Cleavers in the Soup Pot

As a follow-up to the previous blog on Galium aparine, also known by it's common name of 'cleavers', I decided to try some in a soup pot.  In my research, I found that cleavers has been used for centuries in herbal teas and as an addition to soups because of its high Vitamin C content and its many medicinal qualities.  The raw plant is inedible because of the clinging nature of the hooks so cooking is needed to soften them.  You wouldn't want the little 'cleavers' stuck in your throat. 

I cut about 3" off the tips of some of the young plants in my garden to put in the soup pot with chicken broth and shredded chicken breast.  The plant tips were already sticky, even at their young age.  Since I needed to boil the quinoa for 15 minutes that I would be adding, I tossed the cleavers in at the same time and cooked both at a low boil.  The cleavers made a fizzing sound when I dropped them in the boiling broth.  Could it have been from the tiny horns bursting?  Then I dished them all up.

The tips were edible, albeit tasteless (I expected at least a "green" flavor), but further down the boiled stems the hooks were still somewhat bristly.  Maybe just the top 2" of growth would be best if using it in a soup.  A more favorable use may be as an herbal tea where the infusion of the plants--either dried or fresh--will draw out the rich Vitamin C it contains and the other medicinal properties the plant has been known for in its long history.

I'm still intrigued by the red dye you can get from the roots, and the coffee-like drink from the dried and roasted seeds.  I'll be revisiting this 'wicked' but interesting weed again...

A Wicked Weed Indeed: Galium aparine

When we look over the weeds that show up in our gardens every year, most are easily recognizable like lambsquarters, bindweed, thistle, many of the sedges and spurges, and most of the grasses.  But last year a new plant started growing around my gardens that I hadn’t seen before; with a vibrant green color, dainty foliage, and tiny white flowers.  It was growing under many of my trees, along the fence line and in other areas where I had put leaf mulch over the years.

It wasn’t until the end of the growing season that I realized this was not a plant to fool with.  The plants had become rampant vines reaching over 6 feet high to climb up into my trees, and thickly covered plants in my tubs and raised beds until they were almost shaded out.  The tiny white flowers had been replaced by prickly burrs.

When I tried to pull out the plants, the tiny hooks on the leaves and stems scratched the skin on my bare arms and the burrs stuck to my gloves and my clothes, clinging to me like Velcro.  After putting on a long sleeved shirt I went back to work, pulling out all of the plants I could find. 

Then it was time to find out what I was dealing with.

A Google search using words describing the plant soon brought me to Images of possible candidates; and before long I spotted it—Galium aparine!

USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database**

Galium aparine is an herbaceous annual plant in the Rubiaceae family—the same family as Coffee, Gardenia, Sweet Woodruff, Bouvardia, Pentas and many other cultivated plants.  Its most common name is “cleavers” for the way it clings to everything; but it has many other names including, goosegrass, grip-grass, stickywilly, stickyjack, catchweed, and Robin-run-the hedge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galium_aparine 

Although there are native forms of Galium aparine in the North American continent--mainly found in deciduous woods, thickets and rocky coastal bluffs--the weedy type in most gardens was likely introduced from contaminated seeds brought by early settlers from Eurasia and quickly spread by hitching rides on animal fur and on human clothing.

Indigenous peoples on many continents have used Galium aparine, for centuries for its numerous medicinal qualities and the red dye produced from its roots.  The cooked greens are considered rich in Vitamin C and the roasted seeds can be used as a coffee substitute (coffea is a close cousin). http://www.altnature.com/gallery/cleavers.htm 

I also found out why Galium aparine chose my garden: it prefers and thrives on soils that are nutrient-rich, loamy, clayey and which contain humus.  After years of amending and improving my clay soil, along comes a plant that boldly lets me know how good it is.  So how can I be ticked off with a plant like that? Because once established in my gardens the plant will effectively compete with all of my other plants for light, water and nutrients, by smothering or climbing over any plants in its way.

