500 Year Vision » Earth

Gardening by Noel Gallagher

admin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:33:07 +0000

I should tell you what I know about gardening… but I don’t know how much of it is true…
In organic growing you’re depending on earthworms to do a lot of the work for you, if you ever lift up a piece of cowshit in a field you see under, worms having dinner. Worms dig the soil for you. They bring organic matter down under and aerate the soil. So a school of ‘no-dig’ gardeners has come about, because digging is bad for the soil and hard work and it kills everything. But to have this work you need to mulch to keep the weeds down and give the worms something to eat. I get cow dung off my neighbour, lots of it.
So I experiment with this type of no-dig gardening. Last year I mad a bed about 4ft wide and 10 ft long. I made a few, put down newspaper (about 20 sheets thick) then put about 1/2 foot of dung on top. Then using triangles planted potatoes in a bit of compost (triangles make more space than rows).
Of course everybody complained about the smell of cowshit, but not about the spuds in the summer. Spuds are good starters because they are easy to plant, and need a good bit of nitrogen, which dung is rich in. When all the spuds come out (this is where you have to be good) put in winter cabbage seedlings that are just ready to go in the ground. Brassicas also need lots of nitrogen. In spring this bed will be very alive with micro-organisms and earthworms.
Put in some peas or broad bean, and some salads maybe or beetroot. Roots don’t do too well in ? soils generally, but beetroots should, they need richness where carrots just need somewhere to shoot. Swedes also could work, but as they are a member of the brassica family don’t put them in straight after cabbages.
This is where permaculture comes in (look up Masanobu Fukuoka, Emilia Hazehip and Bill Mollison).
Fukuoka says ‘natural farming’ is easy but impossible. Bill Mollison the co-founder of permaculture, I can’t remember the other guy’s name, took some of his ideas from Fukuoka. Where he would go now, after you have brought your soil back to life (Mollison is an Australian, and began this work because he could no longer fish, hunt or collect food because of land poisoning, water poisoning and general destruction of the planet) is to work towards Forest gardening. This is basically like it sounds – planting fruit and nut trees. But the main element of Permaculture is design. This is based on nature and logic. So there are principles of perrmaculture design:
Zoning
Edge effect
and some other shit got to do with the sun and the moon.
Zoning is based on you, mainly. This is common sense but a useful rule to have. You have nearest to you stuff you use every day; salads, chickens, so on. Zone 2 will be things you harvest occasionally, carrots, potatoes and so on. Zone 3 is your orchard, where you don’t have to attend to except for harvest and pruning. Zone 4 is your livestock. People with a small amount of land won’t find this much of a concern.
Edge effect is used to design your garden to be as productive as possible. In nature, edges are the most productive . There is more variety.
Permaculture works towards forest gardening. Fukuoka was the same ideas but his revolution was in grain (read ‘one straw revolution’). Fukuoka Sensei said lets do it like nature; no chemicals, no digging, no weeding. In his rice fields he planted white clover then sows his rice. While the rice is still growing he sows winter barley. (it’s worth looking up his ideas of seed pellets too). After harvesting, the rice straw is scattered back on the field. The clover reseeds itself (clover is planted because it is a legume; it fixes nitrogen in the soil). This mulch of straw keeps the weeds down and feeds the soil, but the barley comes up through it (in Shikoku where he’s from they don’t really get winters).
