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Snails in the Garden

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We are in December, with below freezing temperatures at night, but there are still a few snails in the garden. Their continued presence among the greens (chicory, kale, lettuce, rocket) tells about the long season of rain leading up to winter here in north Georgia.

Snail on a chicory leaf, early December in Georgia.

I haven’t seen any serious damage to my plants, so I am not concerned about the snails. To be honest, I am amazed by their persistence in the cold.

If there were very many snails, and a lot of damage to crops, I would set out some organic-approved iron-phosphate bait. The one I have used most recently is called Sluggo, but there are many similar baits, with the same active ingredient, that work.

When I have used the iron-phosphate bait, it was actually for roly-polies, many years ago. For some reason their population had boomed, and roly-polies roiled every square inch of ground in the garden. These critters usually eat decaying organic matter, but there were so many of them that they started eating seedlings in the garden. That was a problem, but the Sluggo iron-phosphate bait for slugs and snails works on roly-polies, too.

It took a couple of years of persistent use of the bait to beat back the roly-polies, but my garden hasn’t been invaded like that again.

The Royal Horticulture Society (RHS), in the UK, where slugs and snails commonly invade gardens and farms and cause a lot of damage, has been studying methods of slug and snail control. Earlier this fall, the BBC reported on an RHS study of home-methods, using things like crushed egg shells, sharp sand, and copper strips to keep the pests away from garden crops.

The study found that none of those things really work, which is sad news for those of us who like to “DIY” as much of our gardening as possible. They had not yet tested beer-traps (beer in shallow saucers, set around the garden, to lure and then drown slugs and snails), so there may be one method left for us to use, other than placing boards in the garden for the pests to hide under, then turning the boards over to pick off the critters by hand to drown or otherwise dispatch.

In another RHS study, effectiveness of iron-phosphate baits and another organic control, nematodes that target slugs and snails, was compared to conventional (chemical) control options. The organic methods did almost as well as the chemicals. Based on my roly-poly experience, I would have guessed this outcome, but it is nice to have that guess confirmed.

Gifts for Gardeners in Winter

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Gardeners will be spending less time in their gardens over the next couple of months. Colder weather means slower-growing weeds and slower-growing crops, so there is less work to do. For many of us, though, our thinking-about-gardens is still on full-speed.

Indoor projects can help use up some of that gardening-energy. If your gardener could use a wintertime project, here are some garden-related gift ideas to consider:

Stepping Stone Kit: I went to a big garden expo in August, and one booth showed kits for garden stepping stones. The projects were super-cute! This is a fun joint project for an adult plus child.

Flower Press and Idea Book: There aren’t many flowers in our gardens now to place in a plant press, but crafty gardeners who love flowers can get ready for flower-season (most of the year, here in the South) by reading an inspirational book (below). Information about the flower press — shown at left — on Amazon.com indicates that it is for kids, but my flower press, that I use as an adult, looks similar (different picture on the front).

My copy of Penny Black’s Book of Cards and Collages , along with my own flower press, has helped me make many beautiful cards over the years, mostly in the slower, wintertime season. This book, or a different one of your choosing, might inspire your favorite gardener, too.

Looking for a more practical gift? Try a very nice food dehydrator, to preserve your gardener’s harvest, paired with a book of recipes for the resulting dehydrated foods, so the preserved harvest is used to its fullest.

My Excaliber dehydrator, which I love, is the smaller, 5-tray version, but I should have bought the 9-tray version (shown to the right of this text).

The Ultimate Healthy Dehydrator Cookbook isn’t a primer on how to dehydrate your garden produce — a booklet with those instructions comes with the Excaliber dehydrator. Instead, this book explains how to use those dehydrated foods in every-day recipes.

Something that might be less practical, but that I thought was very funny and yet also useful when I saw it at that big garden expo, is a set of Outdoor Yard Drinkholder stakes. Setting your cup/thermos in one of these, near where you are working in the garden, would keep it high enough off the ground that dirt and debris is less likely to fly into your beverage.

The stakes would also reduce the risk of spills (how many times have I accidentally knocked over my water/tea/coffee while weeding?). I can imagine placing these strategically around the yard in the morning, so there will always be one near where I am working.

The linked set is multicolored, but the stakes also come in what may be considered a more tasteful color combo of white and black.

Fall Garden Planning book explains how to choose crops, create a schedule, and prepare the garden for fall planting.

Of course, there is also my very own book about planning the fall vegetable garden, Fall Garden Planning, which would be an Excellent gift for any gardener in the Southeastern U.S. (but my view is probably biased…).

