hello. I'm new on this thread, but thought this might be the place to ask a question about growing fennel - hopefully one of you has got this sussed and getting lovely luscious big fennel bulbs - because it has got me completely flummoxed! Sheesh.
I've tried for several years to grow this successfully and it just doesn't work. I've tried it for one season, and everything is small and then goes to seed. I have tried it as a perennial, and it grows like mad and then goes to seed. I've tried it in the cool part of the veg beds, and the hot, sowing early and sowing late, I always get very good germination. I am out of ideas.
My vegetable beds are in good soil condition. About 6-10 years old (depending on the bed) with excellent friable soil (we started the beds on old lawn area (clay, compacted) and mulched twice a year for the first 5-6 years, then once a year after that). We use loads of homemade compost and manure from a reliable source, growing organically. I have just started producing Bokashi juice, so I am open to that idea.
Any ideas?
Growing Fennel
Fennel HATES to be in soil that is compacted at all. They also seem to hate being around any type of tree roots. Raised beds cultivated in full sun is good. I do not have clay soil, mix something in to lessen compaction.
Thanks for your reply. Over the years we have openned the soil in the vegetable beds to good rich friable soil, and it is deep, so I'm not sure that is the problem. But I do appreciate your response. I will try again - I'm trying some started in the greenhouse and some direct sown this year. Hopefully one will do well.
Its winter growing here--but we are much, much hotter than you in the summer
Debbie
=)
Not all types of fennel develop bulbs. The commonly known 'bulbing' fennel is Florence fennel. Is that the one you are trying to grow?
I assumed she was since this is the veggie forum
thanks podster - yes, it is florence fennel - but it is a good point. I am growing trying Florence Fennel, and I do get scranny bulbs just not those big luscious crunchy ones! DMJ - I am so envious (although not enough to move house) that you grow this in the winter!! How marvellous. so interesting that you are 9b - I had to guess on what our zone would be, and I took it by comparing to the State of Washington. I wonder if I need to reassess that, or maybe you are similar to Olympia?
only in the winter--we have very hot, humid, muggy summer's with temp's 90 or above from May thru early October.
Debbie
Last year I direct sowed some florence fennel in horrible clay, next to a small maple and gave very little supplemental moisture. It seemed all of the seeds grew, I had to thin them out, and then the ones that continues got to about shoulder height so my fennel doesn't obey the rules (go figure). I think it thrived on the neglect and dry weather, cool nights. I wish I could send you my success with it, because I dislike the smell of the foliage. I also grow a bronze fennel in the front yard w/ crappy, compacted soil and it did well too. I'm confused that mine did so well in these unhospitable environments.
Maybe you have too much humidity in the air? Or maybe your soil is too good?
thank you for the thought of sending you success - that really made me smile. Like you I can direct sow, and get loads of feathery growth, bronze fennel does very well here and stays year after year - but I just can't get the bulb to bulk up. And it is so frustrating - I just bought a bulb at the supermarket for £2.49 to add to the dauphanois potatoes (its wonderful added in the layers) - and I want to grow it!! GRRRRRRR. !
Art,
You don't say whether your fennel made a bulb or not. I have tried quite a few times to grow it here. Florence and Bronze fennel grow very well here, but I have never had either on produce a bulb. I have the feeling that out growing season is too short. They start in the spring and go to seed in summer. Ones started after the solstice are make more of a bulb, but not enough to write home about.
Lol, maybe I should look up what a fennel bulb looks like.... I ripped out my florence in July before it could get any bigger, so I am unsure if I had one, was about to have one, or not. I mainly grew it for the seed, what all can you do with the bulb? Do you eat it or just propagate with it?
Laurie it sure would be nice to grow it and not have to pay so much, right? Wow, that's pricey!
Here is a picture of it from the Whole Foods website:
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=23
You eat the white bulb at the base which isn't a bulb in the botanical sense. The seed is also used in East Indian and Italian cooking. The bulb can be cooked or used in salad. You can't grow anything from it, though.
The problem is that I have never been able to figure out how to make it bulb. I just think there isn't time for it to bulge out like that in our climate -- as far as I can tell. I would love to have someone tell me how.