Fukuoka San is now dead, I found out last year, I would have liked to have visited his farm. But at least he wrote a few books, and has many followers.
Hazelip was a follower of Fukuoka, and her way of gardening are the best. But you have to be a real gardener to practice this. So you have your bed:
When your early peas are finished put in french beans.
When roots are harvested put in salads or spinach.
The important thing about this type of gardening is the soil. In her words, ‘wild soil’. Because lots of bacteria and micro-organisms die if you dig the soil, everything is harvested leaving the roots in the ground (except for carrots etc.). There is a system for the plants that follow each other. ? Chard or spinach follow root crops because they have quite a big root to give back to the soil. Legumes (peas and beans) are constantly present to keep nitrogen levels up. And anything of the plant that isn’t used is left back on the bed. The soil, that’s disturbed as little as possible, becomes ‘wild’. This garden which can be very productive also requires a lot of what should we say… knowledge or experience, but practice is the name of the game. And you can read all about it on the Internet.
But this working stuff is a way of research. Farming is just living really, and it’s important. It’s important to be a pig, and to be milk, and to be a bee.
Back to earth…
I learned a bit of soil science last year. To find out if your soil is clayey or sandy, take a bit in your and when it’s wet. If it’s clay it will be stick and you can make a sausage out of it by rolling it. When it’s dry, it will be really hard. If it’s sandy you can’t make shapes out of it and it’s crumbly when dry. Clay soils are high in nutrients and hold water and nutrients longer. Sandy soils are low in nutrients and drain fairly quick.
Certain plants are fussy about PH brassicas prefer slightly alkaline , potatoes prefer slightly acidic. They should still grow but will do better if the PH is right. There is a test you can do but it’s easier to look at the plants that are growing there. Find out what kind of conditions the prefer. or create. Pines make the soil acidic with their needles. Birch grows in acidic soil but the leaf fall makes it more alkaline. In nature this is called succession. In bad soil gorse is likely to grow. It’s a legume so brings nitrogen into the soil. Birch would succeed this, making it more alkaline and adding organic matter, then followed by Oak (in Ireland anyway).
For gardening purposes you can change the PH to your fancy. Wood as, lime and seaweed will bring down the PH. So should better drainage. Manure and water logging will increase acidity. So will piss. Compost is usually on the acidic side too.
There are many ways to make compost. But the basics are green and brown and air, or nitrogen and carbon and air. Green stuff includes green stuff and manure, and brown stuff is dry or dead organic materials including egg cartons and paper. Brown stuff usually adds a bit of aeration to the heap.
Eating also is important. When food is good everything is good. The slaughter ? is good. When I was eating mackerel I realised that I loved that fish. Really. The beauty of it. When I get pigs I will go out to them, say ‘hello’ smell their hairy backs and say ‘any last words?’. I will say this to them every day and they will ? , tell me something different. And when the time is right I will slit their throats.
Bio-dynamic farming is another one you should know about. Rudolf Steiner came up with this rather complicated method about 100 years ago. Using preparations made out of plants, and working with the moon, everything is planted according to nature’s rhythms. There are so called flower, fruit, leaf and root days, which determine what you’re going to do. Never tried it out really, but bio-dynamic food is always great. The most important things I learned from it are: just before a full moon is the best time to sow seeds, and roots are best harvested in the evening, leaves in the morning.

