Update on the Comfrey Experiments

I posted earlier this year about two related projects to do with the comfrey plants.  The first goal was to get rid of the comfrey in the garden proper, because since it was planted the garden has expanded and the comfrey is no longer holding down the corners, but mucking up what I'd like to have as a pathway.  The second goal was to create a comfrey hedge along the northern edge of the garden with some of the rootstock I was trying to get rid of.

I can say with a fair degree of certainty that the hedge is a success.  The tiny pieces of comfrey root that were transplanted in late February got very little help, and yet they've grown into a row of thriving plants.  I did use a hand scythe a few times to cut back weeds and grass that grew up alongside the comfrey in spring and early summer.  By mid-summer the comfrey clearly had the edge and was able to hold its own.  I don't anticipate that it will require any further care.  From now on, and for years to come, the comfrey hedge should hold the line on any grass or weeds that would otherwise encroach on that garden border.  I've run the lawn mower right up to that edge of the garden several times, shredding large comfrey leaves that hang down.  As expected, the comfrey shrugs off such incidental abuse.  I'm definitely thinking about where else a comfrey hedge would be of use.

The possible downside that I worried about - that rodents would make themselves at home under the protection of the comfrey foliage - has come to pass.  A few times I've seen rodents darting between the comfrey hedge and the raspberry canes.  But I haven't noticed any significant crop damage that I can attribute to them, and we have a prodigiously talented hunter-cat.  I know he's keeping all sorts of rodent populations in check (when he's not stoned, of course).  So I'm content to let that ride.

As for the eradication part of the project, that's going about as I expected it would.  I have cut back lush growth in the original locations at least five or six times this year.   It keeps sending up leaves, just a bit slower and less abundant each time.  I didn't expect to get rid of the comfrey in a single year, and clearly I haven't.  I'm perfectly fine with that.  I'll keep on with the reaping next year.  If it manages to hang on to sprout after that, it surely won't have much oomph in the third year of the eradication project.  I'll keep you posted.

If you need more information about why I'm growing comfrey in the first place, read about its wonders.

My Cat, the Stoner

For a variety of reasons, I planted a lot of catnip this spring.  It's a useful and mild medicinal, reportedly good at repelling flea beetles from garden crops, and most famously attractive to cats.  I took some pains to protect the tiny live plants I ordered from Richters.  I asked for a dozen of the smallest, cheapest plants, figuring that if I had many of them there was a better chance that at least some of them would survive.  After planting about ten of them near each other, I laid the chicken greens feeder over them to keep the cats from either eating them whole, ripping them out of the ground, or simply rolling them to death.  They had a few inches of protected headspace, but any part of the plant that grew taller than that was subject to feline depredations.

It worked.  At least seven of those ten plants survived, and it didn't take too long before I was able to remove the protection of the greens feeder.  Being a hardy mint family member, the catnip can now stand up to whatever abuse the neighborhood cats can dish out.

I find our cat Mojo lying between the fence and the catnip quite often.  It's one of his favorite hangout spots, for good reasons: it's sunny, he can hide himself behind the herb and still have a commanding view of the whole yard, and if startled can slip under the fence to the neighbor's property.  Mojo is one of the most resolutely cheerful cats I've ever known.  Unless made nervous by strangers or a strange situation, he's always in a good mood, a regular Mr. Bliss.  So he hardly seems the type to need routine self-medication.  Or maybe I have it all wrong and he's so happy because he has such easy access to kitty dope.  Maybe he'll get cranky and go into withdrawal when the plant dies down for the winter.

The thing I've noticed though about catnip is that its effect on cats seems inherently self-limiting.  No matter how drugged out cats get by smelling or ingesting catnip, it only seems to last about 15-20 minutes.  Repeated exposure after that has little effect. Yet Mo' will hang out in that spot for hours on a nice day.  Maybe he just has wholly positive associations with that place.  Or maybe he doesn't want to share with other cats, so he guards his supply.

