Experimenting With Tuber Crops in Devon

Well, well.... as we're nearing the end of another growing season, it's soon going to be that exciting time again for us to trade plants for next year.

This season I've been experimenting with just about all of those fascinating tuber crops that you can grow in the UK -  Mashua, Oca, Yacon, Chinese Yam, Chinese Artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes, Ulluco and Ground Nuts (Apios Americana - not peanuts!) These are particularly interesting crops for me, as the search continues for perennial food crops that could replace annuals as part of our staple diet.

Yacon growing in their native Andean Region

It's still difficult to know what's going on under the ground and what the harvest will be like, but I'm expecting a decent crop from the Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius) - which seem easy to grow, even in some shade but demand plenty of food and water.





As with many of these Andean tubers - yacon are day length sensitive and so only start producing tubers after the autumn equinox (September 21st) - so we have to rely on a long mild autumn for a good harvest.

Oca - a tuber crop and a salad! The leaves have a lovely lemony taste

Oca (Oxalis Tuberosa) is another of those day length sensitive crops but have also done really well, even in quite dry soil, and I'm hoping for a good yield. I've also been enjoying tossing their tangy leaves into salads and sandwiches this summer, yum!

The Mashua (lots of info in last year's posts) have been suprisingly tricky this year, compared with last and have appeared not to have enjoyed all the hot, dry weather, (or cabbage white caterpillars!) but I'm still hoping for a good few tubers.

Also disappointing have been the Chinese yam (Dioscorea Batatas) and Ulluco (Ullucus tuberosus), but I suspect that they may be suffering from the opposite problem - being too demanding of sunshine and warmth to grow very well in most of the UK. Only my plants in the polytunnel look healthy... Mind you we are up at 180m above sea level in North Devon, so have cooler summers than much of Southern England. Ulluco can also suffer from the same viruses as potatoes, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if an infection has stunted their growth.

The Ground Nuts are now rambling up a south facing hedge very happily after a slow start, it seems they need lots of water to grow vigorously. What a promising crop though - nitrogen fixing and very hardy, I'm excited by the potential of these guys. I probably won't attempt to dig any up until they're well established next autumn though.

As I say it's still early days, but I'm expecting to be able to share Oca, Yacon, Mashua, Jerusalem Artichokes, and hopefully a few Chinese artichokes with others in November/December. If you're interested to do a plant swap or to make a donation towards my forest garden project in exchange for some tubers, please get in touch!
-

charlielechat@yahoo.co.uk

Mashua can produce beautiful edible flowers late in the autumn too! Thanks to my uncle Dan for the picture.

A Taste of the Unexpected

Craetagus Azarolus

Forest Gardening certainly seems to be taking off in the UK right now, with new edible ecosystems cropping up all over the place... but it's still such early days and with few long established examples around, it can be hard to find many sources of information on many of the unusual plants that we're putting our faith in for future harvests. For me, the most important factor is what will actually taste good!

  
Of course everyone's palate is different, so lets share our experiences to get a better picture of what will be really worth growing. Please do write in to share your own experiences!

Fruits

Cornus Kousa - Chinese Dogwood - Deliciously sweet squishy pulp inside, reminds me of banana. The fruits are fairly small however and the skin tastes disgusting. The best way to eat them is to make a hole in the skin and suck the insides out! - I'm still looking for one of these!

Actinidia Arguta - Hardy Kiwi

Actinidia Arguta - Hardy Kiwi - About the size of a large grape. Sweet and delicious, much like a full sized fuzzy kiwi but with smooth, tender skin, yum!

Hippophae rhamnoides / salicifolia - Sea Buckthorn and Himalayan Sea Buckthorn -  Most will find these tiny fruits far too sour to eat raw but I love to nibble them! They have an intense taste that I can only compare to a very sour passion fruit. I'm sure they'd make wonderful juices and jams. The two species taste very similar.

Arbutus Unedo - Strawberry Tree - Don't believe the myths that these fruits taste disgusting! Once they're ripe they can be sweet, soft and nicely tangy. You may find tiny crunchy particles inside that are fine to eat.

Diospyrus Virginiana - American Persimmon - I tried a few of these that were still hanging on the trees at Plants for A Future in Cornwall in December. Perhaps they were too far gone, very mushy, but still had a nice very sweet, almost caramelly taste. A little like cherry sized versions of their cousins the kaki or sharon fruit.

