There are a number of edible plants that oblige us with their presence in a robust and adventurous way.
Many of them are herbs, both medicinal and culinary, like dill and mints. Edible flowers are another large group, including: viola, pansy and calendula.
Some folks prefer a more controlled environment, but I love the rascals that pop up on their own because I didn't have to expend any energy planting them or money to buy them. This kind of indulgent plant-parenting does require a few rules or the garden will have only these hardy characters.
I call this "Subtractive Gardening". It's very simple: if you like the plant, leave them where you want them and remove them where you do not (or transplant to a preferred location). Sometimes transplanting doesn't work as well as letting the seeds choose their own places, but most often they happily settle in elsewhere.
Self-seeders are usually annual plants that grow from seed to bloom to setting new seed in one growing season. Stout annual seeders include: arugula, borage, calendula*, dill, feverfew*, catnip*, epizote*, fennel*, lemon balm, nasturtium*, sunflower, viola and pansy. Those with an asterisk, are the ones to keep an eye on, especially nasturtiums and calendulas. These two can easily take over the spring plantings with their extreme vigor. On a weekly basis, I pull the majority of seedlings. If I didn't they would quickly out-compete the fussier garden vegetables.
Then there are the creepers. These are usually perennial plants which come back from their roots year after year. While many perennial garden plants keep to their own tight root ball, others crawl over and under the surface of the soil with their exploratory roots.
All of the mints fit this category and my strategy is to put them in a large bed of their own where they can compete with each other. I keep them out of the rest of the garden entirely.
Two years ago I had to dig out a bed of apple mint that in just two or three years had grown from one 2 gal pot stuck in the ground, to a circular plantation 10' in diameter. It no longer is allowed anywhere in the garden. Apple mint roots that occasionally show up, go into the garbage. I can't risk having them coming back in the compost bin or weed piles.
A few biennials (plants that survive the winter and finish their life-span the following summer) also reseed. There are a number of vegetables in this group: carrots, parsley, kale, broccoli, lambs quarters, spinach, beets and swiss chard. I don't count on these to reliably come back, but I do honor the tenacity of those that do by letting a few of them share space throughout the garden. I still order fresh seed from nurseries to hedge my bets.
Two tuberous vegetables are loved and/or feared by seasoned gardeners and they are: Jerusalem artichokes (sun roots) and potatoes.
Sunchokes are sunflower family plants which I have praised in a previous posting, however, do plant them in an out-of-the-way spot and don't throw their tubers willy-nilly about the garden. Potatoes leave tiny potatolets in the previous year's potato patch, which sprout and become new potato plants under, in and around everything else you try to grow there in the years following. Sometimes they can grow between things where they are, or they can be transplanted when small to their own bed. Some people say that potatoes lose vigor after years of doing this without bringing in new tubers. In the permaculture garden, so far, so good.
Little seedling that pop up all over the garden are like little presents or little scoundrels, uniquely leveraged in every beholders eyes. Choose your friends wisely and chase away your personal villains. If I were you, I'd think twice or thrice before planting calendulas, catnip or fennel unless you are fond of weeding or committed to cutting the flowering heads before they turn to seed.
Here's to the happy little rogues!
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
My Favorite Vegetables: Harbingers of Spring; Purple Sprouting Broccoli & Chives
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| Purple Sprouting Broccoli in Alder Creek Farm Permaculture Garden Photo by Justin Bailie March 2011 |
PURPLE SPROUTING BROCCOLI
Purple Sprouting Broccoli is an extremely cold-hardy, over-wintering British heirloom vegetable that is planted late spring or early summer of one year and produces its tender purple sprouts the following year in early spring.
The advantage of this is having mature plants that are ready to produce a prolific crop at a time when most of the overwintered kales and collards are tatty and wind-damaged or you're sick of eating them.
Just when it seems as if winter will never end, these plants begin to wake up and start growing new leaves in early February (here on the Oregon coast).
In just a few weeks, they send new leafy growth upright, and pale purplish buds appear on loose heads. These buds grow into smallish purple florets which become the first new crop from the broccoli clan to be eaten in spring.
Our farm's location, less than a mile from the wide-open and windy Nehalem Bay on the north coast of Oregon, presents great challenges to wintering-over taller plants.
Plants that would normally be 30" tall are buffeted all winter by gusts of up to 80 mph or more, driving rain and recently, more freezing days than normal.
Experiments with tying each plant with twine to a wooden stake last winter produced stalks badly damaged by constant rubbing. I've resigned myself to allowing the plants to chose their own tendency to lean away from the wind and keep a lower profile without staking. They take up more sideways room but the impressive amount of harvest gleaned from these sturdy survivors more than makes up for their sprawl.