I'm not much for recreational drugs myself, but my stoner kitty does make me ponder several questions.  Is there any sense in making a plant - a natural living thing - illegal?  Do cats have more self restraint than humans when it comes to psychoactive herbs?  Do the ills of human society lead to addictions where a more balanced existence would allow us to use natural drugs recreationally without such complications?  Or is it the added complexity of the human brain as compared with a cat's brain?  Or is our tendency to synthesize natural substances into more potent drugs the real problem?   I can't see that my cat comes to any harm, or creates any harm, by indulging in a profound high fairly frequently.  Granted, he's not pregnant, and I have no idea how catnip would affect feline fetuses.  Also, he doesn't smoke catnip, or take synthesized tabs of 'nip at a kitty rave.  And perhaps if he did, the drug would affect him differently.  All he can do is eat it or roll in it.  Either seems to work for him.  I think animals have their own wisdom sometimes, and I'm still puzzling out the lessons of cats and catnip.

Anyhow, it's nice to know I've got a homegrown supply of kitty happy leaf and that my cat can get stoned frugally.  Next year I'll have enough catnip to derive some benefit from it myself.  And yes, if you were wondering, this post is at least partly just an excuse to display pictures of the cat.

Homegrown Coriander

 

A minor frustration in growing cilantro is the plant's notorious haste in going to seed.  I deal with this by planting cilantro seed almost weekly from spring through midsummer.  That ensures a relatively steady supply of one of my favorite summer herbs, so essential for salsa and Asian stir-fry dishes.  Still, the plants have their own agenda, which seems to be ensuring future generations of cilantro as quickly as possible, and then dying.  Those future generations take the form of an abundant seed set.  I'm sure most of you will know this, but the seed of cilantro is coriander.  Every so often I see cilantro referred to as "fresh coriander" or "green coriander."

This is the first year I've allowed the plants to fully ripen their seed.  In past years I ripped out the bolting plants to make room for other things.  This year I decided to harvest the seed, both for culinary uses and for re-seeding.  The technique I use is pretty basic.  On a dry day I unfold a full-size newspaper section underneath the dried out plant.   Ideally I manage to arrange the newspaper such that it is slightly bowl shaped, with the center lower than the edges.  Then I bend the seed heads down as low over the paper as possible, and rub the dried stalks and seed pods vigorously between my hands.  What collects in the paper will be a combination of seeds, stems, leaf debris, and a few odd insects.  I fold the newspaper up and bring it to the covered porch, where I open it up to dry for a day or so.  During this time most of the insects will wander off on their own.

Next I remove the larger, more obvious pieces of stem and other detritus.  Then the seeds go into a colander with holes small enough that the seeds cannot pass through.  Shaking the seeds around in there removes the vast majority of other chaff.  After that I pick over what remains by hand.  Medium sized bits of stem take just a few minutes to pick out.  All told, it takes me only about 15 minutes of hands-on work to collect what easily amounts to a year's supply of coriander.  It's one of my mainstay spices when cooking beans.  And we eat a lot of beans.  It's also great for curries and all sorts of Indian dishes.

I put most of the cleaned coriander in a clean glass jar, labelled it, and added it to the chest freezer.  The rest of it lives in the freezer attached to our refrigerator.  I'm sold on the idea of keeping spices and herbs frozen to preserve as much flavor as possible.  Both the chill and the darkness of a freezer help protect the flavors of these ingredients.  Considering that purchased spices are - on a price per weight basis - among the most expensive foods I cook with, it's important to me that I get full value out of them.

Chive Vinegar

The chive flowers have been blooming for about two weeks now.  They are such cheerful adornments for the garden.  Each year I take a division from the parent plant and start a new colony somewhere, even though one plant could easily go for three years between divisions.  It hasn't seemed to hurt the plants any to divide them more aggressively.

This spring I finally got around to plucking some of the flower heads to make chive vinegar.  I'd been meaning to do it for years, but good intentions got lost in the whirlwind of spring chores that must be done as soon as temperatures permit.  Had I known how gorgeous the infused vinegar would be I might have gotten to it sooner.  Look at the color!

