Stinging Nettle Video — The Most Nutritious Plant On Earth?

Stinging Nettle — The Most Nutritious Plant On Earth?

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) is plant whose edible, medicinal, and utilitarian benefits typically surpass those of other wild species. In this video, we discuss all things stinging nettle — including proper identification, look-alikes, medicinal properties, and more!

STINGING NETTLES - For the Garden

STINGING NETTLE  - Urtica dioica

Stinging Nettle offers extraordinary nutrition, both for plants and humans.  The nettles plant provides edible, medicinal, and utilitarian benefits, surpassing those of other wild plant species.  

Stinging Nettle grows in the wild throughout the US, especially in areas with regular rainfall. Nettles are partial to rich, moist to wet soil, and may also be found deep in the woods, or even on roadsides. They can be very successful weeds, tolerating a wide range of soil conditions.

This herb is extraordinarily rich in nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, oligoelements, enzymes, and trace minerals, especially iron.

The herb acquired its name because of its sting, which doesn't last more than a few hours, but is highly irritating. You don't want to brush up against a nettle plant, because they will definitely let you know who they are - Stinging Nettle. Gloves are advised when harvesting, and/or digging up a plant to transplant to your garden. Best to plant in an out of the way area that you do not have to closely pass by very often.  

How to Use Nettle in the Garden

Stinging nettles seems to stimulate the "immune system" of plants, by providing good balanced nutrition, which makes them more resistant to insect and disease attacks. 

For those unable to forage seaweeds from the beach, stinging nettle is the answer for making compost and tea for the garden.

Stinging Nettle Tea for your Plants

How to make Nettle Tea - purin-d'ortie

1. Use a large container, such as a large plastic garbage can and cover with a lid. Need to use a non-chlorinated water, such as from a rainbarrel. Chlorine inhibits the fermentation of the tea. 

2. Cut fresh nettles tops at about half their height. Mix the cuttings with water in the can.

3. Mix one gallon of water with every pound of fresh nettles (or with every 2 ounces of dried nettles).  Keep covered with lid. Fermented nettle tea has a very strong odor.  Allow the nettles to brew/ferment from one to three weeks, depending on the ambient temperature. The hotter it is, the quicker the process. Note: place can in shade during the summer to prevent the mixture from overheating and killing the necessary fermenting bacteria. When the fermentation has ceased, the tea is ready. Stir the mixture to test this. Cover your nose, or turn head away to avoid the fumes, then quickly peak at the mixture. If there are no more bubbles, then the fermentation is complete.

4. Strain the tea as soon as the fermentation has stopped. Store the infusion in clean plastic or glass containers in a cool spot and label well. It is ready for use as an herbicide, or dilute to use for foliar feeding or as a nutritional soil drench.

Use Diluted Nettle tea as a Supplementary Plant Food

Nettle tea must be diluted before using as a foliar feeding spray or applied as a nutritional soil drench.

To dilute the tea for soil applications - dilute to a 10% solution (1 cup of original infusion to 10 cups of water)

To dilute the tea for foliar feeding -  dilute to a 5% solution (1 cup of original infusion to 20 cups of water)

Use Undiluted Nettle tea as a Organic Herbicide

Undiluted nettle tea can be used as an organic herbicide. Use the undiluted nettle tea on actively growing weeds, and two weeks later, the weeds will be gone and the ground will be richly fertilized and ready for planting.

Saving Seeds: 7 Reasons Why and Dozens of Tips for How

Saving seeds can help gardeners save money, grow better crops and become more self-reliant. Learn all about saving vegetable seeds.

By Roberta Bailey
December 2012/January 2013

When you save your own seeds, you are joining a chain of farmers, gardeners and seed savers that dates back to the Stone Age. All domestic crops were once wild plants that early humans selected to feed themselves or, later, their livestock. Today, gardeners save seeds for many reasons.

Photo By Dwight Kuhn

1. Money Savings. Every time you buy a seed variety, you invest in your future. For example, I just bought some expensive ‘Midori Giant’ soybean seed, and I feel better about the high price tag because I know I’ll have the variety as long as I continue saving seeds from my plants. (With soybeans, you simply let the last picking dry on the plant and you have next year’s seed.)

2. Seed Security. Hundreds of excellent plant varieties have been discontinued as big corporations have consolidated the seed industry and focused on more profitable hybrids. If you save your own seed, however, you control the supply. I save seed for ‘Miragreen’ and ‘Blizzard’ peas, ‘Lutz Green Leaf’ beets, and ‘Scarlet Keeper’ carrots because these varieties all grow well here in Maine but have become difficult to find in seed catalogs.

3. Regional Adaptation. This is where saving vegetable seeds can get exciting. Most commercially available seed has been selected because it performs fairly well across the entire country if given synthetic fertilizers. (Several companies now offer seeds selected specifically to perform well in organic conditions — but this isn’t the norm.) When you save seed from the best-performing plants grown on your own land and with your unique cultural conditions, you gradually develop varieties that are better adapted to your soil, climate and growing practices.

4. Consistent Quality. To keep their prices competitive when producing open-pollinated (OP) seed crops, large seed suppliers rarely “rogue” the fields to pull out inferior or off-type plants. This means the OP seed they sell to retail seed companies may have a lot of off-types in it. For gardeners and market farmers, that translates to loss of production per foot of row. To avoid this loss, either save your own seed, or pay more for premium seed produced by small, organic producers whose seeds cost more because they properly select for uniformity and rogue out any plants that aren’t true to type. (See our Seed Company Directory for profiles of more than 100 seed companies, some of which do their own variety trials and follow careful selection practices.)

5. The Joy of Learning. Some people are drawn to the science of seed saving because they want to take their gardening experience to a higher level. The more seeds you save, the more you inevitably learn about botany and the plant kingdom.

6. Explore Heirloom Varieties. Some folks like to grow heirloom varieties because doing so gives them a connection to our garden heritage. Others choose non-hybrid seeds because they don’t want to support the industrial agriculture system that increasingly controls our food supply. Plus, some older, open-pollinated varieties produce more nutritious crops than do modern hybrids bred mostly for high yields and long shelf life. 

