Ac Baker

Have a Cool Yule!

M Ljin wrote:Most wintergreen flavorings were supposedly made from black birch (another plant native to here), or are synthetic, which is mostly the case nowadays. It would be difficult to harvest enough wintergreen for commercial purposes because they are a slow-growing evergreen ground cover growing in acidic soils. The berries are quite lovely, minty and sweet tasting, something between mint and a dry blueberry perhaps?

Interesting! Turns out I was thinking of the toothpaste my older relatives used to use when I was young.  The ingredients include methyl salicylate, which is probably not extracted from actual wintergreen, no.

M Ljin wrote: Partridgeberries are dryish and slightly sweet, and they have a similar ecology but prefer more alkaline or neutral soils and can tolerate more shade. They are more rambling than wintergreen as well. The berries of both persist well into winter beneath the snow and sometimes spring.

Apparently, "binemiin" in Ojibwe, and an important nutritious and medicinal berry, fresh & stored, for many Indigenous cultures.  I had not heard of them before.

M Ljin wrote:Alder tea is nourishing-tasting. I haven’t had any in a while but have some that I brought in and dried. I specifically pick older, more lateral twigs that are gnarly because they have the better flavor. New shoots tend to be more bitter and astringent.

I might have expected the new shoots to be sweeter, I wonder if that's to deter browsers?  Have you got a particular kind of alder where you live? I'm wondering what quality tea I might get from local alders gnarly lateral twigs.

Many thanks!  I think sloes are the latest fruit I've picked, best after frost if the birds haven't already got them!

M Ljin wrote:Wintergreen berries and leaf tea! And partridgeberries!!!

Making a pot of alder twig tea.

These sound exciting.  I've heard of wintergreen as a flavour herb before, might I have come across that in commercial products?

What do these taste like? What especially do you enjoy about them?

Thank you. As many are saying, we need to recharge during this "annual ecological disaster" (as one highly experienced agroecologist I know wryly dubbed winter), and plan, and catch up on maintainance,  and also celebrate with loved ones in whatever traditions and ways are meaningful to us.

I use rolled oats, no further processing, roughly double the volume of tap water to float them, a small spoon of live yoghurt stirred in, and cover with a cloth for about five days.

Not very precise at all!

Last weekend has just gone, or was before the week that just ended.

This weekend is just coming - the end of this week - or happening current ly.

Next weekend is the end of next week or the week about to start.   Of course, you have to agree on what days of the week are the weekend days too!

But yes, days of the weekend and dates of the month plus year to really avoid ambiguity. Little endian with three letter day name abbreviation to help with real-life planning, because the day of the week is highly significant to most people.

Hence, Gregorian style ..

Sun 7 Dec 2025

My second batch was also successful!  My house isn't cool by blackhouse standards, but probably cooler than average for today.  Again I let the ferment continue for five days.  I didn't detect any "off" odours, flavours, colours, nor textures.

The swats, or liquid, was more like rice milk to look at, but a lovely tangy, oaty flavour.

I had the sowan raw with a heaped teaspoon of cooked Japanese quince puree which enhanced the tanginess and was very tasty.

I now feel confident at trying a batch with the ferment from my own sowan with live soya yogurt starter, to see if that works.

Always glad to avoid waste! I was brought up to revel in hand-me-downs, repairs, and rescues.

My most recent big rescue has been a slightly damaged small polytunnel cover (do some people call these "hoop houses"?) that will fit our existing bird net frame.

But I'm always "foraging" for such wins, and there's are fair bit to find in our suburb.

From what I've read, sunchokes may slowly reduce in inulin content as the winter goes on, with a larger drop as they start the budding and sprouting process in late winter right up until they start photosynthesizing again.

So the flavour will likely change a bit in the process.

But yes, I think we can gradually dig up sunchokes as we need them, for a nice winter harvest.

Otherwise, if you don't know where plants were under the show, some regular shovelling may well be needed

Many thanks for the update.  We also had record drought over here in the Midlands of England.  Even our normally reliable sunchokes barely reached half the height the plants normally achieved, I harvested less weight of potatoes than I planted, and the yacón only survived rather than thriving.

I hope you won't be disheartened, "there is always next year" is gardeners yearly refrain.

Your conditions look quite challenging: there is minimal beneficial ecosystem in the near vicinity of your growing beds.

Plus you have done all this hard work improving the growing conditions this year, giving you a head start for the new year.

So I'm hoping you are starting to think positive thoughts about what your next steps might be.

One question: I've read that different varieties of winter squash may not come true to type due to cross pollination if grown within 250m of one another.  How do your eating pumpkins taste?

Good luck!