Cephalotaxus - Plum Yew - Not my favourite this one - it has a bizarre resinous taste that is not quite like anything else. Juicy and sweet but impossible to describe the flavour - better for you to try this one and decide for yourself. Perhaps an acquired taste - some people love them!

Decaisnea fargesii - Blue Bean / Blue Sausage Tree - Open up the pods and you'll find a lot of hard black seeds covered in slimy translucent flesh. The only way to eat them is to take a mouthful of the flesh and seeds and then spit out all the seeds! The flesh has a subtle sweet flavour, a tiny bit like melon.

Rosa Rugosa - Ramana's Rose - A nice tangy tomato-ie taste when grilled but it does take hours to get all those tickly seeds out. 

Craetagus - Sweet hawthorns - There are many species of hawthorn with nice sweet fruits, like the Azarole (Craetagus azarolus) for example. I find they all taste quite similar, with a fragrant appley taste and nice squishy texture when ripe. Reputed to be good for the heart.

Medlar - Can be wonderful, maybe they need lots of sun to be at their best . I tried some at Permaship in Bulgaria which were so sweet, almost like a squishy date or dried banana. 

Myrtus Ugni (Molinae) - Chilean Guava - Tiny, tiny fruits that are absolutely exquisite! Like aromatic strawberries with a beautiful pine like fragrance.

Vegetables and Salads

Oxalis tuberosa - Oca - I've tried these baked - a very nice lemony taste, can be quite sharp. I'd prefer to mix them up with more bland flavours, or in a salad. Texture like potato.

Tropaeolum Tuberosum - Mashua - Amazing vanilla like fragrance once baked. The flesh inside is sweet and fragrant, the skin has quite a strong peppery/cress taste. A strong taste so better mixed with other ingredients. The leaves of the plant are one of my favourites for salad, tender and with a mild peppery taste.

Acocha - easier to grow than peppers!

Smallanthus sonchifolius - Yacon - I've only tried these raw. Crunchy and sweet, halfway between a fruit and a vegetable. Intriguing more than delicious, and like Jerusalem artichokes, may cause jet propulsion.

 Achocha / Caigua -  This is a climbing annual from the cucumber family. Very easy to grow- I harvested this basketful from one plant growing in average soil with a little shade. The raw fruits are fluffy and tasteless but fry them hot until they're dark and they take on a taste not unlike green peppers!

Epilobium angustifolium - Rose Bay Willow Herb - Anyone can try this for themselves - it grows everywhere. I've found the flavour of the shoots interesting but pretty strong and bitter - they soon get tough and stringy too so best to eat them in April when they're small. The leaves are agreeable in small doses, good in salads. It'd be great for someone to do breeding work on these weeds to get them tender and sweet!

Sedum Spectabile / Telephium - Ice Plant / Orpine - The leaves are fleshy and juicy, quite bland with a curious 'green' taste. Great refreshing salad ingredient in moderation. Brilliant flowers for butterflies too.

Chenopodium album - Fat Hen  - Can tickle your throat when raw but great once cooked - much like spinach. Cultivated in India and known as 'Bathua'.


Allium ampeloprasum - Babington's Leek - The bulbils are like little garlic bombs, great fun in salads.

Claytonia sibirica - Siberian Purslane - This one is quite special, with a wonderfully sweet, earthy taste and crunchy texture. Sadly the raw leaves can really bite at the back of your throat so I prefer them steamed and then to my tongue, they taste better than spinach!

Hablitzia tamnoides - Caucasian Spinach / Spinach Vine - A pleasant mild taste when steamed, similar to spinach or fat hen.

Hemerocallis - Day Lillies  - Both the leaves and flowers have a characteristic sweet musky taste that can cling to your tongue for hours - not everyone's cup of tea! It's been noticed that they're more popular with men than women...

Nuts

Gingko Biloba - Inside the smelly fruits you will find a tasty nut!

Quercus Ilex - Holm Oak - These can be nice and sweet roasted on a fire, tasting a bit like chestnuts but others can be bitter. Seems to vary from tree to tree. 


Araucaria araucana - Monkey Puzzle - I've only tried them raw - they're good, a bit like a big peanut. Others say Brazil nut? I'm sure they'd be delicious roasted.