If none of these ideas seems right for your gardener, you might check out the gift idea lists of some of my gardening friends:

New Page About Wildflowers in Tuscany

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I am working on a page for this website that is a little off-topic. It is about wildflowers in Tuscany. The new page is partly for the couple-of-hundred Cobb County Master Gardeners who love Italy, especially Tuscany, and most-especially Montepulciano, where we have stayed. The page is also partly to provide an easy way for me to help people who are curious about the flowers they see next summer, when we go back to Italy for Joe’s job one more time.

View from the roadside on one of my walks in Tuscany - wildflowers, vineyards, and olive groves.
View from one of my walks in Tuscany.

One of my favorite activities of the past couple of summers has been walking through the countryside around Montepulciano, passing vineyards and olive groves, to see the local plants/flowers and their associated insects. Plants growing within the hilltop towns, which are nearly completely paved and have very little exposed soil, have also been a source of amazement. 

While in Italy, I studied the ways container plants in front of buildings can tell about a building’s purpose. I paid attention to the mix of flowers along roadsides and in meadows, and considered how to recreate similar-looking mixes in the rainy, humid Southeastern U.S. I watched the pollinators, and saw a lack of diversity in the butterflies, but also an abundance of flower-flies and solitary bees. 

Flowers of clematis vine, with a solitary- bee.

The biggest surprise has been how many plants  I can identify on-sight, without even thinking hard, because I have seen them here in the U.S. Dandelion is an easy one, but elderberry grows all over Tuscany, too. It turns out that many common weeds here in the U.S. are not native here. They are classified as being “introduced,” and they came from the Mediterranean region of the world.

An abundantly fruiting elderberry, near Montepulciano, Tuscany.

This is not all bad news for the U.S., since many of these weeds either are edible or they have medicinal properties. They are useful plants.

I saw many dandelions in Tuscany.

You can see some of them now, on the new — but incomplete — Tuscany Wildflowers page of this website. I will continue to update the page over the next few months, so check back occasionally to see the new content.

Winter Harvests at Plant a Row for the Hungry

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The local Plant a Row for the Hungry (PAR) gardeners plan to cut back on their whole-group meetings through much of the winter. That doesn’t mean the gardeners won’t still be providing garden-fresh produce to a local food pantry, but it does mean that they are using the reduced workload of the winter garden to take a break.

Instead of meeting as a whole group every week (the usual schedule), PAR gardeners are signing up in pairs to harvest and deliver greens and root-crops. If the garden seems to need more attention, larger-group workdays can be scheduled, but those will be less frequent. There is no need for watering or continuous weeding, and no more heavy work like spreading mulch, until spring comes back around. 

Fall crops at Plant a Row for the Hungry Garden, well-grown and ready for harvest.
Fall crops at Plant a Row for the Hungry Garden, well-grown and ready for harvest.

Last week’s workday was the last major workday for the season. While some gardeners harvested, weighed, and bagged greens for delivery, others pulled the last of the peppers and eggplants. A freeze was tentatively forecast for the weekend, with a bigger chance of freezing early this week. An early-week freeze looks less likely as the target-dates get closer, but it was good to move those plants out of the garden while there was a small crowd of gardeners to complete the task.

Even better, there was a basket-load of peppers to deliver to the food pantry, in addition to the greens.

Kale and garlic share a bed at the Plant a Row for the Hungry garden. Kale can be harvested all winter. Garlic will be harvested in summer.
Kale and garlic share a bed at the Plant a Row for the Hungry garden. Kale can be harvested all winter. Garlic will be harvested in summer.

In the next week or so, the irrigation system will be turned off.  Turning the system off and draining it for the winter will protect the equipment from freeze damage. This is a more complicated task (than pulling up old crops, for example) to prepare the garden for cold weather, but it is important for the success of next spring’s garden.

Trio of gardeners harvesting lettuces and kale from the first planting bed.
Trio of gardeners harvesting lettuces and kale from the first planting bed.