7. Influence Crop Traits. Gene pools are incredibly elastic. By carefully observing your plants, you can save seed from those plants that best meet your needs for germination, ripening time, yield, specific fruit shape, flavor, storage qualities, less seediness, better disease resistance, bloom color, or other unique traits within the variety. With time, most of the plants you grow will have your desired traits. For instance, I obtained ‘Elka,’ a Slovakian poppy seed traditionally used before walnuts became commercially available. The Slovaks saved seeds from only the seed heads with the smallest vents — the little holes below the cap that allow the precious nutty seeds to disperse — until eventually their variety had all unvented heads that shed no seed. When I first grew ‘Elka,’ only two-thirds of its seed heads had no open vents. I started selectively saving seed only from the poppy heads that had closed vents. Within three years, all of my plants had seed heads with no open vents, and I didn’t lose any more seed.

Know Your Seed-Saving Goals

Think ahead and create specific goals as you save seed. If you’re saving an heirloom, are you trying to keep it true to its original traits? Are your seed-saving practices changing the plant? If you save seed from the first lettuce plant to bolt, you are selecting for lettuce that bolts early — not a good trait in lettuce. If you save seed from your tomato plants that did not succumb to late blight, you are selecting to improve that variety’s disease resistance.

When I started growing ‘Czech Black’ hot peppers, the fruits varied greatly in shape, from fat peppers with large seed cavities to slender ones with almost no seed. Most were medium-sized fruits that came to a blunt point. If I’d just wanted to save the most seeds with the least amount of work, I could have saved the fat peppers that had the most seeds. But I was trying to produce a seed crop to sell and it needed to be true to the plant type, so I saved seed from the medium-sized peppers growing on the sturdiest, highest-yielding plants. After four years, the peppers were uniform in fruit size and heat — plus, the plants were sturdier and more productive.

Seed-Saving Tips

You should always choose open-pollinated varieties for seed saving. Open-pollinated (OP) plants are non-hybrid plants with seed that is true generation after generation. A hybrid is the offspring of a cross between two parent varieties. Its seed will not be true to type if saved and replanted. Hybrid varieties will be labeled in catalogs and on seed packets as “Hybrid” or “F1.”

 There are two main types of open-pollinated varieties: self-pollinating and cross-pollinating. The easiest crops to save seed from are peas, beans, tomatoes and peppers, all of which are self-pollinating crops. Self-pollinating plants pollinate themselves, usually before the flowers open. The seed that you save from these plants and grow the next year will yield plants just like the original ones. To maintain the plant’s genetic diversity, you should ideally grow and save seed from 20 or more plants. If you save seed from only one self-pollinating plant, the plant will reproduce, but you are narrowing its genetic diversity.

Unlike self-pollinating plants, cross-pollinating plants, such as brassicas, corn, carrots, beets, squash, cucumbers and melons, must receive pollen (usually via wind or insects) from other plants of the same variety to produce viable, true-to-type seed. Cross-pollinating seed crops need to be isolated from other varieties of the same species. The simplest solution is to grow only one variety of a given species. You can save seeds from just one or two plants, but to maintain long-term health and vigor, you should buy new seed every few years unless you can collect from much larger populations than the 20 plants recommended for self-pollinators. Grow a minimum of 50 to 100 plants, and at least 200 for corn. Keep an eye out for plants that seem off-type (like my fat ‘Czech Black’ peppers), and don’t include them when you collect seed. (Go to the Seed Savers Exchange’s Planting and Seed Saving Instructions for details on isolation distances and other specifics for dozens of crops.)

To save seed from legumes, such as self-pollinating peas and beans, simply allow some pods to dry on the plant. Save the leftover seed at the end of your picking stage, or cordon off a section of the row. As the plants will need to be in the garden longer than the “green” stage, allow for this in your garden plan. Different varieties grown right next to each other will have minimal or no cross-pollination, but ideally you should separate varieties by 20 feet to avoid rare cases of cross-pollination.

If you want to save seeds for several varieties of a cross-pollinated crop in the same garden, a physical barrier such as a screen cage or row cover can keep the seed crops isolated. I use wire hoops and row covers on some seed crops to keep them pure. I also alternate years, growing one variety one year and another the next. My ‘Lutz’ beet seed crop produced enough seed to last five to 10 years, leaving me free to produce other beet seed crops in the interim.

If you’re growing a crop for seed, think ahead of time about spacing. Tomato, pepper or bean plants don’t need more space as seed crops, but biennial beets and carrots do because of how large the seed-producing plants will be in their second year. Beet plants that I set out the second year from roots I stored in my root cellar grew to 3-foot-wide plants. As large seed crops grow, also think about feeding them. I give my seed crops extra nitrogen and minerals during seed production.

When saving seeds, good record keeping is essential. Label your seedlings, your planted rows and your stored seed. I keep a map as a backup record, too, in case a critter makes off with a row marker or weather washes away a label’s ink.

If you spot an interesting off-type, you can save seed and grow it out the next year to see what happens. You may be on your way to creating a new variety — or at least embarking on a little botanical adventure.

Seed crops are harvested at different times than food crops. I often tie off an entire section of a row with ribbon and save all of the seed from that section, leaving it long after the rest of the plants have been removed. Watch plants that produce pods; when the pods are dry but not shattering, they are ready to harvest. I find handpicking pea pods easiest, at least on a small scale. I harvest entire bean and soybean plants and hang them until they are completely dry, then thresh them in a clean bucket. Blow off the chaff using wind or a fan, or sift it through a screen.

Flower heads are usually hand-harvested as they dry. Morning glories and vine crops often mature their bottom seed husks or pods first and progress up the vine as the season goes on. Spread the seed heads out to dry, rub them back and forth between your hands to free the seed, and then winnow or screen away most of the chaff.

Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and cucumbers can be picked as individual fruit. Let the fruit become very ripe to overripe to ensure mature seed. Leave cucumbers on the vine until they mature past the yellow blimp stage. Eggplant should be starting to brown and rot. Tomatoes and peppers need to be very ripe or just past ripe, or picked close to ripe, and then stored until fully ripe to overripe (a process called “after-ripening”).

