all Belarussian Gypsy in cupcake container + 2 eggplant

eggplant seeds in strawberry container

all Striped Amish in tomato container

all cherry toms in brass container

i know i’m a little bit late getting my seeds started, but we had some financial issues that kept me from making my order. i finally just got them in the mail at the end of last week, so i took some time today to get them into the soil!

i decided this that this year i would only plant heirloom seeds, though i will probably pick up some organic seedlings from the farmers market to fill out my garden.

this year’s seeds are a Belarusian Gypsy tomato, an Amish Striped tomato, an Indian Eggplant (from India) and some wild cherry tomatoes that were a free gift with my order. i posted their full names and descriptions earlier on in this blog if you’d like to learn more about them.

luckily, i had some clear plastic cupcake trays left over from my birthday party this weekend and they are *perfect* for starting seeds! all i did was fill up each pocket with potting soil and put a seed in each one. i watered them and left them in the sun. i figure by next week, i’ll definitely have some sproutage and once the threat of frost is over, i’ll put them into my small raised bed in the back yard.

Wondering how i can respond to replies on my tumblr posts?

Spiraea - yes! feel free to repost! :)

Finally! After a long winter of pining out the window at my new backyard, I was finally able to eat something produced there! Mind you, this wasn’t anything that I cultivated… garlic mustard is a highly invasive weed that needs to be pulled, roots and all, from your garden. And, at the prompting of my good friend Raina, I decided to not just throw it away, but make something edible with it. With her help, I pulled hundreds of plants and de-stemmed them.

Then I just basically followed a recipe for basil pesto, subbing the garlic mustard for basil. I put all of the ingredients into my food processor and presto! PESTO. Delicious, garlicky pesto, with a pretty spicy kick!

I poured it into a pint sized ball jar and stuck it in the fridge. I then turned around to see the herb basket… still pretty much full of leaves. Realizing I didn’t have anymore ingredients, I called a couple of friends, seeing if they wanted to come over to utilize the rest of our harvest. No one was able, so the rest of the basket was tossed into the food processor and then pressed into an ice cube tray for later use, possibly in sauces or soups.

For those of you that would like to give this a whirl, below are the ingredients and proportions that I used. But first, be very, very sure that what you’re pulling is indeed garlic mustard. This is always super important when wildcrafting! Although, unlike a lot of other edibles, feel free to pull these plants to your heart’s content.

Hopefully I’ve inspired you to try a little of your own wildcrafting!

- Sarah

Basic Recipe

• 3-4 cups fresh garlic mustard weed
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
• 1/2 cup Italian cheese (Parmesan, Romano, etc.)
• 2-4 cloves of garlic (depending on taste)

Weeds in Your Garden? — Bite Back!
c. 1999 Susun S. Weed

I always say the gardener’s best revenge is to eat the weeds. I’ve been doing it for thirty years and can testify that my health and the health of my garden has never been better. Here are a few hints for gardeners who’d rather eat their weeds than hate them (and for non-gardeners who are adventurous enough to try out nature’s bounty).

View your weeds as cultivated plants; give them the same care and you’ll reap a tremendous harvest. Harvest frequently and do it when the weeds are young and tender. Thin your weeds and pinch back the annuals so your weeds become lushly leafy. Use weeds as rotation crops; they bring up subsoil minerals and protect against many insects. “Interplant” (by not weeding out) selected weeds; try purslane, lamb’s quarters, or amaranth with your corn, chickweed with peas/beans, and yellow dock, sheep sorrel, or dandelion with tomatoes). And, most importantly, harvest your weeds frequently, regularly, and generously.

Overgrown radishes, lettuces, and beans are tough and bitter. So are weeds that aren’t harvested frequently enough. Give your chickweed a haircut (yes! with scissors) every 4-7 days and it will stay tender all spring, ready to be added to any salad. If you forget a patch for two weeks, it may get stringy and tough and full of seed capsules. (All is not lost at this stage. The seeds are easy to collect - put the entire plant in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for 2-3 days and use the seeds that fall to the bottom of the bag - and highly nutritious, with exceptional amounts of protein and minerals.

Unthinned carrots and lettuces grow thin and spindly, so do unthinned lamb’s quarters, amaranth, and other edible weeds. Wherever you decide to let the weeds grow, keep them thinned as you would any plant you expect to eat. Here’s how I do it: In early spring I lightly top-dress a raised bed with my cool-method compost (which is loaded with the seeds of edible weeds). Over this I strew a heavy coating of the seeds of lettuces and cresses and brassicas (cultivated salad greens), then another light covering of shifted compost.