For this infusion I used plain old distilled white vinegar, which, having no color of its own to begin with, probably helps the color given by the chive blossoms stand out so clearly.  If I'd had any of our own apple cider vinegar left I probably would have used that and not gotten so brilliant a shade.  I chose chive blooms that were just fully opened, still soft and with full color.  After the blooms have been open for a while they sort of stiffen up and the color becomes pale, before they begin to dry and turn brown.  I worked by feeling the blooms with my fingertips, checking for the right amount of give.  I washed them gently and spun them in a salad spinner, then pulled all the individual flowers off the flower head.  I got the same eye-stinging effect from doing this as I do when chopping onions.  Chive flowers pack a wallop!

I didn't use all that many blooms to my quart of vinegar - perhaps ten or so.  After just a week of steeping, the color and flavor of the vinegar is pronounced.  The flavor is oniony of course, but it lacks the pungent bite of raw onion; strong but mellow flavor is what we've got.  I'll strain off the spent blooms in another week or so, by which time I expect they'll have contributed all the flavor they've got to give.  I'm well aware that the color may darken and dull over time.  I've seen that happen with raspberry vinegar.  But I imagine the color will still be pleasant.  It seems to me, though I can't swear to it, that my chives sometimes bloom again later in the year.  If the color of this vinegar holds up well, or even for a few months, I may take cuttings from a late season bloom to make more chive vinegar.  If I can find pretty bottles at a rummage sale or yard sale, they would make nice gifts to give away for the winter holidays.  Whether the color holds up prettily or not, we'll be using this quite a bit in salads.

First Tincture: Valerian Root

Events around the homestead are running far ahead of posting, as is so often the case in spring.  A lot has been going on what with the installation a new package of Italian honey bees, and the addition of two Cuckoo Marans hens to our tiny backyard flock.  (Yes, I know that Cuckoo Marans sounds like a stripper's name, but it's a breed of chicken, trust me.) Add more transplanted stinging nettles, and ramps, and rootstock, plus potatoes still to be planted, and it's a bit of a whirlwind.  Blog-worthy stuff seems to just be slipping right past me these days, so I decided to seize upon one of them and just get a post out already.

Learning more about herbal medicine made my official list of goals for this year.  Last year I planted a good selection of the more widely available medicinal herbs.  Over the winter I picked up a few titles on the subject and dipped into them from time to time.  And finally today I've made my first effort towards creating a medicinal tincture.  I'm really hoping I just picked one of the more difficult ones, because it was rather a tedious chore: valerian root.  I planted three valerian plants last year, and spring of the second year is the latest time to harvest the roots.  I could only bear to dig one of them up; I'm hoping the other two will set seed and propagate themselves so I can harvest some of those next year.  You see, to make a tincture from the root of the plant is to kill that plant.  That's hard for me.  Beets, carrots, parsnips and turnips are one thing, but perennials are another.

That's one excuse anyway.  An equally good excuse would be that valerian roots are an absolute pain to clean.  Here's a picture of what it looked like after 20 minutes of hosing off outside, before I tackled the rest of the cleaning inside. It's much like being hairdresser to a sheepdog.  A very dirty and tractable sheepdog.  The digging took only a couple minutes.  The cleaning took at least an hour.  Other medicinal tinctures are going to have to be less work if they're going to get made.  Fortunately, once the roots were clean enough to pass muster with me, there was very little else to it.  I simply cut them up with kitchen shears, packed them very tightly into a clean canning jar, and poured over enough 80 proof vodka to cover.  If I'd had 100 proof vodka on hand, I would have used that.

For the next several weeks the tincture will stay in a kitchen cabinet where I'll see it and remember to shake it every other day or so.  After that it'll be strained and stored in the pantry where it will keep forever, or until it's used up. We'll see how diligent I am about making use of all the other medicinal herbs we've got around here.  If it can be justified, eventually it may make sense to stock up on a case or two of 100 proof.  One is inevitably drawn to wonder if it's the herb in the herbal tinctures which lends the efficacy, or is it the alcohol itself?  Valerian is known as a powerful sedative, but for a lightweight like myself, so is vodka.

