Harvest Monday - The Weather Rollercoaster

Rhubarb is almost ready and unperturbed by the surprise snowfall.

Plants are slowly waking up so I've been harvesting overwintered lettuce, spinach, parsnips, jeruselum artichokes, carrots and some chard. Green onions, horseradish, many herbs and violets are ready for harvest too. The forest is yielding more violets, trillium shoots (though who'd eat these beauties!) wild ramps, trout lily and fiddleheads though I haven't eaten the later two quite yet. Though the season of white barrenness is over and greens are abundant once again, today we got a reminder that the weather ride can be a roller coaster.

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Some Spring Edibles:



Trout lilies in abundance, named for their spotted leaves.

Trout Lily (Erythronium americium): Got woodlands or anything kinda shady next to something that was once wood-ish then you probably have a carpet of trout lilies. They are known as a marginal edible or sometimes as starvation food which has put me off them until now. Though these guys give a description that sounds rather pleasant. the3foragers bloodspot eat trout lily By the way, kudos to this blog for info and delicious looking recipes.

Trilliums (Trillium grandiflorum): A bit passed their edibility now, the spring shoots really do taste a bit like sunflower seeds. I know I sparingly tried them once. I do have enough here to eat with a bit more abandon I suppose but I am reluctant cause they're so darn lovely.

Ramps - aka wild leeks (Allium tricoccum): If you have some woods or are lucky enough to have purchased some wild leeks for your shady garden at home, then these are a yummy and useful early spring treat. Use sparingly so there will be lots for next year. Normally I just eat odd leaf and don't harvest the bulb. GardenofEaten gives you a wild ramp eyeful.

Nettles (Urtica dioica): Any child who lives in an area where these grow abundantly, can tell you which ones they are after a couple of encounters. They are mineral accumulators and therefore quite nutritious. Spring pea, asparagus and nettle lasagna from The Bitten World and Barbara Pleasant talks writes about growing and using stinging nettles.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale): I'm going to presume you don't need help identifying these common plants but many people nonetheless are reluctant to scarf them down. The roots, leaves and flowers are both edible and medicinal. Spring leaves are more mild than they are after flowering but you can blanch them like you would for endive to take out some of the bitterness. I find that it isn't noticeable when cooked with mixed greens such as in a quiche or muffins. Motherearthnews is Wild About Dandelions or join Friends of Taraxacum on Facebook.

Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum): An introduced invasive you may have it in your yard or find it in an uncontaminated wild place. The spring shoots are eaten and I've heard they are similar to rhubarb. I've not been lucky enough to ingest any yet. Here's a meal from food underfoot that combines garlic mustard, japanese knotweed and stinging nettles.

Yellow/Curly Dock (Rumex crispus): I loved these plants when I was a child with their heavy dried seed heads to strip and sprinkle like brown snow onto the ground. Little did I know they were edible. Wild fermented curly dock leaves.


Trilliums, the provincial flower of Ontario being stately. In a week, the forest will be covered with them.

Chickweed (Stellaria media): Another nutritious, edible and mild tasting green that is often pulled out of the garden without a thought to its usefulness. Chick chick pate from eat weeds

Plaintain (Plantago major): Tough little plant often found in the lawn. It's young leaves may be eaten. Older leaves are stronger tasting and fibrous. You can use the seeds too as in this recipe from eat weeds.

Fiddleheads (Matteuccia struthiopsteris): The young uncurling fronds of ostrich and cinnamon ferns. Eat sparingly and cooked! as there are mixed results on the goodness of these even from the safe varieties. Recipes from fiddleheads.ca


These small white and lavender violets are scattered throughout one of our yards.

Violets (Viola species): All the purple/white flowered ones are edible including leaves and flowers. I've read that yellow violets can cause gastronomical distress. If caught at just the right time, the leaves of Viola odorata aren't bad either in my experience. Not Eating Out in New Yard eats violet leaves and other greens.

Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata): An invasive weed, you are likely to have some of these even in the average suburban lot. The taste is described as a cross between - you guessed it garlic and mustard. Some recipes including the common garlic mustard pesto that I keep coming across.

Though hardly an exhaustive list but that's all I have time for now. Let me know if you've sifting through your lawn or woods for food lately.

Wake up Garden (but not too fast)

I"m an avid weather watcher this time of year, hedging bets on when to sow carrot seeds - just before a rain - and when to transplant cabbage babies - if only the flea beetles would stay away. We are getting closer and closer to the Last Frost Date too so tender plants are making their daily migration in and out.

All this and much more activity has been keeping me away from my blog recently. I've been telling people that it feels like I"m running to catch up with myself. But I've taken a bunch of thematic photos so I have high hopes for this Monday.

