Successes and failures, part 1

Cet article en français. 

Este artículo en español.



Pumpkin harvest, one standard pumpkin from the mystery vine
and 10 Baby Boo pumpkins.

Hélène : It feels like the gardening season just started to gain steam a couple of weeks ago and here we are, already at the end of the show. Nights are fresher, it's raining quite a lot and nothing is of a vibrant shade of green anymore. But here we are with a cornucopia of delicious vegetables from the garden! There are of course also a couple of spots in it that are empty, not because what was there was harvested but because it simply did not work out. So here's the article that compounds the successes and failures of this beautiful year's garden season, welcome to the recapitulation of what happened in 2011.

Successes :

Juneberry flowers

First and foremost, juneberries and strawberries. These tiny fruits have wooed us at the end of spring and the harvest was huge. We mostly enjoyed them like that, nothing special. Anyway, I wouldn't have had time to do much with them since my son usually finished the bowl we just harvested. You can read more about it in this article.

On the other hand, I only made one dessert out of unappealing strawberries, strawberries that passed too much time under the rain to the cares of slugs. I also had a decent peach harvest, my first year with this tree, but this is a subject that deserves its own article (here's the article, a year later in August 2012).

The first 4 Zlata radishes,
these are yellow radishes.



There was also lettuce (2 kinds, one of which got a second wind recently because of October's colder weather), carrots, mustard and radishes, all of these planted in Polyculture. For those who don't know, Polyculture is a simple gardening technique: you throw a blend of seeds  in a predetermined space and wherever the seeds land will be where they'll grow. When it becomes crowded, you methodically harvest the biggest specimens to allow the smaller ones to grow in turn. It's a great way to eat baby lettuce for an extended period.

You can however bring the technique a step farther : making an educated choice of plants that complete each other in different ways. The classic combo of carrots and radishes is one (radishes grow so fast compared to carrots that the carrots are just poking out when you harvest the radishes, resulting in a lot less weeding to do than if you had a space dedicated to carrots only).

But there's other combinations worthwhile mentionning like lettuce-carrots-leeks (or onions) : the carrot grows underground and its leaves barely gives any shadow, the leek grows straight and doesn't bother its neighbors, while the lettuce gives enough shadow to prevent weeds but doesn't impact the tall leaves of carrots and leeks. My experience wasn't a complete success however. I got barely 10 radishes. Carrots have been as finicky; I harvested between 15 et 20, but since I didn't pay attention to my clay soil, they came out somewhat small and deformed. I'm still kinda proud since this year, I grew 3 different varieties, 3 different colors. For the mustard... I've talked about it here. The lettuces, Komatsuna and Langue de cerf (Deer's Tongue) come from Solana and have been a resounding success all summer long, rewarding us with lots of delicious salads.

Did you ever try to grow your plants from seeds inside? I did, years ago, near a window, with a too-big container and potting soil. I never quite managed to make anything grow like that, so obviously I got discouraged, because when nothing wants to grow from seeds, it just doesn't make us want to invest more in it. And then for the first time I got a serious setup, with a tabletop grow light, and a heating mat from Veseys (I didn't want to risk disapointment again). Many types of plants grew there from February to May.



3 varieties of tomatoes here: The traditional but good yellow pear,
the White Currant and the P20 Blue Tomato.

 
 Tomatoes were a success spread with failures here and there. The seedlings grew pretty well considering the lack of water under a lamp, a mistake I will not make next year. All in all, 4 plants survived the seedling stage, a quantity I judged sufficient at the time. But there was trouble : putting the seedlings in the garden. Too cold? Not enough water? I'm not exactly sure, but I came really close to losing the 4 plants. And in a moment of panic, I turned toward my favorite garden center (this site is in french) and I bought a tomato plant, one that's very popular and common, cherry yellow pears, something that's found pretty much everywhere. When my seedlings started to show color again, I ended up with a lot of tomatoes and actually a good range of different tomatoes. My 2 seedlings of White Currant managed really well, but in the garden, only one seedling of P20 Blue made fruits (The other one came so close to the brink, it only grew leaves). Me and my family, we love cherry tomatoes, that's pretty much the only kind we eat fresh, so it's not surprising that they take the biggest space in the garden. But next year, I promised myself I would try a fantastic variety of normal size, maybe for canning. The White Currant and P20 Blue came from Solana, like the lettuces mentionned above.