Controlling Galium aparine is fairly easy if done early in the season.  The young plants can be pulled out by hand or covered with a thick layer of mulch to smother them.  This might be a good time to try some in a soup-pot because of its nutritional value.

Herbicides can also be used on early growth but the plant has an extended germination period so one application will not likely be enough.

If you wait until the plants have grown to maturity, be prepared to have to roll the vines into big balls like tumbleweeds and dispose of them outside of the garden.  Don’t even think of putting them in the compost pile.  Plan to also spend time picking the burrs off of your clothing and disposing of them where they are unable to germinate.   Or make use of the burrs by drying and roasting them to make a coffee-like beverage.

A really bad infestation of this wicked weed can take as long as 3 years of complete removal before seed production occurs.   I am now starting year one…

**Photo credit:  Douglas Ladd @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database/USDA SCS. 1991. Southern wetland flora: Field office guide to plant species.  South National Technical Center, Fort Worth.

The Wonderful Wonderberry

Part of the excitement of growing your own food is trying out some plants you haven’t tasted before.  We all love to try new varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, zucchini’s, peppers, melons and other easy to grow vegetables to experience the range of different flavors available from our fresh, homegrown produce.  So it was a pleasant surprise to find a plant that could bowl me over with a flavor unlike anything else I had ever tasted.  It was the historic heirloom: ‘Wonderberry’.

Luther Burbank

I came across the Wonderberry in the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog for 2011 earlier this year when I was putting together my seed orders.  The first thing that caught my eye was the botanical name of Solanum burbankii.  It was related to the tomato, AND it was developed by plant breeder Luther Burbank who developed the ‘Burbank’ tomato, my all time favorite.  On researching the plant, it turned out that the Wonderberry was the center of a very heated debate in the early 1900’s after Burbank sold the rights to the seeds to nursery agent John Lewis Childs in 1909, who changed the name from Burbank’s ‘Sunberry’, to his own ‘Wonderberry’.  Childs then brashly promoted it with outlandish claims as:

"Luther Burbank's greatest and newest production. Fruit blue-black like an enormous rich blueberry.  Unsurpassed for eating ... in any form. The greatest garden fruit ever introduced .... Easiest plant in the world to grow, succeeding anywhere and yielding great masses of rich fruit."

Prominent American horticulturists and plant scientists from as far as Kew Gardens in England stated that it was nothing more than a common weed (Solanum nigrum) or black nightshade. And newspapers across the country had a field day trying to discredit both Childs and Burbank.  Finally, in the late 1950’s, the ‘Wonderberry’ was proven to be a separate species, with seed roots in Africa, but not until the plant had vanished from commerce for decades in the wake of the controversy.  It’s now making a comeback as more gardeners give it a try.

The front of the seed packet I received from Baker Creek had a painted drawing instead of a photograph, so I had little idea what the plant was going to look like in the garden.  I planted the seeds on May 1, 2011 and by the end of June they had grown to small bushes with tiny white flowers.  By the end of July they had grown up to 3 feet and needed to be staked.  I tasted the first shiny black berries about a week later. They were watery with a slight tomato taste and very little sweetness.  I was not impressed.  But just a little over two weeks later that all changed.  The berries were no longer shiny but had a dull cast to them.  The tops of the petals holding each berry were a light yellow color instead of green.  The flavor of the berries was much improved and they were sweeter.   It was time to pick.

I looked for recipes on the Internet and found the most common way the Wonderberry was being used was as a jam.  I printed a few recipes for reference then went out with a cottage cheese carton to pick all the berries.   

Picking wonderberrys is completely different from picking other berries.  If you grasp the individual berry and pull, you’ll likely end up with squashed berry innards all over your fingers.  Instead, you gently roll the berries with your fingers and they will come right off the stem and fall into your hand.  Place a container under a cluster and the berries readily drop in as you roll them.  There will still be green berries on most of the clusters.  These will not come off if you roll them, and need to be left on the plant to ripen.

