About the potential richness and diversity in an edible garden, part 1

Cet article en français.

Louise :

A few weeks  ago, I answered to an anonymous reader who left us a commentary on a previous article that was talking about my culinary discovery of the moment : daylilies.

It is commonly known that daylily flowers (Hemerocallis) are edible. Well, their young spring shoots too. Moreover, they give an abundant and reliable crop each year. Here, the daylily cultivar "Corryton Pink".

This exchange coaxed me to write about growing edible plants in polyculture, according to my own experience. But I don't find the task so easy and, as I want to cover the subject a little more in depth, it will be presented in a series of articles that we will publish in succession.

What is polyculture and why use this method?

Polyculture is a way of designing gardens, garden beds, vegetable patches or even orchards with as much vegetal diversity as possible. In those spaces, if a good number of plants are edible, many others are not. It is because they are there to do other tasks that are equally important. It has been proven  that because it imitates nature, this method builds very resilient ecological systems. Therefore, this idea of implementing as much diversity as possible is one of the basic principles in permaculture.

My front garden beds, in the 3rd week of August. When, many years ago, I started to create an ornemental garden that would be in bloom without interruption from spring to the first killing frosts, I engaged myself on the road of polyculture. But at that time, I did not even know the word... and I was not thinking about edible plants either !

In opposition to polyculture, there's monoculture, the predominant model in industrial agriculture. A good example of this is the apple orchard, basically containing only apple trees growing through a carpet of grass. We can also think about these gigantic farms in the american Middle-West, producing corn, and rotating it with soy in an effort to keep the nutrients in the soil to a bare minimum. This agricultural model does not try to imitate nature, on the contrary, it constantly wars with it with tools like chemical fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides and heavy machinery.

The residential sector also has its monoculture: lawn. In fact, it is the most important irrigated culture in United-States. In this country, the total surface occupied by lawn is three times greater than the total surface devoted to corn.

My garden beds and my potted vegetables, in August. To achieve my dream of a sunny garden in continuous bloom, I sacrificed the major part of our front lawn, which used to spread itself between the road and the house like a conqueror. I never regretted it, not one moment.

Here's the young bed
where I trialed my
polyculture seedlings.

The vegetable bed in polyculture :

Take note that the term "polyculture" may also refer to a very specific method of gardening where we spread at random a mixture of many different vegetable seeds on the same garden bed.

We choose vegetables that can be sown early in spring but won't mature all at the same time (radishes, beets, carrots, mustards and different types of lettuce, for instance). While the young shoots make their appearance and develop, we harvest some in the spots that are too crowded and we eat them as greens or baby vegetables. We leave the others in place to continue their growth. We repeat this harvest as long as it is needed, until the distance between the remaining plants is sufficient to let them grow fully. 

In opposition to the traditional method, the operation of thinning the rows is not done all at once at the very beginning of the plants' growth, but in succession, only as needed. Furthermore, the young plants that are removed are viewed as an edible crop instead of being discarded as waste. Finally, because the types of plants are varied, they can occupy the space without hindering each other. For example, while a carrot grows underground, its slender leaves find their place in a nook between two lettuces that are spreading over the surface of the ground.

While we proceed with this ponctual harvesting, it is interesting to create a few clearings just big enough to put in it a young transplant of a bigger vegetable that will grow much more slowly: a brocoli or a cabbage are good candidates for this.

One of the islets where vegetable
seedlings grow, surrounded by black
mulch. I protected the young seedlings
with small branches poking out of the
ground like a barricade. This trick is
useful against cats looking for a
litter or a soft spot to sleep on.

I tried this kind of polyculture, two years ago, in a half-shaded young bed between our house and the neighbour's house.  I didn't use all the space, but only three small clearings in which I sowed a mix of vegetables: many kinds of lettuces, carrots, turnips, radishes, beets and small onion bulbs.

Lettuces and turnips were interesting while the rest was somerwhat disapointing, probably because the space where the trials happened just didn't receive enough sun. The carrots and beets stayed small and I'd rather not mention about the radishes. Actually, I haven't yet found the spot in my garden where root vegetables have managed to do well.