I'll skip the sunflower subject, since it's already been explored here. But I'll add that I use my sunflower seeds mostly in germination in Mason jars even if they're not easy. Again, here's a subject that deserves an article all to its own (and here's the article in question, dated december 2011).

Another small success was found in the golden raspberries. Each harvest was very small however: a handful here, a couple there. My biggest harvest was only 15 raspberries! The plant is small and young. But if you count on the length of the season, it did extremely well ; my first harvest (of maybe 4 raspberries) was in mid July. Well, here we are in the middle of October, and I'm still harvesting some! And if everything's well, I expect I'll have some until the first frosts!

One thing to mention : the first year brought me fruits too (normally a raspberry plant only fruits on second year stalks), but they were acidic and not good. This year however, they're absolutely delicious! If I first had doubts about keeping the plant, I don't have any, anymore!

 Somehow, the red raspberries coming under the fence from my neighbor didn't do good at all. I didn't pay attention, but these were 3 years old stalks. They dried and died just as they were setting fruits. Maybe next year they'll come back with a vengeance (hope springs eternal).

I barely had the time to take a picture when a little hand grabbed
the fruits, its owner ready to swallow all of the delicious fruits!

Here's a sample of  July's harvest : 4 gigantic turnips,
a handful of golden raspberries, tomatoes, tomatoes
and more tomatoes!



One of the enormous success of the garden was the turnips. Louise gave me early in the season seeds of the variety Early Snowball. I sowed them in a polyculture design with seeds of calendulas. The calendulas have been shy, but managed regardless. The turnips on their part, took all the place they could and we are still eating some on a regular basis!

Louise's Sidenote : Note here we are taking about true turnips, not swedish turnips -look at the picture. And by the way, the leaves and stalks of turnips, radishes and swedish turnips are edible, I'll talk about it in a future article.

There's also a pepper, Corno di Toro, from Solana again, a good sweet pepper that gave a good harvest, albeit a mostly green one. I also planted a purple bell pepper variety, but they had so much trouble getting sun with the sunflowers and pumpkins that I collected only a few, mostly small, deformed and still green inside (I discussed this here). Out of all this bounty, I made a mix of vegetables preserved in oil that I'll taste in a couple of weeks.





The calendula flowers, lost among turnip leaves.

 A note on the potatoes : This year, for an unknown reason, my potatoes died. I heard that sometimes it just happens even if the place attributed to them was a success years prior. So it is only fair that I try it again next year!

There must have been a problem
with the polination of the Mini Boo :
Normally this squash is supposed to
be a bit bigger and white with green
stripes.

And then there's the pumpkins. I had bought Mini-Boo pumpkins from Solana, a completely adorable, small and white variety. From that vine, I collected 10. They made excellent Halloween decorations and probably will finish as stuffed delicacies. There were also my 2 mystery vines, sprouted from my compost heap. Unfortunately out of that experiment, only one pumpkin grew... At least it was very, very good and as I write this text, I have a bag full of pumpkin squares in my freezer!
Louise's Sidenote : It would be normal to harvest a very small quantity of squashes from a single vine. The standard would be of 2 or 3 squashes, even for farmers.