Gingko Biloba - The nuts are quite small but very sweet and tasty once roasted on a fire. Similar flavour to chestnuts.

Eating Weeds - Dandelion Recipe!

Butterflies and Bees like Dandelions too

It's definitely dandelion season out there at the moment - everywhere you go at this time of year there's masses of yellow flowers dancing in the wind, like tiny reflections of the sun. Only a few weeks back they were all hiding away, difficult to spot but now they're forced to give away their location with their bright yellow beacons! I lick my lips and fetch my scissors....

Whereas most gardeners around these parts detest dandelions, I'm fond of them - mainly because I love eating them. I was lucky enough to go to Greece a few springs ago and watched how much the locals relished eating them there - you even find dandelions on the market stalls, sold simply as 'horta', and in such quantity that I can only imagine the people are actually cultivating them!

The thing is, like with most vegetables, you just need to know how to prepare them. If you've ever tried eating a raw dandelion leaf you'll probably never want to get one anywhere near your mouth again. But then that would be the same if you'd tried eating raw broccoli - you're missing a treat once they're cooked!

So to get all that bitterness out, the dandelions need to be boiled for 10-15 minutes. The longer you boil, and the more water you use, the less bitter they'll become. (Some Greeks don't cover the pan, claiming that covering will make the leaves yellow and presumably less tasty? Sounds superstitious but I follow their advice!)

Drain the water, catching some of it in a bowl. Put your dandelions in a dish to serve and add plenty of olive oil, lemon juice and black pepper to give it that classic Greek twist! I like to add a little of the bitter cooking water to the mix now that I've acquired the taste.This water, by the way, is said to be an excellent remedy for a sore stomach, if you can get it down!

I'm not promising that everyone will love it on their first try, but do persevere, it's a taste well worth learning to like. My favourite bit is mopping up the juice with some bread at the end, yum!

Turning Logs into Mushrooms!

Another question frequently asked about growing crops amongst tall trees in a polyculture is: 'But what can you get to grow in all that shade?'

Sunlight must be our biggest consideration when designing an edible ecosystem and it certainly seems like a scarce commodity sometimes here in Devon. Firstly we must position the trees carefully to allow plenty enough light to penetrate through to the smaller shrubs and vegetables below. But of course there will still be places that'll see very little or no sun.

Luckily no sun doesn't have to mean no crops, and one perfect example of a shade loving crop is delicious mushrooms.

Not only do mushrooms offer us an easy crop in an otherwise difficult position, they can also turn our otherwise useless prunings into food and compost.

Full of essential vitamins and minerals and containing 10-30% protein when dried, mushrooms are super foods which can crop prolifically. This gives them great potential as a food to nourish the world's millions without the need for animals - and mushrooms may also crop when all else fails and are perfectly ecological to produce.

Gourmet species like Shiitake, Oyster Mushrooms, Lion's Mane and Chicken of the Woods can all be grown on logs. If you've never tried these kind of mushrooms before - they're quite a treat! Much meatier and more flavoursome than most shrooms, they are also easy to grow.

Many kinds of trees can be used, but oak and chestnut are often favourites, providing a high yield and durable wood that can keep cropping for 10 years.

The typical method is to inoculate freshly cut logs with specially prepared spawn during the winter. Logs are then left in a damp and shady place and usually fruit all by themselves 6-18 months after inoculation, in the spring or autumn.

Shiitakes are the most popularly grown log mushroom and one reason for this is that they can be forced into fruiting not just once but three times a year by a process called 'shocking'. Logs are soaked in water and banged on the ground to simulate a falling branch. The fungi, then thinking that it is time to procreate, unwittingly provides us with loads of tasty fruit, yum!

This method of cultivating shiitakes is thought to have begun around one thousand years ago in parts of China, and now seems to be just beginning to catch on over here!

If you'd like to grow your own mushrooms, a great website with lots of information and spawn for sale is Ann Miller:    http://www.annforfungi.co.uk/

I will be preparing lots of shiitake logs from oak branches this winter and will happily supply you with freshly inoculated logs. The logs will be around 3ft long x 10-15cm wide and should start providing you with mushrooms by 2014.

