Where Did Those Carrots Come From?

by | Jul 14, 2022 | Garden/Yard, Garden/Yard

Gardeners across the world proudly bring freshly picked vegetables and fruits into the kitchen. They’re lucky to have an amazing array of delicious plants to grow and enjoy.   It wasn’t always that way.

Consider Native Americans. Prior to Columbus, many lived in cities and big towns surrounded by gardens and farm fields. They grew corn, beans, and a diversity of squash and pumpkins, but they knew nothing of many of today’s common vegetables.  Residents of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia back then also farmed and gardened, but their crop choices were limited.

New World & Old World

Map of range of Cahokia influence.

Indigenous contacts ranged far and wide.

It changed quickly following what’s called the Great Columbian Exchange. Shortly after Columbus set foot on Hispaniola people began deliberately and purposefully moving plants and animals around the world. Many were valuable and diversified the food chain on all continents. Others quickly became pests………most weeds infesting American gardens originated in the Old World.

 

 

Imagine Southern Italian cuisine without tomatoes! This delicious vegetable originated in South America and was unknown in Italy before the Columbian Exchange. Same with potatoes. The Irish potato originated in South America.

It went both ways. Today’s gardeners enjoy vegetables originating all over the globe.  Here’s a brief list of where common foods came from:

NATIVE OF THE NEW WORLD

Pumpkins and squash, Beans except for fava, Corn, Potato, Sweet Potato, Tomato, Pepper, Jicama

NATIVE OF EUROPE, ASIA, and AFRICA

Watermelons and cantaloupes, Onions, leeks, and garlic, Turnips, Carrots and parsnips, Yams, Radish, Celery, Asparagus, Beets, and Chard, are the same species, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Brussel Sprouts, Broccoli – all related, Endive, Lettuce, Rhubarb, Spinach, Okra, Cucumber, Peas.

The Columbian exchange also included grains and fruit. Corn is American but wheat, barley, rye, and oats are from the Old World.  Apples, peaches, pears, and cherries (except for the bitter American black cherry) are also Old World.  Brambles and strawberries apparently lived in both the Old and New Worlds prior to Columbus. Grapes eaten fresh and used for juice and wine came from the Old World but several species also are native to the Americas.

Thanks to the movement of useful plants gardeners worldwide enjoy a diversity of plants to grow and eat.

Have You Enjoyed a Garden’s Delicious Ignored Foods?

by | Jun 30, 2022 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Garden/Yard, Garden/Yard

Varied Garden Produce

Midsummer. It’s the heart of gardening season as millions of Americans proudly bring tomatoes, beans, squash, and a host of other crops into the kitchen from the backyard garden.

Many don’t realize they ignore eating a typical garden’s hidden delightful food.

Most gardeners spend hours pulling and hoeing incredibly common and prolific garden weeds, only to toss them out. They make delicious food.

Here are our favorite “weeds” to eat

Lambsquarters.  The young leaves of this persistent and fast-growing plant are delicious in salads. Or they can be boiled and used like spinach.

Amaranth or Pigweed. Sometimes called wild beet. Almost as common as lambs quarters, the young leaves can also be used similarly to spinach.

Purslane. This ground-hugging hot weather weed is a commercial crop in India.   Young leaves and stems are delicious raw. They can also be boiled or even pickled.   Grit tends to cling to purslane so rinse it thoroughly.

 Crops with Rarely Harvested Edible Parts
Our favorites are

Beet greens. Beets are the same species as Swiss chard but the leaves tend to toughen as the plant grows. We use young beet leaves as we would chard.

Sweet Potato leaves.  We haven’t tried these yet but will this summer. From what we’ve read they are delicious steamed and can be eaten raw.

Squash and pumpkin blooms.  These plants usually produce more blooms than they need.  We sparingly pick and steam them for a colorful yellow vegetable.

Carrot tops.  Our master gardener friend thins carrots and uses the tops in pesto.  We tried this in a pesto that a friend shared. Delicious!

Radish tops.  Mix a few young leaves into salads. They’re spicy and add zest to other greens.

Resources

Whenever eating a new plant for the first time, make sure the identification is correct.  It’s smart to identify a wild plant from at least three sources. These might include an Internet search, a wild foods book, or identification by a trusted wild food or garden expert.  One online source is www.wildedible.com.   Once you’re certain it’s edible, eat a small helping the first time to make sure you like it and it likes you.