And finally, there's this must-have here, the Scarlett Runner Bean. It's a wonderful vine that grows so fast and high it was the inspiration for the folktale Jack and the Beanstalk. The beans can be eaten whole with the pods when young and tender, but if you let them mature and dry on the vine, you can harvest the seeds (the beans), and these are absolutely superb! Dried, the beans can wait a long time before being cooked, or you can put them aside to make new plants the next year. In a spaghetti sauce, they add color, taste and nutritious value. This year was my fourth year growing them and they had a new space for them, growing directly on my balcony's railing. So, technically, they take little precious space and all by themselves, they make a pretty spectacular vertical garden.

Harvest 2011. All in all, for 5 plants, I collected 736g worth
of delicious dried beans!

The red flowers on this type of bean are vibrant... and edible!
I only planted 5 seeds and my cosmos and nasturtiums were overwhelmed
by the vines. This picture was taken in August, and they
didn't spread that much yet. But you should have seen them at the end of the season!

What about the failures?



This naked obelisk in spring becomes a huge green mountain
in summer. Years before, it was used for the Scarlett
Runner Beans. In 2011, it's a mystery vine
that grew there. I never knew what variety ;
the only benefit I got out of it was experience.

Well on that topic, I do not have many pictures, of course. Besides the potatoes and the second mystery vine, I failed with my cucumbers. I boughtt a dwarf variety that apparently does really well in containers... If the water input is perfected to an art I have yet to achieve. The blueberry plant only produced 9 berries... It's the second year I got it and I think I know why it's a problem : I heard bluberries yield were better if cross-pollinated. Next year, I'll buy at least 2 other plants. I also tried to grow a variety of tiny melon, but it was so small, its vine just couldn't compete with the squash vine : both of them shared the obelisk in my garden. There, I also have a plan : I'll try to grow this variety inside. It did really well on my tabletop mini-glow, so I'll probably just try it there again.



Freya searches for a mouse that I placed
 back in the compost bin where it lives.

There were also surprises...



I somehow managed to grow tomato plants out of the compost bin again. Of course, I only got a couple of fruits since the season was just too short for these late newcomers. But the two biggest surprises of the summer were of a totally different aspect.

First, I found mice in my compost. It's when I noticed my youngest cat running like a maniac after something in the yard. When I got close, I not only noticed a small mouse (it wasn't harmed, but it might have made a heart attack, it wouldn't have surprised me!), and then I noticed through the compost bin's ventilation holes, not too far from where the cat and mouse drama was unfolding... tiny paws running around inside the bin. Lots of tiny paws! Not only that, but under the tool shed, not even a meter away from the bin, I found a lot of tiny mouse-size holes... and one much bigger hole. When I looked into the huge one, I saw two big eyes look back at me. Huh, that wasn't a mouse. But what was it? At the time I'm writing this article, I'm still not sure. I can venture my guess on a wild bunny ; there're some in a tiny forest, nearby, and this passed winter, I found some rabbit manure in my front yard. I never saw gophers around here and althought I did smell a skunk once in a while, its "fragrance" was never powerful enough to signal it was as close as to be in my backyard. This backyard is, by the way, well fenced since the previous occupants owned a dog. The last visitor we had was a raccoon that came around only once : it opened the compost bin, took its fill and went on its merry way. From now on, I do make sure my bin is secured but I do think my 3 cats also made an impression on him. At the very least, he made an impression on them.

Oh yes! One surprise I also found in the compost was a mushroom! I'm pretty sure it was a Button Mushroom, the standard variety we find in grocery stores, since I threw out some, some days before this event, but as mentionned in Louise's article if you don't know for sure, you do not touch it!

I also explored the interesting flora of my lawn. Red and white clover, dandelion and plantain were some of the plants I actually used this year (the clover and dandelion for herbal tea and the plantain to suit mosquito bites - it works!). But the other complete surprise was German Camomile. Considering this plant can sometimes be hard to grow, I was skeptical, but after making an herbal tea out of it, I have to admit it was, indeed, Camomile.

It's to say that nature is always ready to give a little help to curious gardeners... Keep your eyes open  for the second part, Louise's Successes and Failures!

The Magic of Foraging in the Wild...

Cet article en français. 

