Invasivore

For my biz website,* I'm writing up a list of plants I won't sell but are useful edibles if you happen to have the mixed luck of already growing them. And chances are one of these will be on the list. Here is a selection:

Alliaria petiolata - Garlic Mustard

A native across the pond, this potherb's prolific seeding can overwhelm shady areas quickly. They are allelopathic to mycorrhizal fungi partners of certain native trees so can harm their growth and are poisonous to certain butterflies.

Uses: Turn the pest into pesto says it all really. Like many other flavourful greens, it can be used as a spinach substitute in quiche, pies, salads, pastas and more.

Aegopodium podograria - Goutweed, Bishop's weed 

The variegated variety is often seen peeping out along the foundation or under plants. This very tough ground cover does exactly what it promises and covers ground.

Uses: A carrot relative, it is often compared to celery. You will also be amused/amazed to know that this is one of the forgotten vegetables. Yes people planted it to eat on purpose. Oh wait, people still plant this on purpose. They just forgot to eat it. Eat the Weeds tells all.

Campanula rampunculoides -  Creeping Bellflower

Once upon a time, in a garden long ago, I was about to pull a weed when someone stayed my hand saying, "Don't pull that, it's a pretty wildflower." They must not have liked me. Another transplant from across the water, once established, it is difficult to eradicate. It has a clever trick to make you think you have pulled it all out. See, shoots with weak root systems form away from the main, bulky taproot. You pull these and think, ha ha, got it. It laughs back.

Uses: Perfectly passable as an edible, the taproots and greens can be eaten. I experiment with them here. Just remember to get those juicy taproots.

Fallopia japonica - Japanese Knotweed

I have this conversation a lot. "Wouldn't it be great if there was a hardy bamboo that grew in Ottawa." "Oh I have one/ have seen one." "Really?" "Yes, but you have to be careful because they're invasive you know." "Perchance would it have plumes of white flowers in the summer?" "Why do you ask?"

Because it's Japanese Knotweed! However, if you do have an interesting, hardy bamboo, I'm all ears. The jointed stems or knots are what make it look like bamboo. Another common name is fleece flower, also a good description. I often see it growing in damp conditions such as ditches. You may still encounter a variegated variety sold as a decorative perennial.

Uses: The spring shoots are a rhubarb like plant. More from well known forager Steve Brill.

Ranunculus ficaria - Lesser Celandine

The Marsh Menace hails from Europe and is outcompeting natives in wet areas and moist woodlands

Uses: This plant is not edible raw as it contains a toxin that is destroyed by cooking. Funnily enough, I was really surprised to see that it was considered edible at all given that it is in the buttercup family. I have no experience with this plant so I'll refer to someone who does.

Enjoy.

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* No time for photos. Spring clean, bed making, website designing, plant growing. However, I do post to my Facebook account if you are really starved for monotonous seedling pics. Look for Ottawa Gardener.

If you google invasivore, you may be surprised that many animals are on the list. Okay, not necessarily surprised that there are invasive animals, but foraging culture often leaves out the meaty side. Get it, leaves... out... I'll stop.

Playing Garden Design

I was pleased to get the opportunity to try out a new format to visualize and play with garden design at the Permaculture Convergence. Simply, I laminated some grids and used packing tape and recycled seed catalogues along with some printed pictures from my garden to make faux laminated pieces that you could move around.


Plant pieces plus two forms: from above and front on. 

You can put information on the back.


Okay, so you are welcome to disagree with my spacing - I kind of do. It was a bit random as so much depends on context.

It was a useful exercise and we all thought of some neat ways to improve it. My favourite suggestion was to use transparencies of some sort to separate by season. Excellent idea Phil! There was also a desire to do the pieces by scale. I wanted to do this as well but then I couldn't properly fit the info on the back. That's still a work in progress.


Not atypical pre-design yard.

Another useful amendment that occurred to me today was to make forms for north, shadow, sun and wet zone: black, yellow and purple respectively below. You can also use so-called plastic erasable markers to mark out topography and those other details. Another excellent suggestion was to give people particular projects. I think I'm going to make some pre-drawn situations.


You may not be able to see but the trees and path are faux laminated with packing tape.

But it is fun to just go crazy!


Well now that's a change.

You can use them to show specific design features such as contrasting foliage:



Lay on the plant pieces as well, or use them alone, to think about colour


I would have preferred to include california poppy here as a sporadic self seeder but I used coreopsis which also self seeds but I'm afraid would overwhelm the lavender. Just included it for the yellow splash of colour. My california poppy 'piece' was multicoloured instead of standard yellow-orange. Included in this design are seakale, lavender, sage and coreopsis which all do well in dry, sunny conditions. Three of the four are edibles.

This year I'm going to take photos of plants in my gardens and cut out their forms. I know there are various plan your garden programs out there but I quite liked this as a hands on demo.


Very simple veggie patch I just tossed together. A useful tip when planning with rangy plants - like many annual veg - attractive is to lay them out in them with strong geometrical beds. Hence why raised beds can look quite good.

