Author: Carol Pope

  • Food to grow where deer roam

    Food to grow where deer roam

    Here are more ideas for food to grow where deer roam, including rhubarb, sorrel, garlic and culinary herbs. This is part two. For the first part, go to Growing food where deer roam.

    Rhubarb

    In the garden, drama queen rhubarb, Zone 5, is also deer and pest resistant, and adapts easily to virtually any spot. I plunk in rhubarb wherever I’m looking for big and bold burst of its rumpled red-stemmed vegetation spring through fall (but where it can quietly die back through winter).

    My co-author and gardening pal Sharon Hanna (The Book of Kale & Friends), however, gives rhubarb the royal treatment and enjoys a harvest far lusher than mine. Here are Sharon’s tips:

    Rhubarb responds badly to transplanting, so carefully consider where to place it. Prepare a planting hole 18 inches (45 cm) deep and wide. Loosen the soil and enrich it with a few big shovelfuls of compost or well-rotted manure. Set the crowns of rhubarb divisions an inch (2.5 cm) below the soil surface and three to four feet (90 cm to 1.2 m) apart. The crown is the area where stalks grow from, at the top of the rhubarb root. Crowns are fibrous and usually brown, and you don’t want to bury them too deeply. Water well initially and keep moist. Treat rhubarb to half a watering can full of manure/compost tea every other week.

    It’s okay to lightly harvest rhubarb’s ruby-red stalks one year after planting. Gradually increase the number you take, but always leave at least four of the biggest stalks. Never eat rhubarb’s leaves. They’re extremely high in oxalic acid, making them very toxic, and should be relegated to the compost.

    Wherever and however you plant it, healthy plants usually produce lots of stalks in the fourth year. By the fifth or sixth year, the crowns become woody and production declines — time to divide! In early spring, slice the root clumps into pieces with a sharp spade, or work the twisted roots apart with your hands. Replant these bits, and share the rest with friends. After the leaves die down in fall, bury the crowns with manure, leaf mould, straw, compost or other organic material. Pull the mulch away in early spring, and the cycle begins again.

    Red-veined sorrel (Photo by Carol Pope)
    Red-veined sorrel (Photo by Carol Pope)

    Red-veined sorrel

    Also in the rhubarb family and hardy to Zone 5, perennial red-veined sorrel (Rumex sanguineus) has proven to be deer proof (unlike the more tender and luscious French sorrel that I grow inside my fenced garden). While not as sumptuous to eat as its fancy French cousin, this sorrel is a striking addition to the salad bowl and can be sown wherever you have a spare spot in your garden.

    Garlic bed (Photo by Carol Pope)
    Garlic bed (Photo by Carol Pope)

    Garlic

    Go ahead and plant garlic in the fall for harvesting next summer. Despite browsing through my garlic bed to pick at the weeds between the plants, visiting deer leave my crop intact. Learn more about growing (and eating garlic) at 4 fabulous ways to harvest homegrown garlic.

    Rosemary in Bloom (Photo by Carol Pope)
    Rosemary in bloom (Photo by Carol Pope)

    Culinary herbs

    Other alliums, such as chives, are among the many kitchen herbs deer generally pass by. Add to this some lush swaths or pots of deer-hardy mint, oregano, rosemary and thyme. All are are prolific bloomers, culinary godsends and great supporters of bees. Read: 5 bee-supporting perennial edibles to grow

    For height in the rear of your garden, add lovage and fennel, both of which provide a statuesque backdrop through the growing season, edible foliage and nourishing seeds to last all winter. Read: Tasty ways to enjoy edible seeds

    Spanish lavender under quince trees (Photo by Carol Pope)
    Spanish lavender under quince trees (Photo by Carol Pope)

    Sage, rosemary, lavender, lemon catnip, lemon balm, agastache and costmary also join the ranks of kitchen plants that you can grow wherever the deer roam. Try some in a pot  to enhance the visual interest in your garden bed. Read: 9 fabulous edibles for container kitchen garden

  • Growing food where deer roam

    Growing food where deer roam

    Beyond our deer-proof fencing, on the upward slope leading to the entrance of our house, we have several gardens bordered by rock. My aspiration was to plant as many edibles as possible in this area, but it’s a big challenge growing food where deer roam daily, grazing and razing every palatable morsel to the ground. Here are suggestions for deer-proof shrubs, trees and plants.