Este artículo en español.

Louise :  During the end of this summer/beginning of fall, I am very busy foraging the countryside to find all sorts of good things to harvest freely, since these are abandonned ressources.

Here's my Horn of Plenty for this autumn:

- Many litres of Giant Puffballs mushrooms from my own yard (Here's the article on the subject).

- A dozen jars of stewed apples and almost as much that I put first into ziplock bags and then in the freezer (slighlty cooked, the idea here is to keep apple chunks, therefore to prevent the apples from turning into puree, this way I can make pies out of it).

- About forty very sweet yellow pears that often are a bit bruised from their fall, but make delicious fruit ketchup or desserts.



On the border of this cycle path, a dozen abandonned apple trees
of different varieties still produce abundantly.
I've been observing them for about 10 seasons and
I never saw anyone harvest this abundance,
everything just rots on the ground.

- Exactly 3 pounds (1,36kg) of elderberries, my patience was rewarded with 7 beautiful jars of absolutely divine jam (it takes hours to pluck the berries without leaving any stem, a detail that would have been unimportant in a jelly recipe, but I definitely prefer jam).

- A dozen big jars of grape jelly (yes, yes, it's possible to find abandonned grape vines in the countryside and, just like the apples, the grapes manage the "wilderness" very well and even prosper on their own, without relying on human assistance to grow).

- A jar of cherry sauce that is so sublime, coated on a ball of icecream, that it has become my favorite dessert (O.K. I'll admit that I didn't have to search far for these cherries : the cherry tree in question is on my property and is a gift from mother nature).

- Seeds of greater plantain, they can be ground to make a rich flour or used whole in multigrain breads or muffins, but you need a lot of patience to harvest the stacks of mature seeds and shell them (althought this last step is quite enjoyable, apparently the opposite of this operation of shelling mustard seeds that Helene went through a couple of weeks ago). I will make flour with this harvest but will only be able to produce about 1 cup.

i- Some straw, the kind made by these tall invading grasses that grow in ditches everywhere, sometimes they are as high as 1,5 meters (I forgot the name - Ho ! It came back to me : European Reed - Phragmites Australis spp Australis). This wild straw, once the seed spikes are cut from the stalk, will find its home in many corners of my garden, as free and natural mulch, without pesticides or toxic elements (if we choose well where to harvest them). The beauty of this invading plant is that it grows where there are excesses of phosphorus and therefore it accumulates it in its tissues. When used as mulch it enriches the garden with that element.

- Bags of dead leaves, placed on the border of the streets for city services to carry away; they are way easier to "harvest" then straw, but can get more readily blown away by the wind. A key element, in a rich and well-balanced garden, is the fertilizing role of mulch, so this harvest is certainly as important as any fruit or vegetable harvest. Fallen leaves won't give you much nitrogen, but they will give away a lot of organic matter and are the perfect source to build up fluffy and rich soil, just the right texture. Before picking up a bag however, I first check if the lawn on which it was gathered is  adorned with at least a few weeds, a good gage to assess if pesticides were of use. I do steer clear of "golf lawns", which, most of the time have also been fed chemical fertilizers.


A well spread abundance people are starting to notice...

Almost any corner of Quebec province hides these green treasures that can find their way into our kitchens or gardens. For example, my sister remembers finding in the countryside the site of a long  gone homestead, where the orchard was still producing peaches, pears and apricots, plus the usual apples.

In my village, at a 5 minutes walk from home, there's an old orchard across the school, close to the railway. Hydro-Québec owns this piece of land and the company judged unnecessary to cut the dozen of venerable apple trees, which are still thriving. Among them, grows a rarity : a pear tree. I'm perfectly happy collecting the fallen fruits only and apparently, my only competition is the deer that pay the old orchard a daily visit, leaving their tracks and half-eaten fruits behind. The abundance is such that they can't eat everything. I didn't have to ask permission to harvest there since the land is semi-public, crossed by a path villagers often use, either on foot or bicycle.

