a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: How Things Grow

  • The Promise of Good Things to Come

    This is how nature’s grocery store works. There’s no marketing, no glitzy displays to lure you in. It’s all up to chance. The thimbleberries (rubus_parviflorus) and salmonberries (rubus_spectabilis) get closer to perfection each day.

    ThimbleBerries140603A
    ThimbleBerries140603B
    SalmonBerry140603

    According to Practical Plants, leaves of the thimbleberry are used to line baskets for carrying soft fruit or other delicate items, and a soap can be made by boiling the bark.

    The leaves are antiemetic, astringent, blood tonic and stomachic. An infusion is used internally in the treatment of stomach complaints, diarrhoea and dysentery, anaemia, the spitting up of blood and to treat vomiting. An infusion has been taken by women when their periods are unusually long. A poultice of the dried powdered leaves has been used to treat wounds and burns. The leaves have been crushed and rubbed over the skin to treat pimples and blackheads. A poultice of the leaf ashes, mixed with oil, has been used to treat swellings. The young shoots are alterative and antiscorbutic. The roots are appetizer, astringent, stomachic and tonic. An infusion has been used by thin people to help them gain weight. An infusion has also been used in the treatment of stomach disorders, diarrhoea and dysentery. A decoction of the roots has been taken in the treatment of pimples and blackheads.

    Natural Medicinal Herbs, states that the shoots of thimbleberries can be picked while they are still young and tender, and cooked like asparagus, and are rich in vitamin C.

    Hansen’s Northwest Native Plant Database lists quail, grouse, partridge, thrushes, thrashers, towhees, cardinals, grosbeaks, bears, coyotes, raccoons, squirrels, foxes, opossums and skunks as all lovers of thimbleberries.

    And yet the fruit is too delicate to package and sell in supermarkets. Which means that there are just a few lucky folk who get to eat these delicious berries. If you have space and live in an area where thimbleberries grow, plant a few and enjoy a fresh treat in midsummer. They are simply divine on ice cream or with a bit of heavy cream.

  • Bees Need Undisturbed Landscapes

    Few things have impacted the lives of bees, butterflies, and other wildlife more than modern agriculture. In the European Union, more than €41 billion has been spent since 1994 to improve the landscape for wildlife. But there have been few studies to see if this effort has been helpful.

    Margaret J. Couvillon, Roger Schürch, and Francis L.W. Ratnieks of the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects, School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, decided to study bees to see which landscapes they preferred for foraging.

    According to Professor Francis Ratnieks:

    Historically the British countryside has been good for wildlife including having many flowers to provide pollen and nectar for bees. But particularly since World World II the countryside is no longer as wildlife friendly as it used to be.

    Bees are the one animal which can tell you where they have been eating. They do this through the waggle dance bees perform when they return to their hive. Through the waggle dance, the bees tell other bees where and how far away they found good foraging. Only bees who’ve had a profitable forage do the waggle dance.

    Over two complete foraging years, the researches decoded 5,484 waggle dances of bees from hives on campus. The hives were less than a mile from Brighton, and so the bees had access to urban landscapes, farmland, and nature preserves. By studying the bees, the researches were able to survey nearly 100 square kilometers of land to see which areas the bees were foraging. Surveying that large an area would have been an herculean task involving many people, but by letting the bees tell them where they had gone, the researchers were able to do a thorough study.

    BeeMapChart

    They then plotted all the places the bees were foraging. They divided the area into 60 sections and plotted the foraging locations of the bees. The favorite foraging spot for the bees turned out to be the Castle Hill Nature Reserve.

    Next, the researches divided the landscape into seven broad categories of land types. They found that rural lands and those with a higher level of protection were where the bees foraged the most.

    Even though they only studied one insect, the bee, since many other insects forage where bees forage, they were able to see where many insects like to forage.

    As Dr. Margaret J. Couvillon says:

    The honeybees possess great potential for monitoring the landscape for flowers. One reason is because they forage at long distances, so in our study, the bees from a single location could survey and area of 100 kilometers square. … Here we have shown that listening to the bees may give us information that is relevant in helping them, such as knowing where they have gone to get their food. This makes the waggle dance more than just a honeybee behavior, it’s a powerful tool for ecology and conservation that may give us unique guidance to help let us sustain a more wildlife friendly world.

    Here is a video abstract of the study:


    And you’ll find abstracts of the study at these links:

  • The Beauty of Food Growing

    RubyStreaks140527A

    Whether it be sprouting mustard greens, developing cherries, or stately garlic stalks, food that is beautiful. When you are lucky enough to see the whole process, from tiny seed or bulb to fully developed plant, cut and on your cutting board, the flavor of the plant is enhanced.

    As you eat it, you see all the many forms it took and the weeks or months or even years it took before it was ready to be eaten. You miss all that when everything you eat is purchased at a store. Even growing a few things, if you can, is worth the effort. Even if you fail, you’ll learn to appreciate that it’s not always an easy process producing fresh food.

    And if you’re lucky, you’ll get to see the many beautiful forms your produce goes through as it grows.

    Cherries140527A
    GarlicStalks140527A

  • Bees Feed Us

    ArugulaBlossoms140527
    BumbleBeeOnArugulaFlowerA patch of arugula is in full bloom. The wild bees are buzzing all afternoon, finding plenty of food to gather as they buzz from flower to flower. Luckily for me, this means I will have plenty of arugula seeds to keep planting through the summer. The great thing about many vegetables is that you don’t have to keep buying seed. Let some of the plants flower and go to seed and you have a supply of vegetable seeds in perpetuity.

    That’s assuming that the wild bees will keep coming. There’s no guarantee that they will. They can’t reproduce and survive if their habitat, our gardens and our fields, are continually doused with poisons. When I visit garden and hardware stores and see aisles of poisons and herbicides, I wonder how much longer our fragile environment will last. It’s a sobering to think that one of these springs, the buzzing of bees may be gone.

    Honeybees abandoning hives and dying due to insecticide use, research finds
    Beyond Honeybees: Now Wild Bees and Butterflies May Be in Trouble
    Decline of bees forces China’s apple farmers to pollinate by hand
    Declining Bee Populations Pose
    A Threat to Global Agriculture
    Bee Sustainable

  • Building the Great Chicken Wall of 2014

    It’s time to build the Great Chicken Wall of 2014. There’s nothing like a dog to help with the digging. No one licks the sweat off your brow better than a dog.

    GreatChickenWall01
    GreatChickenWall02
    GreatChickenWall03
    GreatChickenWall04
    GreatChickenWall05
    GreatChickenWall06

    The first fence post is in. Six more to go. I could use the power auger to dig the holes, but it’s more relaxing to dig the holes by hand with a shovel, and much quieter. There is so much beauty to see when you work outdoors. The foxgloves (dead man’s bells/witch’s gloves) are blooming. Amazing that something so beautiful is so poisonous.

    GreatChickenWall07
    GreatChickenWall08

    The fence posts are in. These are the posts (see Posts – Nature’s Gift) I made back in April from young alder trees. Tomorrow I’ll put up the wire. The purpose of the Great Chicken Wall of 2014 isn’t to keep the chickens in, it’s to keep the chickens out. I need more vegetable beds to grow greens and vegetables for my customers.

    GreatChickenWall09

    Foxglove ~ Botanical.com
    Plants Poisonous to Livestock ~ Cornell University
    Foxglove Plants ~ About.com Landscaping
    Foxglove ~ The National Gardening Association
    Foxglove Poisoning ~ National Library of Medicine