    I have experimented without success with Jerusalem artichokes (immediately gobbled up), zucchini and squash (picked at) and thorny black currants and gooseberries (ignored at first, then inhaled during one hungry night), but fortunately there are a few culinary plants that hold their own, even if you’re forced to garden on what has generally proven to be a deer dinner tray.

    Once you’ve planted a chew-proof garden, you’ll also be rewarded in other unexpected ways. Most plants unappealing to deer are also resistant to insect pests and, once established, quite drought resistant. In short, they’re tough guys, well suited to the outlying areas of your yard where you don’t want to worry about fussing any more than you absolutely must.

    Mahonia developing berries (Photo by Carol Pope)
    Mahonia developing berries (Photo by Carol Pope)

    Hybrid mahonia

    At the back of my deer-foraged food garden, I’ve planted a small orchard of Mahonia ×media ‘Winter Sun’, umbrella-like shrubs of jagged, glossy leaves that grazers regard as unappetizing. ‘Winter Sun’, hardy to Zone 6, adds evergreen structure year round and a sunshine-like crown of yellow flowers in the middle of winter.

    'Winter Sun' mahonia (Photo by Carol Pope)
    ‘Winter Sun’ mahonia (Photo by Carol Pope)

    The smoky-blue berries that follow are seedy but edible and nice to nibble on while out in the garden. We also simmer some into a tangy, cranberry-like jelly or sauce, but leave at least half the harvest behind for birds struggling to make it through the winter. The brilliant blossoms on this perennial are also highly supportive of hummingbirds that migrate through our area during the winter.

    Admittedly, when the plants are small, deer do occasionally munch a few flowers, but given a little time, mahonia will reach seven feet (2 m) or more, triumphantly outgrowing the reach of deer.

    Oregon grape (Photo by Carol Pope)
    Oregon grape (Photo by Carol Pope)

    Cascade Oregon grape

    Planted below our hybrid Mahonia ×media orchard is a mass of Mahonia nervosa, commonly called Cascade Oregon grape, a native plant on our property that took well to transplanting when we rescued some before installing raised beds for our kitchen garden. With lustrous leaves and grape-like waxy blue berries in May, this drought-tolerant groundcover, which grows two feet (60 cm) tall, also provides food and is a handsome, reliable groundcover. It’s hardy to Zone 5.

    Quince fruit (Photo by Carol Pope)
    Quince fruit (Photo by Carol Pope)

    Quince

    Considered “the fruit of the gods” throughout history because of its sumptuous scent and a flavour between that of an apple and Anjou pear, quince (Cydonia oblonga) is hardy to Zone 5 despite its Mediterranean roots. With leathery leaves and fuzzy fruit that requires cooking to make it suitable for eating in pies, stews, stuffings, desserts or preserves, quince’s properties make it the only fruit tree I’ve managed to grow in an unprotected area without deer picking it clean. In fact, so far they have not given the quince in my garden a moment’s notice or nibble.

    A quince orchard can endure wet feet in winter and, once established (usually after three or four years), it needs watering only during arid late summers. Add mulch and manure prodigiously to the planting bed to encourage good fruiting and rapid growth.

    Quince (Photo by Carol Pope)
    Quince (Photo by Carol Pope)

    I learned of quince’s almost-too-good-to-be-true stamina and sturdiness from Vancouver Island’s quince grower John Edwards, who (with his wife, Gillian) grows a large orchard of ‘Le Bourgeot’ and ‘The Champion’ quince trees on Quinceotica Farm in Yellow Point.

