In the Garden

Here are some of the herbs and wild plants coming up in my garden.

Yellow dock (Rumex crispus)

Mullein and catnip (Verbascum thapsus, Nepeta cataria)

Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris)

I love how raindrops sit on the leaves, sparkling like jewels.

Wintercress (Barbarea vulgaris)

Look at this cutey! I think it is a wood frog.


The nettles are up too. (Urtica dioica) Yum!

Bloody dock (Rumex sanguineus) This is a new edition to the garden, just added last summer.

So much was up that I was able to gather my first wild greens harvest of the year with the dock, nettle, wintercress, dandelion and daylily shoots. Hurray for fresh, free, local greens! I declare the 2012 foraging season officially open. :)

1lb 4oz of Goodness

Oh boy, I can't even begin to tell you how good it felt to gather these items together last Saturday, to draw my thumb across the blade of my bill hook to check for sharpness and then decide it could use a couple of passes from the stone. I opened and closed the secateurs and looked for signs of rust and wear. It all got packed up into my bike basket.

It felt so good to retrace the familiar streets and paths to the garden, noticing all the changes since I last passed in December. A new house is being built here, renovations are finished on that one there, up ahead is a stump where a tree used to be....

And wow, did it ever feel good to walk onto my plots and take it all in. I had visited a couple of times in the winter and paid a brief visit the other week when I was dog sitting, but this time I was here to observe, plan and work.

The work involved cleaning up and prepping some beds that I didn't get around to last fall. The observations I'll post about next time. But today I wanted to share with you my first harvest of the season.

Last spring I planted Japanese gobo, which is the cultivated version of the wild burdock that grows all around. It produces a larger root than the wild version, and when planted in a nicely prepared garden bed, is much easier to dig up than from the compacted, clayey soils it normally grows in, in this area.

Burdock is a biennial, which means that the first year's growth is all about gathering and storing energy in the root, and the second year is all about taking that stored energy to produce a flowering stalk that goes to seed and then the whole plant dies. The key to harvesting the root is to get it at its nutritional peak, before it spends the energy in flowering. The ideal time to harvest many roots, especially those containing inulin, like burdock does, is in the fall after that season's leafy growth has died back. If you miss the fall harvest, like I did, you can still harvest in the early spring before the new growth really starts going.

With the recent unusual heat wave, I suspected my gobo might be already growing and sure enough, there were new leaves uncurling and spreading open to the sun. So I grabbed my pitchfork and lifted all but two of the plants out of the soil (the two left I will let go to seed for saving.) One root was a good 3 inches across and maybe 7 or 8 long, the others a respectable 1 inch thick and of a goodly length. All were certainly larger than anything I've managed to wrestle out of the ground in the wild, and they had that delicious earthy, rooty smell that I love.

After finishing my chores for the day, I got back on my bike and took my bounty home to be well scrubbed and chopped and destined for the dehydrator.

I like to weigh all my garden harvests and it felt so darn good to take the kitchen scale off the shelf and weigh my very first garden harvest of the year.

1lb 4oz. 1lb and 4oz raised up from a wee seed, nurtured for nearly a year, carefully processed and stored and ready to provide nourishment and healing.

This small harvest is just a taste of all that is yet to come, and that feels really, really good.

A Lifetime of Quiet Adventure

Well it's official. I completed my permaculture design course! It was such a rich, full course with fantastic instructors and a great group of fellow participants. My brain has a lot to digest over the coming months and years. I recently heard permaculturist and author of Edible Forest Gardens Dave Jacke say in relation to the practice of permaculture that, "we have a lifetime of quiet adventure ahead of us." How lovely is that? A lifetime of quiet adventure. Yes! Bring it on.

Now that the course is finished I finally have time to do all my fall gardening, foraging and harvesting. Everything's getting done in much smaller chunks now that the days are rapidly shortening, but I like the pace. It means I'm home with plenty of time to make dinner and can also spend some time catching up on chores inside the house. Things tend to descend into a state of organised chaos during the summer months when most of my free time is spent outside, but come fall I like to fluff up the nest and give it a thorough cleaning in preparation for hibernating.

I'm planting garlic right now and I'm so grateful for the mild weather we're having. We'd like to double our garlic harvest next year, so the 140 bulbs or so are going in 20 or 30 bulbs at a time in various patches throughout our four plots. In true permaculture fashion I'm stacking functions by harvesting dandelion roots at the same time.

Yes folks, it's dandelion season! I harvest roots in the early spring too, but I find the fall roots have a richer flavour. It's a good time to harvest leaves as well, as the frosts will have taken some of the bitterness out and sweetened them up a bit. For me though, I'm all about the roots. I love roasted dandelion root coffee, and this year I want to harvest enough to last me all winter.

