Harvesting Cold Day Salads Monday

The garden is a luscious salad bar this time of year until the real cold and snow hits which could be any time now. We are gathering cold hardy lettuce, kale, cabbage, fennel, coriander, kale, asian greens like mustards and bok choi, kale, arugula, the first corn salad/mache,* herbs, onions, more kale, bietina (particularly hardy chard in my experience) and chicories like radicchio.


Beautiful heading raddichio. I sprinkled handfuls of a collection of old seed beneath the apple trees last fall so I couldn't tell you the exact variety but it was tasty!

In fact, I debated calling this post for the love of chicory. Even the deer have expressed their appreciation by nibbling off the tops of some beautiful red heads revealing their mottled interiors. At least they left the roots to grow again next year. It wasn't until I started growing them that I learned to appreciate their pleasingly bitter taste from the deceptively named sugarloaf to the deep reds of classic radicchio to the buttery yellow of forced Belgium endive.

What's not to love? They are perennials.** In their first year, all going well, they produce heads that can be as lovely as flowers in the fall garden. In their second year, they produce a tower of sky blue flowers rather like the wild chicories that you may see along the roadway and like those wild flowers, they will happily seed themselves nearby the mother plants. These self sown seedlings along with those I've started in situ in the fall, have produced some of the most beautiful first year heads. Subsequent years will produce more greens and roots.


At my old place, sugarloaf chicory often made its way into the yawn. It's easy to remove but I often left it, getting a kick out of the contrasting giant apple green leaves. Cutting back the flowerheads prevents this or just aim them in a more appropriate direction.

You can eat the outer leaves but they are quite bitter or wait for cool temperatures to increase their sugar content. Digging up and storing the roots in the cellar will provide you with a winter feast of chicons - forced heads - at a time of year when fresh vegetables are thin on the ground. If you can't wait, then you can blanch the inner growing leaves by upturning a bowl or pot on them. This works for dandelions too.

Though they make a lovely base or complement for a salad, my favourite use is in pasta dishes. Fried lightly with onion, with or without other vegetables, then layered in a cheesy lasagna is delicious. The bitterness is transformed into depth. If you enjoy the way they cut sweet, then stir fry or grilling is also a nice option. Or layer raw on some fresh fall apples atop a shredded head of sugarloaf and a sprinkle of grated cheese.


This picture is taken later in the fall than the previous and you can see the deepening of colour in the heads.

Even my children will eat it though not on the plate. There is something about that circular eating zone that changes vegetables from tasty trail snack to dreaded barrier against leaving the table. The other day, my youngest was cutting up a sugarloaf with the odd leaf making its way into her mouth. I said, "You like chicory!" She smiled and replied "no" while continuing to chew.



* My corn salad is off to a slow start at the new place. I know that once it starts to self seed, I'll be in the corn salads for years but I sure do miss its mild flavour now. If you have a cold frame/polytunnel, you can harvest it almost all year too! The exception is probably after its seeded in summer along with days that your door is frozen shut. Otherwise, it's extremely cold hardy.
** I've also heard short-lived perennial. It may be but as I always have youngsters taking over from their flagging parents, I haven't noticed.


There are all kinds of chicory from loose leaf to ones with thick stems to those with tight conical or more pointed heads. Berton Seeds will give you a sense of their diversity.

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!!Happy b-day to my baby gardeners who are 6 and 8 today!!

Lots of Leaves Harvest Monday

Speckled buttercrunch lettuce.

It's salad time! We've been filling up on lettuce, peas, green onions, arugula, rattail radish pods, garlic scapes, wild greens, orach, magenta spreen, mustards, kale, haskap / honeyberries, even a few ground cherries! Tonnes of herbs too like dill, parsley, lovage, sweet cicely, thyme, sage, oregano, anise hyssop, tarragon and I'm sure I'm forgetting loads.


A nice specimen about a few days before I cut off the centre, leaving the outer leaves.