Tomatoes and cucumbers are “wet” seeds: They have a gel sac around each seed that hinders germination and, in rare cases, can harbor disease. They need to be soaked to remove the gel sac. Squeeze the tomatoes or scrape the seed from the tomato cavities into a labeled container, covering it to keep out flies. Allow the seed to soak for 24 to 48 hours. Add more water after soaking. The good seed will sink while the immature seed will float along with the pulp. Pour off the pulp. Add more water and continue to pour off the pulp until all that remains is clean seed on the bottom. Pour this seed into a strainer to drain off all liquid, and then spread the seeds out to dry in a cool, airy place. I spread my seed on newspaper. Paper plates also work, but paper towels are too fibrous and will stick to the seeds. Label the newspaper or paper plate with the variety name. When the tomato seed is half-dried, stir it to make it less clumpy. After seeds have completely dried, break up any remaining seed clumps and pack the seeds for storage.

To save eggplant seed, grate the fruit or put it through a food processor, and then add it to water. The seed will sink and the pulp will float.
Peppers are even simpler: Just cut fruits open and remove and dry the seed.

For much more on seed-saving procedures for different crops, see the books Saving Seeds by Marc Rogers and The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds by Robert and Cheryl Moore Gough.

Store dried seed in glass jars, plastic bags or paper envelopes. Glass is best, as it does not allow moisture into the seed. Store seeds in a cool, dry place — ideally at less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit and at a relative humidity level of less than 50 percent. In general, for every 10 degrees colder the storage conditions, seed longevity doubles, so it’s best to keep seed in a covered container in a refrigerator. As long as the seed is very dry, it will last longest if you keep it in a freezer. All seed should be dried to a brittle state, ideally to less than 14 percent moisture (the level at which ice crystals won’t form on seeds if stored in the freezer). When you’re ready to use seeds that have been in freezer storage, allow the storage jar to come to room temperature before opening it to avoid condensation on the seed.

Different types of seed have different life spans. Many retain good germination for only a few years, while others stay viable for an impressively long time. Some classic one-year wonders are parsley, parsnip and onions. They may last a second year, but germination and vigor will be much lower. In general, pepper seeds maintain good germination rates for two years; legumes and carrots, three years; squash, beet, eggplant, tomato and brassicas, four years; cucumber, five years; and lettuce, six years. Exact storage conditions affect longevity greatly, however, and seeds from some of these crops can last 10 years or more.

You can do a simple germination test by loosely rolling a few dozen seeds in a moist, white paper towel, keeping it covered with plastic wrap and slightly moist to sprout the seed. Most seed will sprout in four to 28 days. If it takes longer or if less than 50 percent of the seeds sprout, you should probably toss the seeds.

If you end up with more seed than you can use, find a local seed swap. You can trade or share your seed, and you’ll come home with new, locally adapted seed varieties as well as a head likely spinning from all of the knowledge you’ve gleaned from fellow gardeners who share a love of growing great food.
 Organize a seed swap near you, and have MOTHER EARTH NEWS help you get the word out.

Saving Seeds to Sell

If you’re interested in selling seeds that you produce, contact a seed company’s purchaser to inquire about which crops the company needs grown. Specify your areas of expertise. Most seed companies contract for specific strains or varieties one to three years ahead of time.

If you pitch your favorite variety to a seed company, the representatives will want a seed sample so they can trial or observe it for a year or two. Then, if they’re interested, they will contract with you. Some seed companies have tight legal contracts and deadlines. Some use just verbal commitments, however, and you can provide a contract if you want more insurance in such cases.

Prices paid vary with each seed company, and certified organic seed commands higher prices. My experience selling organic seed has been the following: tomato seed at $360 per pound; peppers at $40 per ounce; flowers from $10 per gram for tiny seed to $50 per ounce; hardy, rare rice at $10 per ounce; peas and beans at $5 per pound.
A small seed company may only need a few ounces of seed. Larger companies rarely deal in small lots, requiring 1 to 20 pounds of small seed, such as that of tomatoes. Inquire upfront about amounts needed.

The Organic Seed Alliance provides education and advisory services for seed savers and is an excellent resource.

---

Seed Saving Made Simple

Always save from open-pollinated (OP) varieties, not hybrids. There are two main types of OP crops:
• Self-pollinating (easiest to save), including peas, beans, tomatoes and peppers
• Cross-pollinating (require isolation), including brassicas, corn, carrots, beets, squash, cucumbers and melons

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/saving-seeds-http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/saving-seeds-zm0z12djzsto.aspx

Edible landscaping sprouts beyond the vegetable patch

Originally published Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 4:01 PM

Tips on creating an edible landscape that can help reduce some pest problems while benefiting pollinators, enhance soil fertility and provide homegrown fruits, vegetables and herbs.

By Mary Beth Breckenridge
Akron Beacon Journal

Food plants have jumped the fence from the kitchen garden.

They're making their way into the landscape, doing double duty as both food sources and things of beauty.
It's a movement called edible landscaping, and there's good reason for it, advocates say. Edible landscaping encourages and simplifies local food production, with all its health and environmental benefits.
The idea behind edible landscaping is that fruits, vegetables and other edible plants can be intermingled with ornamental plants such as shrubs and flowers. Often edibles can be used in place of more common landscape plants — rhubarb instead of hostas, perhaps, or a fruit tree instead of a maple.

"I think it opens up a whole new territory for people who don't consider themselves gardeners" or don't like the look of a traditional vegetable garden, said Jonathan Hull, co-founder of the not-for-profit organization Green Triangle. The Cleveland-area organization promotes permaculture, an ecological system that stresses living in harmony with nature.
Edible landscaping is considered a part of permaculture because food plays a central role in sustainability, Hull explained. Homegrown food is considered by some to be more nutritious than much of the commercially produced food, and growing food locally saves the energy needed to ship it long distances.

What's more, reducing a lawn to make room for food plants means less maintenance, less need for chemicals and less use of noisy, polluting equipment, he said.

