What did the kids think of the snow

you can see it on their morning faces:



Introducing my garden helpers: ages 3 and 5.

Wordy Wednesday

Okay, I promise not to say to much but I just don't do wordless well:

My garden growing plastic. Why?


Unseasonably early snowstorm


It should melt before the weekend is out (I hope) and then I'll have to play it by ear when to dig up the remaining root crops for cellar storage. I like to leave them in the garden as long as possible. You can see my half constructed polytunnel on the top picture. It will be different from the peaked polytunnel of years gone by but what it will look like not even I know.

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What's wordless Wednesday. Well it's one of those meme things. You know a joint blog posting idea. I can't recall where it comes from and I don't normally participate because of my general wordiness but I bumped into a blog participating and figured what the heck.

Harvest Day - the roots of fall

We've had a couple hard frosts so I yanked up some roots for a simple roasted dish of mixed veg.

Carrots, turnip, beets, scorzonera (black skin), jeruselum artichoke (bumpy thing), and salsify (thin white roots)

Freshly pulled are dandelion, chicory, beets, carrots, jeruselum artichoke, chinese artichoke, salsify, scorzonera, horseradish, sweet cicely, and turnip. Next year, I hope to add skirret (tried to grow these before but no luck), apios (already added thanks to a generous gardening friend), tuberous sweet pea (found a patch in Gatineau park), turnip rooted chevril, hamburg rooted parsley and more parsnip. I might even grow rampions (campanula rampunculus) but then again, I think it already grows in my yard as a weed.

From left to right: chicory, horseradish and sweet cicely (the last two look similar but feel and taste very different).

You may wonder why I have such a thing for roots but in the cold climate of Ottawa, a root cellar can mean the difference between eating store bought food and cooking from the fresh larder of your own garden. I am lucky enough to have an old cellar built under our front step which is the right temperature but a little dry for root storage. To compensate, I put bowls of water down there and sprinkle a little on top of my roots from time to time.

Scorzonera, salsify (both collectively known as oyster root) and carrot

Also, some roots are great for forcing in the winter to produce fresh greens. Of the above, you can eat the leaves of dandelion, chicory, beet, carrot, scorzonera, horseradish (young leafs), turnip, and sweet cicely. Of course, you can also eat parsley but not the leaves of the turnip rooted chevril. Particular types of chicory are grown for the purpose of forcing them in darkness to produce tasty crunchy chicons for the gourmet market. Thankfully the plant itself is easy to grow in the home garden as are many roots.


Left to right: Jeruselum Artichokes and Chinese Artichokes

Given a light soil (though there are varities of many of these vegetables that will grow in heavy soil such as oxheart carrot, egyptian beet and Russian Kral parsnip), roots require little space compared to other vegetables and some will even take a little shade. They are also the basis for many a meal from mashed to baked to fried to boiled. The famous 'root' used for these purposes is the potato which is actual a tuber but I am playing fast and loose with the definition here. Any undergrown food storage organ is being named 'root' in this post.

In Ottawa you can also grow Gobo (or wild burdock as I'm sure you know if you've ever taken a dog on a country walk), wild carrot / Queen Anne's Lace, short season sweet potato (I did last year with great success), tiger lily (really?), evening primrose, daylily (really, really?),jicama(according to Solana Seeds - who knew), chufa (have grown but was difficult to process) , dog's tooth violet (according to one source only survival food but it's pretty and native here), and many aquatic species such as the very useful cattail, and I'm sure I'm missing something.

-- inserted next day: how about radishes and rutabagas? (someone else should really be at the helm of this brain ship) --

I have the last two in my garden but extraction of a couple first year primerose rosettes revealed no tap root so I shrugged and moved on. The daylily I haven't tried yet.

* You can also cheat by digging a trench and filling it with loose soil or using a crowbar, shoving it into the ground, whirling it around to make a cone and filling with loose soil then planting your seed at the top.

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Root storage and inulin

And now a fun little lesson. Inulin is a polysaccarhide that is used by many plants to store food. It can give people gas and if I remember correctly, it is one of the culprits in beans. In one of my wild edible food books, the writer talks about cooking roots with high amounts of inulin to break it down. Unlike many people who complain after they eat Jeruselum Artichoke of a gassy tummy, I don't normally react like that. I don't know if this is because of the variety I grow, the way I cook it or my own digestive system but I thought this was an interesting factiod.

More on inulin at Doc Weed's Doin's

Links:

Four Season Harvest by Coleman
Plants for a Future - has other roots that grow in milder climes as well
Wikipedia entry on edible roots with specific classifications between taproots, tuberous roots, modified stems and so on.

The Lastest - not seed saving but plant breeding...

Before I start, let it be stated that I approve of this trend! OK, now you can read on.


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Seeds of Diversity mag perched atop my favourite read of the moment. NRC (National Research Centre)'spublications Herbs of Canada and Vegetables of Canada.


If you want to be part of the ultracool organic, edible plant geeks this summer, then you have to do more than just save your seeds. Seed strain purity is good but if you really want to wow your friends and impress your neighbours, then a melon variety named after you is even better.


All kidding aside, I have noticed that there has been more and more talk about amateur plant breeding amoung seed savers. Perhaps it's just a natural progression. First you learn how to define OP and heirloom (let me know when you figure the exact definition of this btw). Then you get up the nerve to save more than just bean seeds. Next thing you know you are wondering if you can develop a purple podded snap pea or an early gold cherry tomato or, if your addiction has gone far enough, a perennial grain or a wide cross between two plant cousins. You have joined the ranks of the amateur plant breeders.