My favourite early summer salad is to mix lots of bulky mild greens like the goosefoots (magenta spreen, orach, spinach, strawberry spinach, chard, beet greens, regular spinach, lamb's quarters, amaranth), lettuce, or mild tasting brassicas (some mustards, chinese heading cabbages, young kale), or corn salad and mix that with lots of herbs. Delicious.


It regrew a mini head of crisp leaves.

For a spicy, sweet salad with crunch, I also like masses of chopped up edible podded peas mixed with a smaller amount of rattail radish pods. What's your favourite spring salad mix?

Harvesting the Wild Monday

Wandering in our maple bush, hunting for spring flowers, I found the wild version of the stinking rose: Wild Leek - Allium tricoccum. It's protected in some parts of the country as it can take awhile for patches to mature so I harvested judiciously.


Wild leeks are early season risers.

To this, I added some dandelion leaves, daylily and horseradish shoots for a salad.


From left to right: wild leeks, daylily shoots, horseradish shoots and dandelion leaves.

There were lots of other nibbles popping up in the forest. It's a time of year filled with green tonics but be careful to make correct identification as sometimes a rosette by any other name might not be edible.

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Wild Man Steve Brill on Daylilies

Northern Bushcraft Wild Edibles List

Sort seed easy with gravity and water

Seed Saving Tip 4 - Get Nature to do the Sorting - gravity and water

A great many techniques, both wet and dry, ultimately use the difference in mass between chaff and seed to sort quickly. And now an example:

Young magenta spreen, Chenopodium gigantium.

I noticed that small birds like sparrow and chickadee were plucking at the Magenta Spreen so I figured that they must be ripe. It is a gigantic relative of lamb's quarters with a striking fushia centres in early growth. Here is when I get experimental.

Mature plants have sturdy stems up around 6-8 feet tall in my garden. As the season nears its end, they regain their brilliant colouration resembling fall leaves.

Early, I had cut some mature seedheads for indoor drying because the weather is attempting to break another record making this an exceptionally rainy September.

Dry seedheads

I rubbed off the seeds with chaff into a bowl and discarded the stems. Since I'm a lazy gardener, I normally stop here but for the sake of public knowledge dissemination, I thought I'd try and clean the chaff from the seed this time.

The seeds are enveloped in chaff coats that resemble tiny stars when rubbed off. The seeds are round and black.

First I rubbed the seeds gently against a screen but that didn't seem particularly more effective them rubbing them with my hands and I didn't want to scratch them too much so I went back to rubbing them between my fingers.

I tried rubbing across a screen but something about me just likes to get my hands in. It took me forever to start wearing gloves when gardening because I loved to feel the dirt. Only my hands didn't cope well with the drying and abrasive affect of the soil.

To separate the chaff that I had loosened from the small, black seeds, I poured them from one bowl to another - a version of winnowing. Result: fail.

Winnowing in this way is a highly effective technique for separating many seeds from chaff if the chaff is easily blown away by the wind and the seeds are comparitively heavier. This didn't seem to work with these seeds. At least not with today's weather.

Then I chatted with a seed saving friend and he said, why don't you try water separation?

I said, "Indeed why not?"

Still plenty of greenish coloured chaff.

I poured the mess into water. The seeds didn't wet easily so I had to give it a stir and let the seeds settle out for a minute or two.

You can see the good seed at the bottom of the bowl.

The chaff, some seeds - yes, some are lost but we are talking a seed generous Chenopodium here, were poured off the top, leaving the dark clump of nearly pure seed to be strained from the bottom. I did this twice to get the most seeds and the least chaff.

Bye, bye chaff.

The seeds were plopped onto some paper towels then squeezed a bit drier. The fact that water didn't seem to adhere easily made them easy to dry and easy to dump off onto more dry paper towel for final drying. This needs to be done fast so they don't sprout or spoil.

Clean magenta spreen seed.

Thanks nature.

Would you like some magenta spreen seeds? Well you are in luck. I have many more seeds heads to process now that I know what to do. Send me an email - right hand side - and I'll send you seeds.