By the time I had rolled most of the black berries off the stems, I had about 1 ¼ cups of fruit.  Once in the kitchen, I poured the berries onto a paper towel spread in a large roasting pan to weed out any tiny bugs that may have fallen in and to pick out any green berries and plant debris.  Then the berries went into a strainer where they were gently washed.

For the jam recipe I used orange peel as a thickener since it contains a natural pectin in the white pith.  The orange peel gives the jam a very slight orange flavor note.  Lemon peel can also be used.  

I made the jam as a “refrigerator” jam since there’s just not enough to bother processing in a hot water bath to store away—it will be eaten way too soon.  But you will still need a sterilized jar to pour the finished jam into.  You can process the jar for storage if you wish, following standard canning procedures.

Wonderberry Jam

1 cup wonderberrys (I used all of what I picked, a little over a cup)

1/3 cup sugar

Peel of ¼ of a medium orange, including the white pith.  Cut this into long thin strips about ¼ “ wide.

Half-pint mason jar with lid, sterilized in a hot water bath

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Place all ingredients in a small kettle and bring the heat up to medium. 

2. Stir well as berries begin breakdown. 

3. Turn heat up to a medium-high.

4. Press the berries with the back of your spoon as you stir to break them down.

5. Continue to stir and press the berries until the jam comes to a low boil.

6. Turn the heat down to simmer and let the jam continue to slowly cook for about 45 minutes or until the liquids have reduced by at least 1/3 of original amount.  Stir occasionally.

7. Turn off the heat.

8. Remove the orange peels with tongs and set aside to cool on a plate.  These are delicious once cooled down.

9. Remove the sterilized jar from the hot water bath and pour in the jam.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.

 

Wonderberry Jam has sweetness similar to a grape jam but a decidedly different flavor.  It's absolutely delicious on an English muffin or a slice of toast with butter.  Spread on a generous spoonful of this dark amethyst colored jam and relish the WONDERful flavor of the Wonderberry!

Mid-Season Harvests in My Sacramento Garden

It’s mid-season harvest time and the vegetable garden has been thriving, despite the unseasonably cool summer—and maybe because of it.    The front-runners are the vegetables with “big” seeds that were initially planted in 4” pots and allowed to grow until rooted enough to transplant.  They included the banana squash, bush bean, cucumbers, pumpkins and zucchini.

Banana Squash—I’ve always wanted to try banana squash, not so much because I like to eat it, which I don’t, but because of the novelty of the huge fruit it makes.  The vines of my banana squash have grown very long and taken over a lot of garden space, as expected, with one vine that found a way to climb up a bush next to the fence and is heading over to the other side of the fence into the neighbors yard (lucky them!).  It took 5 weeks before the plants produced the first female flower, with the first squash now over 19” long and growing.  There are a couple more little yellow torpedoes starting to grow now but the plants seem reluctant to produce anymore female flowers.  That’s okay, because I think we have enough; there’s no room for more.

Bush Bean ‘Nugget’—these plants started out with sparse growth and weak stems resulting in the bushes flopping over with watering or in the wind.  About 3 weeks into their growth I packed a solid 3-inches of mulch all around them to help keep the soil moist and hold up the plants.  I also fed them with fish emulsion every week.  In less than 2 weeks the plants had grown fuller, the bushes were standing up straight, and beans were forming on all the stems.  I picked the first cream-yellow beans a week after for soup and have been harvesting every 5-7 days since.  The bushes are pretty much finished and I could start some more if I wanted to since they have an average harvest time of 52 days.  But I think I’ll wait till next year.  The beans are good in soup and vegetable stews.  The taste is very mild.

