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Dear reader, Greetings everyone, a special welcome to new subscribers and a huge hello to longer term readers. It is a wet wintery day here in Tauranga which is perfect for sitting at the computer creating a newsletter.
I have been unwell with a very heavy cold and cough the like I've not had for years, but it wasn't like a flu where I had to be in bed. I could still function with lots of resting. I guess I needed an upgrade by the virus which I've learned from Dr Zach Bush we need to enable us to adapt to changing conditions and create antibodies. I've actually sort of enjoyed making all sorts of herbal brews and all the dried herbs I had for such a situation were on hand. I've drunk elderflower and yarrow tea. The yarrow helps open pores and allow sweating and the elderflower is cooling. Both help stop secondary infections. I also used 2T of each infused in water and then put the strained liquid into a bath. Another brew I made was kumarohou (excellent native plant for lung conditions), thyme, ginger with a piece of lemon. I was over the moon delighted when I found I'd dried some elderberries so I soaked them and then made a syrup. Elderberry is very good for boosting the immune system. Today's brew is kumarahou, thyme, rosehips and marshmallow root. I also found some dried horehound leaf and I made tea of it with licorice root. Horehound is so bitter it was good with the elderberry syrup. I haven't had any sense of taste but I could sense the bitter and the sweet. In addition, I've been steaming over a bowl of boiling water and eucalyptus oil. Wow that certainly makes me cough up the thick phlegm. I also used a roller ball container with coconut oil and essential oils of manuka, wild thyme (or any antifungal,antiviral,or antibackterial essential oil you have) to roll over my neck, lymph glands and chest. With all that good input I am healing well!!
I haven't felt like smoothies, instead I've been making warm soups with lots of greens. I have made different combinations of salads as you'll see below. And I have a nice lot of root vegetables in the garden.
Workshops coming up:
Sunday 1st August: Coromandel at Jo Sandersons property. Go here for booking
Sunday 22nd August: Raglan at the Wimmer's Permaculture property. Go here for booking.
Numbers are limited for both workshops
If you'd like to order a hard copy of my book "Julia's guide to edible weeds and wild green smoothies" go here
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The pot on the right has horehound and licorice. I strained this and put it in the brown bottle. Behind left is the dried horehound. I wrote a blog about horehound here. I named it Horehound - cough cure.
The black looking liquid in the bottle is the elderberry syrup. |
This is the brew today with rosehips (from my garden roses), marshmallow root, thyme sprigs, ginger pieces and kumarahou. You could add honey too. |
Root vegetables from the garden
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The root vegetables have been wonderful this winter. I'm so pleased when I pull a good sized carrot. During the summer I watered the carrots with liquid seaweed, that I collected and soaked myself. I put it in a pillow case in a water container and then dunk the watering can in the container. I put maybe 20cm liquid seaweed and top the can up with water. The kumara tubers all came from one plant and there are golden beetroot in front of the picture. At the back left are a white/green daikon radish and a round black radish. The mild tasting daikon I use in salad cut into match sticks and the black radish hotter radish I bake. |
Here's something a little bit different. Prickly pear cactus Opuntia stricta though not a weed on our shores of Aotearoa, in Australia has ruined the livelihoods of many farmers. It was unstoppable in spreading for a decade until the 1920s, when its natural enemy the cactoblastis moth was introduced. Noxious in Australia, here we grow it for its bright yellow flowers, rich red fruits and dramatic appearance. There are 300 species some of whom have red or pink flowers. The best part is Opuntia holds nutritional and medicinal secrets beneath the mean exterior. |
I first met this spiny, perennial shrub that grows up to 2 metres high with flattened stems rather than leaves, in Canterbury at my friend Vanya’s organic farm. All the flattened stems or pads are covered in vicious spines and tufts of minutely barbed glochids (hairs). These are easily dislodged and stick to the skin if touched. They’re difficult to see and remove and can cause discomfort. To handle them use thick gloves. I’m looking forward to the large lemon-yellow flowers as then it will produce the succulent red fruit which can be made into jams and jellies and they’re also wonderful medicine. The slimy/mucilaginous juice of the fruit made into a syrup forms a sticky protective coating over a sore throat. In 1925 in New South Wales a local doctor had success treating diabetic patients with a solution he made by soaking the shredded pads in water overnight, then straining the pulp through a sieve. The patients drank a glassful before meals. They said it was ‘unpleasant and slimy to taste’, but the doctor declared ‘there is not a slightest doubt about its value’[1].
[1] The Magic and Medicine of Plants, Readers Digest, 2010. |
I now have a plant in my garden that is three pads high. Despite the spines and hairs snails manage to munch into the pads and have even made a hole. This is a sign that there is something worth eating and indeed the pads can be eaten like a vegetable and are popular in Mexican dishes. You have to remove the spines with a knife and peel the glochids using a potato peeler. They can be cut into strips, boiled for five minutes to remove the mucilaginous texture (although I don’t mind that), and pan fried. They are said to taste a cross between a green bean and asparagus.
The grey green leaves around my cactus are from the Seakale plant. It is a wonderful perennial vegetable. Now it is completely died down resting in the ground but it will regrow in spring with delicious new growth. Read my blog all about it here. |
Wild forest gardens in the Pacific Northwest of America
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This is a wonderful article about cultivated gardens created by Indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest of America and how "the former settlement sites harbored a far more diverse mix of plants than the surrounding conifer forests."