Panning for gold

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:48:33 +0000

Rosie and I went gathering mushrooms the other day. It had been raining heavily so excellent weather for it – we found a great patch of Chanterelle, a couple of Porchini – including the Luridus variety, as well as Chamomile and some wild raspberries. While we were out I got us (a little bit) lost and we had to hop across a stream to get back on course. It was there we made our discovery…

Gold! Well… Clay! Which you must admit, is just as exciting (and far more malleable at ambient temperatures). When we got home I referred to the The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency: The Classic Guide for Realists and Dreamersself sufficiency book my dad bought me and it provided detailed instructions on how to test the clay for PH balance, treat and process it… that book is so good. If we ever loose the internet/civilisation, we’ll be okay. So, we ignored the instructions and got straight on with making stuff. Rosie did a ceramics course recently – so she’s the expert!

The next day I got out my enamel kiln. The kiln is not large – in fact you could just about fit an apple in it. It was given to me by a friend of my mum’s – when I was a teenager – because she knew that I liked all sorts of crafts – and I’ve kept it ever since. Apart from a little smoke it seemed to be working fine and the (dinky) pots were successfully fired. The clay turned from grey to fleshy pink – with lovely sparkly bits (which John says are puwer gowld!).

So far I’m a little stuck on what we can actually make from the clay – smaller than an apple, yet not tat. We’re fine for tat – we can make loads of it. I could make ends for my home made knitting needles… bottle caps to keep wasps out of beer in the garden… John says that literally anything can sell in his gift shop in Bechyne – so the challenge has been laid.

Mushroom Roulette – rules to live by.

admin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:01:16 +0000

Today we ate a new type of mushroom – well – new to us – not to Czechs who’ve been eating it for hundreds of years. Amanita Rubescens (known locally as Masák - meaty) is a relative of both Fly Agaric (the hallucegenic red mushroom with white spots popular in fairy tale illustrations of pixies) and the Death Cap or Destroying Angel (there’s a clue in the name) – so careful identification is essential. It is therefore important to know how to identify those which are poisonous, especially those which share similarities to edible mushrooms. About 20 people die every year in the Czech Republic because of mushroom poisoning – with Death Cap being the principle culprit – combined with human error (aka – guns aren’t dangerous).

The first time I try any mushroom I identify it using several different sources (both books and Internet based), I also get someone else to identify it, seperately, then cook it thoroughly, and only taste a tiny amount (ie cubic milimetre). The second time, a few days later, it’s okay to eat more. Sometimes you discover that a mushroom is edible, but not enjoyable.

Some types of mushroom share a chemical element with kidney beans – so must be cooked thoroughly in order to prevent poisoning, others are poisonous when combined with other stuff – like alchohol and the Ink Cap mushroom (now used as a treatment for alchoholics) combined together cause illness.

The variety we ate today was delicious. It tasted a lot like crispy fatty bacon bits (would to somebody who has avoided pork and bacon for many years) – but perhaps because we fried it in a mixture of olive oil and butter, with lots of salt. No matter how certain I am about identification, eating wild mushrooms feels like taking a risk, and I’m left with unsettling self doubt until they are thoroughly digested and I live to tell the tale.

We have visitors over the summer and I’m not yet sure what our mushroom strategy should be. I think we should only cook Porchini and Chanterelle for other people – as these are very clearly identifiable and differentiable from poisonous species. We have many books available if visitors want to go into the forest themselves to hunt for different types… maybe we could find a mushroom expert who could help?

Cherry Jam – the vital ingredient.

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:32:41 +0000

During a recent wet weekend I decided to make jam. I sat with a friend at the kitchen table and we spent the morning hooking pits out of cherries with hairpins (the wide sort). These jobs are always so much better in company. I used sugar with added pectin, and put in the zest of a couple of lemons for good measure. Miraculously, it set and I was able to give jars away to friends and neighbours in town.

The end of May is a little early for cherries in this area, so my neighbours were impressed to see jam already… the magic, extra flavoursome twist to our jam was that the cherries had been steeped in vodka for 11 months! It worked out well. Last year we didn’t have water at Novy Mlyn, so making jam would have been a nightmare, instead I packed the cherries into large jars and topped them up with vodka. I was really surprised that the process actually added a good flavour to the jam.

This year I am going to try to sun dry the cherries. I plan to make square frames out of willow switches & the net curtains (which I removed from every window in the house (washed, of course)). I also plan to sun dry some apples because we didn’t use the crop last year and I have rather enjoyed dried apple made by my students.

Now I have rather a lot of cherry vodka around the place – I wonder if there is a magic solution to that particular glut.

Chamomile Tea

admin — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:39:15 +0000

Home grown Chamomile tea with local honey… what a lovely reminder of the summer during the long, dark months. I’m enjoying the cold, sharp days… the snow is beautiful and the ice & snow great fun for skating and sliding, but Chamomile tastes of summer.