Edible landscaping also benefits pollinators and other wildlife that are seeing many of their habitats and food sources destroyed. And it's an economical approach to landscaping in tough times, noted Renata Brown, the Cleveland Botanical Garden's associate director of education.

But Tim Malinich's motivation is more personal. "The best benefit, in my opinion, — is the taste is phenomenal," said Malinich, a horticulture educator with the Ohio State University Extension in Lorain County.

Landscape designer Sabrena Schweyer said she regularly incorporates edible plants into the landscapes she and husband Samuel Salsbury create through their Akron, Ohio, firm, Salsbury-Schweyer. Sometimes those plants might be clustered in an attractive area set aside for food growing, such as a traditional French garden called a potager, or contained in pots in an area close to the kitchen. Sometimes they're incorporated into a food forest, a growing method that mimics the layers and plant diversity of a natural forest, where plants naturally get the water and food they need to thrive.

She and Salsbury created what she calls an edible border on an 8-foot-wide strip of land that edges the driveway on the south side of their Highland Square house. There they mixed edible plants such as nasturtiums, cardoons, strawberries, potatoes and tomatoes — some of them in pots — among small trees, shrubs and perennial flowers.

Schweyer said she took care to choose food plants they would use and looked for disease-resistant types, which often are heirloom or native plants. Because her yard is small, she often uses dwarf plants or climbers, such as the purple Italian beans that clambered up a bamboo arbor and fed the couple for a good part of last summer.

She chose those beans because their color matched the trim on their house, she said. Beauty, after all, is a foremost consideration for her.

Still, edible landscaping has some benefits that are purely practical, Hull said.

For one thing, mixing a variety of plants can do a better job of reducing pest problems than traditional food gardening methods. Destructive bugs have a harder time finding individual food plants than they do a whole row, which is "like a big neon sign for any munching insect," he said. And with a mix of plants, it's easier to incorporate flowers that attract predator insects or confuse undesirable bugs.

Interplanting can also enhance soil fertility, Hull said. He often incorporates plants grown specifically to be cut down and returned to the soil as fertilizer, or plants that take nitrogen from the air and convert it to a usable form.

And because edible landscaping involves beds that aren't completely replanted each year, they're not tilled annually, he said. Repeated tilling breaks down the soil structure, a detriment to soil health.

Despite the benefits, promoting the concept of edible landscaping means changing some firmly held mindsets.

"I think a lot of people think flowers have to be here, herbs have to be here, vegetables have to be here," Hull said.

He's hoping to break down those boundaries.

EDIBLE LANDSCAPING TIPS

Edible landscaping tips from Jonathan Hull and Tim Malinich:

• Start small. Limit the number and variety of new plants you add each year. That way you won't be overwhelmed by the amount of information you need to learn about them.

• Choose sunny sites. Food plants need a lot of sunlight to produce the best-tasting fruits and vegetables. If you don't plant in full sun, the plants might still look nice, but the food they produce will have a lower sugar content and won't be as tasty.

• Be aware of plant competition. Larger plants such as trees and shrubs can take a big share of water and nutrients, leaving an insufficient amount for the smaller plants.

• Have a water source. Your food plants may need supplemental water, so make sure you have a hose or some other water source that can reach them.

• Plan for wildlife. Birds and beasts like to eat many of the same things we do, so edible landscaping is likely to attract them to your yards. Some people want that; others don't.

If you intend to protect your plants from wildlife, consider the ramifications. For example, you might be tempted to plant a berry bush in your front yard, but "how's that going to look in your design when it's covered with bird netting later in the season?" Malinich asked.

• Be prepared for trade-offs. If you're used to spraying your plants for insects or diseases, you're going to need to be cautious. Consider integrated pest management instead, an approach that looks at all the factors that keep plants healthy and de-emphasizes chemical controls.

• Know what you're growing. Just because someone told you a plant is edible doesn't mean it is. Be sure before you eat it. It's also a good idea to eat only a small amount of a new food at first, just to make sure you're not allergic to it.

• Expand your horizons. Study how to prepare the foods you're growing, so you'll enjoy them and they won't go to waste.

http://seattletimes.com/html/homegarden/2017469487_ediblelandscape09.html

How We Can Eat Our Landscapes

What should a community do with its unused land? 

Plant food, of course. With energy and humor, Pam Warhurst tells at the TEDSalon the story of how she and a growing team of volunteers came together to turn plots of unused land into communal vegetable gardens, and to change the narrative of food in their community.

Pam Warhurst cofounded Incredible Edible, an initiative in Todmorden, England dedicated to growing food locally by planting on unused land throughout the community.



More about Pam Warhurst:
Pam Warhurst is the Chair of the Board of the Forestry Commission, which advises on and implements forestry policy in Great Britain. She also cofounded Incredible Edible Todmorden, a local food partnership that encourages community engagement through local growing. Incredible Edible started small, with the planting of a few community herb gardens in Todmorden, and today has spin-offs in the U.S. and Japan. The community has started projects like Every Egg Matters, which educates people on keeping chickens and encourages them to sell eggs to neighbors, and uses a 'Chicken Map' to connect consumers and farmers. Incredible Edible Todmorden empowers ordinary people to take control of their communities through active civic engagement. 

"I wondered if it was possible to take a town like Todmorden and focus on local food to re-engage people with the planet we live on, create the sort of shifts in behaviour we need to live within the resources we have, stop us thinking like disempowered victims and to start taking responsibility for our own futures." Pam Warhurst

“There's so many people that don't really recognize a vegetable unless it's in a bit of plastic with an instruction packet on the top.”  Pam Warhurst

“Can you find a unifying language that cuts across age and income and culture? … Yes, and the language would appear to be food.”   Pam Warhurst

What is that green stuff on tomato plants?

Sept. 29, 2010
By Lynn Byczynski

What is the greenish-yellow powder you get all over your hands and arms when you pick tomatoes?