Gardeners who are new to fall/winter gardening in the South may be unsure about how much to harvest each week from the garden. It may help to know the guidelines the PAR gardeners discussed, to guide their harvest of winter crops:

Closer view of one 'Red Russian' kale plant that has plenty of big leaves ready for harvest.
Closer view of one ‘Red Russian’ kale plant that has plenty of big leaves ready for harvest.
  1. For leafy greens, harvest lowest/outer/larger leaves.
  2. Harvest no more than 1/3 of the mass of any leafy greens plant each week.
  3. Wait for warm-enough temperatures (above 32 degrees F, with no frost on the leaves) to harvest any/all of the crops/
  4. For root crops (beets, daikon radishes, etc), pull the entire plant at harvest, including the leaves. Those are good food, too.
  5. For the broccoli, some leaves can be harvested before the actual head of broccoli is ready to harvest — leaves of broccoli plants taste pretty much like broccoli; harvest sparingly, though, so plants have enough energy to make a good-sized head of broccoli.

Hope that other gardens are doing as well as the PAR garden!

Is Gardening Really All About Bugs?

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Some weeks, it may seem like this blog is more about bugs than about plants. Isn’t gardening all about the plants? Well, it probably should be, but our gardens exist in the natural world, which is crowded with many kinds of life, including insects. Some of the insects are helper-insects, like pollinators and predators (“beneficials”). Other insects are destructive, eating our plants or spreading diseases across our landscapes (“pests”).

Some insects can be helpers as adults and pests in their larval stage. A lot of butterflies and moths are in this category. As adults, they pollinate flowers, helping plants to make fruits and seeds. As caterpillars (larval stage), they eat our plants. This dual life complicates a gardener’s decisions about how to manage caterpillars in the garden.

Which insects are “good” and which are “bad”? How can we know what to do when baby insects, like caterpillars, eat plants in our gardens? 

Skipper butterfly on a late-summer zinnia. PHOTO/Amygwh

For me, the decision often comes down to whether the insect specializes on one kind of plant, especially if I am not planning to eat that plant. A lot of the skipper butterfly larvae eat turfgrass. Bermudagrass is not my most favorite plant, so I am not troubled when  caterpillars are munching on the lawn.

However, the decision about how to manage pest insects in the garden could one-day disappear. You may remember the report last year of a study in Germany that showed a 75% loss of flying insects within the past few decades.

The authors of the study note:

The widespread insect biomass decline is alarming, ever more so as all traps were placed in protected areas that are meant to preserve ecosystem functions and biodiversity. While the gradual decline of rare insect species has been known for quite some time (e.g. specialized butterflies [9, 66]), our results illustrate an ongoing and rapid decline in total amount of airborne insects active in space and time.

Article appearing in PlosOne, 18 Oct. 2017

A recent article in the Washington Post, “‘Hyperalarming’ study shows massive insect loss,” tells about another long-term study in Puerto Rico that shows the same trend. We are losing insects of all kinds, and in great numbers. Why should we care? The article offers a reason:

Thirty-five percent of the world’s plant crops require pollination by bees, wasps and other animals. And arthropods are more than just pollinators. They’re the planet’s wee custodians, toiling away in unnoticed or avoided corners. They chew up rotting wood and eat carrion. 

Washington Post article by Ben Guarino, 15 Oct. 2018

To some gardeners, no longer having to worry about pest insects may sound like a dream come true. Sadly, the good and the bad go together. If we lose our pests, we also lose our helpers. This means we also lose a lot of good food and our “wee custodians”.

Like melons? They are pollinated by insects.

It may be possible for us to live on wind-pollinated crops, like wheat, corn, and beets, and on self-pollinated crops, like most of the beans. I don’t think we’d like that diet, though. In addition, being surrounded by rotting carcasses would make the situation extra-unpleasant.

While I don’t expect total losses of insects any time soon (or even in my lifetime), the thought of such a catastrophic loss of beauty and helpfulness is sobering. 

What can we do to change the situation? Well, any action that supports insect life could help slow the decline. Try this:

  • plant more wildflowers to support native pollinators,
  • allow more diverse plantings in our yards, to provide more places to live for more kinds of insects, and
  • refrain (as much as we can) from using pesticide products in ways that kill multiple kinds of insects instead of just the one pest that is “bugging” us.

One step that is both simple and difficult: plant clover in the lawn.

The Passing of a Gardener

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If you spend enough time in a garden, it will tell you about its gardener. The garden of my Mom and stepdad, Bill, mostly tended by Bill, is no exception. It is full of flowers, vegetables, and herbs,

The flowers are for beauty and for butterflies. Bill loved butterflies. Don’t tell my butterfly-conservation friends, but back when his eyesight was good (decades ago), Bill caught butterflies to use in art, posed with dried plants in box-frames.

Right now, the cosmos are providing nectar for migrating Monarchs, but Bill is not here to enjoy either the flowers or the butterflies, because my stepdad, Reverend Bill Shaw, passed away on Saturday, just a few days ago. When he and my Mom married, back in 1997, he and I became gardening buddies.