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Winnowing works: Processing Amaranth seed by Orlo

Wet processing seed - Tomatillo example

Harvest Monday - Rhubarb and Rainbows

There are lots of goodies in the garden including masses of rainbow greens, onions and today's harvest of rhubarb for some muffins.

Magenta Spreen: Chenopodium gigantium


Like its cousin, lamb's quarters - Chenopodium album, it excells at seeding but look at the seedlings!

Orach - Red and Gold: Atriplex hortensis


Another self sowing beauty which makes for a delicious cooked or fresh green rainbow.

Rhubarb


My youngest, for scale, with a strange smile on her face. Mabye she's not sure about rhubarb muffins or maybe it was all those green gooseberries she insisted on eating?

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Great rainbow greens:

Orach - comes in colours from gold, purple, red, magenta, green and in between
Chard - Bright Lights is a favourite or try beets like Bull's Blood
Mustard - Many asian greens come in shades of purple and pink
Chicory - look for red and variegated varieties.
Magenta Spreen - A towering plant once its mature and delicious
Amaranth - Gold, red, orange, variegated. Look for types for greens
Kale - purple, pale and green with purplish viens
Lettuce - more than I can describe
Fennel in bronze and green

Harvest Monday - Soil Seed Bank

"You reap what you sow," said a farmer


Yummy self sown salad plants.

"1 year in seed, 7 years in weed," said the gardener


Going clockwise from 12 o'clock, we have mustard, orach, magenta spreen, bietina (type of chard), coriander and kale. Just a selection of self starters in the garden.

"Like money in the bank," said the plant...

By letting my salad plants set seed and sow themselves, I'm filling the soil seed bank with plants that I want to withdraw. All these babies were taken from the area that I have recently reseeded for lawn to sell our house. It used to be a vegetable garden. The larder was so full of these desirables that I haven't yet removed a weed that wasn't edible.

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I'm excited to announce that I will be uploading an interview with Hida Manns about Mycorrhizal fungi this week. Stay tuned!

Harvest Monday - Dandelion power

One mother of a dandelion... many dandelions hiding out in the lungwort.

Yeah, I knew that you knew that we all know that dandelions are edible but have you ever eaten one? Lately, the turf has contracted a rash of brash yellow and people are complaining or delighting depending on their perception of this most amazing weed.

I get that even if you have fond memories of blowing those dancing ballerinas in the air as a child that you may not want your green concrete to consist primarily of Taraxacum officinale. Perhaps you would like other species to share some space like ox-eye daisy, violets, plaintain, chickweed or even grass. With that in mind:

How to Use Dandelions
How to Abuse Dandelions

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And some other things I harvested: rhubarb, mint, garlic chives... my youngest was going to show off the rhubarb but she got distracted by a pill bug.

How to Use Dandelions

Dandelion greens are very good for you and they taste it too. To temper its bitter tendencies, eat the first flush of growth in the spring or blanche it like endive by turning a pot upside down on top of its crown for a week or so until tender, pale leaves pop up. Or do it like cauliflower and tie the leaves together to blanche the heart. This will lower the good greenness content but its better than finding it inedible. Some people add it to green juice or other leaf mixes in small quantities. Boiling it in a change of water will also lower the bitterness but also the nutrition value. As is generally the case with greens, they are better - ie, less tough and bitter - before the flowers arrive. Then you can pick the flowers to sprinkle in dishes or batter and fry as tempura. A local wild plant enthusaist, Martha Webber, apparently makes Dandelion Jam. Of course, it probably hasn't escaped you that there is such a thing as dandelion wine.


The pill bug. Notice her contented smile? She terrorizes them by overturning rocks and logs and then getting them to go visit pill bugs under other rocks and logs. Yes, I know the image doesn't match the text but I figured I'd try and merge two posts into one for effeciency (and confusion) sake.

The root can be dug and roasted until brittle to grind as a coffee substitute. You can also cook it as a vegetable like parsnip though I have never tried this. I'd love to hear experiences. You can store the roots with chicory and others in your cellar (or back of your fridge) to force in the winter. Bury the roots in moist sand with the crown sticking out. Either place on a window sill for bitter bite, or place in the dark to grow what looks like a curled cousin of Belgian endive.


