Not a fan of the name – ‘micro greens’. I keep thinking that they’ll be tiny little plants and the only way you can eat them would be on a massive white plate with a small pile of them in the centre. Kinda 1990s era nouveau cuisine.
Aside from the name, though, they’re rather cool. We planted some pea shoots which, well, shot up and grew so fast we couldn’t keep up. Next time I’ll plant them a few every day.
We also have some baby kale, and something else that I didn’t recognize but tastes rather good.
If you like salad and live in Canada, like I do, then these grow light contraptions for micro greens are rather cool. As long as you stay on top of them, the greens keep on coming. The grow-op that we have also has a nifty contraption for keeping the plants watered. Once every two weeks you can fill a bin and the water wicks up. It’s brilliant.
And if you really hate the name ‘micro greens’ just don’t harvest them for a few days. They turn macro rather quickly. But then they get unwieldy and the flavour suffers somewhat.
See? The cucumbers did actually grow. We have had several from my plants so far…
Every time I look at a vegetable garden, my first impression is that I just can’t see why anyone would bother. Strange, I know, given the fact that I have a garden myself.
Stranger still, given that I know what can come out of a garden. Somehow, I just can’t shake the notion that there isn’t much there.
Even if I can conjure up a cutting board like this in a matter of a couple of minutes out in the garden. And then a couple of days later I can do it again.
Even if my mother–in-law (who, admittedly, has quite the garden) can come in with endless armloads of produce
It’s almost as if I have some sort of an inherent inability to accept that you can actually get a lot of produce out of a small garden. I’m actually at the point now where I just ignore my first impressions and I start picking. There always seems to be more than enough out there, even if I have to sample all kinds of things along the way.
https://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.png00Alastairhttps://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.pngAlastair2020-09-01 12:54:582020-09-01 12:54:59Green Thumb. Of a Sort.
I would love to meet the person who figured out you could eat plants. Hm. Maybe that’s a strange thing to say. How about this – I would love to meet the person who figured out that this certain plant was tasty, and that one was toxic. I should like to shake their hand for doing the heavy lifting for me. No foxglove in this household, as far as I know, although one of my kids was talking about Socrates and how he had a difficult time with hemlock. I’m no Greek philosopher, but I’ll pass, thanks.
When I go into the forest there are a few things I know I can eat – huckleberries, salmonberries, thimbleberries, saskatoon berries… Asparagus, morels… Fruit trees from long-overgrown orchards… Fiddleheads? That’s about it.
And I’m also pretty sure I can identify a pine mushroom. But in a million years I would never trust myself to eat one. My father-in-law knows his mushrooms and he did find and cut up one for me off the forest floor many years ago. It was great.
But I’m still leery. I have heard of enough horror stories about eating the wrong thing out in nature. It’s wild out there and nature doesn’t care how carefully edited your ‘eat from the wild’ book was.
And thus to the sage. This grows in our garden and I’m pretty sure even the morning glory that tries to choke it out at every turn is also edible but just not nearly as tasty, lest a spring of it end up in the soup. thankfully, the balance of plants in this area are also edible – namely the thyme on one side and the oregano on the other side… Rosemary and tarragon just down the way. I feared the sage plant was near death not too long ago. The morning glory was strangling as best it could, the cold winter obviously didn’t help, either. The leaves were nearly all gone. I did my best to not pick too many and it was quickly becoming obvious that there soon would be no more to pick. However, some regular water, warm weather, and a bit of fresh soil and we have an abundance of one of my favourite herbs.
Perfect with some wide-noodled pasta. Farfalle or the like. Butter and olive oil in a pan; cook the sage leaves until they sizzle and get crispy, hoist in a quarter-cup of roasted pine nuts, salt and pepper, toss and serve with a bit of the pasta water.
Yummy. It’s a bit of a starch overload so we don’t do it that often, but man, it’s good.
https://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.png00Alastairhttps://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.pngAlastair2020-07-22 15:54:262020-07-22 15:54:28Plant life.
We have this unwritten rule in our house – if it’s in the garden, you can eat it.