Valerian root has a pronounced smell which some people apparently find extremely unpleasant.  I sort of like it.  It's strong but not overpowering.  I would describe it as somewhere between mossy forest and licorice.  My cat found the scent of it on my fingers incredibly fascinating just after I finished making the tincture.  I don't think this will be a tincture I've got to hold my nose to take.  At least I hope not.

Oh, and if you're an herbal medicine whiz and feel compelled to tell me I was too late with harvesting my valerian root, please save it.  Tell me in a month or so, if you must.  Today the effort is just too fresh in my mind to learn that it was all wasted.  On the other hand, if you're still an herbal medicine whiz and you have some nifty trick for cleaning valerian root, or any other herbal medicine tips you feel generous about, pipe right up.

Warfare in the Garden - Moving Comfrey

In which our heroine attempts to eradicate well established comfrey plants which are tragically misplaced in the garden.

Everyone makes mistakes when they start gardening.  Putting comfrey plants at what I thought were going to be the corners of the garden was one of mine.  The garden has expanded twice since those plantings, and two comfrey plants are now positioned where I've decided there should be pathways.  Comfrey is legendarily difficult of removal, and these plants seem to find their current locations quite agreeable. 

I have a method to my madness, or so it pleases me to think.  I've had a few years to observe the way comfrey grows, and how other plants behave around it.  I've noticed that:

• comfrey leafs out early in the spring
• comfrey dies back late in the fall
• one comfrey plant generally gets to about 3.5' (~1.1m) in diameter
• nothing - I mean no plant - grows under the full shade of an established comfrey plant

As a homesteader, and a frugal person, I've gotten into the habit of asking myself, about most anything, "What's it good for?  What can I do with it?  How could it be repurposed to serve my needs?"  Naturally I ask, what's comfrey good for - in a structural, functional sense within the garden?  (Because I'm already up to speed on all the other fabulous stuff it's good for.)  It seems to me that comfrey could well form a low hedge plant, to hold back the crab grass from the borders of the garden.  Since comfrey is around both early and late, the grass shouldn't be able to get a leg up.  Another tool in comfrey's campaign for supremacy is its habit of plastering the ground with all the foliage of the year when it dies back in the fall.  Nothing comes up through those layers of leaves before the new comfrey shoots of spring are well on their way.

So the first step in eradicating the comfrey was to take divisions of the roots and transplant them to the northern end of the garden.  This area was heavily lasagna mulched in fall of 2009.  The mulch did a decent job of holding the weeds in check all through last year.  But as you can see, it would need renewal this year to keep the weeds back.  I'd much rather create a self-maintaining border composed of a plant so profoundly useful, and not ever have to give that area another lick of work. With the help of our first WWOOF volunteers of the year, I took some dormant root pieces and stuck them in small holes in the unimproved soil at the garden's edge back in late February, spaced roughly 3.5' apart.  I did absolutely nothing to help these roots along, and after watching for about a month I only needed to put in second root divisions at two of the transplant locations.  I now have obviously viable comfrey plants at each of the ten orange flags in the picture above.  I may expand the comfrey hedge along the western edge of the garden at some point.

Aside from getting rid of comfrey plants where I no longer want them, relocating comfrey seems to make good sense from a fertility perspective.  I think of comfrey as a miner plant.  It grows a formidable taproot and pulls up nutrients from deep underground, making them available to more shallowly rooted plants.  But every mine plays out eventually.  These comfrey plants have been in place for four years.  Putting new plants in a new area should grant access to untapped resources.  Comfrey is also a plant with an extraordinarily large surface area for its size.  The leaves are very broad and long, while the stems are minimal.  I don't know this for a certainty, but that would seem to suggest that comfrey transpires a lot of water vapor, well supplied by its tap root even when the soil surface is relatively dry.  In times of drought that moisture would be helpful to other plants nearby.  At the same time, by covering so much soil, comfrey regulates temperature and slows water loss from the soil through evaporation.  Even if I'm wrong about comfrey's utility to nearby plants, establishing an entire row of these plants where nothing but grass was growing before seems like a good idea.  It will store carbon in the soil, provide more food for bumblebees, and serve as convenient a trap crop for Japanese beetles, making them easy to handpick for the hens.