My method is pretty simple. If I see a dandelion growing in my garden beds, I welcome it with open arms and give it room to grow. I'll harvest flowers and leaves and if it starts taking up a bit too much space, I might cut it back once or twice. I make sure to let some flowers go to seed, ensuring a continual crop. Some dandelions I leave for a season to get nice and big. But when it's time to work and plant a bed (like I'm doing now with garlic) I harvest any dandelion roots in the bed by gently loosening the soil around the roots with a garden fork and pulling them out of the ground.

Yes, washing, chopping, drying and roasting is lengthy and labour intensive, but I find it enjoyable work and I know the rewards will be great. Amazing even. It's that good. Here's a nice description of the process.
And some more sources on the awesomeness of dandelion:
Steve Brill on Dandelion

Dandelion: Unsung Heros of the Plant World

Mother Earth News

Speaking of quiet adventure, I borrowed a friend's van and the ADG and I went out last night and liberated about 40 bags of "yard waste" from the neighbourhood and brought them to our plots where we'll use them to mulch beds and create leaf mold. Hopefully, one day I won't need fossil fuels for the job, because the food forest that is in my future will generate its own!

I hope you all are having many wonderful, quiet adventures!

Wordless Wednesday: Winter is Coming

Wordless Wednesday: The Summer Edition

Garden Experiments

As a new gardener coming to the practice primarily from the perspectives of ecology, food security, resource depletion and resiliency, I jumped into the deep end and experimented right away with different techniques and approaches that I didn't find in conventional gardening books.

In particular, I learned quite a lot from Steve Solomon's Gardening When It Counts. I really like his technique for 'chitting' or pre-sprouting seeds and using a homemade gel medium to help with sowing.
For anyone who grows their own sprouts to eat, pre-sprouting uses exactly the same technique, only you stop the process as soon as the seed develops a rootlet. Pre-sprouting gets the seeds going, under conditions that you can control, like temperature and moisture, and gives the seed a significant head start by the time it goes into the ground. You don't have to worry at all about the soil drying out before the seed has a chance to sprout. You can observe germination rates of the seeds and see right away the percentage of your seeds that germinate.

This process works well for peas, beans, corn and all the small seeds. For the larger curcubits, you chit or pre-sprout them in the warmest spot in your house (not exceeding 29 degrees Celsius), between clean, wet but not dripping, cloths or a towel tucked into a sealed, plastic bag or storage container.

Sowing the really tiny seeds is a fussy, finicky ordeal that often leaves me cursing like a sailor and wasting a lot of seed. Mr. Solomon comes to the rescue here with this super cool technique that I just love. He makes a gel medium by disolving one tablespoon of cornstarch per 1 cup of water, brought to a boil, simmered briefly and then cooled until a gel forms.

You may need to adjust the ratio of cornstarch to water to get just the right consistency of gel, neither too thick or too runny. And adjust how much gel you make based on the size, amount and spacing of the seed you plan to sow. Once the gel cools to room temperature, gently stir in the pre-spouted seeds, evenly distributing them throughout the mix. The mix then goes into a clean plastic bag.

Little, baby seed sprouts! Grow babies grow!!!

When you're ready to sow the seeds, cut a tiny hole in one corner of the bag (start small and increase in size if you need). Slowly squeeze out the gel and seeds, just like you're icing a cake.
It takes some time to get the hang of it, but with a little bit of practice you end up with lovely lines of evenly spaced seeds.

Within 3 days my seedlings were up and out the ground and looking good!

With this particular round of seeds I'm trying another experiment and hoping to incorporate some polyculture into the beds that I planted. So I actually sprouted a few different types of vegetable seeds that went into three different mixes, which is why the bags pictured above are numbered. I'm eager to see how this works. I think I will need to get better at spacing and put more thought into which plants to group together. It's quite possible that I'll end up with an over crowded mess of plants competing with each other. I might have to thin mercilessly, which I'm just terrible at. Whatever happens, it will be a good learning experience!

The Peonies Are Blooming

They make for a lovely view to wash dishes by, in the fading light on a Sunday evening in June.

Wildcrafting Wednesday and Other Things

I'm reading Common Herbs for Natural Health byJuliette de Bairacli Levy.

It's a lovely little book, filled with lots of herbal lore from Juliette's unique perspective and wisdom gathered from years of travelling, learning, practicing and teaching.

Something I found particularly fascinating, was how she used herbs in the garden to improve the health of her plants, treat diseased plants and manage pests. She explained that every year she would replenish her stock of dried herbs and whatever was leftover from the previous year she would sprinkle around the base of her plants growing in the garden.

I love that she treated her plants with herbs, like you would treat people! Excited to give it a try, I collected what was left of my store of last year's herbs and brought them to the garden. I sprinkled them around some newly planted seedlings, and some gobo (the cultivated variety of burdock) that is getting eaten by flea beetles. I'll post an update on how it turns out.




I processed all the herbs I harvested last week. I dried the raspberry and violet leaves and put them into jars this morning. Some of the horsetail was turned into a syrup and the rest was dried. The nettle is almost dry and it too will be stored in jars. The cleavers went into an alcohol tincture and the honeysuckle flowers in honey.