For the past two summers, this question has been bothering me. But I couldn't find anyone who seemed to know. I asked numerous friends in the biology and horticulture fields, and even several tomato breeders. Most people said "isn't it pollen?" But clearly it isn't coming from tomato flowers — it's all over the plant, on the leaves and stems. One grower called it chlorophyl. Another called it "tomato tar" because it turns black if you don't wash it off quickly enough.

An interesting characteristic of this substance is how hard it is to get it off your skin. You lather up with soap and water and the suds turn green. Rinse, and lather again, and the suds still turn green. You can wash your hands four or five times and the stuff just keeps coming off. It explains why all your towels and t-shirts get green stains in summer — no matter how many times you wash, there's still some left behind on your skin.

Finally, the mystery of the tomato stuff was revealed. Chris Wien, a horticulture professor at Cornell University, had sent me some information about high tunnel tomato production for an article I was writing for Growing for Market. I emailed to thank him then added, "By the way, do you know the technical term for the greenish yellow powder you get all over your hands when you pick tomatoes?"

Chris emailed right back. "Yes, the green substance is a number of chemicals that are released from hairs situated on the surface of tomato leaves, stems and fruits.  Under a microscope, these look like miniature water towers, and the compounds are inside these glands.  Some of the compounds are called 'acyl sugars'."

Finally, I had the right words to Google it with. When I did, I was plunged into the totally unfamiliar world of plant metabolism research.

A few hours later, staggering from one barely comprehensible scientific paper to another, I landed on the website of the Solanum Trichome Project, a collaborative genomics project between the University of Arizona, University of Michigan, and Michigan State. That's where I found this beautiful illustration above (by Chris Smith of fivethirtythree studios) of the little hairs that secrete the green stuff that gets all over your skin.

Solanum trichome illustration

And where I learned, in plain English, the meaning and importance of that substance. Here it is, in a nutshell:

The little hairs that cover tomato leaves are technically known as secretory and glandular trichomes (SGTs). About one-third of all the vascular plant species have SGTs. They secrete various secondary metabolites -- that is, substances that aren't used for the growth or reproduction of the plant but have some other function. SGTs contain the essential oils that give herbs their fragrance and flavor. In tomatoes, they produce acyl sugars, terpenoids, and flavonoids.  Acyl sugars are lipids (fats) that are greasy to the touch, insoluble in water and soluble in alcohol. That's why they're so hard to wash off your skin. Terpenoids release the familiar tomato scent when you brush against the plant. Flavonoids are the substances in plants that are getting all the attention for their role in preventing cancer and cardiovascular disease.

These substances are thought to protect plants against environmental assaults including insect attacks, foliar diseases, extreme heat and excessive light. They are of great interest to plant breeders, who hope to use them to develop varieties resistant to late blight, early blight, Septoria leaf spot and other diseases. There is also some research into increasing insect resistance. "Some wild tomato lines from South America have different acyl sugars than the domestic tomatoes, and by crossing them, the breeders can select for compounds that ward off insects," Dr. Wien said.  "Unfortunately, these compounds also give the plants a 'wet dog' smell, so may take some getting used to."

So now I know. The green stuff serves a very good purpose, from the point of view of the tomato plant. And that makes me more kindly disposed to the green stains on my towels and t-shirts in summer.

 http://www.growingformarket.com/articles/green-powder-on-tomato-plants

Lynn Byczynski is the editor and publisher of Growing for Market, a magazine for direct-market farmers.

Consider the Weed

In defense of botanical trespassers.

By Richard Mabey

Posted Tuesday, July 12, 2011

The first weeds were created 10,000 years ago, when the first fields were cultivated, and the concept of the botanical trespasser—the "plant in the wrong place"—was invented. Seven thousand years later, Middle Eastern farmers, still disgruntled at having lost their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, wrote a creation myth in which agriculture and its accompanying weeds are a celestial punishment for their cleverness. Genesis' god condemns errant humans to till the soil "in the sweat of they face ... cursed is the ground for thy sake ... thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee."

Today the thorns and thistles are still there and more is spent trying to exterminate weeds in farms and gardens than on any other aspect of cultivation. Their appearance sparks reflexes, not reasoning. They are regarded as inexplicable and impertinent intruders, quite unconnected with the way we live our lives. But the fact is that we are responsible for weeds. Every single nuisance, from the purslane and witchweed in the cornfields to the thrown-out aquarium exotics now smothering the native flora of the Everglades, is a consequence of our thoughtless and sometimes deliberate disruption of natural systems, ploughing, spraying, moving species way beyond their natural homes.

We tend to ignore that weeds are beneficial. They are nature's pioneers, abhorring the vacuum of barren earth, sometimes functioning as a kind of ecological immune system: organisms which move in to repair damaged tissue, in this case earth stripped of its natural vegetation. Certain weeds are more directly useful for humans. The wheat on which western civilization is predicated began as a weed grass: wild emmer, St John's wort (klamathweed) is now a recognized and widely used anti-depressant.

We couldn't survive as modern humans if we ceased to control weeds. It's impractical to let them grow unimpeded. But, every once in a while, perhaps we should take a break from weed-whacking and examine our relationship with these clever and resilient plants, if only to admire their will to live and to multiply.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/07/consider_the_weed.html

Below we view a slide show by Richard Mabey on weeds that expands on this introduction.

 Credit: Photograph by foto footprints via Flickr.

BINDWEED

Bindweed is the archetypal weed, being both an interloper and awesomely adaptive. It’s also ambivalent, as beautiful in flower as its close relatives the morning glories. The big, “granny’s nightgown” flowers of hedge bindweed came to the United States with early settlers. Bindweeds thrive on weeding and ploughing. Every fragment of chopped root or stem can generate a new plant. It can cover 30 square yards in a season. If it’s eaten by cattle, chemicals in the stem respond to the growth hormones in the animals’ saliva and grow even faster. Doff your hat in respect before you try to hoe it out.

Credit: Photograph by Bogdan via Wikipedia Commons.

DODDERS
A cosmopolitan family of semiparasites that come in all manner of varieties, each chemically adapted to a specific host. Dodders have no chlorophyll and no roots. The growing stems edge forward with the coiling movements of sidewinders, until they chemically “sniff” their host, and then head toward it, suckering spikes at the ready. The variety that preys on tomatoes has been filmed rejecting globes of red liquid and dyed tennis balls, and slithering decisively toward a piece rubber impregnated with tomato-scent chemicals.

