Stephen B. Thomas wrote:Fellow Boot Zach and I sampled the laverbread, and that kind of blew our minds.
It is quite strong tasting, but so good for one! I gather mixing it into sort of oat crackers is one way to use it. I tend to use it in moderation in spinach type recipes.
I've been interested in silverweed since I realised it used to be a staple crop round here. It actually grows quite happily in grassland, although doesn't appreciate being closely grazed, or maybe it is previous ploughing that knocked it back. A few years ago I went to the trouble of collecting some different plants from round the island to try and get a breeding population, since I'm not sure whether it is self fertile. I've tried eating them before and found them quite tasty - like hazelnuts when raw, and like baked potatoes when cooked. The only time I found them bitter (which many of the ethnobotany reports mention) is when we harvested them in September before the foliage had fully died back see my neolithic menu thread.
silverweed growing in long grass on Skye
So I had a lot of silverweed creep into my simple farming area last year - It was in the roots bed as that had failed, and it was happily cohabiting with the potatoes this year. Since I was digging the bed pretty thoroughly to get the potatoes out I thought I'd see what the silverweed harvest was like. So this is from a 10 foot row of my 'Skye blue' potatoes.
silverweed v potatoes
The potato yield wasn't great; just over 6lb from the row. I suspect I have a virus as these tubers have been saved locally for several years. One or two tubers weren't as good as they looked as there was a little slug damage, but not too bad. The silver weed as pictured was about 2 1/2 pounds. No noticeable pest damage to the silverweed roots at all.
So I sorted the silverweed into multi rooted plants and single rooted plants (plus broken bits). I'm assuming now that the multirooted plants were ones that regrew from last year and the single rooted plants were ones that grew from this year's offsets. There was 4Oz of broken bits, 15 Oz of single root plants and 1lb 2Oz of multiroot plants. The multiroot plants often had the shrivelled remains of last year's storage root which I removed.
sorted silverweed roots
I selected some of the nicest looking roots for replanting in my polycultures area. I'm not really sure what characteristic will be most useful - thicker roots (which tend to be shorter) or long straight roots (which are maybe easier to clean, but often break off) so I selected some of both. The longest unbroken root was about 18 inch long and the fattest roots were generally about 8mm diameter.
selected silverweed roots for replanting
The rest of the roots I cleaned by rubbing them in cold water between my fingers. This was slow and I wonder if there is a quicker way. You could probably get almost all the mud off by rinsing with some sand in the water, but I tried to get most of the skin and little hair roots off, as I think this is where some of the bitterness comes from, plus I prefer the white clean look of the roots! When clean and trimmed of the remains of the growing points I had about 1lb 8Oz of good roots. About half I dried in the lower oven to preserve for future experiments with dried roots, and about half I boiled for a few minutes to try cooking with those. I'm thinking - something like rosti, oatsilverweedcakes, leavened griddle cakes, maybe cheesy scones....
boiled silverweed roots
I tried drinking the water from the boiled roots, and it tasted like carrots, but without the sweetness. It might be nutritious, but not very pleasant!
dried silverweed roots
So watch this space - hopefully some more silverweed adventures to come!
My understanding is that is a lot harder to train out a bad habit than to stop it starting.
We have a similar problem with our dog - she is very nervous of people and a bit of a 'lockdown pup', so not well socialised I'm afraid. She is fine once she has said hello (preferably involving a biscuit!). For Della a lot of the issue is the fence. People the other side of the fence seem to be more of a threat than ones that come through it, so you may find that having a division would be worse for the dog (although more comforting for the people). A muzzle would keep people (and the dog) safer, but make her less useful for her guardian purposes, unless wearing it could be timed for when stray people are expected.
Thanks Deane! Yes, it probably makes sense to test them rather than getting caught out with no black seeded plants again next year. I may just sow them all separately as well as a few new black seeded bean varieties.
heddwch a diversion....I never know how to pronounce Welsh, it's a bit like Gaeilc in having different uses for the letters I know in English.
paul wheaton wrote:You get tools to help out. And you get the inside scoop. And you also get the opportunity to help push permaculture forward globally. You get to influence the future of the site ... I dunno, maybe some of the current staff can talk about the perks.
I've been staff here a while and I remember being surprised to receive my invitation! Four years on, and I'm helping select new staff myself (it's very much a team effort, so the more the merrier!)
For me what is great being on staff, is feeling that I am helping keep permies high on the internet, so that more people get infected with the need to make the world better. If I help just a few people find better ways of living lightly then it will all be worth it. A lot of that can be done by the normal permies member of course: creating content, welcoming new members, treating people less advanced on the ecoscale kindly, reporting not-nice or gicky posts (rather than replying to them), sharing interesting ways of doing things that work well for you, pictures and videos...What we do as staff is more of the same, plus a little polishing and tweaking. I like sorting threads into the best forum fit for the subjects, this tends to get a bit chaotic over time, sometimes this involves making a whole new forum which is fun!
We had some light frosts this week and the bean vines have pretty much given up the ghost, so I harvested my runner bean pods.
sad runner bean vines
All in all I'm not too disappointed. The beans grew and set pretty well considering how late I sowed them. I think if I had my act in gear I could plant them at least a month earlier, which would make a whole lot of difference to the yeild. As it was I have a few handfuls of lovely beans to replant next year.
large bean seeds
There is a lovely variation in seed colour. The white and grey ones are already turning beige as I remember them from planting. Funnily there doesn't seem to be any black seeds set, which is a bit of a surprise. I do still have old black seeds, and maybe they are just not viable anymore.
Question: whether to get more fresh seed, or plant all the old seed next year in the hope that a few germinate and grow?
Maybe not relevant to Virginia, but mashua are in the nasturtium family and make small red/yellow flowers on a climbing vine. They prefer a cool summer temperature and mild winter cultivariable suggests zone 9a and the Pacific North West coast most likely for success. Edible tubers, leaves and flowers on an ornamental climbing vine.....
image from cultivariable
A graduate scientist turned automotive engineer, currently running a small shop and growing plants on Skye: turning a sheep field into a food forest.
