Two books on edible weeds

Everything you’d ever want to know about eating weeds

Living in the inner city, there’s no shortage of weeds, in the street and in our garden. Thankfully not one but two books have been published to make the best of it:

• Edible Weeds and Garden Plants of Melbourne (Doris Pozzi)
• The Weed Forager’s Handbook (Adam Grubb & Annie Raser-Rowland)

The first is a self-published book covering common weeds, their identification and use. Don’t be fooled by the name: this book is applicable throughout temperate regions in Australia, including Sydney.

The second book is professionally published, and covers much the same ground, but with more pictures.

Both are truly excellent, and they make you look at “weeds” in an entirely new way. Many of the most common weed plants are edible, as salad ingredients, steamed or in stir-fries. They also have many medicinal uses.

Using the two books, these are the weeds that we identified growing in our garden, or in the food forest out the back:

• Amaranth
• Blackberry Nightshade
• Catsear
• Chickweed
• Cobbler’s Pegs
• Clover
• Dandelion
• Dock
• Fat Hen
• Onionweed
• Oxalis
• Plantain
• Sow Thistle
• Sticky Weed

That’s quite a list! With the plants growing at different times throughout the year, we’re going to make an effort to make use of what’s growing wild, to supplement our garden crops.

We’re also using them to give our chickens a green feed every morning, which is probably why their yolks are so yellow!

(The fact that 80% of the weeds out the back are edible does gives pause for thought. Perhaps they were seeded deliberately at some point in the distant past?)

Is this a free range organic egg?

Is this the egg that it’s supposed to be?

With a greater focus on sustainability, many consumers are shifting to higher quality, more ethical products. This includes free range and organic eggs, instead of the horrifically cruel cage eggs.

But are consumers getting what they paid for?

As the recent horsemeat scandal has shown, there’s every incentive for producers, wholesalers and retailers to cheat. In the case of meat, they do this even when DNA testing can catch them out. For organic vs cage eggs, it’s potentially worse: no test can tell between the two.

Thankfully the majority of suppliers will do the right thing, but it only takes a bad egg, as they say …

To be confident about what we’re buying, we need to know where it’s come from, and to have confidence in the supply chain.

The most direct approach is to grow the food yourself. Our backyard eggs are a perfect example: we know exactly what they’re eating, and the conditions they’re kept in. When we sell eggs to friends (to pay for chicken feed), they too can have confidence.

Alternatively, one of the community supported agriculture sources would be the next best option.

After that, we’re really relying on the reputation of the provider, which may not count for much.

This is a problem that needs a solution if ethical food is to have a real future…

On dealing with a glut of eggs

This is what five dozen home-laid eggs looks like

When we started with our chickens we had three: two Isa Browns and a hand-me-down (of unknown type). Once they started laying, we were receiving 2-3 eggs a day (14-16 a week). That was enough for our household of two, plus some extras to sell to friends or to give away.

The hand-me-down chicken unfortunately died, but about a month ago we ended up with four more. With the Church requiring the nuns to leave the convent next door, we’ve ended up minding their chickens too.

So now we have six chickens, for a total of 40-42 eggs a week. That’s a lot of eggs!

Thankfully there’s a ready market for organically fed, locally raised eggs

We sell them to our friends and workmates, at the price of $4 per half-dozen, the same price as the equivalent eggs in the supermarket. That gives us enough income to pay for the chicken feed, plus a bit left over. So they pay their own way!

Of course, if we fall behind in offloading the eggs, quite a pile results! The photo above shows 5 dozen eggs packaged up, ready to go to friends who’ve placed pre-orders. There’s no danger that eggs will be wasted, even at 40 a week

Quick sewing project: bag bag

We don’t use plastic bags very often any more, but nevertheless we have somehow managed to accumulate a few, which have been sitting on the floor in the pantry in a bag:

Our random collection of plastic bags.

When I was living overseas I used to have a bag bag which was great for storing all these plastic bags so they weren’t taking up space on the floor or in a drawer. I recently saw a similar one made of linen selling for about $30 in Surry Hills.  I’ve also seen other versions online. It’s basically a tube of fabric. You put the bags in the top and when you need a plastic bag you pull one out at the bottom.