How to Abuse Dandelions

Rather like using them, this requires a bit of harvesting though you may choose to put them in a plastic bag and let them bake dead before adding them to the compost to enrich your soil. You could probably also stew them in water to make an enriching tea for your plants rather like comfrey tea. In your enthusiasm, don't feel the need to be too thorough about their removal as they are an early food source for bees and other beneficials. That said, the likelihood of eradication is slim so pull away.


The dandelion blossoms were added to a veggie quiche along with these microgreens - thinnings of self sown 'Red Ursa' kale, 'Osaka' mustard, and 'Magenta Mountain' orach.

Here's how to lower the population of dandelion in your green concrete. Wait for a day where your soil is at its most diggable. Get a good dandelion digger and a shovel. Make sure you have a strong back. Dig out as much root as possible. Curse that it snapped. It will almost always do so unless it is very small. After you have aerated your lawn in this manner, top dress the area with compost or other good 'soil' and reseed with a mixture of grass and clover.

If you haven't gotten around to doing this, then snap off the flowers whenever you see them to prevent them from seeding. The healthier your grass, the less likely it will be overrun with weeds but I'm not promising anything.

Another alternative is to cover over the whole area and plant an edible garden. Maybe one with a few dandelions...

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Wild Man Steve Brill talks about how to cook up dandelions

Harvest Monday - Taste Test Take II

This San Michele cabbage head breezed through our unusually mild winter. I could harvest it but I think I'll let it, and its friends make seeds.

Apparently, this unseasonable spring decided to take a U-turn as soon as the official spring date had passed so after today's possible high of 9C, we are nose diving into forcasts that use the words: Freezing Rain, Possible Flurries and Double Subzero Celcius temperatures. I know spring will return but as I will have to wait, I am going to go outside and see what salad materials I can harvest from the still unfrozen ground.


Orach sprouts up early.

I have baby nodding onions (Allium cernuum) in the ground and decided to take a nibble today. At first, I thought, not much of a strong taste but then a gentle, mild quite pleasant oniony flavour developed after a couple of chews.


Pale yellow crocus half open on this partly cloudy day.

Also in the front garden were crocuses and violas a-bloom. Among them were various bellflowers. I tried two. The first was a small, yellow leafed variety which was not bad but as you can see it would take quite a bit to bulk up a salad and the common Campanula persicifolia (I believe). At first, I thought "tastes green, like grass" but really it was not bad and there was a fair amount of leaf available. Ox-eye daisy never really impresses me when it comes to green so I designate it 'pot herb' until I experiment more. The leaf buds are sometimes pickled as a caper substitute.


Zebra mallow edible but palatable?

After various grassy greens, I popped some Zebra Mallow - Malva sylvestris - into my mouth and though I find its texture a bit tough (preferring the salad version 'curly mallow'), it had a very pleasing sweetness. Oregano was quite good raw or maybe it was in comparison. I was also happy to see that my Celeriac made it through the winter. The early greens shooting up were very yummy, tasting just like the swollen root/stem.


Young salsify sending up grass thin leaves.

I also nibbled on some salsify - Tragopogon porrifolius - which is called 'oyster root' as is Scorzonera. It's leaves are thin, almost grasslike but they are not hairy like its perennial namesake and so the lettucy flavour could be better appreciated. Too bad it didn't produce more abundant spring shoots.

And now I'm going to hide indoor until spring reappears and its pea planting time.

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Plants for a Future - Bellflowers
Pickled Ox-eye Daisy buds from Forbes Wild Food

Harvest Monday - Spring Taste Test

The unusually warm weather we've been having is that NSD (No Snow Day) is fast approaching. We'll probably get a few flurries before spring really settles in but tomorrow the forecast is calling for an incredible 15C!

So for harvest monday, I did some taste testing of various spring greens as I made a salad.