If you ever notice a fruit tree nobody takes care of but which is situated on private property, you could go ahead and ask permission to harvest it. You can always offer the owner half of the harvest or thank him with a couple of jars of jam. Chances are he'll be happy to have someone else take care of this chores, especially if it only cost him the harvest or part of it.

Actually, there are some cities in Canada that have this kind of arrangement in their community, where the owners of fruit trees invite interested citizens for the harvest. This harvest is then divided between owner, harvester, and a charity or community organization.

Imperfect fruit maybe, but still absolutely delicious!

I got used to eat untreated apples at home. Indeed, when we arrived here 25 years ago, we became the owners of three very old apple trees that produced a few years more before dying. Since we didn't want to spray them with fongicides or other chemical cocktails, I learned how to use spotted and bruised apples. I realised what our grandmothers already knew: it's quite possible to make divinely delicious desserts, compotes, jellies and jams with these. And even if losses were more important than when using the entirety on a perfect fruit one can find at the grocery store, 3 old apple trees yielding not even half of their former productivity were still exceeding the needs of my family.

So no, neither the occasional small worm found near a core nor the black spot on the skin made me shiver with disgust. Neither did the half-bruised apple. While consuming an untreated apple, I feel I can go back in time, to a place where the use of pesticides and fongicides were unknown practices.  I'm convinced it's a lot better for our health.

What can you expect from this kind of harvest?

When we forage apples that have received zero treatment, more so apples that fell on the ground, we can divide our harvest in 3 categories. Firstly, let's look for the most bruised apples, and those that are half eaten by wasps and other creatures, but are not rotted, yet. In general, these apples will make up the two thirds of the yield found on the ground. They can be used to make juice or cider. This year, I provided a good quantity of these fruits to a collegue who was, along with family members, the proud owner of a cider-press. She thanked me with a delicious gift of brown apple juice, that I froze for later use. Of course, I intend to propose to my own family to acquire our own cider-press. I love the idea of a new occasion for a yearly family gathering ! But let's go back to our subject.

After harvesting (or ignoring) all those apples destined to your brand new cider-press, you come across the apples that are nice enough for jams, ketchups, pies and other cooked delicacies. Their skin may be spotted and they may be deformed.They may be quite bruised or cut, and partly eaten by bugs also, but they are big enough to give an adequate quantity of intact flesh. They will form a bit less than a third of the yield.

Finally there is your perfect fruit. Not bruised, not split, nor invaded by even the tiniest worm, its form is mostly regular, its big enough, perfectly ripe and its skin have little to no default. These apples represent 2 to 5% of what's fallen on the ground. I noticed they are more present if the ground is soft or presents an even surface, as an area covered with long grass, for example.

This means that among the two thousands apples or so that I harvested this year (yes, this is not a typo), I put aside maybe fifty to bite in directly.

I have access to many varieties of apples, red or yellow, early or late season, varying in size and in taste. My favorite was a big apple of a soft yellow, often a little bit bruised but exceptionnaly sweet tasting, the kind of sweetness that even the store's varieties have trouble matching. But the majority of apple trees I visited give fruits that have a more acidic taste, comparable maybe to a MacIntosh. I also found another yellow variety tasting just like a Granny Smith! The last apples I harvested just yesterday are so acidic that I wouldn't dare to eat them raw, but according to my experience, they should do find in a jam... if I'm a little bit more generous on sugar.

And the pears, yellow, big and juicy, delight my husband, because it's is favorite fruit of all, althought they are more problematic to use, since their tender flesh is so easily bruised. Those ones that were too damaged to eat fresh found their way into my fruit and tomato ketchup.Of course, I could have made a dessert or a jam out of them also.

All in all I got a big box full of these grapes,
harvested with help since I needed a stepladder
at the end, to get to the more beautiful bunches.