    While deterred by neither deer nor drought, quince’s invincibility doesn’t end there. Says John, “I saw our resident black bear take an exploratory bite of a ripe quince, but only one bite — he prefers the blackberries in the fall. And we recently had a tent caterpillar explosion of biblical proportions, yet the wretched creatures seem unable to feed upon quinces.”

    John forgoes pruning to allow each of his 150 quince trees to form an arched umbrella shape through the weight of their fruit, which makes them easy to pick in late September or early October. One quince tree is enough for small gardens; unlike some fruit trees, two aren’t required for cross-pollination. To encourage pollination, though, gardeners are advised to grow bee-supportive plants and erect mason bee houses.

    See also: More suggestions of what to grow where deer roam.

  • How to enjoy edible seeds from your garden

    How to enjoy edible seeds from your garden

    Fennel features ornamental flowers. (Photos by Carol Pope)
    Fennel features ornamental flowers. (Photos by Carol Pope)

    There are many ways to enjoy your edible garden in winter. Along with what’s still growing outdoors and indoors, such as my microgreens, I have cured squash, onions and garlic in my cold room; tomatoes, tomatillos, blanched zucchini, pesto and veggie soup in the freezer; and air-dried herbs hanging on hooks. And filling several decorative glass bottles are tasty, healthy, organic edible seeds from three prolific plants — bronze fennel, cilantro and lovage.

    Fennel seed
    Fennel seed

    Bronze fennel

    While each year’s food garden has both its dynamic and dodgy moments, there is invariably a particular high spot July through September when bronze fennel (the herb Foeniculum vulgare ‘Purpureum’) blazes upward, a mass of ferny garden architecture, culminating in mustard-yellow crowns of blossoms followed by star-like webs of green and yellow seeds. This self-seeding perennial has found its way into dusty, deer-trodden corners of my yard where previously nothing dared to grow, surviving periods of sustained drought despite never being watered.

    In fact, bronze fennel is so hardy and prolific that it can be a bit of a problem in some gardens, and can even be considered invasive down south. With regard to my Pacific northwest garden, though, my response to concerns about any over-zealousness is similar to what I say about parsley, kale and other eager edibles: If it’s overrunning your garden, you’re just not eating enough of it!

    Planting and growing bronze fennel

    Sow seeds or tuck in seedlings in spring after frost has passed. Give it space — this statuesque beauty will grow to seven feet (2 m) tall and looks wonderful wherever you want a focal point in your garden. You can also allow a mature plant to self-seed in a barren area of the garden — just don’t let it get carried away. Bronze fennel thrives in sun, but can tolerate partial shade. It also needs good drainage and is drought tolerant due to its long taproot. This herb returns every spring after dying back for the winter. Cut it down in the fall to harvest the seeds and foliage—but leave a few of the hollow stems partially intact for beneficial insects to hibernate in.

    How to eat bronze fennel

    Magnesium-rich, digestion-enhancing fennel has been used for centuries to improve human well-being. Bronze fennel’s foliage, flowers and seeds are all useful in the kitchen. In late fall, when the seeds have mostly turned brown, snip the fennel stems and place them upside down in paper shopping bags. Come winter when the seeds are dry, gently thresh the seeds into a bowl and bottle them for culinary use. Foliage can be air-dried or chopped finely and frozen in ice cubes.

    Seeds

    • Steep fennel foliage or a teaspoon of seeds in boiled water for a soothing licorice-laced, digestion-enhancing tea.
    • Strew seeds over bread dough before baking.
    • Add seeds, foliage or even some of the fennel stalk to fish stock.
    • Add seeds and chopped foliage to salmon or crab cakes. Decorate with pretty yellow fennel flowers.
    • Sauté seeds with slices of turkey sausage to add to a tomato-based pasta sauce.
    • Add seeds to sweets—blackberry quinoa cobbler or almond fennel-seed biscotti sound good?
    • Chew undeveloped (green) or mature brown fennel seeds for an effective breath-freshening digestion booster.