Cucumber ‘Marketmore 76’—this cucumber gets both thumbs up for ease of growth, prolific fruiting, and delicious taste.  The roots in the 4” pots were very well formed at the time of planting and the plants had their first bloom just a week after planting in the garden bed.  I set up a trellis line for the vines and they were attaching readily.  The first cucumber began to form by the third week, and by the forth week I was picking.  From then on, the vines began to flower nonstop with little baby cukes showing up every day.  I’ve been harvesting cucumbers every 3-5 days.  These cucumbers are big and solid with a clean, slightly sweet flavor and not a hint of bitterness.  They can be picked between 6 and 9 inches and are usually straight, but can be curved.  Take two cucumbers, peel, slice thin and cover with rice vinegar mixed with about 2 tablespoons of sugar,  ½ teaspoon of salt, and a dribble of sesame oil.  Nummers!

Cucumber ‘Green Slam’—compared to the ‘Marketmore 76’, this cucumber is a disappointment.  The transplants struggled from the time they were put in the bed next to ‘Marketmore 76’ and only by packing a thick mulch around them, did they finally start to put on growth.  I had to help them attach to the trellis as the vines grew.  The small leaves also wilted severely in the heat which meant pouring supplemental water around them every afternoon.  I don’t think the plants put down very long roots to get at moisture deeper in the soil.  The cucumbers are small and I picked the first one about 7 weeks after planting.  These cukes should be picked at about 6 inches.  The flesh is dryer than ‘Marketmore 76’ and the taste is very mild.  It does have fewer seeds.  When I grow this cucumber again to use up the seed, I’ll plant it in a tub where I can set it in a spot with afternoon shade and see how it does.  I think ‘Green Slam’ may be better suited to coastal climates rather than the hot Sacramento Valley conditions. 

 

Pumpkin ‘Jack Be Little’—I planted 3 4-inch pots at the end of the corn bed right around the end of May.  They have been growing vigorously since that time and have begun to grow along the woven trellis around the corn--even growing over the top of the corn patch.  I checked the vines in vain every morning for over 7 weeks for female flowers; male flowers all over the place, but no females.  Then one day 2 weeks ago, I moved a leaf aside and, there it was, the first little pumpkin, looking like a creamy marshmallow at the end of the stem.  It reached about 4 inches in diameter and colored a deep orange this week —ready to pick.  It’s so cute.  It sits right in the palm of my hand.  And, wonder of wonders!  There are more female flowers showing up and more creamy chunks growing on the vines.  Fingers crossed, I’ll have a bushel by October!

 

Zucchini ‘Revenue’—what can you say about zucchini?  It pretty much grows itself.  You just have to find homes for all the zukes as they seem to explode off the bushes all at once.  ‘Revenue’ is a really good variety.  The plant stays fairly bushy with a shape around 3’x 3’ with very slight vining.  Two bushes are plenty for two people.  The color is a medium green (see the sample in the basket above) and it has a nice, clean taste that works well in scrambled eggs, creamy soups, mixed vegetable stews or chopped in salads.  I was a little worried when the bushes stopped producing at the end of August, but they started putting out more zukes about a week later.  Needless to say, the production is starting to get out of hand again.  Time to dig out my Zucchini Bread recipe.

 

Corn Lodging Follow-Up

The corn block is doing exceptionally well since I set up the woven containment system for each stalk.  In fact, the corn stalks have grown almost 1/2 foot since last weekend and are now up to 36" tall.  

This won't be the end of my worries, though.  When I picked the corn variety "Honey & Cream" from the catalog, it was because the description sounded so good:   

"Nothing beats the old-fashioned flavor of this classic, bicolor corn.  

Succulent and sweet, 7 inch ears form 12 rows of the most flavorful, creamy kernals".  

I had fixated on "old-fashioned flavor" and "flavorful, creamy kernals".   I failed to seriously take into account the rest of the description:  "Robust, 7 foot tall plants ..."  

                                                  7-FOOT TALL PLANTS!!  

What was I thinking?  Obviously, I wasn't.  Most corn varieties for the home garden fall in the 5-6 foot range which would have been a better height for my garden.  With the corn growing in a 16" high raised cinderblock bed, the tops may eventually be unreachable.   ..."where corn grows as high as an elephant's eye"...