Excepts from the article
"Because these wild-looking forest gardens don’t fit conventional Western notions of agriculture, it took a long time for researchers to recognize them as a human-created landscape at all.
The forest gardens were filled with plants that benefited humans, but they also continue to provide food for birds, bears, and insect pollinators, even after 150 years of neglect. It’s evidence that human impact on the environment can have long-lasting positive effects. “A lot of functional diversity studies have a ‘humans are bad for the environment’ approach,” Armstrong says. “This shows humans have the ability to not just allow biodiversity to flourish, but to be a part of it.”
Read the full article here. |
To leave covered or to uncover a garden bed?
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This raised bed has been left fallow all summer. I didn't water it and the sweet marjoram survived as did the purple sprouting broccoli, red clover and plantain and grasses. Recently my Wwoofer Chloe cleared this end of the bed and I found it so hard to see this. It looked like a shorn sheep without it's coat. I hate to see bare soil - it is so vulnerable. Yet we humans think it looks so much better to us. Why is this? What do you think looking at this scene?
It does mean I can plant it up with edible vegetables and I have done that. It now has leeks growing in it. and I have mulched with hay around the cherry tree. Mulching is a good way to protect the soil. |
This is the other end of the cleared bed above and the bed next to it. Chloe said she preferred the look of the bed with the nasturtium and arugula as there are more useful things in it that can be eaten and it is true there is lots of diversity in this bed. It is not just grass as in the bed opposite. There is a movement towards leaving wild areas in a garden. I find the wild grasses attract the seed eating gold finches. They will also eat the puha seed once its ripe. I call my garden a nature sanctuary meaning I let things go to seed for the birds and insects. |
The above salad is based on grated beetroot and carrot, with chickweed, lettuce, fennel, lentil sprouts and I added black nightshade berries as decoration. They add diversity, a taste of sweetness and the contrasts of colour and shape.
I like making vegetables into different shapes and in this salad to the left I made long stripes of daikon radish and carrot along with celery, fennel bulb, chickweed, red cabbage and decorated with my microgreens from kale seed I saved. I also have a self sown tomato in the greenhouse and it provided this one tomato.
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This salad it mostly chickweed from the garden, along with celery, red cabbage, fennel bulb, carrot, daikon radish, apple and then decorated with calendula petals, primrose flowers and purple oxalis leaves. I don't put dressing on the salad and that helps it keep longer in the fridge. The dressing I make is lemon juice, olive oil, mustard, a splash of tamari, and then a small about of pomegranite syrup. Really delicious! |
This kingfisher has been coming to the garden which has been so thrilling. I have seen it sit and watch and then fly over and catch a praying mantis. It then bashes it on the perch and then eats it. I've also seen it go down and pick up a worm. They have amazing eyesight. I keep my binoculars handy to watch the birds in the garden. I also have goldfinches and sparrows who've stripped the Magenta spreen of their seeds. |
This lovely golden amaranth sowed itself in late summer in the path and I enjoyed watching it grow, mature and produce seeds which the birds and I harvested. You can eat the leaves in smoothies, young tender ones cut up finely in salad or steam them like spinach. The seeds can be added to muesli, crackers or your smoothies.
(The dried stems behind the amaranth are the bare magenta spreen branches that the birds stripped. Now they'll be cut up for the compost and being so woody provide a good source of carbon.)
Compared to other grains, amaranth seeds have a much higher content of the minerals calcium, magnesium and iron, and the amino acid lysine. They’re also high in potassium, zinc, vitamins B and E, and protein. Amaranth leaves are also loaded with nutrition. For example, they contain three times more calcium and niacin (B3) than spinach leaves, or twenty times more calcium and seven times more iron than lettuce. The leaves are an excellent source of vitamin A in the form of antioxidant carotenoids, iron, calcium, protein, vitamins C, K, riboflavin (B2), pyridoxine (B6), magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese. Excerpt from my book 'Julia's guide to edible weeds and wild green smoothies', page 15. |
Last year during lockdown I had a Chinese woman called Mingxia staying here. We tried drying persimmon for the first time the way she knew it was done in China . They were so successful I wanted to do it again. And this year my wwoofer Chloe peeled them and hung them and this is the result as you see in the photo. They are amazingly great to eat - tasting sweet, like caramel and are nice and chewy. Here is a video on how it is done in Japan on a very large scale. They're a delicacy there where they eat them in a tea ceremony. Watch here. Compared to the beautiful looking ones in the video we have some refining to do in the peeling I think. I noticed they peel them vertically and that must influence how they look in the end. |
Ted talk called 'The beautiful trick of flowers' by
Jonathan Drori
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In this visually dazzling talk, Jonathan Drori shows the extraordinary ways flowering plants -- over a quarter million species -- have evolved to attract insects to spread their pollen: growing 'landing-strips' to guide the insects in, shining in ultraviolet, building elaborate traps, and even mimicking other insects in heat. Watch the Ted talk here. |
Geometric patterns in the garden
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These tendrils of the bottle gourd climbing over the fence from the neighbour were so decorative that I had to take photos of them. |
Decorative edible flowers
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These gorgeous pretty edible flowers all from my garden were used to decorate a 16th birthday cake. There are pansies, arugula and white brassica flowers, cosmos, zinnia, lavender, one pink stock flower and heartsease pansies.
I'll leave you with the beauty of these flowers and wish you all much health and happiness, Love Julia |
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