Credit: Photograph by Epukas via Wikipedia Commons.

BURDOCK
Most American weeds originated in Europe, a legacy of colonialism that outstayed the colonists. Burdock’s floppy gray-green leaves were a favorite foreground ornament of 17^th- and 18^th-century landscape painters. But it’s had a more modern practical use. The seed-heads—called “burrs”—are covered with hooked spines, which attach themselves to passing animals and get dispersed. In the 1940s the Swiss inventor George de Mestral, removing a bushel from his dog’s fur, was inspired to create Velcro. It was patented in 1951, one of the first examples of the burgeoning science of bio-engineering.

Credit: Photograph by Muffett via Flickr.

  PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE
One of the most enchanting European wetland flowers. The pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais painted its magenta sprays on the riverbank in his famous picture of the drowning Ophelia. It arrived in the New World in the early 1800s, probably as a stowaway in ships’ ballast. It came without any of the munching insects that, above and below ground, keep it in check in Europe, and took off west like any other ambitious immigrant. It has now reached the fragile marshlands of Alaska, forming solid stands—a mile thick in places—which even muskrats cannot penetrate.

Credit: Photograph by K W Reinsch via Flickr.

TUMBLEWEED

A quintessential ingredient of the ambience of Western movies, but also a wonderful example of cinematic anachronism. Tumbleweed—aka Russian thistle—is a native of arid areas of eastern Europe and Asia which arrived in the USA in the late 1870s, mixed up with flax seed brought by Ukrainian immigrants. It didn’t really become established until the early 20^th century, some while after the pioneering heydays portrayed in classic Westerns. Tumbleweed’s great trick, in which the dried-out plants detach themselves from the ground and bowl about the desert, scattering seeds as they go, is a typical piece of weed smartness.

Credit: Photograph by Lane Tredway via Flickr.

KENTUCKY BLUE GRASS
Sounds as American as hillbilly, but is another settler introduction. Meadow-grass is a widespread European weed-grass and was introduced to the United States in the fodder, or attached to the hooves, of their cattle. Adapted to the heavy grazing—and heavy hooves—of domestic stock, it soon ramped across grasslands east of the Mississippi, and drove most of the more delicate indigenous grasses close to extinction. But it was good feed and a boon to ranchers, who rebranded it, immortally, as “Kentucky blue grass.”

Credit: Photograph by Gardening in a Minute via Flickr.

COGON

Not all weeds travel east-west. Cogon is a tough grass that is a natural component of the ground vegetation of Southeast Asian forests. When the United States used Agent Orange to obliterate the trees in large areas of this forest during the Vietnam War, cogon rampaged across the landscape. It has overwhelmed attempts to overplant it with pineapple, teak, even the formidable bamboo, and picked up the local tag of “American weed.” There’s some poetic justice in the fact that cogon recently infiltrated the United States in the packaging of imported house-plants, and is now advancing across the southern states.

Credit: Photograph by SoftCore Studios via Flickr.

KUDZU

Kudzu is the “vine that ate the South”—aggressive, imperious, its origins the subject of wild conspiracy theories. The true story of its arrival in the United States is that in 1876, the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia contained a Japanese garden full of that country’s native plants. Kudzu proved very appealing as an ornamental climber and was widely planted in gardens. In the 1920s, a Florida nursery noticed that cattle were browsing on the plants and promoted it as a forage crop. Ten years later the Forest Service started planting the vine to control soil erosion in the dust bowls. But by the 1950s it had broken out of cultivation, and, capable of climbing up to 90 feet at the rate of 1 foot every 12 hours, was swallowing entire forests and houses. It’s a salutary demonstration that even the most beneficent of plants, translocated from the natural control systems of their native habitats, can turn into superweeds.

Credit: Photograph by DarkOne via Wikipedia Commons.

TREE OF HEAVEN
Not all weeds are, so to speak, “weedy.” Many tree species can behave with the enterprise of wheatfield invaders and flower-border guerrillas. Tree-of-heaven is a popular Chinese ornamental with prodigious powers of both seeding and vertical growth. It gets its name not from some paradisiacal scent (the flowers smell rather disagreeable, but are popular with city bees), but from the speed with which it rockets skyward, sometimes carrying sidewalk slabs with it. In the U.K., during a rubbish collectors’ strike, trees-of-heaven were seen shooting out of unemptied refuse bins. They are one of the great healers of broken and derelict city space, as in Detroit, and already a key component of the post-industrial urban forest across the northern hemisphere.

Hay Bale Garden, Waist Height Raised Bed and more at the Orange County Great Park

John from http://www.growingyourgreens.com/ goes on another field trip to visit the Orange County Great Park to learn more about what's growing on at the Great Park. The Great Park was a former military base now partially converted to a great park. After watching this video you will learn more what's growing in their raised bed gardens, see their waist height raised bed garden and learn about the hay bale garden and more.



This video demonstrates many vegetables and herbs growing in various types of raised beds. Raised beds can make gardening easier because it breaks up the work into doable parts.

A raised bed that is 12" or even 16" high is nice so you can sit next to it or on the edge to plant and fill with mulch etc. The mulch is a key factor to gardening because it feeds the soil and helps build a healthy environment full of microorganisms, protects from hot and cold and temperature fluctuations, and helps to retain water, yet allows for drainage of too much water.

Raised beds built higher, around 3 feet high are good for those with physical limitations, and/or just a bad back.

Personally, I would not have paint on the structure of my raised beds anywhere near my soil. I have built raised beds mostly using redwood and even some Douglas fir which breaks downs much faster, but yet will last for years and is cheaper than redwood. One thing that will protect the exterior of the wooden raised beds is "used" cooking oil. It really works and looks good too. I have used it on a potting bench and the shingles of a tool shed. I don't bother putting it on my raised beds because they last so long anyway. In the Sacramento CA area redwood raised beds will last for a good 20 years usually.