Even the cover of the latest Seeds of Diversity (great resource for gardeners/seed sharers/savers - check out their Canadian Tomato project) highlights this growing interest by featuring a generational digram of bean seeds. In this you see that the 'plant breeder' is not sure of the 'father' of his cross. Which brings me to the more haphazard version of plant crossing called 'accidental.' Of course, in the article he details and follows the accidental cross in a well planned manner.


I would describe myself as a more or less lazy plant breeder. I like to buy mixed seed packs of plants like mustard or beets and let them cross in my garden*. After awhile, I will then start to select my favourite outcomes of the cross and eventually (one hopes) get a strain of beets or whatever that I like. They may not be uniform and there might be a lot of rouging (getting rid of) inadequate varieties but I enjoy the variation. I also feel that the wider genetic variation will allow for yearly differences in pests, conditions and so on. Before any 'professional' amateur plant breeders read this and tsk-tsk my technique (if you can call it that), there are a lot of details that I have decided not to go into in this post just to keep the length down and to not bore to death those that haven't been overtaken by plant manipulation fever.**


It is also a bit inaccurate to call this a new trend. People have been selecting, intentionally or not, for improved edibles for as long as we have been eating. Just think of our ancestors choosing one fruit over another and then depositing the seeds in our 'special compost' near our dwellings perhaps even in clearings. Those seeds would get fertilizer and potentially more light. Then as we liked those fruit, we might have decided to weed around it a bit giving it all the more advantage and then eat the result etc... It just got more sophisticated from there.


This 'new' trend is reclaiming an art lost to many gardeners. A knowledge of genetics makes it less haphazard (ie. not my technique) and even more fun. For more on amateur plant breeding, genetics and techniques, I highly recommend Carol Deppe's book Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties.


* If I offer seed varieities, I do try my best to ensure seed purity. In the furture, I might offer mixed seed but do you really want it?
** Seed saving is essentially plant selection which is why it is a good idea to know a little about plant genetics to avoid disappointment in future plantings.
*** I know I didn't have a third footnote? Don't let this scare you off seed saving, however, it is great fun.
**** Also a member of a plant breeders forum that seems to be based around a seed development company has recently left his url on my blog. If you are a plant breeder geek, you might be interestd in http://alanbishop.proboards60.com/index.cgi

The seed company less well travelled

I have just seeded some unusual plants from Yuko's Open-Pollinated Seeds: manchurian plum and nanking cherry. She also has lots of other interesting varieties that she saves from her garden and sells at reasonable prices including Mitsuba (perennial japanese 'parsley') and a variety of ground cherry that amicably sows itself around her garden. This company especially interests me because it is local so I know the plants are adapted for this climate (if not my particular garden conditions).

I also visited (and promptly bought seeds) from Solana Seeds who have recently translated their webpage into English. Stunned by the number of plants including Piel de Sapo melon (a keeper melon), Red okra and more solanum berries than you can shake a stick at, I decided to try more french websites and bumped into La Societe des Plantes who made me swoon by selling turnip rooted chevril (I was beginning to think this veggie was a myth) and skirret (perennial 'carrot' relative) seeds. Both these Quebec companies also sold scozonera (another potentially perennial veggie I'm trialing here) which I could not easily find in NA prompting a kind European blogger to send me some seed from over there (I'm not linking him only because I don't want people to think of him as a courier ;-).

One final company that I quite like is Wild Garden Seeds as they genetically mixed seed packs so you can do your own selection for a variety suited to your microclimate.

Thought I'd bring these smaller seed company to the attention of locals and perhaps even those further abroad.

Show me your harvest day

As promised, this is the first of my intended meme on showing me your harvest. On a monday, I encourage other veggie gardeners to post their produce. To kick off I present to you the Winter Keeper Tomato. Here they are sitting on my kitchen counter.


Winter Keeper Tomatoes

For those unfamiliar with long storage tomatoes, they reputedly keep until New Years or Easter or some other far off tomato-less time. Often it is suggested that they are stored in idividual wrappers one layer deep not touching but Mapple Farms, my seed supplier, said he just kept his on a bowl in the kitchen and that sounded way easier. The type I have ripen from the inside-out which may be a common characteristic of long storage tomatoes but don't quote me.


Cut open winter keeper. On the outside it looked icy orange and inside, red.

Anyhow, last year something happened to my plant so this is the first year that I have to really experiment. They do appear to be ripening a bit more slowly than other tomatoes that I brought in and I have only had one rot on me but I suspect that the skin had been damaged. I picked them from the just off green to blush stage before frost in late September and they have an acidic but acceptable taste that is far superior to a supermarket tomato, however much less sweet than a vine ripened one.


Also harvesting:

The veggie patch is still going strong after our first true ground frost of the year. We have brassicas including tatsoi, broccoli, cabbage, kale and mustard; roots like carrots and beets and soon to come are the unusual roots (post next Monday); lots of greens like rocket, chard, mache, minituna, salad burnet and so on; and crops like celeriac and florence fennel.

The coldframes are up but the polytunnel has to be constructed again this week as we are expecting dips to -5C. Soon will come the snow.


Links

Mapple Farms - winter keeper (my variety)
Sand Hill Preservation Centre - various storage tomato types

Blog Bounce

I'd like to introduce you to a game I have decided to play called blog bounce which is where you hop around from link to blog link through their blog rolls (impossible to play on my blog because I can't commit to a blogroll. But don't worry all my favs are hidden away on my computer. I just can't write one because I would be the kind of person to have a blogroll that scrolled into the horizon just 'cause I hate leaving people out). If you want to play blog bounce from my blog, hop over to http://daughterofthesoil.blogspot.com/ to see some fun with genes (and a seriously cool pea pod last I checked).

The reason why I am blog bouncing is because I'm trying to expand the blogs I read that are interested in edibles.