In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying pondering the weather.

Tomato Tuesday: Baby's first true leaves

They are actually bigger than when this photo was taken and are back outside in the greenhouse after a sojourn inside last week because of a dip in the mercury. I had excellent germination in all but a few very old seeds so I'll have to separate or thin the seedlings and re-pot them up soon. P.S. I'm probably going to transplant most of them so I'll do a short picture-post soon.

Tomato Tuesday Fact

Cotyledon leaves are present inside the seed as part of the embryo plant and in tomatoes pop out pretty shortly after the root shoots down. Tomatoes are dicots, meaning they have two of these seed leaves though once in awhile you'll see a seedling with three or even four. Once the plant is up and running, true leaves of quite a different shape emerge.

Interviews with Great Gardeners:Farming seed to seed with Joseph

Over the years, I've grown to respect Joseph's bold and interesting approach to developing his own seed strains - adaptivar landraces - which enhances genetic diversity along with yield and taste to provide his family and CSA with great fruit and vegetables. There is a lesson in good seed stewardship for all of us.

Where do you farm and when did you start?



I started farming as a toddler in Paradise Utah, a small village in a mountain valley. Cold air from the surrounding mountains settles into the valley, so the growing season is short and cold. Due to the low humidity during the summer, we get bright sunlight during the day and intense radiant cooling at night. I am still farming in Paradise.



I grew up on the farm that was settled by my 3rd great grandmother. We raised a huge vegetable garden to feed the family. The rest of the farm was in pasture, wheat, alfalfa, woodlot, or fallow where the mountains are too steep. My primary responsibility was to milk the cow once a day, every day, year after year after year. I love the intimacy of milking, and the gentle rhythm of it, but it ties you down something fierce.

We raised or hunted just about everything that we ate: pigs, sheep, cows, vegetables, chickens, deer, eggs, milk, fish, etc. We bought bread and noodles. We canned, froze, and dried lots of food. We had a root cellar, and a pantry.

We kept a couple of ponies that we rode all over everywhere when I was young. They were named Sunshine and Stormy, after the weather when they were born, which just happened to match their temperaments after they grew up. I usually rode bareback.


Tell us about adpativar landraces and your seed to seed practices.

I had always bought my seeds from The Company. Some years ago I was looking for a more exciting sweet corn, something with a bit of color to it. I read about the pedigree of a variety called "Astronomy Domine" which was being grown by Homegrown Goodness in Pekin Indiana. It contained the offspring of many dozens of varieties all jumbled up and inter-pollinating each other.


Astronomy Domine

That got me wondering about whether I was harming my garden by planting the highly inbred varieties that the seed companies were offering. So I started doing some plant breeding experiments with cantaloupe. The first year I had only harvested a few fruits before the garden was killed by frost, but I saved the seeds and replanted, and added about 60 varieties as a trial planting. Most of the varieties did extremely poorly, failing to produce seeds or even to germinate in my cold soil. The second year I harvested about two bushel of cantaloupes. There were a few plants from my saved seed that grew vigorously and were highly productive: One plant produced more fruit than an entire row of store bought seeds. So I saved the seeds from the best, and from anything that produced fruit and replanted. The third year I harvested around 15 bushels of ripe fruit. Wow!!! I could finally grow cantaloupe in my cold short season garden.


Mal-adapted cantaloupe


Well-adapted cantaloupe


The fruit of his labour: cantaloupe!

After seeing how successful the cantaloupe experiments were, I decided that I would grow all of my own seeds for my garden, and that I would grow landrace varieties. An adaptivar landrace is a food crop lots of genetic diversity which tends to produce stable yields under marginal growing conditions. Landrace crops are adaptively selected for reliability in tough conditions. In the case of mostly self-pollinating plants like peppers, tomatoes, beans, wheat, and peas a land-race may be thought of as many distinct varieties growing side by side. In the case of out-crossing plants like cantaloupe, squash, or corn, a land-race can be thought of as an open pollinated population with tremendous genetic diversity.

I have had great success with other varieties. For example, I planted every variety of moschata/butternut squash that I could get my hands on and allowed them to freely cross-pollinate. 75% of the varieties didn't produce offspring in the 88 day frost-free growing season that year, and of those that did survive, some of them only produced one fruit per seed packet. But I saved the seeds from the survivors and had a tremendous harvest the following year.


How do your clients react to the diversity of your vegetables?