Naturally, weed seeds germinate right along with my salad greens. When the plant are about two inches high, I go through the bed and thin the salad greens, pull out all grasses, smartweeds, cronewort, clear weed, and quick weed (though the last three are edible, I don’t find them particularly palatable). And, I thin back the chickweed, mallows, lamb’s quarters, amaranth, and garlic mustard and other edible wild greens.

Keep those annuals pinched back. You wouldn’t let your basil go straight up and go to flower, don’t let your lamb’s quarter either. One cultivated lamb’s quarter plant in my garden grew five feet high and four feet across, providing greens for salads and cooking all summer and a generous harvest of seeds for winter use.

When a crop of greens has bolted or gone to seed in your garden, you pull it all out and replant with another crop. Do the same with your weeds. We eat the greens of garlic mustard all spring, then pull it out just before it bolts (making a horseradishy vinegar from the choicest roots) — often revealing a generous crop of chickweed lurking underneath.

Some of my favorite garden weeds:

Annuals
o Amaranth (Amaranthus retroflexus) Young leaves, old leaves, even non-woody stalks are delicious as a cooked green; chop and boil for 30-40 minutes. Serve in their own broth; freeze leftovers for winter use. Use instead of spinach in quiche (you may never to grow spinach again). Collect seeds throughout the autumn by shaking seed heads over a lipped cookie sheet; or by harvest and dry the entire seed head. Winnowing out the chaff is tedious but soothing. There is a special thrill that comes when you toss the chaffy seed in the air, and the breeze catches it just-so, and the seeds fall back into your tray, while the prickly chaff scatters “to the four winds.”
o Chickweed (Stellaria media) Young leaves and stalks, even flowers, in salads. Blend with virgin olive oil and organic garlic for an unforgettable pesto. Add seeds to porridge.
o Lamb’s quarter (Chenopodium alba and related species, e.g. Chenopodium quinoa). Young leaves in salads. Older leaves and tender stalks cooked. Leaves dried and ground into flour (replaces up to half the flour in any recipe). Seeds dried and cooked in soups, porridge.
o Mallows (Malva neglecta and related species) Leaves of any age and flowers (the closely related Hibiscus flowers too!) are delicious in salads. Roots are used medicinally.
o Purslane (Portulacca oleracea) The fleshy leaves and stalks of this plant are incredibly delicious in salads and not bad at all preserved in vinegar for winter use.

Biennials
o Burdock (Arctium lappa) Roots of non-flowering plants harvested after frost make a vinegar that is deep, and richly flavorful as well as a world-renowned tonic. Petioles of the leaves and the flowering stalk are also edible; for recipes see my book Healing Wise.
o Garlic Mustard (Alliaria officinalis) Year-round salad green. Leaves used in any season, even winter. Roots are harvested before plant flowers. Seeds are a spicy condiment.
o Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota) Leaves finely chopped in salads. Flowers are beautiful edible decorations. Roots of non-flowering plants, harvested in the fall, and cooked.

Perennials
o Dandelion (Taraxacum officinalis) Leaves eaten at any time, raw or cooked, but especially tasty in the fall - not spring!. Roots harvested any time; pickle in apple cider vinegar for winter use. Dandelion flower wine is justly famous.
o Sheep Sorrel (Rumex acetosella) Leaves add a sour spark to salads. Cooked with wild leeks or cultivated onion and potato they become a soup called “schav.”
o Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) Young leaves cooked for 40-45 minutes and served in their broth are one of my favorite dishes. Seeds can be used in baked goods, porridge.
o Yellow dock (Rumex crispus) Roots pickled in apple cider vinegar are tasty and a boon for enriching the blood. Leaves, especially young ones, are eaten raw or cooked.

catsluck:

Chickweed - A Zine about Herbalism (click for PDF)

Strawberries are beginning to bloom!

Harvesting garlic mustard today with Raina to make pesto!

Apple Blossoms

Received my seed order in the mail! She also included a free sample of heirloom cherry tomatoes :)  Need to get these things in some dirt, pronto!

inspiring and pretty videos! i love the chickens!

- Plant deep. About 4 or 5 inches, up to the top flush of leaves.

- Fertilize early and then leave it alone, except to add potassium occasionally.

- Mulch. It keeps the soil moist and at a moderate temperature.

- Pluck the first flowers. This allows the roots to grow stronger, which will create more structure for the plant and provide more nutrients.

- Cage or stake. This will keep the vines off of the ground, away from disease and pests.

moss on the split rail fence