Most of us gardeners are already practicing polyculture: 

In fact, rare are the gardeners that cultivate only one or two plant species. And the reflex to physically separate our plants is weening. From my stepmom's confession, no one would have mixed annual vegetables with ornementals in the 1940's. Yet, this strategy is particularly useful in our city gardens, because of their small size and unusual conditions. It as become common to see, in a city garden, a rhubarb plant neighbouring a rose plant or tomatoes snuggled between a shed and a spirea hedge.

But the more we try to produce food on our small parcels of land and balcony, the more we need to find ways to maximize the space. Here, polyculture may lend a hand.

Between sidewalk and house, perrenials are queens, but still share the space and sun with fruits and vegetables. The brown patch of soil in the center of the picture is one of those discreet spaces I keep for annual vegetables.

Polyculture, an ally for the gardener who cultivates edible plants:

Snow peas are easy to grow on a very
small surface, because they can climb
vertically on a physical support such
as a pole or a trellis.

Of course, as in the traditional vegetable garden, we still have to give each plants their required space, sun, water, warmth, soil requirements, etc.

Actually, those annual vegetables we so prize are generally more fragile and finicky than many a perennial ornemental. Their capacity to adapt to different conditions are more limited (if you want a good crop, that is). It is however normal: most of these plants come from sunny and warm countries. Moreover, we do ask more out of them than just growing well and looking pretty. To reach what we want out of them, they went through a tough selection throughout the centuries and have become domesticated.

In my opinion, heirloom varieties have more to offer to the gardener than the recent hybrids that saturate the market. These hybrids have been selected more for their abilities to produce well and be resistent to certain disease in monoculture situation. They need constant irrigation, fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides. 
Leave them to themselves however, and they are less able to thrive in a natural environment (one that has, for example, other species of plants to compete with or that  is subjected to the occasionnal dry spell). Some farmers recognized for their work to advance the fields of ecological agriculture and polyculture - like the famous austrian farmer Sepp Holzer - have realized that these vegetable hybrids lose quality in taste and even in nutritional value what they apparently have gained in productivity.

Tomato "Sub-Arctic", from Solana.
It is easy to grow in containers and it produces
early in the season (45-50 days). It doesn't need
hot weather to bear well. Even more, the fruits
are delicious. It is however a determined variety
meaning it will produce all its fruits at the same
time (over a period of 2-3 weeks, then the plant
will stop producing and eventually die). 

The availability and popularity of different varieties of edible plants has varied widely throughout the years.  For instance, many flowering plants have passed from giving strongly perfumed flowers to cultivars that have pretty flowers but are almost scentless. Phlox is a good example and many varieties of other plants that can now produce double flowers.

On the other hand, many hybrids are sterile or produce babies that aren't like their parents. In vegetables, it's generally not something we favor when we want to gather our own seeds for the next year's sowing. On the other side, some hybrids do have interesting qualities that aren't available in older cultivars, like the tomato "Sub-Arctic", presented on the picture above.

"Anna Russe" tomato is an
heirloom and the fruit is
heart-shaped. This variety
is particularly delicious,
especially when the fruits
are very mature. The plant is
indeterminate, which means
you will have a huge sprawling
plant that gives fruits throughout
the season. Another one we
found at Solana.

Hélène :

Of course, these plants choice of selection also stem from marketing considerations. Nurseries rather prefer selling annuals instead of perennials since it means a reliable repeat of customers year after year.

At the grocery store, fruits and vegetables have changed a lot in the past decades and althought we do have more choices than before, the taste of those products coming from industrial agriculture is generally inferior to the taste of our garden's produce. This is simply because the produce grown by mass agriculture have been selected first for their appearance, yield and transportability, not their taste.

Remember those Florida strawberry that were pinkish, kind of hard and barely tasted strawberry?

A beautiful and good fruit, well matured on the plant doesn't bring back a dime if it becomes jam through its Florida-Québec trip. Right now, California strawberries supplanted them, and good for us ! But in my humble opinion, none of them beat the taste of our local strawberries - at least when the season is agreable to their good growth.

The "Pantano Romanesco" tomato is
often ribbed and dented. But she
gives meaty fruits that are very good
fresh or in sauce. Again, from Solana.

Louise :

Furthermore the consumer demand favors good-looking fruits, which closes the door to many otherwise good varieties whose sole defect is its looks. Of course, a farmer will select plants accordingly and favor plants of reliable uniformity, color and appearance.