So much for all the benefits of moving the plants.  But how do I imagine I'll eradicate the comfrey from its current location?  Well, I plan to take a multi-pronged and long term approach.  And to be philosophical about it, rather than allowing my personal feelings to come into it.  Now that I know the root divisions have taken, I'll basically just keep cutting back the growth of the parent plants.  I expect to take at least six cuttings this year, and I don't expect to win the war in one year.  The first spring cuttings from the comfrey will, as usual, be used to provide some extra fertility to the potatoes when I plant them.  This year I may also use comfrey cuttings to give the corn a boost as well.  After that, I'll take several cuttings to dry for the chickens' winter feed, and also feed it to them fresh.  I will even let them have direct access to the comfrey occasionally so that they can do some damage on their own; although I know they'll be far more interested in eating all the critters living below the mulch that the comfrey creates from its own leaves.  The damage to the comfrey itself will be purely collateral.  Other than that, I'll just keep cutting back the top growth of the plants, so that the roots gradually deplete themselves.  Without leaves to photosynthesize, the roots will eventually starve and die.

Depending on how it goes, I may experiment with solarizing the root mass at some point.  This would entail covering it with clear plastic and weighting down the edges so that the roots are both deprived of water and baked by the sun.  It sounds torturous, I know.  The only thing that salves my conscience is knowing that I've already provided for the continuation of the plant's genetic line.

Tune in later this year to see how fares the war.  And wish me luck.

Mint, Tamed

Last year I decided to put in a spearmint plant.  Of course I'd heard all the tales about how invasive mints are and what drastic measures are needed to contain them.  Serious gardening friend said he planted his mint in the middle of his lawn so that he could use the lawn mower to tame any offshoots or new growths.  But still, I was determined.  Perennial herbs are so tempting, and there was no way I was going to resist adding a nice mint to the collection.

So I did a little strategizing.  The first thought was physical containment.  I decided to sink a 5-gallon bucket into the ground, and plant inside that.  So I cut off the bottom of the bucket, while my husband dug a fairly deep hole where I indicated.  I had him put the dirt into a wheelbarrow, and to this I added a good amount of compost.  The bucket was placed in the hole with a couple inches remaining above grade.  Then I put in the soil and compost mixture until it completely filled the bucket, and backfilled the rest of the hole around the bucket.  I knew the soil inside the bucket would settle down gradually over the season.  I put my spearmint seedling in the bucket and watered.

My second thought was also physical containment.  I'd been looking at this fragment of large plastic pipe that we'd fished out of a dumpster on a construction site for quite some time.  Its diameter was several inches larger than that of the bucket, and laid on the ground it's about 10 inches high.  Now mint is known to spread just by expanding its root system, which the sunk bucket should take care of.  But it has a second, stealthy means of propagating itself.  The plant can just grow a long stem which then casually, oh-so-innocently and when you're not looking because you're distracted by everything else going on in the garden, falls over under its own weight until it touches the ground.  That's when this double agent piece of plant tissue grows roots and establishes a beach head.  The plastic pipe was installed as a collar around the bucket to prevent exactly that habit.  If the mint wanted to try spreading by such methods, the stem would have to grow very tall indeed, lean itself against the collar, and then droop a considerable way before reaching the earth.  It never happened in all of last summer.

Interesting thing too about the bucket and collar system.  I think it creates a microclimate that is beneficial in both summer and winter.  Last summer was a scorcher - very hot and unusually dry for our area.  I watered the mint seedling from planting through late spring, but it was mostly ignored after that.  It held up fine through that sort of neglect, and I think the shade provided by the collar reduced the soil temperature at the surface inside the bucket, and therefore checked evaporation.  The bushy habit of the mint also helped to cool its feet, I'm sure.  In winter, the tall collar kept some wind off the plant, and the black color helped snow melt a bit faster and provided a little extra warmth in early spring.