Here's something I wrote earlier: Eat my Yard

All of spring's promise...

... and none of summer's reality. It's that crazy wonderful time of year before the snow reveals all that you didn't get done in the fall, before you discovered that you need three times as many carrots and half the pumpkins and before various little tragedies befall your plants.


Some not quite related pictures to pretty up the post: Pepper babies are up and growing

Ah yes, you may have been in a dream state during the depths of winter while combing through seed catalogues but now it's starting to feel real. The red winged blackbird calls, the maple sap is running and the snow is turning into that slushy, dirty cover called early spring. Soon bulbs and overwintered weeds* will appear in the mud.


Albino tomatillo seedlings: not long for this world I suspect.

Or maybe you are like me and underneath the excitement is the recollection of last year's problems. Top of the list is Drought 2012 meaning I am keen to hasten the installation of ponds, trenches and other water direction/collection. Second is The Earwig Plague 2012. I hope that the various poultry I purchased last year have cleaned up most of them but just in case I'm going to let them scratch through the mud for a week or so this warm spring before tidying up the paths that the chickens put asunder. There is also the Ecological Chaos of March Summer 2012 when the mercury shot to plus 20 during sugaring. The snow vanished, the sap threatened to go green and the flea beetles emerged early to decimate all the brassicas babies. This was followed by Late Frost 2012 when plums, cherries and friends were wiped clean of fruit over much of the fruit growing regions of Ontario. Apple and pear growers even suffered losses. Heck, this year has the most notable plant death events that I have experienced yet. Much worse than Leek Moth Invasion 2008 or the Cucumber Curse (ongoing).


Quite obvious IRL, these are my Red Rock Mammoth x San Michel seedlings. On the left are the RRM pod parent seedlings and on the right are the much bigger SM pod parent seedlings. The SM pod seedling show intermediate traits but the RRM show much stronger RRM traits so may not be crossed. Hence the SM babies may be showing hybrid vigour.

Yes, it was a year to remember.

So it is not without some trepidation that I look forward to the growing season. Will the trees on the rocky ledge be alive despite burning up to green crisps in August? Will I be able to eat mustard and kale this year? P.S. I'm building some brassica boxes which are pretty much like you imagine them:  boxes with insect netting to put over flea beetle susceptible plants. Will earwig armies come in the night to eat all the parsnips (etc)? Trapping will commence early this year. I used tuna can traps last year but in order to avoid attracting the darlings (which walk the line between beneficial and pest** by the way), I'll be going with rolled up cardboard.


Prairie smoke and asters share a tray: natives for infilling the old orchard garden and adding a bit of their natural beauty to the demo gardens.

At the same time, I'm excited to begin a new growing year. I am starting a garden related business (anyone have a drawing program I can borrow for my logo that's better than paint?). My demo gardens are filling in with beautiful, useful plants and I have a huge pile of wood mulch, a hoard of fall leaves, bags of green manure seed and a stack of straw - hurray!

Besides this year is going to be awesome right? I will get soccer ball sized cauliflower, enough tomato sauce to feed the extended family and just enough rain.


Two varieties of Taraxacum - red leafed and pink flowered - for the dandelion garden and some Mexican Shell flower.


*Ah weeds. Though you could argue that exotic invasives are troublesome enough to spit the curse weed at them, I try to feel wonder for prolific ground covers instead (before smothering, burning, cutting or yanking them out of course. I'm all for good stewardship).

**Pest is unfair too. Sure some bugs annoy me what with their inability to share but mostly I like earwigs. I think the hungry hoards removed every other insect pest from the garden temporarily (the flea beetles preceded them).

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In other news, the Edible Ottawa Garden Group's next meeting Gardening small in the Urban Sprawl will be April 10 at 6:30 at the Hazeldean Public Library.

We'll also be holding a pre-meeting meeting at 5:30pm about trying to get the concept of a Seed Library off the ground or any other projects people want to put forward.

Seed Library!!

As mentioned in a previous post, I'm super psyched about the idea of a seed lending library in Ottawa. Not just me either but various folk are interested in this. No doubt all sorts of people I've never heard of are interested in this so I propose we get together and make this thing work.

My understanding is that there are various models including ones that link directly with the library and others that use nearby facilities. A seed bank may also work as a lending library too and there are possible proposals for this as well in the works in Ottawa.

So let me know so we can all grow.

Scarification mini-Update

Update on my seed surgery last week (also known as scarification).

All hibiscus and related genus germinated well especially Hibiscus sabdariffa that popped their roots two days after being nicked and soaked. Still waiting on Canna edulis and Prunus (these are older seeds so I'm not sure if they are viable). One of the most interesting germination habits I've ever seen are from these Tinantia erecta:

If I was formally trained, I'd probably have something more enlightening to say then cool. As it is, check out the multiple 'seed' roots.

OH performs seed surgery - scarification

Seedy Sunday (and Saturday)

A whole lot of seedy stuff happening at Perth this Sunday.