 Each log takes time and materials to prepare so I'm asking for £12 per inoculated log or £3 per freshly cut oak log for you to inoculate yourself.  I'm afraid they'll have to be picked up locally in Devon though as they're too heavy to send!

Please email me for more details... charlielechat@yahoo.co.uk

Shiitake mushrooms are believed to help fight cancer, lower cholesterol and boost our immune system

Chestnuts as a Staple Food?

When people first hear about the idea of Forest Gardening and replacing annual crops with perennials, one common question in response is: But where will the real bulk of food come from? How can we replace all those calories we get from the cereal fields without all the heavy work and energy input?

One of the answers is nuts. Nuts can be used in a similar way to cereals and perhaps the very best species of nut in terms of sheer yield in Southern England is The Sweet Chestnut.

We all know about roasting and boiling fresh chestnuts but they can also be dried and will keep for years this way. They can then be ground into flour to make bread and cakes. This was traditional in Southern Europe where they were sometimes known as 'Bread Trees'.

Chestnuts are also nutritionally similar to cereals but without the gluten and are full of Vitamin C.

Though not widely recognised as a viable crop in the UK, carefully selected varieties have been shown to perform consistently well in the warmer parts of the country and can give us up to 25kg per tree.

The good old Agroforestry Research Trust in South Devon planted a trials site for various species of nut trees in 1995 to discover the true potential of nuts as a staple food in the UK.

Their findings show that from a hectare planted with the most productive Chestnut cultivars we could expect 2.5 tonnes a year of green nuts a year, perhaps more. This compares with a typical yield of 4.3 tonnes per hectare of wheat grown organically in the UK. So the present yield may be lower, but when we consider the vast amounts of cereals and land that provide for lifestock, chestnut orchards may seem like a realistic alternative if were to move towards a less meat based diet.

And of course farming with trees requires less work, a lot less work!

Chestnut cultivars can start cropping after 3 years and will reach their full yield in10 years or so, but in that time they require barely any looking after.

Once they get going, all that is required is to come back every autumn and harvest the fallen nuts (*read bottom of page for squirrel issues). For the rest of the year, the orchard can be left in peace to serve as a permanent habitat for all kinds of other plants and creatures to enjoy - or be utilised to to grow further crops in a polyculture. In all that space that's left under the trees we can let poultry range, grow shade loving vegetables like Solomon's Seals, Wild Garlic, Sweet Cicely and also mushrooms (article coming soon!)

 Compare that with all the heavy machinery and annual Ploughing > Feeding > Sowing > Weeding > Harvesting cycle needed to provide us with wheat alone and well, I know which I'd choose!

But is it really that simple - don't the trees require feeding? Nut trees do indeed require a decent supply of nitrogen to keep cropping well, but naturally, Nature has a solution...

Instead of all the trouble of carting around chemical fertilisers or manure every year, we simply plant nitrogen fixing plants to fertilise the ground for us, perennially. In the case of a nut orchard, we'd look for trees such as alders, sea buckthorns and eleagnus species which can also act as a wind break, and may provide us with additional crops themselves. Even more nitrogen could be supplied by keeping poultry under the trees, who'll happily drop little nitrogen bombshells all over the orchard free of charge.

I'm currently planting a small orchard of Chestnut trees in Devon, mainly seedlings. The seeds I've sown are those from the trials site in Dartington so the parent trees are all good croppers. Yes, seedlings are always unpredictable but there's a small chance that some of them could turn out to give decent crops themselves and I could then share these new varieties with others. If they turn out to be less fruitful then I can always top graft them with a proven cultivar, or coppice them for their durable wood.

If you're keen to grow nuts, you must go and see Martin Crawford's trials site near Dartington, Devon. He tends to give guided tours of the place every autumn, and there's also a weekend course for growing all kinds of nuts.

http://www.agroforestry.co.uk


*Squirrels.... I love to see them around, but they're the biggest problem we face when growing nuts. Luckily the spiny casing on chestnuts will deter squirrels, but only for as long as they're on the tree - as soon as they hit the ground they're easier to get into and the squirrels will usually beat you to it! So if don't want to harm the squirrels, we must harvest the nuts off the tree. The only method I know is by banging the branches with a long pole regular and then collecting the fallen nuts - if you know of any others, please let me know!

I don't currently have any chestnut trees to offer - but do check the agroforestry research trust's catalogue.