And this often lead to a wasteful attitude that the client himself is rarely even aware himself: the farmer can't sell these defects for human consumption (an important amount of the initial harvest, by the way, sometimes as much as half of it) whether they be ribbed potatoes that are hard to peel or carrots that aren't perfectly straight.

Some of these defects generally end up in the 50 pounds bags tagged for deers and sold to hunters in fall. I've been bold enough to try one of those bag for my own consumption. I ended up with dirty, broken or crooked carrots, some with 2 legs or bigger than standard, but they were delicious. They required more work to clean and peel and there was a certain amount I had to just throw away (something my worms were delighted about). But I payed 11 cents for a pound (24 cents for a kilo)! I did, at one point, get a bag of carrots that had a strong carotene taste. But the very same thing happened to me with a normal bag from the grocery too, so... 

The point is, when we make a vegetable garden, we can expect some to have defects: siamese tomatoes, crooked carrots or too small carrots, imperfect skin or irregular color, especially since the seed merchant whose aim is us, gardeners, tend to favor varieties whose first qualities aren't appearance, but taste and originality, for instance.

With a dash of open-mindedness,
a failure can become a resounding success.
For instance, half of my turnip's harvest
turned out with roots slimer than normal
but I harvested a lot of healthy, green leaves too.
I prepared those like spinash, as an
accompaniment for a meal or even in a soup.
I used them about half a dozen time before
freezing some for winter use.

In our garden, no one will stand between our harvest and our table to discreetly eliminate all those deviant specimens. The new gardener who doesn't know about that may hence feel disapointed when he finds out part of his harvest is so imperfect - especially since we live in a world where perfection is the game, this failure is disheartening, even if it's actually quite normal.

In older times, farmers and gardeners who were producing their own seed stocks weren't spared from these vicissitudes. But with perseverance, they managed to select, year in year out, varieties of vegetables that were very well adapted to their specific local clime.

As gardeners, we too can explore the vast array of choices offered by seed merchants to find fruits and vegetables that do well where we live. Those varieties not only live better in gardens that are appropriate to their needs but they may also deliver better for our needs and taste too.

Successes and failures 2013, Part 1

Cet article en français.

Este artículo en Español.

The June garden gets greener everyday!

Last year's related article :

Year 2012

Hélène:

It goes without saying, this year as been my best since this blog started! Harvests have been bountiful, weather was better than the previous years and failures were few. 

Abundant and diversified harvest : juneberries top
right, strawberries under, small green peas 
down left and linden flowers top left
(for herbal tea).

The failures:

The only noticeable problems were the abundant rains at the beginning of the season (althought I still prefer too much than not enough), but all these clouds offered less sun. In my garden, this made strawberry harvest a tad late and less sugary than usual (sun = sugar, after all). At the grocery store, this lack of sun and too much rain manifested by a shortage of local strawberries. It also forced farmers' markets to open later in the season than previous years. This lack of sun put in motion curious events: I barely had any sunflowers. Actually, the 5 sunflowers that managed to grow matured only at the end of September and they weren't as tall as they should have been. Surprising, considering everything else was bigger than its usual size.

My dill didn't fair well either : the spot where the seeds fell last year was covered with plants before the dill managed to grow since everything else was so vigourous. The asparagus have been slimmer than pencils this year, so I didn't harvest any. But I filled up on hosta sprouts that have a similar taste.

More bad news were the strong winds that blowed throughout the season; they actually were so strong my tiny lilac "Miss Kim" in front of my house had to be replaced (by a linden tree - Tilia - which gave me a marvelous flower harvest to make beautiful linden herbal tea) and my only mature tree behind my house, a birch, lost its major limb! I'll most likely have to change it next year.

Finally, the last problem came at the end of August. Temperatures dropped drastically at that time, especially at night and althought we had bits of good weather here and there, I was anxious during September and October since the date for closing the garden was hard to predict. Furthermore, the first two weeks or so of September brought rain, cold and clouds everyday; there was so little sun that my groundcherries became a failure. I had a lot, they just never could ripen enough to be edible!