Anyhow they eat it a lot in Italy and they use the seed a lot in Indian dishes. Apparently, the plant can be invasive and it looks a lot like dill if it doesn't bulb which means you have to be careful not to get them mixed up in cooking because their taste is very different.
Art, it is delicious - pajarito is right, botanically it isn't a bulb, more like stubby celery. The flavour is that of anise, and incredibly refreshing when eaten raw. Added to any casserole, especially pork or fish, it really brings out the flavour and gives the food a lovely compliment. One of our favourites is to make dauphinois potato -
Peel and slice potatoes very thin.
slice fennel across the bulb, thin.
Layer in a casserole alternating a layer of potato, a layer of fennel, and a layer of cheese (I use a firm soft cheese like raclette or rebochon or brie - ). Season each layer with black pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. finish with a layer of potato. Pour in light cream until you see it just below the top layer. Bake in a medium oven for 45 minutes, remove the lid and allow to brown.
Serve it in bowls after a big day of working outside, with a glass of red wine. Excellent.
sounds delicious Laurie--what's even better is no meat.
=)
Good, dmj, hope you will try it. We cook a lot of non-meat dishes, but then, I grow a lot of vegetables!!
I just slice it up and put it in salads. Delicious and refreshing.
That sounds really yummy! Thanks for sharing the recipe.
That does sound really good; I'm saving it to try it. I'm going to try growing fennel this year for the first time, and I'll see how I make out. I'm not sure how early to plant the seeds, though.
Here's another good recipe that includes fennel:
Tuscan White Bean and Sausage Stew
This is traditionally Italian, but uses some canned items to speed things up. The fresh fennel really makes the flavor in this fantastic! It saves well in the refrigerator or freezer too. I used mild sausage instead of hot. You might want to serve it with crusty bread to soak up the delicious juices.
32 min | 10 min prep
SERVES 6
3/4 lb hot Italian sausage
2 medium carrots
1 medium fresh fennel bulb
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can petite diced tomatoes, undrained
2 cups chicken broth
4 garlic cloves, pressed
2 (15 ounce) cans cannellini beans
1 (18 g) package fresh basil
Remove sausage from casings and cut in half lengthwise, then crosswise into 1/2 inch nuggets.
Place sausage in a large pot and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes or until golden brown, stirring occasionally.
As sausage cooks, peel carrots. Chop carrots and fennel; add to pot and cook an additional 3-5 minutes or until sausage is cooked through and vegetables begin to brown.
Stir in tomatoes, broth and garlic into sausage mixture. Drain and rinse beans; add to pot.
Simmer stew, uncovered, 10-12 minutes or until vegetables are tender. As stew simmers, chop basil. Remove pot from heat and stir in basil.
That dish sounds fabulous and in New Jersey you may have a long enough spring that you can get fennel to bulb.
Here's hoping! And I do recommend that recipe; it's really wonderful, especially if you also like sausage and beans. The fennel adds that je ne sais quoi...
Yum yum! I had a really easy time growing kohlrabi - which I know is a different taste, but I wonder if I could sub that for the fennel bulb in those recipes because I could NOT find any good kohlrabi recipes. I just ended up eating it raw.
Art, always worth trying vegetables in different places. Especially since we generally come up with a glut of any one of them!
Thanks for the recipe gg, I'll give it a try. Hope you are growing the white beans, too. I love growing beans - especially borlotti! So beautiful, and so yummy.
Art, kohlrabi is good sliced thin, battered and deep fried like onion rings.
Laurie, your area has a colorful history. I believe the problem with fennel not producing a bulb is the lack of growing season. I looked in the plant files to see and it requires 100 - 120 days. It is hardy in zone 9a to 6.6 degrees C or 20 degrees F.
Laurie, I tried growing white coco beans last summer, to try in my cassoulets, and all I got from one row was one quart of shelled beans. They made one cassoulet, that's all. So this year I'm sticking to snap beans and I'll buy cannelini for my cassoulets!