Bill, my Mom, and butterflies.

Bill’s Oklahoma garden always grew more vegetables than his household could eat. Tomatoes would take over the kitchen and peppers pile up in any bare spaces. The overabundance meant there was plenty to share.

The herbs are mostly for my Mom. They show that he loved her very much.

Bill’s garden reflects his preference for a well-ordered and tidy space. The plants are spaced far enough apart that there is room to work around them. His garden also shows that he could outsmart the groundhogs. 

When the groundhogs first invaded, he tried all kinds of traps and baits that didn’t work. The groundhogs ate the plants from below, while underground, which made catching them more difficult. Finally, Bill bought some plastic food-grade barrels, sawed them in half, then sunk the halves into the garden. He planted much of his garden in those half-barrels, which kept out the groundhogs.

Tomato plants, safe from groundhogs in the half-barrel in-ground planters.

This planting strategy shows the creativity of the gardener. No groundhogs were harmed, but the plants were protected.

Back when Bill’s hearing was better, we would talk on the phone about our gardens. He was my main source of information about old-time garden practices. I was his source for information about new varieties and crop diseases. 

I will miss Bill and our discussions about his latest plans for the garden. 

  • WWII veteran, U.S. Navy
  • At his 90th birthday party.

At the Pollinator Symposium

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At the Pollinator Symposium at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit this past weekend, attendees learned about urban bees, pollinator plantings along roadsides and around retention ponds, and about plant-pollinator interactions. The event was amazing!

Of course, I am on the committee for Monarchs Across Georgia, the group that organized the symposium, so I might be biased. 

Dr. Jaret Daniels, the first presenter, is working in Florida with the Florida Dept. of Transportation to find the best mowing schedule for roadside wildflower plantings in that state. Dr. Daniels reported that the state DOT mostly keeps an every-3-weeks schedule for much of the mowing. For the 12-or-so feet nearest the road, the vegetation needs to be kept short for safety reasons.

He has found, though, that for parts of the verge further back from the road, 6-weeks between mowing allows more plants, and more kinds of plants, to flower (all good for pollinators!). In talking with state officials, he found that “protecting monarch butterflies” was a better motivator for trying a longer mowing cycle than “saving money.” Everyone wants to be seen as a friend of the monarch!

Dr. Leavey, telling us about her students’ work with urban bees.

Dr. Jennifer Leavey, working at Georgia Tech to understand how urban environments affect bees, suggested that flowering trees are a great supplement to our small pollinator gardens. Each flowering tree provides many more flowers than a small garden, even though a tree may flower for only a few weeks. The key is to make sure that enough flowers are available to pollinators through the entire growing season to support bees over many months.

She showed us a graph of information, developed by her students with information from Trees Atlanta, that showed most of Atlanta’s flowering trees are blooming in April. Apparently, we need more trees that flower in other months.

This pink Salvia is the kind of flower that is pollinated by critters that have long tongues, like butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds. As pollinators fly under the extended flower parts (anthers with pollen, stigma where the pollen needs to go for pollination) to get to the nectar inside the flower, pollen brushes onto their heads and backs.

Dr. Tim Spira is a (recently retired) plant ecologist whose work has focused on plant-pollinator interactions. His information was less practical, in some ways, since much of what he told us isn’t “things to do”. It was more, “how this works, and why.” However, his talk contained the most fun-facts.

Example: Usually, pollination is a happy accident that occurs when an insect or animal pokes its head inside a flower to plunder the nectar or pollen. Some of the pollen ends up on the insect/animal, and when that individual visits another flower in search of more good food, the pollen from the first flower brushes onto the female parts of the second flower. If the two flowers are for the same kind of plant, voila! Pollination can occur. He told us, though, about one pollinator that moves pollen onto the female parts of a flower on purpose, with pollination as her primary goal. This pollinator is the yucca moth (link to US Forestry Service information).

She gathers pollen from one yucca flower, then flies to another flower where she lays eggs inside the ovary of the new flower. Then, she uses her wad of gathered-up pollen to pollinate the flower where she has laid her eggs. When her eggs hatch, the babies will eat seeds of the yucca fruit that develops from the pollinated flower. 

More than just butterflies and bees were visiting the wildflower meadows at the Monastery. Some flower-visitors, like this grasshopper, are not pollinators.

