Jean Rudd

Time for a floor sweep!  And making the dog put his toy away.

I keep trying to get this badge bit done because I have a great stash of oregano in my herb garden and every year I dry it (mostly for culinary use, but this year I'm working on medicinal use).  Each year I forget to take full pictures of what I've done.  

So I finally have it in order.  Every summer, I have such abundant oregano that I do a "continuous harvest" of sorts.  I cut a bunch, strip off the bottom part if I need some oregano for the salad dressing, then tie up the remainder in an air dry bundle.  I fill up jars of dried oregano as the summer progresses until fall when I chop it all back and dry the remaining.

Well, it's only August, so I am showing the start of the dried jar from this year as well as a few years of past harvest jars.

Hi Kate,

I would love to be a tester!  I have edited courseware and written instructional design, so I think I can follow your recipes!  Currently this summer, I am learning to perfect sourdough whole grain breads.  I used to be good at making yeasted breads, but gave that up for gluten-free 15 years ago and recently (past few months) have been switching back to Weston Price and sourdoughs.  I think it isn't the modern wheat necessarily that is causing major problems, just contributing.  Pesticides and GMOs with poor soils are likely doing the bulk of it. Anyway, trying traditional methods with a host of other ways to get more nutrition and less bad stuff!

On my sourdough journey I have been using the "scrapings" method and I have a very active starter that I got from a friend.  I am now going through the Bittman Bread book and I'm getting so good.  Baking recipes twice really helps.  I made a Rye bread yesterday, and today was a Brioche sandwich loaf.  These are all whole wheat and I am finally getting the lift and crumb right!  I've made sourdough focaccia, pretzels -- tomorrow is a scallion pancake, and I think I'm prepping a cinnamon roll for the day after.

I totally would love to help test recipes.   Here's some of my recent pictures.

I use only whole grains and have access to einkorn, wheat, emmer, rye, buckwheat.  I could get spelt and probably whatever else whole grain.  I have a mill and hard red wheat berries.  I'm not sure what to do with whole einkorn, but I have some of that.  I thought someone said you have to de-hull it somehow before you grind it.  So I'm not sure how that works.  But it's always nice to learn something!

I don't have any of the other kinds of ovens, just a regular oven.  

Good luck with the book.  I'm excited for you and for more people learning this skill!  So thank you for writing this.

My teen chick ate my gold stud earring out of my ear.  Does that count?

Two of my growing chicks would sit on my shoulder, just trying to be close to me as I got their food, etc.  One day, one of them pecked my earring and it fell out into the coop.  I grabbed it quickly.  The next day, one of them pecked the earring and it was gone.  Completely eaten.  Do you think they will ever lay golden eggs?

They're hens now, and no longer sit on my shoulder.  And I don't wear earrings in the coop.

Hugo Morvan wrote: I've planted some  true garlic bulbils that are known to flower and seed .

A related topic: are you saying we shouldn't eat the delicious garlic scapes on hardneck garlic?  I'm not sure I can make that sacrifice :)  But again, I have a small yard!

More updates on my walking onions.  They are flowering at the top again this year.  Lots of little white flowers on top of the bulblets.  Here's some pictures.

I'll see if they make viable seed.  When should I bag the flowers?

I had a comfrey emergency yesterday -- on my plant, not on a person!  We had heavy rain for a few days and then high winds.  My spring-overgrown comfrey toppled!  Completely broken and squishing its neighbors.  Begs the question, can comfrey plants use a comfrey poultice?  hee hee!

So I am on a comfrey binge -- over the next few months you'll see my comfrey medicinal salvaging.  First stop: oil infusion!

First, I pruned the broken bush.  I understand that I really need to divide this up this fall.

I made two massive piles: The leaves and stems that were in bad shape will go to the chickens and the compost pile.  I will use some for mulch also.  The good leaves were harvested.  Over 10 pounds of material total.

The best leaves were then cleaned up and separated into what I will do with them. Some will be dried, some made into poultices and frozen, and some made into infused oil.

For the infused oil:  I used the slow heating method with EVOO.  It's a quick infusion compared to letting it steep for a few weeks, but I have to get this material processed. I used a double boiler trying not to let the herbs boil.  I heated it for a half hour or so and then let it sit overnight.  Strained it into a jar and labeled.

I only used about 2 cups of chopped herb.  There's so much more to do!  This is not the ideal way to get medicinal herbs, but it's best to make use of an unexpected harvest.  You'll see me on future BBs!

Burra Maluca wrote:Please, please, please keep records of all this. With photos. And share them here. I think this is fascinating.

It does sound like you accidentally selected for seedlings by picking out the single plants rather than from clumps.

Maybe the original clump of walking onions will flower again. If they do, maybe you could bag the flowers and save the seed so you can plant it in a separate pot and then if it grows you will know for sure if it's fertile seed from the hybrid walking onions.

Maybe try to save seed from the babies too to see what happens.

Great idea again!  I will make records.  And save seed if it happens.  But what if these babies aren't as good as the hybrid?  The walking onions are pretty reliable source of onions year after year.  I have to go out of my way to make the clumps smaller and use them all !  So far the babies have pretty flowers, which I'll use in salads.

Nevertheless, I love a good science experiment.  So I will let you know what happens.  Thanks for the ideas.

That is really interesting!  The established clumps I have are large and crowded.  They did make some white flowers over the bulblets at the top last year.  Usually a new clump grows several little sprouts all together because each stem of bulblets at the top of the plant fall over together and plant themselves.  But the ones I transplanted were all single sprouts -- I thought that would be easier to get greens in my container that were already individually apart instead of breaking up a baby clump of sprouts.  

Thanks so much for the responses.  Because the flowers really look like chives!

Crazy question:  I've grown Egyptian Walking Onions for 8 or 10 years in the same spot.  Needless to say, since I live in suburbia, I have to regularly trim or give away my onion babies each year.  

This year, I've been experimenting with containers and so I planted a few shallot bulbs in the middle of a container and surrounded it with transplanted walking onion shoots, thinking I'd get a little extra green onion harvest. They looked beautiful, and then they flowered. But they look like chive blossoms!  My chives are in the back yard and these are in the front yard, so I don't think I sowed them.  The green "leaves" are a bit fatter than chives and just looked like young walking onions.

Funny huh?  At least the containers look good.  Anyone else ever seen this?