My new bag bag.

So I decided to save my $30 and make my own bag bag from scrap fabric. This only takes about 15 minutes if you have a sewing machine, and only slightly longer if you’re sewing by hand. You will also need about 25cm of 90mm elastic and about 1 metre of thin rope or strong ribbon.

Fabric, elastic and thin rope.

Start with a rectangle of fabric. I used some leftover Liberty cotton from a recent project; linen would work equally well. Avoid stretch fabric or thin fabric otherwise your bag might bulge too much. My rectangle of fabric is about 70cm long by about 35cm wide.

Next, sew the long ends together to make a tube. Keep the bag inside out.

Up one end of the tube, turn the end up by about 3cm and sew most of the way around with a 1.5cm seam allowance. Cut about 25cm of elastic. Put a safety pin on one end of the elastic. Thread the elastic through the casing you’ve just created.

Threading the elastic through.

Sew the two ends of the elastic together going back and forth over your stitches about 4 times so the ends won’t come apart.

Securing the ends of the elastic together.

Now the elastic is safely inside the casing you can sew up the small gap you used to thread the elastic through.

On the other end of the tube, again turn the end up by about 3cm and sew most of the way around with a 1.5cm seam allowance. This time, make sure the opening will be at the back of the tube where the seam is. Thread the rope or ribbon through.

Pull the rope so the fabric is slightly gathered. This hole at the top of the tube needs to be wide enough for you to put bags into so don’t pull it too tight. Now tie a knot in the rope against the fabric so the size of the hole at the top of the tube doesn’t expand, and tie another strong knot high up the other end of the rope. This top knot will be the bit hanging from your hook on the wall so don’t make the knot too bulky.

Now your bag is ready to fill with plastic bags. Once you’ve filled it, hang up your bag with the rope and you’re done!

Voila! The bag bag is finished.

Making paper seed raising punnets

A pile of paper pots, ready for seeds.

When on holiday in Tasmania over Christmas, one of the thing we picked up was a paper pot maker. It’s a lovely little device made of turned wood, and it creates very practical paper pots for seed raising.

I’m doing all my seed raising in these for Autumn/Winter, and so far so good. The paper stays nice and moist, and doesn’t seem in a hurry to break down or fall apart.

One variation from the instructions is to make the paper pots taller than the first batch shown in the photo above. This gives the roots a bit more space, and the pots a bit more volume, reducing the danger that the pots dry out.

Making pots is also a good thing to do while watching TV

Broccoli seedling, poking its head up from a handmade paper pot.

Organic gardening has changed since 1972

“How to grow food organically” by Gary Null & Staff, published USA 1972

We were recently given a pile of 2nd hand books, about organic gardening and healthy eating. They mostly date to the 1970′s, published in the UK or the USA.

One of the books was “How to grow food organically”, shown above. There’s a bunch of good stuff in it, although not presented in an easily digestible way.

But this was the real surprise lurking within:

It’s an advertising insert … for cigarettes!?!

… and over the page.

Yes, that’s an advert for cigarettes, within an organic gardening book. “Stop poisoning yourself and your environment!” says the cover of the book. Except for the cigarettes, of course. Times have changed since 1972.

(I’m giving the Gary Null, the author, the benefit of the doubt here. I’m sure it was mindless publishers at the time, but it’s still pretty damn weird.)

 

 

Summer crop of pickles and chutneys

Our summer harvest, converted into jars of pickles and chutneys.

It’s been a hot summer in Sydney, with some much-needed rain after an extended dry period. So as usual, the summer glut of produce overwhelmed our immediate needs.

One of my favourite activities is converting what we grow into jars of pickles, chutneys and the like. This is what we produced this summer:

• Australia Day chutney
• cucumber relish (two ways)
• pickled beetroot
• pickled bur gherkins
• pickled cherries (two ways)
• tomato chilli pickle
• tomato & onion relish
• tomato passata
• tomato & tamarind chutney

By my count, that’s 42 jars, not including the half-dozen we’ve already given away or used. That’s not bad considering that half of our main raised beds were attacked by roots, and therefore struggling to produce anything…