Leslie
big borlotti bean fan here too--just got my first rows sown this afternoon.
we just slice kohlrabi up into thin chips and eat with dip--great for parties or shred into a salad sometimes--I seldom fry anything anymore, sometimes a stir-fry, but that's mostly in the winter
fennel grows over the winter here in 9a and bulbs up just fine--also looks really nice in the winter veggie garden, but that's beside the point
Debbie
=)
What do you all do with borlotti beans, and don't you find it's awfully labor-intensive to grow them, for not much in the way of a result? Maybe my white coco beans just aren't that productive, but it was a whole 20' double row and all I got was a quart of dried beans! Reminds me of the time we went after wild rice in a canoe, and after I parched the kernels and cleaned them off I had only 1/3 of a cup!
borlotti beans are real productive here--some of them are saved for seeds and the rest are eaten fresh (summer protein)
GG, I wonder what is going on with your beans - a 20' row should give you bags for the freezer!! I grow a 2.5 mtr run, and bag up enough to keep us through the entire winter (in fact, we are just eating the last this evening). Is it worth add a bit more compost/manure to your bean run, or mix in some fish/blood/bone into area. Beans are very hungry plants, and maybe the soil has gotten a bit thin for them? There is also a very interesting short article on magnesium and beans (amongst others). Are you on very acid soil? It may be that you need to balance the mineral content.
If you do manage to grow more, may I suggest not bothering to dry them. I just pod them and put them in bags in the freezer. They store wonderfully and cook up much faster than the dried ones. Just great.
As far as what to do with them, our favourite is borlotti bean and pumpkin stew - we grow Crown Prince pumpkin, and the sweet perfumey taste of the CP with the borlotti is brillant. Add in a handful of wild mushroom, and its it just brillant.
Laurie, actually I did some measuring and that row is only 11 feet, I think. When I drew up my garden diagram I forgot to include space for the fig trees! But the same area grew loads of Pelandron and Fortex snap beans, so I don't think that it's the soil.
Aren't they easier to shell if they're dried? I just left them in the rows until the plants shriveled up and then pulled the plants and popped the beans out of their pods.
I'm growing Musquée de Provence squash this year, which should work well with your bean dish, but I'll have to find some other beans to cook it with if I want to try your recipe. What kind of dried mushrooms do you use - porcini/cépes?
Leslie
Perhaps it was also the variety of beans you were growing--I also don't let them dry excessively on the plant either. I grow both Borlotto lingua di fuoco and Borlotto di vigevano (bush types--french)--both are highly productive. I also freeze them but usually use most of them fresh as harvested.
Debbie
Porcini mushroom for me - I love their strong rich flavour. Yum.
I grow the lingua di fuoco - but I don't let them dry on the vine, our weather is too unpredictable, and with wet and warm there is too much risk of fungus. And I like podding.
I'll have to try the Borlotto lingua di fuoco next year. I can't fit any more beans into my garden this year!
I love porcinis; I like to sautée them with deer steaks, among other uses. I can only find them dried here, though.
Dried proves no detriment, and in some ways is best as they absorb and intensify the flavour of the liquids.
Dried is all I've had them, too. I heard about them in France and have seen them as ingredients in recipes but only found them here. I didn't realize at first that porcini were the same as cèpes!
I just checked out your garden tour; what a wonderful place you live in! I have to go back and look more closely!
Leslie
Porcini mushrooms or cepes are generally referred to as bolitus edulus in the US, since we have no English word for them. We find them here in the Rocky Mountains in July and August and September, but there are never enough.
No kidding? I thought they were just a European variety! Thanks for the tip; not that I'm about to go mushroom hunting in the Rockies any time soon, but that's interesting.
Yes, they grow very nicely in the Mountains outside of Santa Fe near the Santa Fe ski basin. Also we have the King bolete which is a cepe or porcini that is pure white and just as tasty. Those grow in the mountains where I live and I have found them near Flagstaff, AZ. as well.
Do you collect and dry them, or just use them fresh when you can find them?
gg, glad you enjoyed the garden tour. I have to admit, I do feel lucky living here.
Interesting point that there is no familiar name in English for Porcini - I hadn't thought of that. And my word lucky you to be able to go collecting! We use to do that in Scotland, up on Skye (use to dry them on the radiator over night - house smelled wonderful) - but I've never found any this far south.