This spring the level of soil in the bucket is at least a couple inches below the mulch I put between the outside of the bucket and the collar to keep weeds down.  I see no signs of any offshoots from the spearmint.  This is good, since I plan to add peppermint and catnip (another member of the mint family) this year too, though I fear we can count on the cats to help control the latter.  I expect that the bucket and collar method will keep the spearmint from taking over the world in this second year which should bring even more exuberant growth.  I'll be keeping my eye out for anything that can serve as collars for my additional mints when we go dumpster diving this year.  If nothing turns up, we could cut out the sidewalls of some old tires and use just the tire rims.

How about you?  Do you have any tricks for keeping the mint family within reasonable bounds?  Or have they gotten the better of your garden?

Spring Harvest Meal: Cream of Lovage Soup

The temperature is gradually warming up, but the weather has been grey and damp and dreary lately.  The herbs are all coming on strong, and the asparagus are just breaking ground in their raised beds.  I got my spring haircut, so the nape of my neck is bare, which only means I don't have a great desire to be outside more than necessary when the sun is hidden. This is all a roundabout way of saying it's soup weather.

So today I whipped up a bare bones, easy-peasy cream of lovage soup.  Cream soups were a staple of the curriculum at culinary school.  There we were taught a formula and a methodology rather than individual cream-of recipes.  Pretty much, you can make a cream-of soup out of any ingredient.  Now, having told you there's a formula, you might reasonably expect me to tell you what the formula is.  Sadly, the exact proportions are lost in the mists of time, at least to my mind.  What has stuck are the ingredient list and the methodology, which is admittedly a bit fussy in the sense that too many pans get dirtied.  It is after all, a French recipe.

When I was in culinary school "lilies" were shorthand for anything in the onion family.  I believe at one time all onion relatives were classified in the lily family by botanists.  In any case, the chefs just referred to "lilies" in a formula, while an individual recipe would specify which lily was called for, such as onion, shallots, leeks, ramps, scallions or even garlic.  Lilies are one cornerstone of a cream-of soup, and the other is the main ingredient.  Then of course there's the cream.  Since this is a French recipe, it goes without saying that multiple additions of butter are also involved, one of which is likely to be roux.  Roux is just a cooked mixture of flour and butter.  (Enough divagations yet?  Can we move on?)

So my cream of lovage soup recipe took advantage of my three-year-old lovage plant, which is up and at 'em very early in the year.  Convenience came into it in other ways as well.  There were those salvaged and precooked leeks hanging out in the chest freezer, and scrumptious canned stock made from our home raised turkey.  Also there was some parsley butter (a convenient means of preserving last year's herbs) in the freezer.  Those four convenience foods made this soup a snap to pull together in no time.

The prepped leeks were roughly equivalent to one medium leek, already chopped up and partially cooked in butter.  These went into a soup pot to thaw over medium heat.  When thawed, I added two bay leaves, a good pinch of kosher salt, and half a pound of lovage - the chopped up stalks first, the leafy tops initially reserved.  There was enough butter in the leeks to handle the lovage stalks too.  When these were nicely sweated and softened, I added the leafy tops, a quart of our smoked turkey stock, and about 2 tablespoons of the parsley butter.  While that warmed through, I cooked a very thick roux with a couple tablespoons of butter and three heaping tablespoons of flour in a separate pan. I went to the hassle of straining the solid ingredients from the liquid (removing the bay leaves) in order to puree them.  The strained liquid was gradually (to avoid lumps) mixed into the roux, and then the pureed solids returned to the pot.   (A wand blender, if you have one, would get you close enough to the same effect with less bother and cleanup.) From there I added a good glug (1/2 a cup or so) of cream, tasted to adjust seasonings, and then warmed the soup through for serving.  It was very nice, but light enough to need some toasted bread for extra ballast