Judy told me that I am a "bad farmer" for letting colored pollen from the Indian corn get into Astronomy Domine... But for the most part people are pragmatic. My brightly colored and genetically diverse vegetables taste better than the bland grocery store offerings, and so I am readily forgiven if one melon in a basket has a funky smell. If diversity is the price that has to be paid in order to harvest ripe melons in our valley then it's an easy bargain to make. And if I get the chance to share my belief that brighter colors equals higher nutrition and better taste, then people are nearly always willing to entertain the notion. When word of Astronomy Domine sweet corn got around, a local newspaper sent a reporter out to do a story about it.


Any project on the go that you'd like to share with us?

I am currently working on turning every species I grow into reliable landrace varieties for my garden, but the species that I am most excited about is watermelon. I was able to harvest 5 fruits from the 600 seeds that I planted last spring. That is great odds for a breeding program! I am collaborating with two other growers in similarly cold short-season gardens, and with one grower in a warmer climate. We are all growing each others seed and sharing seeds from the survivors with each other.


Mal-adapated watermelon

Well-adapted watermelon


The fruit of his labours: watermelon!

What advice would you give to young farmer's beginning a CSA or other local food farm?

Farm because you love to farm, not because you think it would be a lucrative career. I estimate that I make around $2 per hour. That figure is slightly misleading, because I also eat from the garden, and I have much lower expenses because I grow my own seeds, and because I have developed varieties that thrive without pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, weed-mats, etc. Farm-gate sales are much easier on the main highway than from a back-field somewhere. You can develop your own clientèle and your own way of doing things, regardless of the traditions of the other farmers in your area.

Read more at Homegrown Goodness

Tomato Tuesday: Get Ready...

I'm sure I spaced these seeds better...

It's the time of year to start your tomato seeds and other tomato-y fruits too. I have a whole flat of ground cherries, litchi tomatoes and a new one called golden berry (I'll report back) seeded, watered and waiting. I've already started my eggplants and peppers but that's another story.

They're sitting in my sweltering greenhouse at the moment germinating one by one. I feel like a kid finding easter eggs each time I spot a new sprout. They'll be spending cold nights and days inside of course but that's not necessary during this misplaced summer we're having this week. I take them in whenever the weather is predicted to be too close to 4C and leave them out as long as it's not frosty - in a greenhouse of course. I used to put them in a plastic tub and prop the lid open when it got too warm. It will warm up, even getting way too hot, in surprisingly cool temperatures with the lid securely fastened so err on the side of caution if you use this trick. Closer to planting date, they'll be moved outside to face their new friend - wind - in full force.

Someone asked on a forum if anyone used cold treatment for their tomato seedlings. According to this explanation, it helps them to flower earlier. Because I tend to leave my plants out during passable weather - not hail, gale or frost - from the beginning, I guess I do. Can't say as I notice super early flowering plants or at least flowering time seems to be quite variable. I'd love to hear other people's experiences.

Maple Syrup means Spring*

It may not be the official calendar date for the beginning of spring but early on Tuesday with mist laying heavy on the ground and geese flying over head, I could feel a change in the air.

The sugar shack showing through the early morning mist.

For a week, the sap has been rising in the maple trees as the temperatures crept and even leapt above 0C.

On a previous sunny day, you can see the sap dripping from the tree.

Gardening partner started a fire in our inherited evaporator. The kids gathered round.

The previous owners made this crafty invention which is an evaporator/smoker depending on how you place the chimney. In this picture, the boiling pans are removed.

The sun burned off the mist brining not the drizzly day we had been promised but one shining with beautiful golden light. We are nearing the sweet spot of spring when temperatures warm but before the biting bugs come out.

Sap gets boiling.

Sap was added to the evaporator. For those not in the know about how maple syrup is made. The trick is to boil it down the slightly sweet sap into a thick sugary concoction. It takes approximately 40L of sap to make 1L of maple syrup.

My kids thought it looked like a volcano here.

After boiling down all day, we brought a couple pots of near-syrup indoors to finish the job. I have about 4L of maple syrup to be bottled and stored. This whole adventure will begin again sometime next week, weather holding.

* These are pictures from last week. This week there is almost no more snow and temperatures in the summery range of 26C. Crazy!! We probably boiled down the last of the sap for the year, today.

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Urban tapping: There are some beautiful maple lined streets. Those trees are well branched and mature meaning lots of sap production. I have this fantasy of these blocks getting together for sugaring in the spring. Tapping supplies can be gotten inexpensively on the various seller sites but make sure you get food grade plastic, cast aluminum or something else that isn't so antique it contains lead. Or you could make your own with a hollowed out staghorn sumac stem (some people are allergic to this shrub) and a milk jug.

Not Far From a Tree Toronto organized an urban tapping: They blog about the ups and downs of this sort of project.

Awaiting Seeds?

My next mail run is tomorrow. If you would like some seeds from my trade list then I hope to make another mail run next week.