So my plan is to add 8 foot stakes at the corners and continue to corral the block of corn inside the twine enclosure to prevent "stalk lodging".  That's when the corn plant is actively growing ears and breaks in the middle of the stalk from strong gusts of wind.  The result from this type of lodging is pretty much total loss of the plant.

I'll be learning more from growing this block of corn than I had ever imagined...

Corn Lodging in the Home Garden

I know a lot of gardeners in the Sacramento Valley have planted corn as part of their vegetable garden mix.  But wind conditions on Sunday were really bad for the young corn stalks just getting going with our late spring heat.  Gusts of dry, northwest winds started up early in the morning with a few strong gusts to 30 mph; sustained winds were between 18-20 mph.  I looked out the kitchen window around 10:00 am and couldn't believe what had happened to the corn.  The stalks were lying almost horizontally in the bed and the wind was continuing to beat them down in erratic waves.

I ran out to see how bad it was.  It was bad.  It could have been worse had I not planted baby pumpkins at the south side of the bed.  They were holding the end stalks up just enough to keep the stalks from lying flat on the ground.  I'd heard of this condition and even seen pictures of it in huge corn acreages, but never thought it would happen in my garden.  It was "corn lodging".

Corn can stand slow wind speeds with the roots acting as guy ropes to anchor the plants against lodging.  But during high wind events, the windward roots are pulled from the soil while the leeward roots start to buckle from the fluctuating changes in the direction of the wind, causing the plants to compress down onto the next row of plants.

When lodging happens in large corn fields a decision is often made to leave the corn alone for a few days while the stalks redevelop a root-system, causing the stalks form into a vertical pattern called "goosenecking".  This may decrease photosynthesis and increase the potential for diseases, but it is usually not a complete loss for the farmer.

Because my block of corn is significantly smaller than in the big farms, I decided to use a method for holding the stalks up throughout the season and help prevent possible lodging as our summer winds blow through the valley.

I don't remember where I had seen this method but I know I'm not the first one to use it for the home garden.  It's a simple weaving of twine down the rows in one direction and through the rows in a perpendicular direction, leaving each corn stalk in its own protective cage of twine.

The corn stalks are now back to almost upright positions.  More twine levels will be added as the stalks continue to grow.

Although I feed the corn with fish emulsion every weekend, I decided to add an additional side-dressing of vegetable fertilizer (5-10-10) to encourage faster root development.  Now I just need to wait and see if the corn recovers and gets back on its way to growing tasty late summer treats.

Will Old Zucchini Seeds Germinate?

A question one of my readers asked, after seeing some of the old seeds I was planting, was if old Zucchini seeds will germinate.  I can now say YES! …and NO.  The Squash ‘Slender Gem’ from 2005 and Zucchini ‘Round Bush’, also from 2005 did not germinate—none ever even broke the surface.  But the Zucchini ‘Revenue’ from 2005 all germinated and have grown to healthy plants in their 4” pots.   My suggestion if you’re wondering about planting seeds 3 years or older is to plant them in 4” pots rather than directly into the garden, in case they don’t germinate.  But also make sure you leave some space in the garden for the plants in case they do germinate.

Seed germination has not been a big issue with this years crops since most of the seedlings came up by the third week of May.  It was the last week of May and the first week of June that has had the most impact on all of the plants.  I lost the ‘Orange Delight’ melon which just did not thrive in the unseasonably cold and damp.  And the melons ‘Hales Best’ and ‘Jenny Lind’ are just hanging on.  I may just plant a fresh crop now that the weather is warming up.

Equally holding on are the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and okra.  They’re still in the 6-packs with too little root development to transplant to 4” pots.  With a three week minimum rooting period in the 4” pots before transplanting into the gardens, it will likely be mid-July before any of them get transplanted into the gardens. 

Looks like September harvests will be very big this year…