If we'd had any potatoes left, they would have been a perfect addition to this soup.  They'd give it some heft, turning it into a far more substantial meal, and would be a satisfying way to use up the last of the winter stores by pairing them with a bright new flavor from one of the earliest spring crops.  Another option that suggests itself to my tastebuds is the addition of wild rice to this soup.  I think the complex flavor of the lovage would complement the dark nuttiness of wild rice very nicely.  And fully cooked wild rice is an excellent thickener when pureed.  With the addition of either potatoes or wild rice, the roux could be omitted, making the dish gluten-free.

I suppose I should talk about lovage, since it's not the most familiar herb to modern palates.  The taste of lovage is commonly likened to celery, but I think there's a great deal more to it than that.  While I certainly taste the kinship to celery, lovage also reminds me strongly of cardamom.  The later in the season, the more the celery taste recedes, and the more the cardamom flavor predominates.  But lovage has something else all its own that is neither celery, nor cardamom.  It's hard to describe, but lovage is a big flavored herb, far stronger tasting to my palate than self-effacing celery.  The stalks of lovage are round and hollow, so some people apparently use them as straws - particularly for bloody marys, which benefit from the celery-ish taste imparted by the stalks.

As a plant, lovage has many virtues too.  It's perennial and hardy to zone 4 or 5, depending on whom you believe. On my homestead it tolerates half a day or more of total shade, and actually requires partial shade in warmer zones than mine (6b).  It is reputed to improve the health of many other crops when companion planted, and it provides habitat for beneficial insects, especially hoverflies.  Though it can become bitter and tough in hot weather, you can cut it back hard in summer to encourage the growth of tender new stalks with milder flavor.  Like many herbs, lovage is unfussy about soil type, water, and temperatures once it has established itself.  In the second and subsequent years it gets tall by mid-summer - up to 5 or 6 feet, but is not an aggressive spreader.  This is an herb that I have utterly ignored except for an occasional shovelful of compost side-dressing once in a while, usually in fall.  It comes up reliably for us and is much appreciated at this time of year, when we crave green things.  It can be propagated from seed or root division, which we plan to try next  year.

So that's the run down on lovage.  If you've got a shady spot that has gone begging, you might consider giving it to this early, delicious, and easy to grow herb.  If you already grow and cook with lovage, I'd love to hear what you do with it.

Harvest Meal: French Peasant Soup

Tonight we'll have our first serious frost.  Temperatures forecast below freezing, so no ambiguity.  October is the month of goodbyes to all the bounty of summer.  The last vine-ripened tomato.  The last eggplant.  The last basil and parsley and tender sage.  A last flurry of harvests, and a growing appreciation for the sturdy leeks and kale that will hang on a few more weeks through the early frosts.  We draw in, rummage through the freezer for ingredients, turn our thoughts to the canning jars in the cellar, full of preserved spring and summer.

So today I gathered huge fistfuls of parsley.  They will keep for a few more days in the refrigerator.  You know this trick, don't you?  Place them in a large drinking glass full of water, cover them with a plastic bag, and secure the bag with a rubber band.  Really, they'll keep beautifully for about a week if they're cut fresh.

But I've also been longing to prepare a recipe I came across in Emelie Carles' book, A Life of Her Own.  It's not a cookbook, but a sort of memoir, from the era before memoirs were fashionable to write and trivial to read.  This book is sturdy, like the peasant woman who wrote it.  Yes, she called herself and her neighbors peasants, and used the term matter-of-factly, with neither pride nor shame.  This endeared her to me immediately.  I like the word peasant, and feel an affinity for it in the sense of being tied to the land.  I recommend the book to anyone interested in how people lived in a isolated mountain valley from the beginning to the middle of the 20th century.