Corn salad looking lush in March

The bulk was provided by corn salad - Valerianella - also known as lamb's lettuce and it really is a valuable crop right around lambing time. I did not seed these lovely, crunchy, mild tasting leaves as they are reliable self seeders. They have slowly spread outward from the original spot they were sown to cover a good 8 foot wide radius, just enough for plenty of winter and spring salads. Besides being abundant in spring, they are also available in the coldframe all year - yes, you read me right.

To this mild backdrop, I added flavour.

Egyptian onion did not disappoint, providing succulent onion tasting hollow spears. Bloody dock was crisp and slightly sour as expected from a member of the Rumex genus. Sorrel was lemony and chicory was mildly but pleasantly bitter. Horseradish shoots, as always, were an interesting addition with their pleasantly pungent, slippery flavour. And there was a mound of parsley from overwintered plants, tasting just as it should.


Bloody dock opening its decorative red veined leaves.

Surprises in great tastes for spring shoots were Red Valerian - Centranthus ruber - which had an excellent mild, sweet crunchy flavour like the best lettuce and English Daisy - Bellis perennis - whose leaves were almost peppery like arugula. Funnily enough, Plants for a Future had different impressions of the quality of these greens. Maybe it is in the amount of frost they received.

In my so-so category included salad burnet - Sanguisorba minor - whose reputed cucumber taste is always lost on me though I did pick up something vaguely gasoline like. Scorzonera has a nice nutty taste but it is hard to appreciate because the leaves are hairy. Also, Mallow - Malva moschata - is a bit too fiborous for fresh eating in my opinion. I prefer the seedpods.


Salad burnet takes over the brick.

Plants that I did not swallow included yarrow - Achillea millefolium. It had a prickly unpleasant texture which made me spit it out. I think I'll leave it to medicinal uses. Also, creeping sedum was too acrid. I do like Sedum telephium whose succulent leaves were excellent when I had them on a wild weed walk while they were growing under deciduous leaf cover.

That's all for today but enough to full my salad bowl. Lots more plants to nibble on in future days. Welcome back spring, early though it may be!


First flower of spring - winter aconite. I also have a viola almost in full bloom - crazy!

Self seeding sea of greens

So I was worried that even though I had been seeing orach seedlings for weeks, my mustard hadn't germinated yet.


Mix of orachs from green to purple to variations in between.

Like I needed to worry. Yesterday, I notice a sea of tiny purple and green heart shaped brassica seed leaves where the osaka purple mustard was last year. I think it's safe to say that they have reseeded themselves.


That's not green and purple mold, those are all mustard seedlings.

The sweet cicely seed head I tossed down also has dutifully reproduced.


Sweet Cicely is a pain to germinate having a chilling requirement, liking a bit of freeze thaw (so I hear) and insisting that three earthworms do the tango at high noon on April Fool's day before breaking dormancy. It is also a short lived seed so I figure that I would let mother nature do what it does best. I lay the seed head down and said, good luck. As usual, they grew.

I'm waiting to see what else will pop out of the ground unplanted but certainly planned.

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Orach is a slow to bolt spinach substitute that is so decorative that it is often grown as an ornamental. Comes in a range of colours from lime green to purple. It reliably self sows in my garden for early spring greens with no fuss. I think it should be said that spinach is an orach substitute.

Wild Garden Seeds has a great selection of Orach and Mustards.

Mustard is a spicy green that gives a stir fry or salad a kick, though milder versions have been bred. It is a cool weather lover as well but when it bolts, it showers the ground with seeds for a repeat performance the following year. Or you can eat some of the flower heads as sassy broccolini.

And lastly, Sweet Cicley has got to be one of my all time favourite perennial edibles. It is highly decorative with finely serrated leaves on this bushy perennial that reaches about 2-3 feet in my garden. The white lace cap flowers are similar to other members of the carrot family and attract beneficials. They are followed by large black seeds that stick straight up. The entire plant is edible and tastes of anise. It can be used as a sugar substitute. Best of all, it grows in part shade, being fond of the dappled shade at the edge of a wood lot so I'm told. Mine grows along the wall of our house in a dry garden. I love this plant.