Seedy weekend or as I'm calling it the seed enthusiasts annual reunion started in Ottawa. Lots of friends, lots of seeds, and little parking but I'd like to focus on Seedy Sunday in Perth. Though Ottawa had more vendors and tendors, Perth had a more charitable flavour. Local companies had respectable selections including Yuko's Open Pollianted Seed*, Mountain Grove Seed, Heritage Seeds and Produce and others with seed packages in the 2-3 dollar range rather than closer to 4 as it was in the 'big city.'

In fact, the zero dollar price tag really set apart two booths. Robert and Carol Mouck maintain a large selection of rare, heritage varieties. They had their table set up with bottles filled with beautiful seed to give away. All they asked for in return was the promise that you would keep the seed. As Carol explained to me heirloom seeds are "treasured," "a gift," and "have a right to be grown." They started on a farm 30 years ago with Dorset Horn sheep and crops. Wanting to create a more self sustaining system, they started to save their own seed and from this a passion to preserve rare varieties was born.


The beautiful gift of seed from Robert and Carol Mouck.

Though now they focus on disseminating seed and knowledge to local backyard growers and farmers, the Heirloom Seed Sanctuary they founded lives on.

Also, bringing the love of sharing and seed to the community is the Perth & District Union Public Library with a seed lending library. Yes, they just managed to combine two of my favourite things in the world: seeds and libraries. I'd heard rumours of something like this happening in Toronto too. Simply borrow seeds, set some aside for yourself and return the surplus to the library. Are your eyes popping out of your head now? Are you dancing in the streets? Don't you love this idea as much as me??

I love it so much that if Ottawa isn't cooking this up, then my hand is bouncing up and down in the air to help set this up. If it is already underway on the hush-hush (or I just missed it), then let me know what I can do to help.

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Seed Libraries
A list of Seed Libraries
* Yuko's Open Pollinated Seed's Annual Plant Sale will be on the weekends of May 11/12 and 18/19 between 8am and 2pm at 202 Arklan Road, Carleton Place.

OH performs seed surgery

I started the day saying, I think I'll scarify those seeds. Shouldn't take long (common intro to foreshadowing). From top left: Prunus sinensis, Canna indica edulis, Smyrnium olusatrum, Hibiscus palustris, Tinantia erecta and Callirhoe involcrata. P.S. I'd wager that remembering how to spell botanical latin is better than cross words for the old noggin.

Most of the seeds grown in the average salad garden* grow without much coaxing, so much so that gardeners are often perplexed when seeds show low or erratic germination. Others make you work a bit harder to see the fruits of your labor.

Some have hard seed coats that must be broken down essentially by weathering whether that be from freeze-thaw, soil organisms or more. To speed up the process, you can carefully scarify.

Here is a selection of pre-conditioning I did on seeds today.

Alexanders, Smyrnium olusatrum may not be hardy here but that rarely stops me from trying especially if I am sent some seed. Heck, optimism is the gardener's middle name, right? It had the simplest instructions: rub off black husk:

Alexanders emitted an lovely aromatic odour while being pre-conditioned for germination.

Next came various 'mallows' including roselle, Hibiscus sabdarilla, and Rose Mallow, Hibiscus palustris. I'll complain about poppy mallow in a moment. They were nipped them with nail clippers.

Another blogger that I came across calls these love bites. I can't find her/his blog now but when I do, I'll ref. See the instrument in the background?

Widow's tears, Tinantia erecta, were a bit harder to hold so I tried scratching them on an emery board. We'll see if that does the trick. 

Me thinks these knobbly seeds were insufficiently scratched and should just be wintersown. We'll see.

Prunus sinensis came with instructions to crack the seed coat with a vice. Done:

Done after crushing the first two in pliers, then flinging one down the stairs as I headed for the garage and another somewhere on the garage floor as it was poorly placed in the vice. Finally I got success.

Then I had to pop off the outer seed coat from Callihroe involcrata. This picture does not really give you a sense of how small and hard those *&^* were. I was supposed to follow this up by scarify the itty bitty inner coat which indeed was very hard. I tried with itty bitty nail clippers then had to go and do something else. I do have a life beyond nicking seeds you know.

There must be a simpler way. So far, my luck with poppy mallow has been to lose most of them to slugs or earwigs once I finally did get them germinated...

Some of them now sit in pots or baggies to await the hard won germination. Others are imbibing water on my window sill.

Drink seeds drink.

I"ll report back on the results. 

P.S. Hardy species seeds could just be sown in a propagation bed to allow for nature to do the work for you however long that takes. I suggest labels. 

* Salad gardens are those that mostly contain tomatoes, cucumbers and greens for use during the growing season. They are among the most beloved of back (and front) yard growers. Most of the common annual veg will readily spring to life though some herbs may require a bit more attention. The most common issue with veg starting is that they are sown at the right soil temperatures, at the right time (similar yes), in a bed that is kept moist until establishment and with the hope that seed/ling predators say away. 

Some other methods of scarification Apparently you can freeze then drop in boiling water. Yikes. Perhaps this should be called seed torture techniques.