greg mosser

i suspect, like their even-closer-than-sunroots cousin, yacon, dahlia roots will sweeten more if left to ‘cure’ in the same way: leave one in a sunny windowsill for a day or two, and then peel and eat.

Craig Schaaf wrote:I don’t think it would be wise to run them through a grain grinder. They have important oil in them that will probably gum up the plates or stone.

just a note: different species of oak have vastly different amounts of oil in them. other members of the red family (southern red, black, pin, willow, etc) have even more than northern reds, enough to be pressed out mechanically (or separated via other means). acorns from the white family (white, chestnut) have negligible amounts. the basically oil-free species can be ground totally safely with a (tougher grade) standard grain mill.

i do have a long list of favorite uses. will have to marshall my thoughts about them.

good looking northern red oak acorns! welcome!

public service announcement

one small bit of warning: you really don’t want the tubers to freeze. they can’t survive it, and they smell unholy when they start rotting afterwards.

more rest and by-the-woodstove time (maybe with a pot of twig tea on the go)
but also more time to do some heavy-labor jobs without sweating to death
more soups!
working on making food out of all the fall bounty

and then a bit later on in the winter, syrup season.

yep, it’s a vertebrate of some kind.

not all of them! there was an improved waltham butternut, a couple kinds of thai pumpkins (originally from baker creek seeds - the originals were very long season, and their offspring are a bit less so but still pretty long), and maybe another two loosely butternut-type that i can’t remember. year three or four there were also some lofthouse medium moschata mix added in sparsely.

i think i must be on year 9 or 10 now. i may start dividing the groups into loosely pumpkin-shaped and necked groups in the future sometime, but ‘all together now’ has been working just fine so far.

this landrace has been going for quite awhile and i have lots of seed. i have a lot that i took decent notes about, so i could theoretically tailor seed to particular shapes/sizes. not totally sure what you mean by brown flesh, hugo. i’ve been selecting for deep orange flesh, though.

by all means contact me for seed via pm. i won’t have much of this year’s seed ready to go for a while, but seeds like the ones that grew those squash i have piles of.

family portrait of most of this year’s moschata landrace. notably missing are the three big thai-style pumpkins on the big vine that volunteered out of my composting area this year, which are currently hanging 15 feet up from the top of my derelict hoop house, and a handful of small-to-medium sized squash whose vines died early and had already been harvested.