The garden is well on its way in June, here. My daylily "Bitsy" starts to flower at the front here (the yellow flower). Next ,to the left, chives with loads of purple flowers and the bluish leaves of brocoli. Following up from the chives, milkweeds with their long woody stalks and at the foot of the milkweeds you can spot the yellow sage (yellow leaves visible through the chives). Then there's a Hosta, tomato plants and a weigela (pink flowers with amber leaves). In the tires, a red nasturtium flower is deployed but the place was soon filled with a squash - discussed a bit later in this article. Finally, in the black container, I have part of my potatoes.

Successes:

Oh there are so many! From tomato to potato, I'd rather show you loads of pictures to express the success rate in the garden this year.

I made a couple of lacto-fermented jars of radishes, by far my favorite way of eating this otherwise uninteresting root (in my opinion, at least!).

Raspberries (2 colors please), strawberries and groundcherries (in sparse quantity) were fabulous at the beginning of summer. My golden raspberries don't make a huge harvest but they deliver throughout summer and part of autumn. Actually right up to first frosts. That's amazing! I was still munching one or two here and there near Halloween!

Someone fancy herbal tea? Here peppermint, spearmint and lemon balm
promise a tasteful evening.

 Mixing plants to make a cup of herbal tea feels limited only to the imagination! In the picture to the left, a cup of thyme just before pouring hot water on it. Thyme is ideal if the body needs strenghtening against viruses - a bit like echinacea. The photo just down shows lavender flowers. I like to add lavender flowers to any tea, my favorite mix must be peppermint, lemon balm, dill seeds and lavender flowers.

Lavender flowers are delightful in pastries too: lavender powdered biscuits are scrumptous.

The potato harvest has been magnificient! This year's variety was a red potato called Norland from Veseys and it's delicious. It makes awesome fries and combines well in a soup. I wouldn't recommend it for mashed potatoes since the resulting texture becomes sticky and bland.

The tomatoes in the picture to the left are only at the beginning of harvest time. Later on I had much bigger harvests than these, like the picture just down here. On average, I was harvesting a full bowl like this every 2-3 days.

My harvest of a day, literally up to the rim, decorated with a stem of basil of the variety
"African Blue". On days when the tomato harvest was even bigger -
like shown on the next picture, I used to freeze those big red tomatoes, a variety
called 'Pink Vernissage' from Solana. They make an
amazing tomato sauce by the way. The two other varieties are
'Orange Grape' (a cherry size, delicious tomato, it was the first year I was trying it)
 and 'White Currant', a raisin size variety that I keep cultivating each year.

One of the many ways to use my potatoes : homefries!

Some harvests don't need a picture even thought they were plentiful! Like turnips. We'll have enough for the entire winter! Mustard harvest was also colossal, so was fennel seeds (I'll be talking a little more about this at the end of this article). Actually, herbs and flowers have done really well.

Beans have been incredible too: on the picture above, the beans to the left are called Jacob's Cattle (they are white with wine-red spots giving them a certain bovine flair) and the beans to the right are a mix between two climbing varieties, Scarlet runner beans (my favorite variety above all, the beans are black and purple) and Painted Lady (similar to Scarlet, but the beans are white and brown and the two-tones flowers are prettier than the one-tone of Scarlet).

This squash is a great variety called Sunshine, that has been recommanded to me as one of the best tasting. And it is so true! The flesh is crispy and juicy and makes a delightful puree for the perfect pumpkin cake (here's my favorite recipe on the web; even without any frosting it's sublime).

The pictures I took of my beans don't show you the entirety of my harvest: in reality, I froze 1kg of fresh, out of the shell beans that didn't have time to dry up on the plant. The picture on the left shows you the typical cow pattern of Jacob's Cattle beans.

In August, Scarlet Runner Beans (vines adorned with tiny red flowers that are climbing the balcony), daylilies of many colors (the beautiful two-tones orange and the wine-red are both fabulous varieties) and mullein (yellow flowers on spires) enliven the glorious garden!

New surprises :

Hemaris Diffinis,
Snowberry Clearwing

Every year, I like to observe life in the garden and I look out for surprises: stuff I didn't expect. I had some this year althought nothing as spectacular as previous years like the one about mice or this mystery squash growing where it shouldn't (althought this year more than ever I had to be unrelenting about new tomato plants that were sprouting everywhere in the garden and feel like a weed to me by now).

