Lost crops of the Incas

Consider the yacon.

I've been growing this for some years now.  It's easy to grow, fairly attractive plant, at the end of the season you get these large brown tubers to eat and small nobby red parts that easily keep inside overwinter to start next year's plants.

But we don't eat them.  They are kind of like a water-chestnut but more juicy, slightly sweet.  What to do with them?  Me, I put them in bags or buckets and they sit around until they go bad.

So again this year I'm following this system, and we got to the stage last weekend where one of the buckets of yacon that's been sitting in the garage since October got tossed into the compost pile Then yesterday, I ran through the pouring rain to harvest some kale to put in a salad, and I notice that the rain had washed clean the blackened, gnarly skins and they actually looked pretty good.  So I went to the not-yet-composted bag of yacon that was sitting in the den, and pulled one out and scrubbed and peeled it.  Wow... still good!  And the 5 months storage had made it much sweeter.  We sliced it and added it to the salad, where the texture was tender but juicy and a little crisp and the sweetness really came though.  It discolored a little even from kitchen to eating... but not badly enough to be a problem. This is my very first time eating yacon as part of a meal... or for that matter eating it while sitting down.

Yacon is one of the lost crops of the Incas, it's a sunflower relative that produced tubers.  In Ashland, I had tried - and failed both times - to grow Oca, a tuberous oxalis.  I have some tubers and will try again this year.  Since last year, I've had mashua growing, with mixed success; mashua is a tuber-forming type of nasturtium.  And I just purchased Ulluco, which is related to Malabar spinach; you can also eat the leaves so I feel happier about the possibilities, although Malabar spinach is, well, mucilaginous. 

These four tubers are among the Lost Crops of the Incas, a set of edible plants domesticated in the highlands of South America and described in a book of that name.  These plants would include the potato except that the potato is definitely not lost.  Besides many tubers, this includes Quinoa, Amaranth, Chilean Guava, Pepino and others.  The problem of growing many of them is that they are from high elevation tropics - the equator runs through Ecuador, after all - so while they are adapted to coolish temperatures, usually they don't take frost, and day length issues can cause problems.  For example, Oca just starts to form tubers when the days get shorter in fall, and may not form anything if the frosts come before they have time to do their thing.

The Ulluco came from Fry Road nursery in Albany, who produce a lot of greenhouse tropicals.  They have a number of other interesting tubers, like taro and canna root as well as coffee plants.  But given that it's taken me more than 5 years to go from growing to eating the yacon, and my list of as-yet-untasted lost crops; it's better not to try to push things too much....

The project that ate winter

I've been working on a Garden Resource Guide for East Linn County.  This is stuff I love - collecting information and spreading it around - but boy, I didn't realize how much time it would take.  But I'm very happy with the results.  I just hope that this information will be helpful for people!

We haven't started looking for a permanent online home for this - since it's done under TRFW, presumably their site, but since their website is kind of a blog I don't know how I'd integrate it.  But I put in on the farm site to stake a place.
http://www.fwfarm.com/trifolds/GRG-Linn-Spring2012.pdf

Meanwhile, while working with the rest of the TRFWEL group to get the information collecting, fact-checking and reviewing done, I've been using dropbox.  I don't get a kickback from them, but I really, really like it - such an easy way to share large files on the internet and between computers.

Now, back to the sadly-neglected spring garden work!  Over the last months or so we did get a bunch of trees, shrubs and groundcovers planted - probably two dozen; prepped and/or dug two garden beds, topped off with dirt and planted about 3/4 bed's worth (seeded roots and a few starts), and started 2 trays of cabbage family and lettuces.  But we are behind in garden prep and orchard attention, and the tomato and peppers will begin starting this week, eek!

Is it spring?

We've had some warmer weather the last couple of days, the frogs are making a lot of noise and the grass is starting to grow.  This afternoon I checked on the beehives, and all three hives had bees coming in and out, enjoying some sunshine.  Then this evening when I went out after dark to pick some kale for dinner.... the garden is full of... slugs!  And cutworms and even a few earwigs.  So I did the first slug pick of the year, into a jar to dispose of by duck in the morning.  Not many huge brown slugs, it was mostly the striped ones that don't get as big, but they were full size, many an inch and some two-inchers. The cutworms were fat and healthy looking.  In Portland the cutworms were a problem, but I saw more cutworms tonight than I've seen in the last decade.  But it really seems to early to have to deal with this, it's January.

