogging up the garden shed too much stuff.

Pictured here are all my favorites: a large turning fork, a rake, several sizes of hoes, a dibble, measuring tape and stakes and an edger for keeping the lawn tidy. A good old fashioned watering can comes in handy, too, for mixing up fish emulsion when transplanting. (I don’t really use garden boots, but they look nice in the photo.) This year I added a manure fork to help load compost into the wheelbarrow, and a new pair Felco pruning shears  from Lee Valley Tools. Not pictured here, but invaluable is a giant roll of twine that comes in handy for laying out the garden or tying up the peas.

When Ali Kaukas took this gorgeous photo for my book, corn and blueberries were in full-season. But alas, it is only early April now, and these are but a dream away. It’s time to take the garden fork down to the compost pile and give it a good turn.

cutting mix lettuce

Is there anything more delicious than the first salad of the season? Tender, delicate, buttery. The dressing has to be ultra mild, with a hint of lemon and very little salt. When you have lettuce like this growing in your garden, it’s best to adapt your dressing to be simple in order to highlight the flavor and the perfection of the leaves.

Prepare the dressing before the greens are harvested, ideally just before serving and when everyone is already sitting at the table. This will keep the fragile leaves fresh and at peak nutrition. My favorite dressing starts by rubbing a wooden salad bowl with a clove of garlic and a hint of salt to season, then stirring together a few tablespoons of my best extra virgin olive oil with a squeeze of lemon juice. Sometimes I add a drizzle of honey to sweeten, or even a bit of sesame tahini to give it a creamy texture that clings to the leaves.

As if it is not enough of a miracle that something so beautiful can sprout from a mere seed, but cutting mix lettuce is cut-and-come-again crop made up of loose-leaf lettuce types, which means that it will regrow  another crop after the first cut. Harvest at soil level with scissors, careful not to bring in any soil to the kitchen ( avoid washing, too, since the leaves should be dry in order to hold the dressing) and wait another two weeks.

Here is my recipe for lemon dressing , ideal for a light spring salad.  Lemon has a way of bringing out out the flavor of mild spring salad greens. This lemon dressing is also used for Quinoa and Lentil Salad, one of my favorite summer recipes that I make almost every day when the cherry tomatoes and arugula are abundant.

Photo credit above: by Ali Kaukas copyright The Complete Kitchen Garden.

Match the dressing to the greens. Three of my favorite dressings: Lemon, roasted garlic and lemon tahini, from The Complete Kitchen Garden.

Garden with stone border

The upside to a late spring snowstorm and unseasonably cold weather, is that I have more time to stay indoors to read.  I’m reading three wonderfully different and totally engaging books about gardeners. It’s a good reminder that I can always learn from other gardeners, and not just by visiting their gardens, but through stories, photographs, garden design, garden history, tales of adventure and perseverance, and building a career in the garden world.    If you are stuck in between the seasons, here’s a few books that I’d recommend:

Rosemary Verey: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener by Barbara Paul Robinson

A few weeks back, I attended a lecture given by Barbara Paul Robinson at the Arnold Arboretum, and left with this fascinating account of a powerfully influential and brilliant plants woman. Rosemary Verey was a self-taught gardener, who did not give a care about landscaping until she was in mid-life. She wrote her first book, at age 62 and continued writing for the next 20 years producing 17 books. This engaging account of her life, documents her strong personality and obsessive love of plants to carve out a successful career. It’s a good read for anyone interested in Rosemary’s’ work or the behind the scenes of building a horticulture career through pure determination and passion.  Don’t expect to find any garden tips or planting technique, save those for Rosemary’s books. Barbara Paul Robinson is on speaking tour thanks in part to the Garden Conservancy – try to attend one of her lectures. You’ll be glad you did.

The Flower of Empire: An Amazonian Water Lily, The Quest to Make it Bloom, and the World it Created

I’ve just started reading this exciting tale of adventure and the pursuit of a horticultural wonder, told by gifted writer, scholar and Victorian literature expert, Tatiana Holway. Through meticulous research, this book comes alive with rich, sumptuous details about a passionate obsession with a giant water lily, that inspired and left its affect on nearly every aspect of the Victorian life, art and culture. The story revolves around the efforts by an early explorer to map new territory in the Amazon, while simultaneously obtaining plants for private collectors, which led to the surreptitious discovery of a giant water lily, and thanks to well documented diaries and careful research by Holway, this book transports the reader back to an era of exploration and innovation. Wonderful prose, combined with charming old photographs, The Flower of Empire is a fascinating account that will appeal to gardeners and non-gardeners featuring a cast of colorful, historic characters who weave a remarkable story. A royal tribute to the important role that plants have played throughout history.

Monticello: A rich spot on earth by Peter Hatch

Earlier this spring, I was delighted to be on the same speaking engagement with Peter Hatch at the Fernwood Botanic Garden.  We hung out after the event with his sister and friends, enjoying a lovely dinner with a view of Lake Michigan. He’s a fascinating person, with a knack for writing and love of history, and of course, a delightful gardener. Since his  book just arrived by post, I’ll include a bit about Peter from the Amazon site: From 1977 until last year, Peter has been the  Director of Gardens and Grounds at Monticello, responsible for the maintenance, interpretation, and conservation of its 2,400-acre landscape. He has written several previous books on Jefferson’s gardens and is an adviser for First Lady Michelle Obama’s White House kitchen garden. This richly photographed and brilliantly written story of  Jefferson’s unique vegetable garden and the medley of plants he enthusiastically cultivated in the early nineteenth century,  is a living expression of Jefferson’s genius and his distinctly American attitudes, and continues to have an impact on the culinary, garden, and landscape history of the United States. Be sure to visit Peter Hatch’s website to find out where he will be appearing, and invite him to be a lecturer at your next event.