My most astounding harvest is, without a doubt, the tart grapes, maybe from a wine making variety, which ended up as jelly. The vines climb abandonned apple trees next to a public parking lot and a cycling path (see photo). When you get close enough, if you just look up, you can see the top of the trees interlaced with beautiful blue to violet bunches. I started harvesting what I could reach. This was at the beginning of September. The juice, which tasted as bad as the fruits, still made a good jelly, but gave an orangey color, since the fruits just weren't ripe enough.

Thesee vines stock  seems like its
assaulting this abandonned tree, boring
high in its branches.

The abundance was such that I couldn't resist, so for my second visit, I enlisted the help of my sister and we came back with a stepladder.

And for my third and final visit in mid-October, this time helped by my husband, the bunches were so ripe that we obtained a juice as dark as what you can find at the store. This last batch of jelly is exquisite.

Therefore, in three foraging sessions of 30 to 45 minutes each, we harvested about 3 square foot of grape bunches, which gave us about 8 liters of grape jelly. And we left behind us about the same amount, unharvested. 

Of course all of this foraging activity consumes time and effort, both outside and in the kitchen, but at least, I didn't invest a minute of my time to cultivate these treasures. I only had to extend an arm (O.K., a ladder too) and grab. Furthermore, I didn't have to dedicate any space in my yard to cultivate any of that.

These are just a part of the bunches we left behind us,
the harvest being too abundant for our needs and a bit too high for our stepladders.

What about you? Would you risk harvesting and eating wild food like that? Or maybe you already do your own foraging ?

Would you be hesitant to help yourself with all this abandonned goodness? Hélène is a bit uneasy about it, especially if she knows a passerby could see her. However, those who see me while harvesting and have the curiosity to talk to me have a very positive attitude about it. My husband is always a bit scared of transgressing any unknown and obscure law while foraging in public spaces. Of course, I would never ransack these spaces to obtain wild plants, nor would I trespass on private property without explicit permission from the owner, but here, I'm talking about fruit abandonned on the ground, on trees or vines that once belonged to well tended gardens, and that still give their abundance generously in places that lost their private title.

I would like to close this article by pointing out that, regarding wild plants in general, the important rule to remember is not to destroy any environment. Some plants are protected by government laws, like wild garlic. But many species are so widely spread that you won't endanger them by foraging them. But do be respectful. If you harvest whole plants (like when I collect burdock roots), you have to leave some specimens behind so the natural balance will stay in check and the plant will not risk eradication from any given site. It is the way to keep a sustainable environment.

 What do you think about it?

The mustard that made me cry

Cet article en français. 

Este artículo en español.

2011 seeds harvest, shelled.



Hélène : There's this proverb in french, "la moutarde qui me monte au nez", which is to say "that thing that made me see red". Well this mustard didn't do that, it just made me cry. When I was the proud owner of a lot in a community garden in Montreal, a neighbor gardener gave me some mustard seeds to plant, telling me how wonderful the plant was. True, the leaves are delicious in salads or sandwiches. The seeds can be harvested and used just as they are or maybe to create the condiment of the same name. The only trouble (and the reason for this article's title) is the shelling of the seeds, a long and boring task if you are not well equipped... Like me.

Here's one bearing stalk... I had about forty
to shell like this!

 For 45g of seeds, I worked 8 hours. The method used this year is simple enough : Put the seed pods in a sieve, crush the pods to shell the seeds and collect the seeds in a bowl placed underneath. What's making this more difficult then one would expect is the fact that the process is not that perfect ; Many pods just won't break properly so finishing the task by hand was required. There's also the problem that a lot of remains from the shells and a lot of dust ended up in the seeds anyway. At least, that part wasn't complicated to take care of : swirling the seeds in a metal bowl made all the remains come out on top in a neat pile. Softly blowing on it, the seeds would remain, the detritus and dust would fly off. Do this step outside though, you've been warned! Another method that I haven't tried yet is to crush the pods on an inclined board. The seeds will roll in a bowl at the bottom and the remains of the pods will stick to the board.