Now, there are many synthetic materials on the market for building raised beds, which may be healthy or not in contact with your soil and the food you are going to eat. Any material should be investigated before using for this purpose.

Garlic Basics - Fall is Garlic Planting Time!!!

The article below is from Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply

Aug. 04, 2008  -  GrowOrganic

Garlic is easy to grow since most of its time in the ground is during our rainy season and, after you mulch it for winter, can pretty much be ignored.

About the time the scapes (flowers) begin to develop in spring, the weeds start to grow and need to be removed as garlic does not develop well with all that competition. Have you ever eaten garlic scapes? Since you have to remove them when they begin to curl, you might as well cook them. Grilled or sautéed, they have a nice, mild garlic flavor. Just use the tender part as you would asparagus and they store in the fridge at least a month.

Back to the garlic bulb, here are the basics. We sell 2 types of garlic – hardneck & softneck. Hardneck garlic usually has larger cloves, which are easier to peel, but they don’t store a tremendously long time. Softneck garlic has a larger quantity of smaller cloves, they’re a bit harder to peel, but they keep a long time. These are also the ones you can braid & hang in your kitchen. I usually plant both types, using the hard necks first.

Garlic is planted in the fall. Separate the cloves but you don’t need to remove the papery skin around each clove. Plant, pointy end up, within 5 days, at a depth about double the size of the clove. Deeper if you’re in a very cold location. Water-in and moisten frequently till the rain starts. Once the soil cools off, mulch with a few inches of rice straw. That’s it for fall.

When the soil begins to warm in spring, watch for the growing tips. (Sometimes they’ll start in the fall if you plant early and the soil is still warm.) Cover with more straw to protect from frost – you may need to do this 3-4 times. This is also the best way to keep the weeds down.

Harvest when about ½ the leaves turn yellow or brown. This usually happens in my yard about the end of June, but this year its about 2 weeks later. Stop watering so the soil can dry a little. Don’t leave them in the ground too long after you stop watering as the papery skin will start to deteriorate and the bulbs won’t store as well. Try not to poke them with your digging fork as this can introduce disease and again, affects storage.

Place them in a cool, darkish location to cure, usually about a month. We have a huge, low-limbed butternut that shelters our garlic. If curing outside, be prepared to cover your garlic with plastic if it rains. It seems like it always rains once in July, after we’ve harvested. If you want to taste your garlic while its still green, you can, just not with Elephant Garlic. Once cured, keep in a cool, dry location, inside. Yes, garlic freezes and turns to mush.

Enjoy your garlic. Not only does it taste good, but it’s good for you!

http://groworganic.com/organic-gardening/articles/garlic-basics

Good Hips: Roses in the Autumn Garden

By Jennifer Jewell

Roses are like people – some just have nicer hips than others. Some have pretty faces, some have great legs, great shoulders. Some have good hips - especially in October. And I like good hips. To me, they speak of strength, fertility and beauty. 

Autumn is the best time for the widest variety of fully-formed, voluptuous and vibrantly-colored rose hips in the garden, in arrangements, in recipes and in photographs. 

Roses will set fruit throughout the growing season, as evidenced by wild roses, if given the chance. However, we rose growers can be so vigilant about picking flowers or deadheading to encourage repeat bloom, that it’s often not till the end of the season when we’re advised to stop picking in order to harden our plants off for winter that we give our plants a chance to form their lovely hips. Autumn’s cooler nights, cooling soil, and shorter daylight hours likewise signal to all of our plants that it’s close to the end of their seasonal chance to get the job (reproduction) done and set seed if at all possible.

 

Rose hips are, after all, the fruit and seed of the rose and two things are required in order for a rose to produce hips. The first requirement is that your rose is not a sterile cultivar, which would preclude it being able to produce seed. The second requirement is that your fertile rose is successfully pollinated, which is what will trigger fruit/seed formation.

As seed structures, much like their relatives the apples, rose hips are a mass of small flatish individual seeds, called ‘achenes’, all bound together in the soft, sweet flesh of the colorful hip. The flesh of the hip serves multiple purposes, both protecting and even nourishing the seeds inside while they are developing. Furthermore, brightly-colored-when-ripe hips stand out, providing an attractive offering to birds and mammals (such as bears and people). The colorful fruit entices animals to pick and eat or process the flesh. Because the seeds inside are fibrous and hard, they pass through the intestines of most birds and mammals, and are by- and -large discarded by people.

When a seed passes through a bird or mammal’s digestive tract, the highly acidic conditions help to process the durable protective layer surrounding the inner seed. This ‘stratification’ or ‘scarification’ allows the seed to germinate more easily once it finds itself in welcoming ground. Finally, if not picked and processed by hungry, predatory creatures, the ripening and then breaking down of the hip’s nutrient-rich flesh over the course of the seasons will also serve to stratify the inner seeds. Whether the seeds have been passed through the gut of a bear, through the crop of a bird, spat out by a person, or been allowed to age on its stem or on the ground nearby, all of these pathways lead to the hip’s whole intended purpose: the safe dispersal of the seed.

 

While all seed-bearing plants, which roses are, are genetically designed to set seed and attempt to reproduce, some roses do in fact set hips more easily and abundantly than others. Species roses – including the rugosa roses, which are famed for their fat, fleshy, apple-like hips – produce perhaps the best hips. Single, and more open-flowering doubles and semi-doubles are also likely to produce good hips because they are pollinated with relative ease. 

 

According to some sources, very tightly and profusely-petaled rose forms can be difficult for insects to pollinate well, can have that dense-petal formation at the expense of stamen and other reproductive parts, and are more likely to be sterile hybrids, and therefore might not produce hips consistently. Although, according to Karl Bapst, American Rose Society Master Rosarian, some of the rugosa hybrids are the most densely -petaled and produce the best hips, so dense-petals equaling poor hips is not a hard and fast rule.

Successful pollination triggers good fruit set. If you want good hips, then you need good bugs. So your best bet is to avoid pesticides – particularly broad-spectrum pesticides. Although you might want to only harm insects you worry are damaging your roses, any pesticides are also likely to be killing or impairing your pollinators.

