One Plant at a Time: Alexanders

Today's plant is alexanders. That's the singular. Alexanders, smyrnium olastrum, is a mediterranean plant that was eaten historically in Europe. It fell out of use after the middle ages as celery became a widely eaten food rather than just medicine and fodder. In my garden, alexanders is naturalized. It holds its own against sour grass and will gradually crowd or shade it out, which is reason enough for me to love it.

Alexanders is in the apiaceae, formerly the umbelliferae, the carrot family, which has many plants of significance to humans as food, medicine, and poison, such as parsley, lomatium, lovage, water hemlock, parsnip, fennel, and asafoetida. It has a peculiar taste which may not immediately appeal, not as pleasant as celery, but I can't grow celery. In fact, I can barely grow any vegetables at all, but alexanders thrives untended in my yard and gives me greens for many a meal in the late winter and early spring. Plus, it grows in part shade, which is my yard's version of sunny.

I eat the flower stalks of the second-year plants. They are succulent. The leaves are too bitter for me, though the whole plant is edible. If I see them in time, I pick the stalk as soon the flower buds emerge from the carpet of leaves. You don't really have to be that prompt; if the weather is mild they are still good after the flower opons, so you can let a few more mature if you want to have a meal's worth. I cut them as low as possible, remove the leaves and petioles, and chop the stems into short chunks or long spears. It seems there is a lot of waste, but that's compared to commercial vegetables pre-trimmed on the farm. While chopping I evaluate how much is tender enough to eat, and reject any length that is too tough to slice easily. The buds and young flowers are also tasty, including the little leaves that enfold them, less bitter than the main leaves, and they fill out the meal a little. I generally sauté or steam the stems and the flowers. Often I add them to my Sunday breakfast of eggs and weeds. The plant continues to grow and send up more shoots, though skinnier and less worthwhile for cooking. And besides you might want seeds.

When they first are ready I eat them daily for a short while, then back off to once or twice a week, as the flavor is so distinctive as to be tiresome too often. You can eat it raw, but my habit is to cook everything.

One Plant at a Time: Sweet Flag

People often ask me how I know so much about plants. There's so much I don't know that I discount the question, but the actual answer is I learn one plant at a time. I've had a lot of time. We are currently quarantined for the coronavirus, and I have been inspired to write about the plants in my garden. So I will do it one plant at a time.

Today's plant is sweet flag, acorus calamus. Not to be confused with sweet grass, hierochloe odorata, which I have tried to establish and there may be a little plant somewhere, hidden in the weeds, but I haven't seen it in a long time. Anyway, sweet flag. It came to mind because I am trying weave a basket out of its leaves. It is way too brittle to use for the binder, so I am trying it as the core. I am experimenting with different ways of drying and rehydrating it, as it is difficult to work with fresh. I want to use it because it has a curious aroma. Scent is a very important part of baskets for me.

I have a little water garden in a big pot that I have to keep treating against mosquitoes, because sweet flag prefers to grow with wet feet, and my garden is very dry eight months of the year. I have also tried transplanting it out and it seems to be surviving in one place that's a little soggy sometimes. My water garden was getting crowded so I transplanted several roots of it into the catchment basin down at the corner for the water that runs down the gutter. It's often wet there, and there are a few cultivated plants among the weeds, so I thought it might improve the diversity there. But as soon as I planted it we had an absolutely dry month in the middle of the rainy season, so nothing I planted took. I carried gallons of water down the block and looked foolish watering the weed patch, but to no avail.

Speaking of roots, the root is used medicinally and as a flavoring. Sucking on a bit of the dry root will stop hiccoughs and allay heartburn. I can't use it because I leave it in my mouth too long and it burns my mouth so badly that the buccal mucosa are sore for days. However I have made both bitters and a tincture out of it that work for me. I rather like the fresh-plant tincture. Others report that the tincture is too awful to imbibe and they prefer the root. I don't think the bitters I made would improve gin, but maybe they'd be good in brandy. I just use them as an aperitif.

Sweet flag is a circumpolar species, though the eurasian variety is triploid and the american is diploid. Reputedly the diploid plant lacks the carcinogenic component of the triploid variety. I can't imagine anyone imbibing enough calamus to be affected by the carcinogen, but many people are more careful than I am. Anyway, when I bought it I obtained a reputedly american individual from a reputable herbalist. So I don't worry about it.

Now where's my camera?