     Save these ideas for next season’s fennel foliage

    • Top any seafood, particularly shrimp or spot prawns, with finely chopped foliage.
    • Infuse oil with foliage for a licorice-flavoured gourmet drizzle.
    • Use a mortar and pestle or a food processor to chop fennel foliage with oil, salt and garlic into a pesto, and slather it over seafood or vegetables.
    • Sprinkle finely chopped foliage over summer cucumber salads.
    • Wrap salmon or any other seafood in foliage before steaming or baking.
    • Add finely chopped foliage to egg dishes and potato or green salads.
    • Sprinkle finely chopped foliage over roasting potatoes or vegetables, then top with a few fennel seeds.
    Flowers on cilantro.
    Flowers on cilantro

    Cilantro/coriander

    The cilantro/coriander plant (Coriandrum sativum) provides us with two harvests — the greens we call cilantro and savoury seeds we call coriander. A powerful natural body cleanser that binds to toxic metals within our systems and helps to flush them out, this annual herb is worthy of superstar billing. Plus, its spicy white flowers attract beneficial insects to our gardens and support bees.

    Planting and growing cilantro

    Cilantro does best summer through fall, so tuck in seeds July through early September. It doesn’t respond well to being transplanted, so direct-sow into a pot or (ideally) your garden soil. Snip away at your plants for tasty additions to salads and stir fries, but leave some plants to flower and set seed. Gather the mature brown seed as you see it; seed you don’t harvest will likely sprout prolifically. Cilantro can tolerate some partial shade, but basically needs a bright spot and rich, moist but well-drained soil.

    How to eat coriander and cilantro

    When collecting seeds, snip the seed heads into a paper bag. When they dry, gently thresh them into a bowl. Bottled and kept in a dry and cool place, coriander seed lasts for years. They’re best freshly ground, either with a mortar and pestle or in a clean coffee grinder. In addition to the little round seeds (coriander), cilantro’s leaves, flowers and roots are all delicious. Puree and freeze the plant as pesto if you can’t eat it fast enough while fresh.

    Seeds

    • Drink coriander-seed tea — it sweetens the breath.
    • Add a spoonful of crushed coriander seed to the fruit in any crisp or cobbler.
    • Use coriander seed in homemade curry powder.
    • Marinate raw mushrooms in olive oil with lots of coriander seed, orange zest and a little balsamic vinegar.
    • Toss sliced cauliflower with crushed coriander seed, olive oil, salt, pepper and orange zest—squeeze orange juice over top. Roast at 425°F until browned, turning cauliflower slices a couple of times. Garnish with cilantro leaves.
    • Make coriander vinegar. Add a handful of lightly crushed seeds to light-coloured vinegar, strain after two weeks, and sprinkle over apple and celery or Waldorf-type salads.

     Save these ideas for next season’s cilantro foliage

    • Make cilantro butter by blending butter and minced cilantro leaves, or whirl them together in a food processor. Garnish butter with tiny cilantro florets and chopped leaves.
    • Pulse a few cilantro leaves in your blender once or twice and add to tomatoes, peaches, nectarines or strawberries for fruit salsa. Add minced jalapeno and chopped sweet onions or scallions.
    • Drizzle olive oil and chopped cilantro over sliced tomatoes.
    • Fry cubes of potatoes with garlic, and garnish with a few handfuls of chopped cilantro.
    • Use lots of chopped cilantro leaves in cabbage slaw. Add orange juice to the vinaigrette.
    • Garnish tomato soup or roasted red pepper soup with chopped cilantro.
    • Mix thinly sliced cucumbers with cilantro, chives and yogurt—serve with curries.
    • Make cilantro pesto using oil, peanuts, garlic, salt and pepper. Serve on rice or over Asian noodles, or make salad rolls stuffed with shredded veggies and cilantro pesto.
    • Use cilantro flowers as a garnish on salads.
    Lovage leaves
    Lovage leaves

    Lovage

    Giant lovage (Levisticum officinale) deserves a place in every garden. Edible from root to leaves to its umbels of seeds, this seven-foot (2-m) perennial herb tastes like celery and is a fabulous befriender of beneficial insects that flock to its giant cartwheels of greenish-yellow flowers.