From the kingdom of insects, there were some new faces like the Snowberry Clearwing I spotted in my lilac (Hemaris Diffinis, Sphinx du Chèvrefeuille in French). My neighbour has a huge honeysuckle next door, one of the staple food for this tiny moth, but it loves lilac too! It looked like a bee but its movement - so unlike a bee - caught my eye. What a chance! Its transparent wings gives it an incredible elegance.

Otherwise, the ladybug population in the garden boomed this year. They are, for me, a good indicator of the garden's health, so I was really pleased to see so many... Especially when I spotted them feasting on aphids that were on my sacrificial plant of the year (a thistle, considered a weed pretty much anywhere and everywhere).

There was a lot of snails too that had beautiful shells! Slugs were also present, but they don't make such great pictures. :)



The surprise plant this year is fennel. I planted some last year (2012) and at the end of that season, I didn't took the time to clear the plants out. I thought that maybe some of the seeds would allow my fennel to make a come back. Well, not only did seeds sprouted quite happily, but the winter didn't kill the mother plants either! My son loves fennel and whenever he's in the front garden he nibbles on it. Personally, I don't like it much: too much anis flavored for me. But the seeds make delightful (not too scented) herbal teas, so I decided to harvest it this year.

Herbs harvested : Top left, 69g of mustard seeds,
top center, dried, purple sage,
to the right, dried thyme,
and down middle, fennel seeds.

Finally the end of October came, and a night frost took out every tomato plant still laden with immature fruits. A couple of harvests later,  it was clearly time to close the garden doors. Here, thyme, lemon balm and daylilies mingle in the frosted dew, signaling the end of the great 2013 gardening season.



The story of a false strawberry

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Hélène :

One Sunday afternoon in September, during my visits to some friends, an intrigue arose like this.  

"Come look at this, Helene, maybe you know what plant this is. I say it's a strawberry, my wife says it's not."

Moments later, on a shadowed corner of the yard, there's this huge dark green carpet of low plants on which perfect, flashy red pearls are lying on. After a look at their leaves, grouped in threes just like strawberry leaves, I answer assuredly : "Yeah, this looks like a kind of strawberry!" And then, the taste test. One berry, two, three. Huh. They taste almost nothing, something like faint strawberry water mixed with a dash of watermelon. Crunchy because of all those seeds covering the fruit. I'm still pretty sure it's a kind of strawberry, however one that unfortunately, doesn't tastes much.

After a bit of research, however, the fruit's story appears : It's called Potentilla Indica, previously classed Duschesnea Indica, aka Mock Strawberry (Fraisier des Indes, or Faux Fraisier in French; Falsa Fresa or Fresa India, in Spanish). The flowers are yellow instead of white or pinkish, an element that distinguishes Potentilla Indica easily from your normal strawberries (Fragaria), but not being in springtime, I couldn't rely on this clue.

Mock strawberry is an agressive plant. Here, the lawn can't keep it at bay.

In its English version, Wikipedia states that it comes from eastern and southern Asia, and in the French version, it says it comes from Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Japan, North Korea and China. Wherever it comes from, it grows really well here, in Canada.



September's herbal tea.

Even if, to me, the taste seemed bland at first, it is probably due to me expecting the strong taste of strawberries. Otherwise, this plant as many advantages : First off - to my eyes - the plant as great value as an agressive but really lovely groundcover, speckled with bright red, perfectly round beads. It could probably be used with some measure of success in some part of the yard deemed difficult. Second, an herbal tea can be made out of the leaves. The taste is quite pronounced and pleasant but would most likely be enhanced by adding another plant like raspberry leaves (to my palate at least). I think the berries, besides being eaten as is, could be agreably mixed to a lemonade without changing the taste much but adding a nice pink coloring.

The most interesting thing about this plant however, is that it is a berry that's abundant in September, a month where - besides groundcherries - there is very little variety in the family of berries !





On the vertues of plantain and the cohabitation with wasps

Cet article en français.
Este articulo en Espanol.

Louise :

Most of the time, plantain (Plantago), just like wasps, raises negative reactions. On one side you have an agressive weed that sprouts everywhere and on the other an insect armed with a sting that can be potentially fatal to those who are allergic to it. Of course, this means war : They are both in the way, aren't they?

Broad leaf or Greater plantain (Plantago Major - Plantain Majeur in French, Llantén Mayor in Spanish). In this picture, it's growing through grass and clover. The seed stalks and broad, shiny, spoon-shaped leaves are clearly visible.