For dinner: meatballs made of lamb heart, cooked with onions and garlic and kale and served over spaghetti squash.  That's the last of our "offal" from the sheep butchering, we ate liver and kidneys over the weekend, I think I've figured out how to cook these parts so they are pleasant in texture and flavor. The squashes are starting to go, at least the large ones have some spots, so we have to cut out bits before cooking.  The delicatas in the garage seem to keep better, maybe it's too cold in the "root cellar"  The onions are keeping well, but the garlic is getting dry, and the kale is at an awkward stage (as well having to inspect for slugs).  The onion and lettuce starts are spending their first night in the greenhouse tonight.  It does seem to be rolling along for spring.

What, exactly, do I do with a lot of turmeric? Or, I love the greenhouse

So our greenhouse is wonderful, but it's not heated.  The "tropicals" I've been growing are mostly happy, but not all of them.

Both basil are dead, as is the tomato.

There are 5 citrus which are all doing very well, insofar as I have been able to keep the scale and aphids under control.

Of the 10 peppers that started into fall, 6 are alive.  There were 5 jalapenos, of which only one died (two of these jalapenos overwintered last winter too), and at least one is making baby peppers.  The anaheims are both dead, but the Yankee Bell, while fruitless and ratty looking, is alive, and the Nardello keeps ripening but not making more peppers.  Since we have lots of hot sauce, I'm not sure what to do with all the jalapenos.

The coffee tree is very unhappy; I brought it into the house but I think it's too late to save it. Too bad, it was looking really good and probably 4 years old.  It did fine in the garage the last two winters.

The turmeric - well, I'm impressed.  The leaves all died down so I harvested the tubers, and there's almost two pounds of pretty good looking roots!  That's from a 2-3 gallon pot, after repotting 3 smaller plants, although it was 2 years in the pot since I thought it was all dead last winter. I don't know what to do with it all!  I can see that it should have been harvested earlier, there's some browning.   Tumeric is a beautiful plant, with big, tropical banana leaves.  I put the pot inside a larger pot with no holes, elevated on some rocks.  So it usually had water under the roots, which helped when the greenhouse gets so warm in the summer.

The aloe and scented geranium are doing fine with this degree of chill.  The vietnamese coriander is okay (better than the spearming and peppermint, actually).  The unknown variety of banana plant that Don gave me seems unphased by the cold, although it's not actually growing.

After a week of cold but sunny weather, today was a mix of snow with cold and some sun and some gray.  Winter in Oregon...  I've got most of my seeds orders done, started onion seeds already, and some arugula and lettuce... but it's time to work on the greenhouse floor, rather than play with seeds.  We worked on the duckhouse floor and foundation yesterday, so we've got the really heavy work done for that.

Diet and Forks over Knives

I was recently annoyed by a video called Forks over Knives. I've been reading off and on about nutrition over the past few years, and so I did come into the movie with some existing beliefs (I tried to keep an open mind, but I am not sure it was successful). But the movie didn't give much information, it was dramatic and entertaining with lots of graphics, but not much convincing argument. Over and over, it set up a comparison between "industrial food including animal products" and "natural foods with no animal products". The message seems to be that the problem is the animal products, not the industrial food!

I didn't realize it at the time, but Forks over Knives is by a Dr. Campbell, who did write a book with the same material called the China Study, and that book caused some uproar and discussion in the paleo-nutrition blogosphere that I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to at the time. Here's the article: China Study Response (pdf).

When I was looking for that article, I found a critique of the science in Forks over Knives, written by the same writer: forks-over-knives-is-the-science-legit-a-review-and-critique
It's great; it expands and goes into excruciating detail on many of the points that bothered me, so I don't have to even start trying to figure out the problems. Warning, though, it's very, very long and full of data.

Myself, I'm kind of with the Dr. Weston Pricers, and believe that animal meat and fat are healthy. Dr. Cate Shanahan wrote a book called "Deep Nutrition" that is by far my favorite; it's against sugar (including starches) and seed oils, and in favor of meat especially bone broth and organ meats. While I see her points (and some of the data from the Paleo people) about the problems with starches and especially wheat, I'm just not sure - I don't do well without some starches.

The bottom line for us, though, is that any sort of diet philosophy has to work with the foods we can grow for ourselves at different times of the year. Since we do grow so much, it's a reality test that makes more sense for us than for almost everyone else (at least in the industrial world) who just buys food at the store. I was reading another book that said to avoid root vegetables since they were too startchy. Well, that's what we have right now, and no one's going to take away my carrots!

And don't forget to get plenty of sleep and exercise regularly.