    Planting and growing lovage

    Sow seeds or tuck in a couple seedlings in the springtime after frost has passed.

    Lovage returns every spring after dying back for the winter. Cut it down in the fall to harvest the seeds and leaves, but let some of the hollow stems remain intact to provide hibernation spots for beneficial insects. Lovage is deer resistant and thrives in partial shade. It needs rich, well-drained soil and is drought tolerant due to its long taproot, although it will droop if growing conditions become too dry. It grows easily from seed and self-seeds prolifically.

    How to eat lovage

    Like fennel, lovage is an excellent booster of digestion. The seeds and leaves bring the taste of celery to the kitchen—use sparingly because it is strongly aromatic. In late fall, when the seeds have mostly turned brown, snip them into a paper bag. However, allow a few of the seed-laden stems to remain standing in the garden through winter for feathered friends. When the seeds are dry, gently thresh them into a bowl and bottle for culinary use. Foliage can be air-dried or chopped finely and frozen in ice cubes.

    Seeds

    • Grind lovage seeds with salt or substitute a pinch of lovage for salt.
    • Add seeds to pickles and nasturtium capers.
    • Seeds are excellent in breads and crackers.
    • Sprinkle seeds onto roasting fish, free-range chicken or squash.
    • Seeds add flavour to soups, stuffings, lentils and other savoury dishes.

    To use fresh foliage

    • Add chopped lovage leaves to shepherd’s pie, salsa, turkey stuffing and rice.
    • Spiff up vegetable soups with a couple of chopped lovage leaves.
    • Make lovage vinegar. Harvest, wash and dry leaves. Pack loosely into clean jars. Cover with white wine vinegar, seal and store in the dark for a few weeks. Strain out solids before using. Try with rice or cider vinegar, too.
    • Use hollow stems of lovage as straws to drink or stir mixed drinks like Caesars — anything that uses vegetable juice. Make sure there are no overwintering insects hiding in the stem before you sip!
    Fennel flowers attract pollinators.
    Fennel flowers attract pollinators.

    Pollinators that love fennel, lovage and cilantro

    The anise swallowtail butterfly is strongly attracted to the members of the Apiaceae plant family, including fennel, lovage and cilantro. If you want to support butterflies, grow these plants, and you’ll find the green, yellow and black caterpillars of the butterfly chomping down the lacy foliage. Once they move on, the plants will spring back quickly wherever they might look a bit depleted.

    Bees, too, are attracted to these herbs and will flock to their flowers. Other beneficial bugs that stop by for nectar are syrphid flies (hover flies) and lacewings, both of which help control aphids, as well as tachinid flies, which can help keep the cabbage butterfly in check (take note, kale growers). Ladybugs also can be seen in all life stages from egg to larvae to adult on the leaves of these plants, particularly lovage, which in my garden seems to serve as an incubator for the alligator-lookalike larvae that eventually develop into the cute little ladybugs that help keep my kale and other leafy greens safe from those insatiable aphids.

    One quick cautionary note: Before you grab some seeds or chop a chunk of foliage from your fennel, cilantro or lovage, look closely to ensure that the seeds or foliage aren’t hosting beneficial insects. You don’t want to harm the very insects you’ve been trying to attract.

    Get free Garden Making PDF downloads

  • Microgreens give taste of summer all winter

    Microgreens give taste of summer all winter

    Basil growing in recycled salad container. (Photos by Carol Pope)
    Basil growing in recycled salad container. (Photos by Carol Pope)

    Now that the season of cold and wet has roared in, we need to say a sad farewell to fresh herbs like basil and crisp, fresh salad greens . . . or do we?