All in all, it was a great day. My little presentation about systemic pesticides seemed to go well, and I had fun visiting with other gardeners and people who love pollinators. Of course, very few people place the flower flies quite so high on their list of favorite insects as I do, but someday that may change.

Small Garden Ideas from Uncommon Ground (Use What You Have)

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Uncommon Ground restaurant and rooftop farm grows crops vertically, everywhere it can.
Uncommon Ground restaurant and rooftop farm. PHOTOS/Amygwh

Uncommon Ground restaurant and organic farm, in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood, doesn’t have much exposed soil to work with. The restaurant building sits at the intersection of two streets, and a parking lot wraps the other two sides.

Not too surprisingly, large containers, raised beds, and trellises are key parts of the farm. Uncommon Ground also uses existing structures to provide more space for growing.

The ways it has expanded to make full use of the small lot may help other gardeners working with limited space think of new ways to expand their own little farms.

Rooftop farm

The first idea is the least practical for most of us. In order to make the roof of the restaurant strong enough that the whole farm wouldn’t come crashing down onto diners at their tables, the original wood supports were removed, new metal supports were installed, and those were set more deeply into the ground.

This is not the kind of retrofit that can be done cheaply or easily. However, anyone thinking of building a new shed or workshop in the backyard, in a spot where there is plenty of sunlight, might consider whether installing a mini-rooftop farm is feasible.

If you know a structural engineer or architect, that would be helpful. Working out how to make the structure strong enough to hold the load of soil, water, and plants will require their expertise.

Stair rails as trellises

Grapevine trained on stair rail at Uncommon Ground in Chicago.
Grapevine trained on stair rail at Uncommon Ground in Chicago. PHOTO/Amygwh

Installing trellises everywhere possible helps, but using existing structures (and not just the rooftop!) is also good. One feature at Uncommon Ground that is hard to miss is the amazingly productive grapevine threaded through the outside stair rail, all the way up to the roof.

At my house, our grapevine is trained onto the railings of our back deck, but my vine is not nearly as productive as the vine at Uncommon Ground.

Another way I have used existing structures in my gardening in the past was when we lived on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. I planted cucumbers in pots, then set the pots at the base of our (South-facing) metal-scrollwork porch posts. The cucumbers grew up the scrollwork posts. Harvesting was as easy as stepping out the front door.

One caution

It is important, when planting food crops, to remember not to set them into the ground too close to our homes in the Southeastern U.S. The foundations of our homes have all been chemically treated to deter termites.

The chemicals involved are not rated as being safe for eating, but plant roots don’t know that. The roots would bring the unwelcome chemicals into our plants along with the water and nutrients they need. The chemicals would totally wreck our plans for organically home-grown food!

Walls for plant support

Hop vines at Uncommon Ground are supported by a wall.
Hop vines at Uncommon Ground are supported by a wall. PHOTO/Amygwh

The most luxuriant hop vine I have ever seen is at Uncommon Ground, supported by a brick wall. In the Southeastern U.S., we might not choose hops as the crop to drape over a wall, due to leaf-disease issues that they get here, but the idea is a good one.

Do you grow climbing forms of nasturtiums, passionfruit, or other vining crops?

If your property has a wall that is not part of the house, in a sunny spot, plants can be espaliered in front of it (little fruit trees), or draped over it, like at Uncommon Ground.

Meanwhile, in my yard

For me, just north of Atlanta, it is time to plant crops that have a listed days-to-maturity of 55-60 days. That includes ‘Detroit dark red’ beets, ‘Little finger’ carrots, and ‘Marvel of 4 Seasons’ lettuce. The carrots and winter radishes that I planted a couple of weeks ago have sent up their first leaves. The fall garden really has begun!

 

Large Black Wasp on Flowers

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We finally returned from our summer in Italy, to find the garden full of weeds — no surprise there — and large black wasps on the milkweed flowers. The same flowers also were buzzing with carpenter bees, which looked almost small compared to the wasps. If you are familiar with carpenter bees, then you know that, in the world of bees, they are giants.

Great Black Wasp and Carpenter Bee on milkweed.

To see such large wasps flying among the giant bees was, at first, alarming. When I realized what they were, though, I moved in for a closer look.

The name of the large black wasps is Great Black Wasp.

What do Great Black Wasps eat?

As adults, these wasps are vegetarian, eating nectar and pollen. When they move from flower to flower, the wasps carry pollen on their legs and bodies and pollinate the flowers. This means they are yet another of our beneficial garden insects.

