Dear Helen: We are back on Vancouver Island after more than a decade away. We now have access to ample supplies of rhubarb, and I want to bake a rhubarb custard pie like the ones I used to make from a (lost) recipe I鈥檇 found in one of your columns before moving. Could you repeat it?
S.N.
Rhubarb Custard Pie
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
鈥� dash of salt
3 beaten eggs
Beat the mixture smooth and combine with four cups chopped rhubarb.
Cover the filling with a lattice top (or slivered almonds) and bake at 375 F for 50 minutes or until set. This should work with frozen chopped rhubarb that has been thawed or partly thawed. I use the same custard mixture of eggs, flour, sugar and spice for berry pies.
For rhubarb custard pies through the winter, freeze and package rhubarb, cut into three-cm pieces, in four-cup batches.
Dear Helen: I want to grow cauliflower for over-wintering and eating in late winter and early spring. When should I聽start the seeds, and what varieties do you recommend?
N.G.
Seed indoors now. I had my best over-wintered cauliflower (and purple sprouting broccoli) ever this year from an indoor seeding made on June 21. In general, a mid- to late-June seeding works best, for both over-wintered cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli, in most garden sites and in average winter conditions.
My preferred over-wintered cauliflower is Purple Cape (Salt Spring Seeds). This variety is easy to grow and ready to harvest during February and March. The heads are a beautiful purple-violet, and tasty raw or cooked.
Galleon (West Coast Seeds) is another over-wintering cauliflower, with large white heads in April and May. It's a nice cauliflower, but several gardeners mentioned to me this spring that its lateness to produce was a bit of a problem with space management in their spring gardens.
Dear Helen: I have a wireworm problem in my vegetable garden. I have trapped quite a few on chunks of potato stuck on short sticks and buried in the upper soil layers, but this has worked only in some parts of the garden and not in others. Why would this be?
S.D.
It's a good idea to bury chunks of both potato and carrot, to attract and trap different species of wireworms with varied taste preferences.
Where wireworms are an issue in vegetable and annual flower plots, it is helpful also to turn over the soil several times before planting to expose the larvae to the birds. The adult form is the click beetle, which favours grassy areas for laying eggs that hatch into the leathery larvae. Wireworms take three to five years in the soil to achieve adult beetle-hood. That is why wireworms are a problem most commonly in areas that in recent years grew lawns or other grassy plants.
If you plant cover crops in the spring, avoid using fall rye, a grassy plant that will attract adults to lay eggs.
Wireworms feed on tubers, seedlings and large seeds in upper soil layers in spring and fall, and move into deeper levels in summer and winter to avoid heat and cold. Planting after the soil has warmed avoids some damage.
GARDEN EVENTS
Government House nursery. The plant nursery at Government House, 1401 Rockland Ave. in Victoria, is now open for public sales from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays through to Aug. 30. The nursery is located opposite the Tea Room.
Mill Bay garden ramble. The Warmland Rojava Sponsor Group, an immigrant-sponsor group affiliated with the Cowichan Intercultural Society, is hosting a Whiskey Point Garden Ramble and Silent Auction on Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The seven gardens on the tour include woodland, terraced and alpine landscapes, and are within walking distance from each other. The ramble will include local art and music and tasty Syrian dishes to sample. Tickets at $30 are available at 7GardenTours.com and from Dinter鈥檚 Nursery and Volume One Books in Duncan. On the day, tickets can be purchased at 650 Hollings Rd. The sponsor group is working to bring a Syrian family to sa国际传媒 to join relatives in the Cowichan Valley.
Nanaimo tour. The Nanaimo Horticultural Society is holding a free tour of six gardens with a plant sale at the last garden on Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Details are available at Nanaimo area nurseries and libraries, and at nanaimohort.org.