    While it’s possible to keep some herbs and greens going outdoors in most climates — especially in cold frames — the ultimate luxury is growing microgreens indoors, ready for any meal, anytime. Think of it: You wouldn’t need to step outside on a dark, dank night for those stir-fry greens, or plod through the snow sifting about for what’s still standing in your edible beds. Or, if you live in an apartment with no outdoor space, you could have a garden of edible greens 365 days a year.

    Many vegetables and herbs can be grown as microgreens — most particularly, Asian greens, including komatsuna, mizuna, pak choi and shungiku, as well as amaranth, arugula, beet, broccoli, cress, fenugreek, fern lettuce, magenta spreen, mustard, orach, pea shoots, parsley, purslane, radish, sorrel, sunflower and Swiss chard.

    There are two additional crops that grow extremely well indoors in trays, and as it happens, they’re my top picks: basil and kale.

    Basil

    It seems too good to be true, but not only is it possible to grow large-leafed sweet Italian basil all year long under grow lights, it’s easier to tend this herb indoors than out.

    Instead of guarding these precious seedlings from slugs and other unstoppable basil eaters, we avoid the siege and grow flat after flat of basil in our basement storage room under grow lights even when the weather is at its warmest. Outdoors, we stick with tougher basil picks, such as Fairyherbs Wild Color basil. Meanwhile, in the house, no matter the month, we enjoy a continuous stream of freshly snipped sweet basil for pesto, pizza Margherita, omelettes and Mediterranean soup.

    A bulk bag of seed, available online through many seed sellers, will provide flat after flat that can be steadily snipped, or we can take a “thinning” approach and yank out entire young plants, roots and all, and give them a quick rinse. When the first flat is depleted, there’s another in the wings. And so it goes, week after week.

    Kale seed pods
    Kale seed pods

    Kale

    In the summer, we let our Red Russian kale growing outdoors go to seed (once we’ve picked delicious buds from it for several weeks) and save the seed to save some money. I wait until the pods are fully developed and look a bit crispy, then clip them off and stuff them into a paper grocery bag. A month or so later, I scrunch the top of the bag closed and shake the dickens out of it, after which there are a gazillion little round seeds rolling around inside the bag, enough for months of growing greens. Snipped for soups, sandwiches, salads and any other dish calling for garden-fresh greens, kale microgreens provide us with tasty nourishment with just a scissor snip.

    Kale seeds collected from the garden.
    Kale seeds collected from the garden.

    What you need to grow indoors

    Many nurseries and online seed-supply companies sell plant stands with grow lights, ready to go, or you can gather up what you need and make your own:

    • Full-spectrum growing lights. Plant-grade T8 or more powerful T5 tube lamps are the best picks. The brighter the light, the sturdier your greens will be; weak light equals spindly sprouts.
    • Watering can with a gentle flow or a spray bottle (mister), or both
    • Sterilized potting soil
    • Small trowel for scooping soil
    • Clean, shallow plant or deep-root trays with drainage holes. Or use old baking pans or recycled plastic salad bins, as long as you can drill adequate drainage holes into them.
    • Plastic under trays designed for seeding flats. Or repurpose old baking sheets with edges from your local thrift store.
    • A place to set it all up; inexpensive shelving works well. Suspend the grow lights from a top shelf and line up your trays below.
    • Transparent covers for your seeding trays to create a humid atmosphere for germination — or recycle those clear plastic salad tubs you don’t know what to do with.
    • Optional: A timer for your lights to maintain a consistent 12-hour day-night cycle for the plants. This lets you off the hook from worrying about it.
    • Seeds! Collect them yourself by letting your herbs and greens go to seed in the summer and fall, purchase them at your local nursery, or find a mail-order of online source to buy in bulk. You can go through a lot of seed when growing microgreens.
    Tray of kale microgreens.
    Tray of kale microgreens.