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. If you tear out half of the pea plants getting a pod of peas, you’re going to have to answer to someone. And if you dig up an entire head of lettuce to munch on, one of the adults in the house might have something to say about it.
But that’s really about it. We don’t really have too much in our garden that you can eat this year. We didn’t do sugar snap peas; instead we have sweet peas because the flowers are just so pretty. We have some lettuce in the ground but it’s taking its own sweet time getting going.
There are tomatoes, as well. And, of course, my cucumbers.
These raspberries are from my mother-in-law’s garden, where she grows them, literally, by the bucketful. The kids have always been allowed to go and eat as many as they want. Help yourself.
It isn’t really junk food in the traditional sense. Yes, they probably don’t have much in the way of nutritional value, and yes, they have a bunch of sugar in them… But there is also some fibre in there, somewhere.
But that’s not the point. As far as I’m concerned eating out of a garden is one of life’s most underrated pleasures. The produce always (and I mean ALWAYS) tastes miles better than what you can buy. Aside from water and seeds, it’s free.
And the berries are always so succulent. Sinful, even.
Now, there are a couple of caveats:
Better wear some shoes because it really hurts if you step on a hornet that is grazing on a cherry from the tree. Personal experience in this case.
Better wear some shoes because sometimes bears come through the property and, well, they don’t really spend too much time considering where they might relieve themselves.
Further to this point above, take a good, hard look around when you go to the garden at dawn or dusk, because the only thing worse than getting too close to a bear is getting too close to a surprised bear.
If anyone ruins their dinner because they stuffed themselves with cherries, raspberries and various other garden produce we will let it pass with no small amount of parental pride.
https://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.png00Alastairhttps://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.pngAlastair2020-06-25 14:01:402020-06-25 14:02:51If it’s in the garden, it’s allowed
The grain elevator in Dorothy is pretty darn cool. Check out those hills in the distance! I was driving by with my brother-in-law a few years back and we just had to pull over to take a photo. As far as I know, it’s still there and in OK shape.
But it brings up a question – one I can’t answer here given my lack of time to write, but one that I’ll pose anyway – how many of us actually know where our food comes from? In this case the grain was taken from the fields right nearby and then stored until the train showed up. Then (I believe) it was brought by truck to the elevator and the conveyor in the elevator would bring the grain up and fill the railcars. At least that’s my understanding. This elevator isn’t for storage – it’s for loading rail cars.
Then it would get moved off to market. There are all kinds of other themes here, too – transport, pooling of product, monocultures, organic farming (or the lack thereof)… The fact that it’s near-impossible to grow just a little bit of wheat and deal with it in any profitable way given the way the modern food markets work…
I took the photo for a number of reasons – namely that it was a really interesting view and I’m always worried that these vestiges will pass quietly away before they can be documented. I didn’t really take any time to think of the actual use of it until I wrote this post. Form following function, but beautiful nonetheless.
https://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.png00Alastairhttps://dontcrowdthepan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dont_Crowd_Logo_new-1.pngAlastair2020-05-26 10:28:582020-05-26 10:32:00Where does this food come from, anyway?
All 6 seeds germinated. I’m not sure what I’ll do with 6 cucumber plants, aside from have a lot of cucumbers…
My mother-in-law gave us some cucumber seeds. I planted 6 of them, and lo and behold, all 6 have germinated. I was asked to make (and I did) a sort of wooden obelisk (photo to come later, when it isn’t pouring with rain outside) upon which the cucumber plants can grow. The idea is that the cucumbers themselves will be kept out of the dirt and won’t be as likely to be ravaged by slugs and the like.
So, I’ll have lots of cucumbers. Apparently these plants are rather prolific.
And then what? It’s kinda like the proverbial zucchini plant. How do you know your neighbour has a zucchini plant? Well, they’ll arrive on a daily basis with gourds a-plenty. I fear cucumber is the same way, but you can’t grill them on the barbecue, you can’t make muffins or loaf out of them…
Pickles? Gherkins? Lots of salads? Not really sure what I’ll do if I have an embarrassment of cucumber riches, but I’ll deal with that if and when it happens. Currently, they’re about an inch high, so I best not get ahead of myself.
