A Rant on Green Garlic
My Urban Homestead
by wooddogs3
2y ago
Every few years I permit myself to carry a bit about garden produce that is misunderstood. Judging from what I see at farmers markets, green garlic is misunderstood. Because here’s the important thing: green garlic is green. It is bright vibrant green and not yet yellow-green or beginning to yellow, and certainly does not show any garlic scape yet. If the scape has appeared, it is no longer high-quality green garlic, although soon the scape will become a tasty item. Green garlic is very delicious from the time the leaves first show up on the ground to the time that the leaves are large and de ..read more
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Re-upping the Stirfry
My Urban Homestead
by wooddogs3
2y ago
I have been in touch with a discerning eater who is teaching himself to cook, and I decided to repost two posts on stir-frying that I wrote in the heart of the pandemic. This quickest and most frugal method of cooking might be daunting to approach, because of the prep and the high heat and speed required. but gather all your ingredients and have them ready to use beforehand, have a good wok and waiting rice, and it goes like lightning and lets you make tasty meals out of all kinds of vegetables. https://wp.me/pmQ9F-ZG ..read more
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Fall Renewal
My Urban Homestead
by wooddogs3
2y ago
  It’s been an unusual growing season at my place, with the strangeness in the larger world reflected in strange events that affected my gardening. First, a hard freeze two weeks later than I have ever had at my property before. Then after things were replanted, a heavy hailstorm in late spring that tore all the vegetable plants to tatters, shredded the tree leaves, and knocked little green fruit off the fruit trees. Then lots of clean-up and a new round of replanting. Then, about five weeks later, an even worse hailstorm. This one had hailstones an inch in diameter, and was followed by f ..read more
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Passing pleasures: Hops shoots
My Urban Homestead
by wooddogs3
3y ago
I decided to re-up this post on hops shoots without change because this is their brief season and because I still think that this is the best way to cook them. Many years ago I planted hops vines along my fences, planning to use the flowers for brewing. Not long afterwards, I gave up beer for weighty reasons, but in my difficult climate I’m not likely to get rid of plants that grow lustily with no attention. There was also the delightful bonus of hops shoots every spring. Gather the young shoots by snapping them off at the point where they snap easily. This is usually about the terminal 6-7 ..read more
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Glorious Greens, with Notes on Alfalfa
My Urban Homestead
by wooddogs3
3y ago
I once read that people who regularly ate leafy greens other than lettuce were, on average, 11 years slower to develop cognitive problems than their non-greens eating peers. This would be easy to check out in scientific literature, but I never have, for this simple reason: I prefer to believe that it’s true and don’t want to discover that it isn’t. I love greens and take it on faith that they’re a wonder-food, and what I do know for a fact is that some of the longest-lived and healthiest peoples in the world eat a lot of them. So chow down. Most of my spring harvest comes from perennial plan ..read more
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Early Spring: Collards
My Urban Homestead
by wooddogs3
3y ago
My yard is full of perennial greens ready to harvest, but the first greens I harvest every year are last year’s collards. Kale may be a good winter green in snowier areas, but in my nearly snowless windy desert, kale has desiccated to death by mid-December. My winter stalwart is collards, and I’ve never had a year in which they didn’t live through winter and produce a good crop. I plant in summer, harvest the majority of the leaves in late summer and fall for chicken greens but don’t remove the topmost leaves or the growing crown, and leave the stalks in place. By late February each stalk is ..read more
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Semi-Permaculture Garlic
My Urban Homestead
by wooddogs3
3y ago
Glorious spring is here. There are no leaves on the trees yet, but the fruit trees are starting to bloom, and the perennials are starting to show up.  Green garlic is always the first vegetable of my gardening year, and it’s one of the most welcome. I have seen “green garlic” in stores and farmers markets that was an elongated stalk with an actual bulb of garlic, and that isn’t what I’m talking about. At that age, the green parts are too tough to be of any culinary interest. The green garlic that I relish is tender and sweet.  I grow my garlic in permanent beds that  are enrich ..read more
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Leaf Ales for All Seasons
My Urban Homestead
by wooddogs3
3y ago
By any standards, we have been through a very strange year, and it isn’t over yet. The tragedy of the pandemic looms over everything, changing every professional, social, and financial situation. As a healthcare worker I’ve seen the distress caused as the impact of deaths ripples outward through families and communities. Anything that we can do to help and protect each other needs to be done. More than ever, I feel that provident householders who have taken some steps toward being able to meet their own needs are relatively fortunate even when times are tough. The 2020 growing season was a st ..read more
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Books Worth Reading: Regenerative Ocean Farming
My Urban Homestead
by wooddogs3
4y ago
I’m not sure how I came to read Eat Like a Fish, except that I had heard of kelp farming and was vaguely curious about it. I grew up in Louisiana and tend to think that seafood is my birthright, but I’ve become uneasily aware that the shrimp, lobster, crabs, and fish that I love so much are not readily sustainable. Bren Smith was a commercial fisherman for much of his life, and the first part of his book is the series of salty stories that made up his life on the ocean. Then he goes on to dismantle any illusion that his former way of life was sustainable. Commercial fishing? Larger more despe ..read more
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Got Milkweed?
My Urban Homestead
by wooddogs3
4y ago
I’ve written before about my efforts to grow milkweed, not just because it’s one of my favorite wild edibles but because I would like to be part of the chain that helps the monarch butterfly survive. Monarch larvae can only survive on milkweed, and so for years I’ve been nursing along milkweed plants as if they were orchids, never eating any myself because I needed them to grow and spread and maybe offer a home for some monarch larvae. This year, six years after this project originally began, I saw adult monarchs fluttering around my blooming milkweed. I ran for my phone but couldn’t get a go ..read more
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