Other advantages to this plant are: the large size of the mature broccoli is difficult for slugs to reach and it bears early enough to avoid much of the damage caused by cabbage moth caterpillars. (I refuse to use Bacillus thuringiensis, also sold as BT, because it indiscriminately targets all larval species including rare butterflies.)
The harvest can be used in the same way as other broccolis. I prefer simple steaming or stir-fry, which turns them dark green. Raw, they hold their gorgeous purple color and add an eye-catching accent to a green salad. Add purplish chive buds later in the spring (see Chives below) for even more sassy salad color!
CHIVES
Chives are one of the most useful of herbs. Small members of the onion family, they have many culinary uses and are excellent for making mulch as they grow prolifically and can quickly recover from being cut off at the ground. Throw into a compost pile, where they will quickly break down, or use directly as a mulch.
In the late fall chives slowly disintegrate into mush and disappear. By late February they are shooting up again and I begin adding them to everything: soups, egg dishes, salads, garnish on baked potatoes and vegetable stir-fries.
In another month, chives will start budding up and the minaret-shaped buds are my favorite edible flower.
I pick and use the buds regularly, both cooked and raw, to keep them producing. When the flowers are so numerous that they start to open fully, I use a few in salads by breaking the large blooms into florets and sprinkle them on top.
When the stalks and flowers are becoming bent and blowsy, they are cut them back to the ground for a new crop. I cut them back two or three times a season and never tire of their delicious mild onion flavor.
Now is a great time for planting them in the garden or putting them in a pot just outside the door. Snip as needed, cutting down low so it will grow back fresh. Water moderately and mulch around the outside edge of the plant.
Place in full to partial-day sun. Plants in shade will become lax and floppy.
Once you plant them, you will always have them!
Purple Sprouting Broccoli is an extremely cold-hardy, over-wintering British heirloom vegetable that is planted late spring or early summer of one year and produces its tender purple sprouts the following year in early spring.
The advantage of this is having mature plants that are ready to produce a prolific crop at a time when most of the overwintered kales and collards are tatty and wind-damaged or you're sick of eating them.
Just when it seems as if winter will never end, these plants begin to wake up and start growing new leaves in early February (here on the Oregon coast).
In just a few weeks, they send new leafy growth upright, and pale purplish buds appear on loose heads. These buds grow into smallish purple florets which become the first new crop from the broccoli clan to be eaten in spring.
Our farm's location, less than a mile from the wide-open and windy Nehalem Bay on the north coast of Oregon, presents great challenges to wintering-over taller plants.
Plants that would normally be 30" tall are buffeted all winter by gusts of up to 80 mph or more, driving rain and recently, more freezing days than normal.
Experiments with tying each plant with twine to a wooden stake last winter produced stalks badly damaged by constant rubbing. I've resigned myself to allowing the plants to chose their own tendency to lean away from the wind and keep a lower profile without staking. They take up more sideways room but the impressive amount of harvest gleaned from these sturdy survivors more than makes up for their sprawl.
Other advantages to this plant are: the large size of the mature broccoli is difficult for slugs to reach and it bears early enough to avoid much of the damage caused by cabbage moth caterpillars. (I refuse to use Bacillus thuringiensis, also sold as BT, because it indiscriminately targets all larval species including rare butterflies.)
The harvest can be used in the same way as other broccolis. I prefer simple steaming or stir-fry, which turns them dark green. Raw, they hold their gorgeous purple color and add an eye-catching accent to a green salad. Add purplish chive buds later in the spring (see Chives below) for even more sassy salad color!
 |
| Chives with coffee bean mulch and blue bottle hose-guides Alder Creek Farm Permaculture Garden Photo by Justin Bailie March 2011 |
Chives are one of the most useful of herbs. Small members of the onion family, they have many culinary uses and are excellent for making mulch as they grow prolifically and can quickly recover from being cut off at the ground. Throw into a compost pile, where they will quickly break down, or use directly as a mulch.
In the late fall chives slowly disintegrate into mush and disappear. By late February they are shooting up again and I begin adding them to everything: soups, egg dishes, salads, garnish on baked potatoes and vegetable stir-fries.
In another month, chives will start budding up and the minaret-shaped buds are my favorite edible flower.
I pick and use the buds regularly, both cooked and raw, to keep them producing. When the flowers are so numerous that they start to open fully, I use a few in salads by breaking the large blooms into florets and sprinkle them on top.
When the stalks and flowers are becoming bent and blowsy, they are cut them back to the ground for a new crop. I cut them back two or three times a season and never tire of their delicious mild onion flavor.
Now is a great time for planting them in the garden or putting them in a pot just outside the door. Snip as needed, cutting down low so it will grow back fresh. Water moderately and mulch around the outside edge of the plant.
Place in full to partial-day sun. Plants in shade will become lax and floppy.
Once you plant them, you will always have them!
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