Why Plant Potatoes?

by | May 26, 2022 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Garden/Yard, Garden/Yard, Preparedness

Good Friday Tradition

On a cold April morning, we planted a row of potatoes at Winding Pathways. This plant has made an amazing long journey to reach our yard.

Potatoes are native to South and Central America and were cultivated by native people long before Columbus. Early Spanish explorers realized this humble American plant produces an enormous amount of food that’s easy to store. They brought potato sets back to Spain, and eventually, the plant was cultivated throughout Europe.

Productive Crop

Potatoes produce more human food per square foot than wheat, rice, corn, or nearly any other crop, so crowded Ireland embraced the plant. Potatoes thrived in Irish soil and were so productive they enabled the human population to flourish. Unfortunately, the entire crop was of just one or two varieties. Disaster hit. Between 1855 and 1859 blight killed most of the crop, which lacked resistance to the disease. It caused massive starvation and spurred huge immigration to the United States.

Early Europeans who colonized North America brought potatoes to plant in the New World.  So, an American plant crossed the Atlantic Ocean twice in its long journey.

Vandals and Hawkeyes

We both hold degrees from the University of Idaho.  It’s the potato state, and the plant loves the light volcanic soil along the Snake River in the southern part of the state.  Iowa, where we live, is the corn state, but humble potatoes do well in our garden.

We buy seed potatoes in early spring, cut and cure them, and plant them in early April.   They don’t expect much from us, and by mid-summer we carefully hand dig delicious new potatoes. Later, when the tops die back, we dig and cure a bushel, or so, for winter storage.

Expert Resource at Hand

We hedge our bets by planting a few potato varieties, and this year we’re fortunate to have a potato expert move to Cedar Rapids. Jean Contina earned his doctorate degree from the University of Idaho studying potato diseases.  He’s a fellow Vandal!  We’ll seek his advice on how to maximize our crop.

Inexpensive. Why Grow Them?

Store-bought potatoes are one of the least expensive foods.  So why grow them?

We have two reasons.  First, anything we grow seems more delicious than its store-bought counterpart. It may be our imagination but it is true.  Second, they are an easy crop to grow and store well all winter without the need to can or freeze them.  Having potatoes stored in a cool dark room in our house gives us a bit of food security in a crazy world.

 

How Can You Trim Your Food Bill?

by | Apr 28, 2022 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Chickens, Foraging, Garden/Yard, Garden/Yard, Weeds

We are shocked by the rise of many prices, especially food. Fortunately, we mute the cost by finding or growing groceries here at Winding Pathways. We’re lucky to own two acres, but folks living on tiny lots can produce an amazing amount of food, even if they aren’t passionate gardeners.

In a nutshell here’s what we do to tame grocery bills:

Foraging

It’s ironic that many people consider the most delicious and easy wild foods pests and spend time and money trying to eliminate them. We eat ‘em. Books and websites, including Winding Pathways, share tips on finding, identifying, harvesting, cooking, and eating wild foods. Caveat:  ALWAYS check that you have the correct plant, gather from unpolluted places, and consume only a small amount initially to be sure your body accepts the wild edible.

Here are our favorites:

  • Mid to late spring: Nettles and dandelions.

  • Late spring through summer: Lambs quarters, purslane, amaranth, and the bluegills and crappies we catch.
  • Early fall: Acorns, new lambs quarter growth, and walnuts. Watch this YouTube video for complete processing and eating the cookies!
  • Winter: Venison from the deer we harvest…..if we’re lucky.

Gardening

We’re not passionate gardeners and we don’t can or freeze vegetables, so here’s what we do:

  • Succession plant: Our small garden yields an enormous amount of food.  We don’t let a square foot be idle. When summer’s heat turns lettuce bitter, we pull it, feed it to our chickens, and plant beans or another heat-loving crop. Same with other crops that grow quickly and then fade.
  • Use vertical space: Pole beans, for example, produce much more food per square foot than bush beans, so we choose climbers and use vertical space. We have the pole high enough to reach up and pull off the beans.
  • Grow dwarfs: Some cucumber varieties, for example, are “bush” type, meaning they produce a crop without long vines that consume plenty of space.
  • Think of winter eating: Because we lack freezer space and don’t can food, we plant vegetables that need little care during the growing season and store them until late winter without being canned or frozen. Here’s our list:
    1. Winter squash. Pick them, let them curet, and store them in a cool spot. They keep for months. Same with pie pumpkins.
    2. Carrots and parsnips. In late fall we smother the plants with a thick blanket of dry leaves or straw that keeps the ground from freezing. We’ve harvested carrots in January by brushing away snow and peeling back the mulch and pulling them.
    3. Sweet potatoes. They love the South’s climate yet grow well up north.