Human reality may appear quite clear but when it comes to the true state of affairs, it's not  as black and white. Plantain does have the unfortunate habit - unredeemable for some - of colonizing the manucured lawn with speed and zest. But it also as the precious quality of being there - anywhere - for first aid needs. Its formidable efficiency against stings from wasps, bees and mosquitoes and skin rash due to plants like nettle (Urtica) or poison ivy should make it a keeper.

The stalk is full of green-brown seeds
almost ready for a potential
harvest.

I experienced it first hand this summer when I unfortunately stepped on an underground wasp nest. I managed to get swiftly far from it, thus limiting the damaged to only one sting on a finger. The next step took me searching for plantain. Since our lawn's got nothing to do with a manucured golf lawn, it was an easy enough task to locate a good plant. 2 leaves out, folded in 3 or 4, I chewed this and spat the crushed leaves on the sting.

The pain instantly diminished, to my relief. I kept the plaster of mashed leaves there for about 30 minutes. After that, the pain that was still there was benign, a simple reminder not to got back in the vicinity of the nest right away.

 Wasps do contribute greatly to the polinisation of plants, just like bees. Moreover, they are also fierce predators of other insects, insects that are considered pests by gardeners. Some species are regular hunters but others are parasitoid - laying their eggs inside the bodies of these pests (if you want all the gory details, check this link, meanwhile just know that the horror movie Alien was based on this type of insect behaviour). Of course, when we just received a sting from them, the only facet we can think of is how bothersome they are - still, this is where plantain comes to our rescue.

Hélène : Plantain is considered a weed  because whatever the kind of
environment - either the country or the urban life, it grows. In the streets
of Montreal, a simple fissure in the pavement (and there's so many) will
soon be host to, more often than not, this plant. See here how it's chummy
with dandelions, daylillies and my son's slide.

I am sometimes ambivalent on either killing a wasps nest or living with it. After all, there is always a risk living with insects that are so good at defending their territory. However, in all my family's history, even the worst encounters with them resulted in no more than 3 stings. Even that time where the human encroaching on the wasps territory had to make a mad dash for the pool, leaving behind the lawnmower at a still, its engine roaring right on top of the underground nest.

 So far, we destroy a nest only if : 

- It's underground in an area where there's lots of foot traffic;

- It's suspended to a structure and the occupants will feel attacked whenever the structure is shocked (like a door closing or someone's making reparations) or if there is a lot of foot traffic - human or animals - close by;

- The site is visited by children or guests; 

 I leave the wasps alone if their nests is in a remote location where not many people walk by.

 Reagarding plantain, its uses doesn't stop there. 

- The young leaves can be eaten in spring, either raw in salads or steamed like spinach.

- The leaves can be dried and rehydrated again for cataplasms, to heal scratches and cuts. The roots can be used in the same fashion.

- The leaves can be used to make an infusion, providing a vitamined herbal tea.

- The seeds can be harvested (althought it is a tedious job) and be ground and added to plain flour. Or you can give the seeds to birds. The seeds have a slightly laxative effect.

-  Finally, just keeping the plant right there in the lawn is a good idea since this plant accumulate hard to reach potash, calcium and sulfur, releasing these nutrients when it dies off, and thus, rendering them available for every neigboring plants. 

Hélène : Wasps have a reputation for being more agressive than bees. One of the reasons for that behavior is that bees, when they sting you, tear off their stinger, ripping up their abdomen, which cause them to die in the process. Not so with wasps ; they can sting you as many times as they like. This makes the bee less enclined to sting. She will only do this if she really feels threatened, it is indeed a last resort act of defense. That's why bees in my garden and me, we live together really well. Indeed, in my 5 years of gardening with them - this includes me leaning on their nests, which are located in the wood of one of my raised bed, to reach some part of my garden - I was never stung. I'm talking about it in this article.

This amazing nest, made out of chewed wood paste, is the residence of white-tailed hornets (or white-faced hornets  - Dolichovespula Maculata). Their heads have white spots and their abdomens are stripes black and white. The nest grew throughout summer, close to our garden. In winter, the only survivors will be the queen and her retinue of young, pregnant females. In spring the nest will be abandonned and each survivor (queen and princesses) will go out on a quest to establish a new nest.