I needed to make room in my place because I went out again this morning. Today I harvested more nettle and violet leaves as well as wild roses, plantain and a bit of red clover. Wednesday mornings are quickly becoming my favourite time of the week!

I did end up making some posters about comfrey that I put up in a couple of places in the garden. (I totally cut and pasted from Wikipedia and then forgot to cite my source. Oops!)

Interestingly, I had a conversation with a fellow gardener last night about invasive plants and I mentioned that dog strangling vine had made it into the allotments, and as far as I could tell, had no redeeming qualities. She then started talking about comfrey and about horribly invasive it is. I took the opportunity to tell her about how much I love the plant and all its uses. She was surprised that there were so many benefits to the plant. I told her I was on a mission to change people's minds about comfrey!

Then, this morning while I was at my plot, I ran into a neighbour while he was scything down the big patch of comfrey growing on his plot. I mentioned it to him and he told me that comfrey is apparently a great fertiliser for the garden. Now, I don't know if he got that information from my poster or not. I happen to know that he is a Master Gardener, and he knows a lot about gardening, so it's entirely possible he was onto comfrey already. Either way, I was happy to chat with him for a bit about the glorious and blessed comfrey! Then he gifted me with two sweet potato plants, which totally makes up for whoever it was that came into my garden and lopped off the top of my chicory plants that I was letting go to seed, so I could save the variety which is especially grown for the root, for making coffee. Now I'm going to make a sign for what's left of my chicory plants!

Note: The ADG hesitates to mulch with comfrey that is in flower as it is possible that the flower will put down roots. I tend to fly a little more fast and loose with my comfrey mulching, though I suspect the more careful approach is the wiser one.

Blessed Comfrey

Once upon a time a gardener planted comfrey at the allotment gardens, and now there are big patches of it growing near my plots. Comfrey spreads readily from the tiniest piece of root left in the ground. Experienced gardeners will tell you, once you plant comfrey, don't ever dig it up, or else you will have it everywhere. Someone must have ignored this advice, or perhaps a new renter had a plot tilled with comfrey growing in it. Whatever the history, we are blessed to have access to such a wonderful plant growing in abundance.

I say 'blessed' because comfrey is rich in nutrients and minerals and makes a wonderful mulch for garden beds. You can add it to your compost pile to heat things up, or add it to buckets of water and let it steep into a funky smelling compost tea. Free, organic fertiliser! Not to mention that the plant also has wonderful medicinal qualities as well.

On Friday evening I took my wheelbarrow to the comfrey patch to gather some plants for mulch.
Sadly, not everyone sees this plant the same way I do. A lot of people, who do not know about the many benefits of comfrey, think of it as a nuisance weed that spreads and takes over their garden. They curse it and the person who brought it into the allotments. Even worse, they treat the comfrey patch as a trash heap, throwing garbage and other garden refuse into the plants (and I'm not talking about the biodegradable kind). Among others things, I uncovered this tangled mess of plastic trellising.

I pulled it out and carried it to the dumpster, feeling sad and a bit angry. Why would my fellow gardeners, who understand what it means to grow something in the earth and then eat it, do this? I wondered what it would take for people to stop using this space as a dump.

There is a large bulletin board in the centre of the allotments. If I posted some information there about comfrey and all its benefits, I wonder if that would make a difference? If people saw the comfrey as a valuable, free resource that could help make their gardens lush, their soil rich and their vegetables happy, instead of seeing it as a cursed weed, would they be more respectful of the space where it grows? I don't think a lot of people read what is on the board and for many people at the garden, English is not their first language. I think I'll try it anyway and see what happens.

Actually, I find that my visible actions tend to create opportunities for discussion. People see me harvesting nettle and other weeds and ask me about them. Now, I see some ladies picking nettle.

Maybe if they see me with my wheelbarrow full of comfrey, they'll stop and ask me about that too, and I can tell them how awesome it is!

A Few Things

Salad in a basket: peppercress, chives, dandy greens, waterleaf, spinach, kale, violet leaf, bishop's weed, sorrel, clover leaf.
Here's how my polyculture, cherry tree bed is starting to look after getting it started in early May. On the shady side I've planted chickweed, and another attempt at cleavers, we'll see if this one takes. On the sunny, south-west side, I transplanted yarrow, sage and St. John's wort.


After such an incredible turn out for the weed walk last month, I decided to run a longer, more in-depth workshop later this month. You can find the details about it here:
Wild Food in the City: Urban Foraging for Food and Medicine

I also created a public document of what I think are some important Principles of Ethical Foraging and Wildcrafting.

I'm really excited for the Fletcher Wildlife Garden's Annual Native Plant Sale tomorrow! I missed the last two years. Here's a list of what they will have for sale. There's quite a few edible and medicinal plants that I would like to add to my garden.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!