    Getting started growing in trays

    • Fill your tray with about two inches (5 cm) sterilized soil.
    • Sow the seed densely. For small seeds, such as kale and basil, simply scratch them into the soil with your fingers or an old fork. Larger seeds, such as sunflower, should be pushed down deeper.
    • Place on flats on under trays positioned about six inches (15 cm) below the grow lights.
    • Water gently or mist thoroughly. The soil should be damp, but not soggy.
    • Check twice daily to test for moisture — don’t let your soil dry out.

    Microgreens can be harvested when the first pair of leaves opens fully and are a lush green, although you can let them grow larger, as we do with basil when we want lots for pesto.

    Keep them coming — make planting microgreens an ongoing activity in your home!

  • Physalis alkekengi: 4 facts about this decorative fall plant

    Physalis alkekengi: 4 facts about this decorative fall plant

    Physalis alkekengi (Photo by Carol Pope)
    Physalis alkekengi (Photo by Carol Pope)

    To get into the Halloween spirit, pick up a decorative pot of Physalis alkekengi, a.k.a. liv’n lantern, Chinese lantern plant, strawberry ground cherry or bladder cherry, from your local nursery. Similar to tomatillos, this plant produces showy paper-like husks that wrap around ripening fruit – and in the case of P. alkekengi, they turn from green to bright orange, just in time for Halloween.

    Hardy to Zone 3, this perennial reaches two feet (60 cm) in height and blooms in midsummer. Direct sow P. alkekengi in June or start it indoors along with your tomato seedlings. It likes well-drained soil and a partially sunny location. In fact, sometimes it likes these conditions a bit too much, and can spread aggressively via underground rhizomes and self-seeding. Keep an eye on it, or grow it in a pot.

    To dry the husks for fall and winter decoration, harvest the branches as soon as the lanterns turn bright orange and hang them upside down in a cool, dry indoor space.

    If you’re wondering whether the fruit is edible, here’s what you need to know:

    1. When the husk fades from bright red/orange to a transparent beige/white, the ripe-red fruit (like a large berry) of alkekengi is ready to eat.
    2. Extremely rich in vitamin C and some antioxidants, ripe fruit is thought to have value as an anti-inflammatory.
    3. You can use the very tart ripe berries to make a substitute “cranberry sauce”: barely simmer a cup (235 mL) of the fruit for about 30 minutes with enough water to prevent sticking and then gradually add sugar by the teaspoonful to achieve your desired sweetness. Rich in pectin, these berries are also useful added to preserves and pie fillings.
    4. Other than the ripe fruit, however, all parts of this member of the Solanaceae (nightshade) family – including unripe fruit and the husk (calyx) – are poisonous (similar to green potatoes and tomato leaves) and can even be fatal. And it’s wise to avoid eating too much of even the mature fruit at one time, as it’s a strong diuretic and has laxative qualities. Pregnant women or anyone with compromised health should avoid eating the fruit of P. alkekengi altogether.
    5. Pumpkins ready for the porch. (Photo by Carol Pope)
      Pumpkins ready for the porch. (Photo by Carol Pope)

     Pumpkin fast facts

    While shopping for some Halloween porch pick-me-ups at the Cannor Nursery/Wildwood Outdoor Living Centre in Victoria, garden expert Matt Hall shared these fun pumpkin fast facts with me:

    • Pumpkins were once recommended for removing freckles and curing snake bits.
    • Pumpkins are 90 per cent water.
    • Pumpkin flowers are edible.
    • Pumpkins are fruit.
    • Carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween dates back hundreds of years ago to Ireland. Back then, however, jack-o’-lanterns were typically made out of turnips or potatoes. It wasn’t until Irish immigrants arrived in North America and discovered the pumpkin that a new Halloween ritual was born.
Advertisements
Clicky