Chamomile grows like a weed in the fields and on the roadsides during the summer. The flowers are like large daises but with feathery leaves (which look rather like dill). You need to be careful not to pick May Weed by mistake – which has very similar flowers but very different leaves. The Chamomile flowers are ready to pick when the flowers turn ‘bug-eyed’ – with the petals turned downwards and the yellow centre rounded.

Once gathered it needs to go somewhere in the sun – for example sprinkled on paper and covered with muslin. When it’s completely dried out it will be crumbly and can be kept in an airtight jar.

Chamomile flowers at the same time as the cornflowers and poppies. This year I will also gather poppy seeds so that we can have wild poppies on the roadside by the house. I didn’t gather any seed heads last year because of a reluctance to pick from the wild… however the roadside mowers taught me that it’s fair to take seeds from the wild a metre from the road. I guess it’s more important to have safe roads than beautiful verges…

Deliciously Moorish Vodka Cherry Chocolates

admin — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:53:44 +0000

What to do with the vast quantities of cherries sitting around the place in vodka… well, as you’d expect, I’ve been experimenting… and perfecting the technique has involved eating rather a lot of cherries dipped in chocolate.

After experimenting with several types of chocolate, I prefer to use a 35% cocoa chocolate from a Papua New Guinea plantation (bought in Lidl) because there was no sugar on the cherries and they really need the sweetness of the chocolate to balance the flavour.

If you plan to post the cherries, it’s best to remove the stems because these will cause the chocolate to crack in transit. Otherwise, just remove the pit using a hooked bit of wire or a (new) hair pin with the plastic stripped off.

You can prepare these vodka cherry chocolates a couple of days in advance of a dinner party and serve them with coffee after the meal.

To make vodka cherry chocolates you will need:

80 pitted cherries which have been pickled without sugar in neat vodka
125 grams of good quality chocolate
some cocktail sticks
A metal bowl
Grease proof paper

Float the metal bowl in a saucepan of boiling water which has been removed from the heat.

Break the chocolate into the bowl and stir until it has melted.

Add 10 cherries at a time and stir them into the melted chocolate.

Remove one cherry at a time and place on the grease proof paper to dry using the cocktail sticks.

Repeat until all of the cherries are used up. You can use a little of the left over cherry vodka to make a chocolate sauce by using it to ‘clean’ the metal bowl.

Leave the cherries in a cool place overnight to set. These will keep as the cherries are preserved by the vodka, but it’s unlikely that they will get the chance as they are rather delicious.

Eat Local: Tábor Apple Bomb* recipe (traditional custard cooked in an apple)

nicola — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:55:57 +0000

An easy & speedy dessert recipe which can be made for one person. The inspiration for this recipe is the English custard tarts I love and have not yet found in the Czech Republic. Using the apple itself for the casing means less cleaning, and incidentally produces a gluten free pudding.

*My mum used to make us apple bombs as children. It’s not the name she gave them, just the result of the occasional apple explosion.

Ingredients:

1 large apple
1 small egg
A splash of cream (or two dessert spoons if you’re measuring)
A drop of vanilla extract
7 large sultanas
1 dessert spoon of sugar
Cinnamon
Nutmeg (a generous sprinkling of freshly grated nutmeg is key to this recipe.)

Heat your oven to 175 0C.

Beat the egg and add the sugar, cream, sultanas, cinnamon & nutmeg. Chop off the top and bottom of the apple, forming a chunky cylinder, then, leaving no more than a cm of flesh attached to the skin, remove the core (a sharp, thin knife is useful for this). Cut a slice from the bottom of the removed core & put this back into the apple. Stand the apple on foil to stop any leakage sticking to your oven tray.

Pour the egg mixture into the hole, and cut wedges from the apple core into the mixture, until the apple is full. Finish with a sprinkle of sugar, nutmeg & cinnamon.

The apple will take half an hour to bake through – check the egg mixture in the centre is cooked all the way through using a blunt knife inserted into the custard. When it comes out clean, your Tábor Apple Bomb is cooked.

So… 4 apples down, three tonnes to go!