As larvae, they are not vegetarian. They eat grasshoppers, cicadas, and katydids. When a female adult Great Black Wasp finds an insect like a katydid, it paralyzes the insect/prey using its stinger. Then, it carries the insect/prey to a burrow it has dug in the ground, where it lays an egg.

When the wasp egg hatches, the larva that comes from the egg will eat the insect. A hatched wasp larvae can eat more than one insect, so the adult will stuff at least one more insect down the burrow, and as many as five more, for each wasp egg.

Where do Great Black Wasps live?

Great Black Wasps live across much of the United States and into Canada, but they are not commonly seen in the upper part of the Western U.S.

Great Black Wasps are in the group of wasps called Digger Wasps. These are mostly solitary wasps, each female digging its own holes in the ground for its eggs. Digger wasps don’t live together in one place, they are not honeybees in a hive, but they sometimes congregate. In a way, they are kind of like the suburbanites of bees, each with its own space, but grouped in a way that feels less lonely.

Are they really as big as I think they are?

If you are like me, when you see your first Great Black Wasp you will think it is at least two inches long. If you have seen a female, the surprise will trick your mind into believing the fish tale — “it was THIS BIG!” In reality, even though females are larger than the males, the biggest Great Black Wasps are closer to an inch and a half long.

Do Great Black Wasps sting people?

If you do something crazy like chase one around with a camera, it might (or it might not!), but these wasps are busy with their own agendas. If you leave them alone, they will keep doing their work of eating nectar and pollen, digging burrows for their babies, and hunting insects.

The time of greatest activity for these large black wasps is now. By the middle or end of September (depending on where you live), the adults will no longer be flying. Their job of laying eggs and providing food for their larvae will be done. The babies, though, will emerge next summer, and then there will be more Great Black Wasps on my flowers.

Other beneficial wasps you may see at the end of summer include the potter wasp and blue winged digger wasp.

Stale Bread Plus Tomatoes and Basil Equals Great Food

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One new favorite food that I found while in Italy uses stale bread as its base. The dish is called panzanella locally, but in English the name is bread salad. I know — the name “bread salad” isn’t inspiring. The appearance isn’t, either. However, the flavor explains why so many people keep basil plants growing in pots on their windowsills and doorsteps. Bread salad taught me that stale bread plus tomatoes and basil equals great food.

Doorstep gardens in Tuscany, like this one, often include a pot of basil.
Doorstep gardens in Tuscany, like this one, often include a pot of basil. PHOTO/Amygwh

After being served bread salad a few times here, I asked one of my new Italian friends how to make it. This is what I was told:

Traditional panzanella, or bread salad, recipe

Start with stale bread (3-4 days old) that is dry and hard.

Break up the bread, then drop the pieces into water for brief saturation. Then, squeeze out the excess water as much as possible.

Mix onion, white vinegar, and a LOT of chopped basil into the bread in small amounts. Keeping adding and mixing until the flavor is good. Then, add olive oil.

Chop tomatoes, drain them, add salt, and continue to drain them until they are fairly dry.

If cucumbers are available, chop them to add to the salad, but do not use the gel/seed part.

Tips to make the generalized recipe work

The standard, soft, sandwich-style bread that is prevalent in the U.S. might not work well in bread salad. I think that the bread needs to be the kind made of just 4 ingredients – flour, water, yeast, and salt. Whole wheat works, but so does bread made from white flour. Joe and I have made the salad with both kinds, with good results.

We don’t have a basil plant on our windowsill in Italy, but our friend makes herb-infused olive oils. She gave us a bottle of basil-infused olive oil to use instead of fresh basil, and it is glorious!

Notice that there are no guidelines for amounts of anything. Either Joe and I have been very lucky, since this is good every time we make it, or bread salad is nearly foolproof.

Less obvious (maybe) benefits of bread salad

  1. It uses an ingredient — old, hard bread — that might otherwise be wasted.  As a person who prefers to use up leftovers, even hard, stale, leftovers, rather than waste them, finding recipes for good food that use old bread well is a gift. Another way we have noticed that hard, stale bread is used is as a thickener for soups. Tomato soup, bean soup, vegetable soup — all contain bread that has been soaked, broken up, and dispersed throughout the broth.
  2. When tomatoes are in season and piling into the kitchen in large numbers, having an easy recipe (like this one) that uses them well is helpful. Ditto for cucumbers.
  3. If your basil is growing into an enormous plant, you can use that, too.

Let me know if you try making bread salad at home, and if you love it, too!

I hope your gardens are all growing well.

-Amy