Obtain a Yield

For some reason, this permaculture principle is difficult for me to live with. So I'm writing about it. I know I do obtain a yield, but somehow, I don't know, maybe it's the wording. It sounds like an order. You Must Obtain A Yield. You Must Succeed, Dammit. Do Not Stray From The Path. Is beauty not a yield? Or pleasure, or even exercise? What about failure? Could not failure yield learning, yield determination? Calling it Enjoy Your Harvest might speak to me more. Or Understand Your Yield.
Anyway, I want to acknowledge my yield. It's so small, and so intermittent, and just never seems like much. Maybe in the writing it will appear more substantial.
My primary and most essential yield is visual privacy, here on a city lot surrounded by apartment buildings. And a sense of residing within Nature. But I also have sprecific useful yields.
Starting in the southeast corner, there is the apricot tree. One year it had a wonderful crop of apricots. Mostly I was away that year. This year we got a dozen or two. They were excellent. Is that encouraging or demoralizing? I don't know.
There were iris flowers this year for my vases. A small harvest but I enjoyed it. And I culled some plants, so that was useful.
Even though the squirrels got at least three quarters of my feijoas, I had plenty for the kids and some for myself.
The three peonies that bloomed were repeats from previous years, many have not yet blossomed. They were gorgeous and lasted a while, and the ones I didn't pick have set seed. Which theoretically they don't do, being hybrid (except for the ostii).
Rhubarb, a small quantity. But I don't use it much, so that's fine. And some transplants. I guess new plants are a harvest.
Roses, a few, brilliant. 
Are seedlings a harvest? I dug up several dozen pawpaw and white sapote seedlings to plant out and give away. The harvest was better connection with my community to whom I gave plants and garden tours.
I ate currants, buffalo and clove, and concluded I don't much care for them.
The kids and I ate fuschia berries. They ate the bolivian in quantity, I ate the ornamental, one or two at a time.
The squirrels got all the figs.
The mountain papaya has started dropping papayas. They are boring & when it dies I will not replace it.
The plums are falling in plenty, both eating and brewing quality.
I got a mulberry or two.
I ate burdock greens. They were excellent. Not nearly as bitter as I feared. Nothing to cardoons.
There was plenty of poke, but the only part I needed this year was big leaves for a compress for my daughter, and those were in short but scroungingly-adequate supply.
There were dandelion greens in adequate quantity or more every time I wanted them.
Lemon balm was available as desired.
I got several meals of favas and fava greens.
Last summer I got purple string beans. They were suppposed to be perrennial, but I have not seen them this year. I got a few scarlet runners, and two of them have come back.
I ate nasturtium leaves and concluded they are inappropriate in quantity.
I ate collards. They're supposed to be indestructable, the purple tree collards. But they don't much like it here.
There was chickweed. Yum. Just a little. Never saw it here before.
Got a couple of artichokes.
Got my first local apple.
Tried splitting the bees, but it didn't work. Harvested some honey while the hive was open. Also last year's mead was quite interesting.
Pruned the pine, and got needles for weaving. Sometimes also harvest bermuda grass and iris leaves for basketry.
Looks like there will be a walnut this year.
I never think to harvest the pellitory, it's too far away to notice. I guess I do have zones.
Bay leaves (california, which I prefer, having been raised on it).
Both pear trees that have not borne until now are holding young fruit. The one that bore last year is bare.
Two cherries from three trees.
A few spears of asparagus. I don't think they get enough sun. I try to keep up the water, and it's about the only place I fertilize.
Strawberries! I must be watering better. One or two, every few days, in the summer.
The cardoons are sparse this year, but I don't need much.
Peaches. But I am cutting the tree back. Poor climate for sweetness, and it's crowding the new avocado.
A lime or three at a time for months. Enough to make marmalade for christmas gifts.
Honking big lemons, a few left after the passersby get most.
Plenty of rosemary for the tea I use for colds. Though I have to go steal the lavendar from the neighbors.
Lemon guavas. Sometimes they all disappear, sometimes there are handfuls left for me.
Coupla mandarins. Tiny but sweet.
Coupla white sapotes. Vernon is the only variety that's bearing yet.
Poha, until it died.
Oregano.
Olives. Enough to make a big batch even after sorting out three quarters because of fly larvae. Thinking of using clay spray this year, but probably too lazy.
A few grapes, grape leaves, tendrils.
Mushrooms. Not so much this year, maybe a few oysters, but several meals and jars of dried of wine caps a couple of years back, and turkey tails for immune support.
Maybe that's it. Not quite 50 things. Some with several uses each, that's maybe a dozen or so uses of things per month. Real stuff from my yard twice a week. Significant.