In the Claree Valley, where Emilie Carles lived all her life, wild greens and herbs were available for the picking for more months out of the year than any cultivated crops.  She sketched a simple soup made with an evenhanded mixture of many of these foraged foods, plus a bit of garlic, and potato or rice.  It sounded far too good to resist.  So I also gathered all the herbs and greens I could find today.  Madame Carles stressed that the key was to balance all these green ingredients, so that no one flavor predominates in the soup.


"Wild" arugula - Though in fact it was something I planted deliberately once upon a time.  Now it simply shows up all over the property.









Dandelion - Began reappearing in the cool fall weather after a summer hiatus.







Sage - Only the tiniest leaves now meet my fussy standards.  The bigger ones have toughened up too much in the chill.












Nettles - A transplant put in before our long hot summer.  Apparently thrives on utter neglect.







Chives - Because the recipe doesn't call for any onion, and how could I resist?











Parsley - Surely the backbone of any herb and potato soup.








Thyme - Two tiny sprigs of regular, plus one tiny sprig of lemon thyme.

Oregano - Barely hanging on through the early frost.

Rosemary - So as not to overpower the other flavors, only the merest clipping from the top of one stem. (This one's potted up and sitting winter out in the living room.)










Altogether my herbs and greens came to 100 grams, or 3.5 ounces.  The parsley and chives were finely minced, the rest well diced.  I started the soup with a generous hunk of butter to saute the minced garlic.  I debated the authenticity of this fat however.  Would an Alpine peasant more likely cook with lard, or butter?  Lard seemed more likely to me, and I could have started the soup with some of my home cured lardo.  But I didn't feel inclined that way today, so butter it was.  Once the garlic had sizzled a bit, the finely minced parsley and chives went in to sizzle for a couple of minutes as well.  The rest of the greens and herbs went in along with a double handful of our potatoes, cut up onto bite size pieces. I added a good pinch of kosher salt and several twists of white pepper.

I added just barely enough water to cover, wanting to test how much flavor the ingredients would give a simple water broth.  There was always the possibility of adding some chicken stock later, if it needed a little sumpin' sumpin'.  So keeping the liquid minimal at this stage was important to preserve that option.  I let it simmer gently for 15 minutes and tasted.  The broth was very flavorful, but I still thought the chicken stock would benefit it.  I added 1 1/2 cups of that and another pinch of salt.  This is probably an unforgivable deviation from authentic French low cuisine.  But you know what?  It's really fantastic!  Green tasting, with a straightforward integrity, and yet also a complex interplay of flavors among the greens and herbs. And everything but the salt and pepper were produced right here.

This may well become a late October tradition on the homestead.

Drying Comfrey

This seemed utterly unremarkable to me.  I wasn't going to post about it.  But my husband thought it was nifty-clever.  So.  Here's how I dry comfrey leaves: between two old window screens.  We have a pile of these that we hauled out of a dumpster, or maybe somebody gave them to us when they redid their windows.  Can't remember.  The storm windows had more the more obvious application of covers for cold frames (mostly yet to be built).  But the window screens hung out in the garage for a while before it occurred to me to use them this way.

The screens allow good air circulation for quick drying, prevent the leaves from blowing away in a slight wind, and make the leaves dry down very flat, which is handy for storing them after drying.  Plus it's a low-tech, grid-free, cheapskate way of drying. Yes, it works even when laid on grass, though it's faster on the driveway.  If rain threatens, I can pick up the screens and stick them in the shed, regardless of the degree of drying so far achieved.  Having the screens hang out somewhere prominently outside is also a good reminder to me to keep cutting more leaves for drying.  I use the dried comfrey leaves steadily over the winter as a feed supplement for the hens.  And it's best to have the comfrey thoroughly dried if I want to use it as fertilizer with garden seedlings.  The plant is so damn vital that cut leaves will simply grow new plants if put into the ground without first being well dried.  I suppose it might not be a bad way of drying leaves if you wanted them for medicinal purposes as well.

Besides, a steady harvest of leaves from comfrey plants helps keep them from total world domination.  We've got six comfrey plants on our 2/3 acre, and two of those in the main garden, so this is a real concern.