We carefully dig them in the fall, cure them, and store them like winter squash.

Chickens

We can’t imagine living without a small chicken flock. Our six to 12 hens gift us a couple of dozen eggs a week. Their manure fertilizes the garden and garden weeds are a great hen chow. During warm months our hens forage in their large run eating bugs, worms, and weeds and transforming them into eggs. Sometimes we even stew down an old hen.

Wildlife

Lots of folks don’t like hunting.  For us harvesting a deer is a form of food gathering, not recreation.  After all, deer are free-ranging, local, and organic. Fortunately, we’re able to hunt on our property and convert a deer into delicious meat.  We also enjoy eating panfish.

Like most folks, we can’t grow or forage all our food but much comes from the yard and area. It takes knowledge and investment in elbow grease but trims the food budget.  Perhaps even better, knowing how to find and grow food makes us feel less vulnerable to national disruptions that make food either hard to get or expensive.

Can You Grow Sweet Potatoes in Iowa?

by | Mar 17, 2022 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Garden/Yard, Garden/Yard

As we watched squirrels gleaning sunflower seeds from feeders in our backyard, we dined on 2021s sunshine!

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are a healthy vegetable.

Thanks to last season’s sun our crop of sweet potatoes produced a bountiful crop, and we ate them until our last one became part of our February 8th dinner. We’ve only been growing sweet potatoes for a few years because we’d heard they need a long southern summer to mature. We now know that’s not true.

We love sweet potatoes. They come in many varieties and color shades from white to purple and the common ones with deep orange flesh. This nutritious plant originated from tropical South America and is now grown in warm regions all over the world.  Sometimes they are called yams, but these two plants are distinctly different. Yams originated in Africa.

 

Nutritious Vegetable

We love the taste and nutrition of sweet potatoes but here are some other ways we love this plant:

  • They are easy to grow. We buy “slips” and plant them in late May or early June.
  • The plants and flowers are gorgeous, and slips are sometimes sold as ornamentals.
  • They store well. We carefully dig them before the first frost, let them cure for a couple of weeks, and then store them in a cool dark place. They last all winter.

Sweet potatoes are easy. No freezing or canning is needed. We plant, weed a bit, dig, cure, and store and then enjoy eating them all winter. This year we’ve ordered a variety of sweet potato slips from Sand Hill Preservation Center and look forward to a larger harvest.  The company also sells heritage chicken breeds and vegetable seeds.

 

Harvesting Snow

by | Jan 5, 2022 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Flowers/Grasses, Garden/Yard, Garden/Yard, Nature

A raging blizzard roaring over Winding Pathways just before Christmas 2022 showed us the power of HARVESTING SNOW. We love catching it. Other parts of the country endure blizzards, especially Nor’ Easters

Well, we didn’t really catch the snow, but our prairie did. It has a talent for harvesting snow and other forms of moisture. It taught us how prairie and other taller plants – grasses, forbs, shrubs, vines, and trees – help themselves grow next summer.

Our prairie has a thick growth of two-foot-tall dead stems from last summer’s growth.  Each stalk is brittle, but thousands of them working together slowed the wind just enough for it to drop the snow it had swept off nearby lawns and roads.

The deep drift that settled on our prairie will melt and give next spring’s plants a jumpstart in moist soil. Nearby shortly sheared lawns can’t catch snow and will start the spring on dryer soil. Nature delivered irrigation water to our yard for free!

Sharing Nature’s Wisdom

In dry regions of the country, snow also helps next summer’s vegetables. During college, Rich worked weekends at an Idaho ranch. He was surprised one January when Lucille Pratt, part owner of the land and an outstanding vegetable gardener, asked him to shovel a snow drift from nearby onto the garden.

For a Jersey boy, this seemed like a weird request. He did as asked and learned that melting snow oozed water into the soil. That helped get the vegetables going come spring and sustained them through the dry north Idaho summers.   

Snow may be a bother to some, but it’s also a blessing to dry soil and the plants it sustains.

Over two blizzardy days, our prairie gently caught snowflake after snowflake. We already are looking forward to bright prairie flowers dancing in next summer’s breeze. Thanks, prairie for harvesting snow. Nature’s wisdom to catch winter’s snow and help next summer’s growth is amazing.