But why did I go through all this trouble this year for mustard seeds I could have perfectly well bought at the store for a minimal price? Well, I wanted to make my own condiment from the beginning, from the plant that perplexed me all those years ago at the community garden. All in all, my lesson here is that shelling the seeds, unless you're equipped to do so is not worth it. But making mustard - the condiment - deserves to be tried at least once! The first reason would be because you can perfume it the way you want : honey, sugar, ginger, lemon, dattes, grapes... why not maple syrup?

First off, my mustard was made from red wine vinegar and honey. The process is simple, you soak the seeds (or the seed powder) in either water, liquor or vinegar. From what I read on the web, mustard in water will have a shorter expiration date then in liquor or vinegar, a feature that directed my choice. Some sources say to leave the seeds to soak for 2 hours, others claimed an entire night was better. Since I wanted my mustard as soon as possible, I opted for the 2 hours and maybe in retrospect this is why my mustard was hard to grind. I'll admit that with a mortar and pestle it's long. About at the third of what it would have taken me to grind it well, I decided to transfer it to a hand blender, but a real blender or a grinder would possibly have made a better job. I added honey and voilà ! Mustard, the condiment. Again, some sources said to let it sit for a day so it would develop flavors, others swear the taste really comes into it's own after a couple of weeks.

We had a meal the next day that required the mustard so we tasted it at that moment and it was delicious! It is definitely something I want to try to make again and next time, I'm flavoring the mustard with... mead. One last thing. The first time you open that new, beautiful homemade jar of mustard, remember your science classes : With a wave of the hand, bring the smell to your nostrils. Don't plunge your nose in that jar or you will end up like one of those people choking in videos on Youtube ! After all, you just created something very powerful!

Of a mushroom that pretended to be a ball

Cet article en français. 

Este artículo en español.

Louise : Today, I won't spin you a fable from La Fontaine, but I do wish to present you a very special character, a weird thing that could have inspired the famous french poet.

How can one not be surprised by this sight!

The first time I saw from a distance this weird white ball on my lawn, my assumption was that there was a kid, somewhere in the village, who might be really sad to have lost its toy. But I did not get close to investigate; no time, I had to go to work. And I forgot about it, my mind busy with this new workday and its thousand details. Then the next morning, the white ball was still there, exactly at the same place but it looked bigger than I remembered. Strange. I got closer and found, a couple of meters from the first one, a baseball of the same whiteness in the grass!

It took me a good minute to realize that these were in fact mushrooms of a variety I knew nothing about. That autumn, I watched closely and suspiciously their evolution, their cycle of life. I didn't inquire for their names : wild mushrooms are dangerous, everybody knows that, and my general principle was to let them live their life without interference. However when their skin turned brown and split, revealing a dusty, sickly brown-green interior, I got worried that this cloud of spores might be toxic.

A couple of years passed and the sightings of these balls kept occurring in August and September. A friend of my daughter finally gave me information on these mushrooms : my backyard's underground was apparently a perfect site for Giant Puffballs (Vesses-de-Loup Géantes, in french) and not only, according to her, were they not toxic, but they were perfectly edible and even delicious! Why a colony of Calvatia Gigantea decided to establish themselves here is still a mystery. I never saw them anywhere else in the neighborhood or farther away.

My daughter's friend had some trouble convincing me of this monster's edibility, but after she took a specimen to a chef of her acquaintance for counter-verification, I couldn't doubt anymore. The only thing left was to taste it. We peeled, sliced, fried the thing in butter and sat down at the dinner table : It was definitely hard on the liver, since the mushroom absorbed an insane amount of butter while cooking! I learned later on that when giant puffballs mature, their pores become bigger, transforming them in a kind of sponge, rendering this cooking method inappropriate. I went back to researching this free food source and learned of a few other interesting ways to make a meal out of them.