What should I grow? A primer of classic vegetables

If you are a fellow urban 'farmer,' then this time of year is filled with intricate 4 dimensional planting charts, and painful decisions about what not to plant. Then again, perhaps you just embrace the seeds but then wonder when the time comes where you are going to cram all those plants? Or maybe you are new to vegetable gardening and are trying to decide what best to plant? Well, friends, I am here to try to help because it is my trial too so let us think of some criteria:


a. Will my family eat it?
b. Will it grow with minimum fuss here?
c. Is it a space hog or will it provide me with maximum food output with minimum space?
d. Does it taste better fresh fresh, not normally available or is very expensive?
e. Is the store bought / non organic version normally high in pesticides?



Don't feel like playing my Q&A game then let me give you some common, mostly annual veggies that meet many of the above criteria.


1. Beans: easy to grow, you can plant 2-4 inches apart. Fresh beans are available abundantly during the summer and pole beans can be trellised. Also, it's one of the easiest plants from which to save seed.


Sideways picture 'Hunter' bean with broad pods and a ladybug.

2. Peas: See above and add that freshly shelled peas are an exquisite taste that you have to experience to believe. I experience it seldomly as my kids eat most of them.


Glowing peas

3. Roots: carrots, turnips and beets. They don't take up much space and their growing requirements are meagre - a bit of sun, a bit (not too much) fertility and adequate watering. Carrot*, turnip and beet tops are also edible so eat your thinnings. You can often get two crops in a year too. Carrots are one of the dirty dozen food that has a high pesticide residue to boot.


Turnip 'orange jelly' I think it's called and a golden beet by the looks of it beside dandelion?

4.Greens: lettuce, kale, spinach and the like are easy to grow tucked in between plants as they appreciate a little coolness in the summer months. They are not high in calories but superstars when it comes to providing you green vitamen vitality! Also on the dirty dozen list.


Self sown sugarloaf chicory

5. Peppers, especially bell peppers, tomatoes and potatoes are all sprayed within an inch of their life. Thankfully they'll all grow in containers. Just choose shorter varieties unless you have really big containers as indeterminate tomatoes are impressively large by the end of the season and bit tops usually mean big bottoms, ie the roots. If you have the space, potatoes are quite fun to grow. Kids enjoy helping plant the tubers and then dig up the treasures at harvest. Growing your own will also allow you to experience a diversity of varieties that is just not available at the grocery store.


Baby potatoes, the early crop.


Have a bit more space, then consider:


6. Strawberries and other soft fruit like grapes whose thin skins easily absorb pesticide residues.


Plums and cosmos happy together.

7. Cucumbers and squash whose rampant vines can be trellised for cleaner harvest, better air circulation that cuts down on diseases, and of course to save on room. Many kinds grow well in containers too.


Pontimarron squash I believe.



Even more space? Here are some high calorie crops to add to the mix:


8. Onions and leeks are both recommended by Jeavons, author of 'How to grow more vegetables,' the biointensive method.


Yummy onions... pictures of leeks lacking due to leek moth. I hope they enjoyed them.

9. Other roots like parsnip and sweet potato. Short season sweet potatoes will grow very well here with clear plastic mulched beds. Some have success in containers too.


Super delicious sweety 'Georgia Jet'

10. Grains and more pulses like lentils, chickpeas and dried beans. Combined with wheat, hulless barley, amaranth, and corn, you will get a very healthful meal.


Various dried legumes: peas, chickpeas, and beans

And my recommendation.

11. Cabbage fun to grow and surprisingly delicious fresh. It also keeps well in the winter in the back of my fridge. I've put it last as it is a space hog though I commonly space cabbage and broccoli only 12 inches apart and they grow smaller but sizeable heads in fertile soil.


Yes, I really love this picture. (It's been posted before...)

12. Lots of other veggies of course.

Enjoy and remember, Seedy Saturday with its seed trading table is coming up soon.