 

Cut stalks of hips can make wonderful displays – combined with more complex floral arrangements, or on their own. Placed in water, stalks of fresh hips will generally remain plump for about a week. Dried hips are also very attractive and will hold on the stem for a very long time.

Rose hips have a rich history of culinary and ritual use. Noted by nutritionist as being a “good source of Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol), Vitamin K, Calcium and Magnesium, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Manganese”, many cultures have used rose hips to make tea, jelly, wine and even to eat as a dried fruit.

The term rose hip linguistically comes to us from the Old English “heope” or “hiope” and alternative forms are rose hep and rose haw. It is said that early Catholic monks used dried hips of wild rose to create the first rosaries – using each hip to keep track of their required number of prayers said.

I like the idea of marking spiritual significance and prayer through the nurturing beauty of rose hips in the autumn garden - a spot full of grace indeed.

 

Arrangement and photos include hips from the following roses:

R. rugosa sp. – (first photo) fat, squat-round, reddish orange
R. ‘John Cabot’ – climber – noticeably oblong deep orange
R. ‘La Belle Sultane’ – large, round burgundy, dull-rough sheen
R. ‘The Endeavor’ – round, shiny, apple-like orange to red on single hip
R. ‘Shropshire Lad’ – round, mid-sized, dull orange
R. californica – multi-clustered, oblong, bright orange to red
R. ‘Crown Princess Margareta’ – slightly oblong, pale orange to red
R. ? white spray shrub rose – name unknown – small, squat round, greenish to brown

For more information:

Butte Rose Society: www.butte-rosesociety.org
Shasta Rose Society: www.shastarosesociety.org/Shasta_Rose_Society/Home.html
Bidwell Heritage Roses: http://bidwellheritagerosesgroup.com/
Sacramento Historic Rose Garden, Sacramento Old City Cemetery: http://www.oldcitycemetery.com/roses.htm
American Rose Society: http://www.ars.org/

This article originally appeared in the Butte Rose Society’s October 2011 Newsletter.
http://jewellgarden.com/blog/2011/10/20/good-hips-roses-in-the-autumn-garden-butte-rose-societys-festival-of-roses-oct-22-in-chico/

Combat To Compost: Soldiers Learn Organic Farming

All Things Considered

Listen to the Story http://www.npr.org/2011/04/07/135216393/from-combat-to-compost-soldiers-learn-organic-farming

by Gloria Hillard
April 7, 2011

Some veterans and active duty personnel are learning to navigate a new type of terrain. Their tough military training and attention to detail are proving to be assets as they learn the skills needed for organic farming.

Transcript:
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
On a small farm in Southern California, a group of veterans and active duty Marines is learning about planting, harvesting and sustainable agriculture. The program, taught by one of their own, is meant to give them a place to heal and the skills to cultivate a new career.

Reporter Gloria Hillard has the story.
GLORIA HILLARD: Tucked away in these rolling green hills north of San Diego is a small organic farm called Archi's Acres. It's an avocado orchard peppered with wildflowers and hydroponic gardens of basil, kale, rainbow chard.

Mr. COLIN ARCHIPLEY: We have red leaf lettuce. So what we have up here, although in about a week's time, over here we'll have heirloom tomatoes.

HILLARD: Before becoming an organic farmer, Colin Archipley served three tours in Iraq as a Marine Corps infantry sergeant, and it's not surprising, perhaps, that he chose this particular patch of land.

The helicopters heard overhead are from Camp Pendleton, just over the hill from this 3-acre farm. Today, Archipley is training vets and active duty personnel returning to civilian life for careers in organic farming. It's not an easy job, he says, but veterans are up to the task.

Mr. ARCHIPLEY: We're a type of population that needs more than just a dollar. We need a purpose, and this is one way to give us purpose.

HILLARD: The six-week course called Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training has been approved by Camp Pendleton's Transition Assistance Program. One of the new students, veteran Ron Vaughn(ph) is taking great care to harvest a live bouquet of basil in one of the farm's greenhouses.

Mr. RON VAUGHN: You can plant this right in the water, and it will still keep growing.

HILLARD: The Marine sergeant did two tours in Iraq and was wounded in Fallujah. And the farm, Vaughn says, has given him a new sense of purpose.

Mr. VAUGHN: I went in the Marine Corps so I could serve my country, you know? Now that I've gotten out, guess what? I still want to serve, and you go small-scale organic farming, that is me being able to serve the community.

HILLARD: Vaughn was able to attend this program with a scholarship from the Farmer-Veteran Coalition. Michael O'Gorman is a longtime farmer and the organization's executive director.

Mr. MICHAEL O'GORMAN (Executive Director, Farmer-Veteran Coalition): And the more we work with the veterans and the more we work in this process, the more we understand that there's healing in being needed.

HILLARD: O'Gorman says his organization works with farmers across the country.

Mr. O'GORMAN: Our goal is to mobilize this entire community, then welcome with open arms the returning veterans and look to them for a source of new, young talent going into our industry.

HILLARD: One of those new farmers may be Cory Pollard. Growing up in San Diego, he enlisted in the Marine shortly after high school. He served three tours in Iraq as a rifleman. Today, he's cradling a seedling in his hands.

Mr. CORY POLLARD: Before I got here, I didn't know what chard was, didn't know what kale was, but, you know, nonetheless, I've been here and I never thought I would see myself farming.

HILLARD: Working alongside Pollard in the greenhouse is 26-year-old Carlos Rivera. Both men went to Camp Pendleton and ended up serving in Iraq together. After leaving the Marines, Rivera says he got a job in the city, but it stressed him out.

Mr. CARLOS RIVERA: This is different. You're working outdoors and working with other vets. And I have my own little garden out there in my patio where I live. And I love going out here.

HILLARD: He says it's his dream to one day have his own small farm, something like what he has found here.

Mr. RIVERA: The sounds of trees and the birds singing and leaves falling down.

HILLARD: Rivera has been working on the farm for a year. He says he's not only found the job he loves, but a certain peace of mind. For NPR News, I'm Gloria Hillard.

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