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I’ve always felt compassion for friends in California, Washington and Oregon whenever wildfire season hits, but I’ve never experienced it first-hand until now.
The air quality here in the NYC suburbs is still in the “Moderate” range, but that’s a significant improvement over the “Hazardous” levels that kept us indoors on Wednesday. I suspect many of you, especially those closer to the hundreds of Canadian fires still burning, aren’t in the clear. And I hope you’re taking precautions to protect yourselves and your pets.
Plants, of course, no matter how much we love and have invested in them, are low on the priority scale during disasters like this, but when the smoke clears (so to speak), they might need some help.
After hearing from many of you, I wrote an extra column to address your concerns this week. The good news is that plants should bounce back for the most part. This depends, of course, on how close you are to the fire, whether you’re dealing with smoke, ash or both, and how long they’re exposed.
Here are some tips for assessing their needs and avoiding any long-term damage.
📬 Ask Jessica
And as promised last week: Here’s how to grow rhubarb, the unsung June crop I think everyone should try.
But those outside New England, parts of the Midwestern US and Canada might not know what to do with it. Here are some Weekly Dirt readers to the rescue:
“I grew up on a farm in Iowa, and we always had rhubarb. I was so happy to find some here in the garden in Connecticut. I break off a stalk and remove the leaf. I use the recipe for fruit pies on the Minute Tapioca box and need 4 cups for the pie. I don’t like to mix strawberries in it. I sometimes make a sauce, but pie is my favorite.” —Carolyn McDonough. Canaan, Connecticut
“Advice my mother gave me about stewing rhubarb: Cook until soft, add sugar and continue cooking until dissolved. This prevents the stewed rhubarb from being bitter.” —Peter E Scott, Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada
“You overlooked one important recipe for rhubarb: making rhubarb wine.
It’s a beautiful rose-coloured wine that makes a fine June drink after working in the garden. I’ve been enjoying making rhubarb wine for the past 30 years, and highly recommend it.” —Will Van Delft, Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
And here’s my super-easy recipe for strawberry-rhubarb pie:
I pound of strawberries, rinsed, hulled and halved
5-6 stalks of rhubarb, leaves removed and discarded (they’re toxic), rinsed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup sugar, divided, plus a little extra for sprinkling
4 tablespoons cornstarch
2 piecrusts (make your own or use a prepared crust as I do)
1 tablespoon milk
Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Place rhubarb pieces in a saucepan with 1/2 cup of the sugar and water to cover. Simmer until mushy (yes, that’s a culinary term 😂)
Meanwhile, toss the strawberries with cornstarch and the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar.
Stir rhubarb mush into the bowl with the strawberries.
Line a pie dish with one crust and fill it with strawberry-rhubarb filling. Cover with the second piecrust.
Pinch the top and bottom crusts around the edges to seal, then use a sharp knife to cut slits in the crust to allow steam to escape during baking (or stab it in a few places with a fork).
Brush the top crust with milk and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake at 450F (230C) for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 375F (190C) and continue baking for 45 minutes to one hour.
💡 If you do one thing this week…
Hill up your potatoes when they reach 6-8 inches tall, and repeat every 2-3 weeks throughout the season. Do this by mounding soil (or straw) up over stems, burying them and leaving just the foliage at the top of the plant exposed.
👏 Sunday shoutout
Reader Margaret Hanan of Rockville Centre, NY, asks: Can a cat nip plant morph into a cat nap plant?
📰This week in my Associated Press gardening column
I write a weekly gardening column for the AP, so you might have seen my byline in your local paper (or news website) — wherever in the world you happen to be. In case you miss it, though, I’ll post the most recent here every week.
This week: Your garden doesn’t like wildlife smoke and ash, either. Here’s how to help it.
Also this week: June is rhubarb picking time, so pucker up! Here’s how to grow the strange fruit.
Last week: Tips for planting a container like the pros do.
Before that: A primer for growing herbs. They’re so easy — you don’t even need a garden!
You can read all my AP gardening columns here.
📚📺🎵 Random things I enjoyed this week
Where to begin?
📺 I underwent an endoscopy on Wednesday, returned home to an orange sky and curled my groggy self up on the couch, where I remained for the rest of the day and streamed the entire new season of Somebody Somewhere on Max. If you don’t know the show — or Bridget Everett — give it a whirl. It’s delightful!
👨⚕️ I started physical therapy. Wooo!
🎶 It’s a few years old, but for some reason I could not get Gossip’s Heavy Cross out of my head all week. Yep, it’s still in there.
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📧 How’m I doing?
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