Note that the giant puffball doesn't have any form of
stalk. A mushroom is actually the aerial part of the
organism that lives underground. It's a bit like a flower,
in the sense that it' a transitory part that plays a role
in the reproduction of the plant in producing spores
(kind of seeds).

Ready for the harvest.. but taking care to not poison myself !

Even if this mushroom comes back reliably each year around mid-august, for me, it is a matter of health and good sense to check again that it is the real deal. Therefore, I always reread the description before harvesting the white ball to make sure I don't take in something that looks alike and could make me really sick. You see, when the giant puffball is still small (10 cm in diameter or less), it can be confused with an amanita muscaria at an early stage of growth, just before the amanita produces a white stalk and a cap (then it is clear which one is which). And here, we are talking about a deadly mushroom. But there is no worries when we wait to see the giant puffball grow, because according to the experts, there is no other poisonous mushroom of this form and size that has a pure white flesh, with no discernable inside pattern.



Here we see the filaments that bridge the mushroom to its underground parts.
It looks like roots. I learned later on that it's preferable to not tear off any species of mushrooms,
 but to cut them close to the ground. This way, the mycelium (the underground part) can survive.
Now I take a knife at the base of the puffball to detach it.



At this size, the risk of wrong identification is non existent.
However, it is still small enough to have a strong and thick flesh, easy to cook
and tasty.

For extra precaution, cut the puffball in two. The flesh must be pure white and completely uniform
 in its coloring and texture and it must not present any sign of patterns.
If it has started changing color, it means it started developping spores and is no longer edible.
If you decide to harvest giant puffballs, make sure you have asked a mycologist in your region or checked it in a serious reference book to make sure you know a foolproof method to identify  the toxic mushrooms that look like a young giant puffball.
Remember : some mushrooms are deadly and their toxicity is sometimes so important that
even a doctor will be powerless to save the imprudent who have tasted it.
Don't forget that also, as with any other type of food, some people could simply be just allergic.
It is then wise and prudent to only ingest a small quantity the first time to see how you react to it.

We can easily clean, cut, peel
and cook such a monster in less then 30 minutes.
The flesh is delicate and neutral,
but with a definite forest flair.

In the kitchen...

Giant puffballs are easy to prepare. Wash the exterior without soaking the mushroom, else it will absorb the water. Next cut it in slices, and peel it delicately. The skin is easier to peel when the mushroom is in slices than whole. After, you can cut it in dice or thinner slices depending on what you want.

So far I tried 3 ways of preparing this mushroom.

- Just by frying some slices in a little butter. Very good when the quantity of butter is limited...

I cooked mushroom dice in this small steamer
made of silicone (a Starfrit product).
I filled the steamer and placed it in the microwave
at medium intensity for 2 minutes.
I let the cubes cool on a big plate afterwards,
and finally, I transfered them in a plastic container for
freezing.

- Make a pancake batter, soak the slices of puffballs in it and fry in a skillet with a dab of butter or oil, as you would cook french toasts. It's our favorite recipe (so far).

- Cut the flesh in small dice and steam cook, let them cool, and then freeze for later use, in a soup, sauté, stew, or spaghetti sauce. But I noticed that after several weeks in the freezer, the cubes develop an unpleasant smell. Therefore, I think it's better to cook them soon after the freezing process.

There's still many recipes I need to test. For example, I read that we can roast the slices in the oven, or hollow the mushroom, and stuff it. This mushroom is a bit like tofu ; it takes the taste of the other ingredients it's been cooked with.

Speaking of which, some sources state that it can replace tofu or eggplant.

I named this monster the piglet. It matured, split and opened up,
maybe because of the bountiful rain we had this summer.
Its more than 30 cm in height and almost 60 cm wide!

Here's one of its friends, measuring approximately 40 cm in diameter.
Its colors already mark him as unappetizing and it isn't yet at the
greenish cloud of spores stage. If I let it in place, this mushroom will
be there next spring, still releasing spores !