Perennial Favas Continued

Just FYI, they did not come back the next year. I believe they died over the dry season.

Wintering Squash

I'm fairly new to vegetable gardening. I didn't grow up doing it, and don't have a lot of experience. Fruit trees are what I know, and even they would prosper more with more attention. But last spring I planted winter squash.
I figured squash are fairly easy. Everyone knows that zucchini grows like a weed. Why should hard squash be any different? It was April or May. I bought a packet or two of seeds, and started them in random places around the garden. Several came up. A few survived. I had five or six squash vines around the yard, and was waiting to see what kind of squash I would get. (I can never remember what I have planted, and besides, at least one packet was an assortment.)
They grew. They bloomed. They bore male flowers, as squash often do at the beginning of the season. They continued to bloom, sporadically, into the summer, the flowers continuing male.
I did research. Some people say that fertilizer encourages female blooms. Some people say fertilizer suppresses female blooms, what one needs is tough conditions. I figured, all else seeming to be equal, I would continue with my hands-off approach. Some say sunlight helps, but sunlight is not always available. I put up pole tripods and tomato cages for them to climb.
Come September, they still were growing, still blooming, still bearing male flowers exclusively. I went away for a month to be with family.
When I returned in October, there were two little squash. They bloomed! They bore fruit!
One is about an inch or two long when I arrive home from my trip, and over subsequent weeks gets maybe fifteen inches across, round, mostly green. I get compliments on my watermelon.
The other starts out small, you know, squash blossom sized, gets about the size of a softball. 
The first grows into early November, developing white stippling in the green. Then it sits. The other one hangs partway up a tomato cage. They seem inert. There's no use picking them, they clearly will not be sweet. I put a ceramic tile beneath the one sitting on the ground.
The winter rains come, the sourgrass and nasturtium come up, almost hiding the big one. It is late February. There are more female flowers. It looks like they might set fruit, but the fruit fall off after a few days.
The small one from October is near the front door, on the sunny side of the house. I notice it is beginning to turn color. The white stippling is developing a yellow cast.
It's March. The sun is as high as before Halloween, and the day length is quickly heading for half time of the equinox. Even the squash in the shade is turning a shade of cream.
I continue to leave them, waiting for the vines to shrivel, indicating that they are ready to harvest. I wait all summer and into the fall. The vines set more fruit, they get large, but none of them turn any squashlike color, nor do the vines die back. The fruit of the one vine climbing the bamboo tripod gets so heavy the tripod breaks and it falls and cracks. Harvest! I try cooking it. Bland, stringy.
I wait a while and as they continue not to change, I harvest anyway, and cut back the vines.
Still boring. Black seeds. Turns out the only black seeded squash is chilacayote. The immature ones are good as summer squash, but the big ones are useless - they are traditionally candied, but I don't see the point.
But I am happy to have in my yard anything useful that flourishes without care, so they are still here, climbing my fig tree, supplying summer squash and mystifying people.

celebration

winter solstice leaves
fall on peony blossoms
sudden bee flies off

Fuck Dat

"Shark Puddle" I said, reading the sign for the bus around the park. Yes, I'm prone to spoonerisms, the best ones surprising me as I hear them jump out of my mouth.

Duck fat is one of my favorite ingredients. The drippings from a good crispy duck go into a jar in the fridge. If there is any waste skin left over from cooking or eating duck, it gets rendered down into yummy cracklings and the iota of fat is added to my jar. When I have enough I make duck confit, which needs to be submerged in fat while it cooks. But it does not absorb much fat while cooking, so usually I soon have enough to make the next batch. 

But this time I made duck rillettes. It just sort of happened. I had bought six duck legs to make for 

dinner, but we ended up going out. Then a couple of days later I was hungry at the farmers' market and bought some olive bread and duck rillettes to have something to eat right away. I thought "I can do that".

So I went home and did a little research on the trusty interwebs and plunked those tasty waterfowl limbs into a pot of fat with a couple of bay leaves. (I know I should have brined them first, but this was a first approximation. I didn't expect to need it to keep over the winter.) When they were well cooked I picked the meat off the bones and ran it through the electric mixer with a fair amount of plum brandy and some salt.

I ended up with quite a bit more than I was going to eat soon, and was worried that it was not salty enough to keep a long time. So I take it to pot lucks and folks ask whether I studied cooking in the South of France.

But between the fat blended in and the fat on top of the jars to seal the rillettes from the air while it aged I had no fat left.

Fuck dat.