Twenty-four Carrot Magic!

 Greetings and Salutations to all you intrepid gardeners out there, welcome back to another installment of the Forage Foods series on Lost In The Farmer’s Market. As you might already know the current Geo-Political situation coupled with inflation and supply shortages has prompted a series on foods you can forage for just in case things go sideways. Even if they don’t, forage foods may have added nutritional benefits and may also have medicinal benefits that can help you out.

 

Note the foliage and hairy stems, these help in identification.

Note the pretty white umbel flowers, this should not be the only identifying feature you use. You cannot verify the carrot for sure until you dig up that root.

Common Name: Queen Anne’s Lace

Other Common Names: Wild Carrot

Botanical Family: Apiaceae (The Carrot Family)

Botanical Latin Name: Daucus carota

Season to Harvest: Mid to late spring.

Habitat: Wild carrots are typically found by roadsides, in vacant lots and

Parts to Harvest: Flower heads, seeds, and the tap root and leaves if harvested early enough in the season.

Poisonous Lookalikes: Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum), Fool’s Parsley (Aethysa cynapium). Both plants can be distinguished from a Wild carrot by the aroma the root gives off when damaged. Wild Carrot will always smell like a carrot, the two lookalikes will stink pretty bad.

Related Edible Species: The Domesticated Carrot (Daucus carota) is the most closely related species short of the Parsnip (Pastinaca sativa).

Description: The Wild Carrot is a somewhat narrowly shamed upright biennial with a pale fleshy taproot shamed like a carrot. In the first year of growth this plant forms a rosette of finely divided leaves which appears lacy, hence the name. The Mature second year plants will have hollow stems and a noticeable carrot-like odor when the foliage is crushed. Tiny white flowers are borne in dense white flat or, concave clusters at the end of long flowering stems. Wild carrots will have a red flower in the dead center of their flowering clusters.

How to Harvest: First year roots can be harvested by gentle digging and will need to be scrubbed clean with something like a soft bristled tooth brush to get most of the grit and or dirt out of the nooks and crannies. The individual leaves and flower heads can be harvested as needed.

Recipe: While a number of means and ways to cook carrots in one form or another exist, the flower of a wild carrot can be lightly battered and fried as a calorie fortified food. The root can be used as one would use a normal carrot, but I do suggest using them in pickling. Additionally as with domesticated carrots the leaves can be used as a salad green which adds a peppery-carroty flavor.

 

With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog.  In addition to being able to process card payments we now take CashApp payments so your payment options for my product have tripled. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic fruit, herbs, flowers and perennials, come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

 

 

For those of you wondering what plants are going to be at the market this weekend here is the list.

 

Garden Stuff: ($3.00)

Tomato – Sungold

Tomato – Chocolate Cherry

Tomato – Glacier

Tomato – Mountain Pride

Tomato – Purple Cherokee

Peppers – Cayenne

Peppers – Anaheim

Peppers – Bell

Okra – Red Burgundy

Okra – Jing Orange

Basil – Rutgers DMR Devotion

Sage – White (VERY limited Item, $9.00)

Marigolds – Strawberry Blonde

Amaranth – Early Splendor

Cock’s Comb – Scarlet

Castor Bean – Zanzibar

Marshmallow

Wonderberry

 

 

Coming Soon:

More TBA!

 

How to stay in Contact with Us!

 

Our group’s online presence has migrated to Nextdoor.com. All you need to keep up with all our activities is to have a Nextdoor account and to look for the ‘Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville’ group and ask to join! You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join us! Feel free to ask all your garden questions of our knowledgeable membership and post your cool garden pictures.

 

Go to our Nextdoor Page!

 

Also please take a gander at the Youtube version of this blog:

 

 

The Videos: Look Here

>Newest videos (1): - Catnip

 

Meetings still going on! We now meet at LeClairs General Store on the First and Third Thursday of every month. Our next meeting is on June 2nd between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. We are in the back room so come on in and join us for a fun garden chat.

Questions From The Neighbors; Part II

 Welcome back to another episode of Lost In the Farmers Market, and here we are with part two of a brief discussion covering questions sent in by the Sustainable neighbors crew regarding the how’s and why’s of growing things. This is the second part of a two-part series which answers the other five questions. This post is early by one week so that the readers can get all their information sooner rather than later.

 

“When are my radishes ready to harvest?”

 

This depends on the variety you are using, the fastest maturing Radish I’ve ever seen takes just 21 days (Rover and D’Avignon). So the ready to harvest part firstly relies on when you planted them, when the seed visibly emerged and if or if not you thinned the seedlings or properly spaced them in the first place. Another factor is what you intended to grow the radish for, since there are types where you eat the leaves, the seed pods and of course the root. On a standard Icicle Radish you can eat the leaves and the root, though you’re really in it for that root. Since most people only really grow radishes for the root it’s typically pretty visually obvious when a radish is desirable for eating because you can see the swollen part of the root. I should note that home grown radishes normally are not as perfectly round as store-bought ones and won’t often have a uniform a size either, but they will have more flavor and some varieties retain the peppery bite that radishes used to be known for. So this question summarizes to ‘It depends’.

 

“When is garlic ready to harvest?”

Garlic is crop that requires more than one season to mature. Typically you would plant viable individual cloves in September or Late August and mark where you planted them since they won’t immediately show any signs of activity. As the green parts emerge, and those are called ‘Scapes’ you let them grow, mature and they can get up to a foot or more tall. If your garlic tries to bloom and you will be able to tell what the flower stalk looks like since Garlic is in the Allium (Onion) family and most onion blooms look alike. You snap off the flowering stalk which forces the garlic to try to go to seed via producing cloves. Basically without the flower stalk the garlic can’t try to reproduce sexually so it tries to do it asexually via the cloves. Typically your garlic will be ready for harvest in the second year roughly in April or May, but this may vary based on growing conditions and the specific variety. For instance, Georgia Crystal is a hardneck procelain type of garlic, it takes a bare minimum of 240 days from planting to produce a full garlic bulb. Softneck garlic such as Silver Rose takes as long as hardneck the difference being that it’s stems can be braided to make those neat garlic braids. Also as an added note here because I am growing this, Elephant Garlic (Allium ampeloprasum) has two options, it can be grown as a fast spring herb and in 90 days you can harvest a single large bulb, or, you can grow it for a bit longer and get something resembling garlic by the second growing year.

 

“Something ate the root of my carrots, what did it and how do I stop it?” 

Despite what you might think, the culprit here isn’t Rabbits or Squirrels, since squirrels would have dug up the entire plant and either left it to die or dragged it off or left partial remains. Wild rabbits don’t really bother carrot roots and only eat the greens if really hungry and there is nothing better around. It’s kind of a weird storybook myth that rabbits go after carrots in general, and yet they are blamed for the real critter that does. What ate the root is probably a Vole, Voles are effectively herbivores and they will eat the sweet root of a carrot if they encounter it. Voles are not to be confused with Moles which are carnivores specializing in eating worms and insects. If your carrots aren’t too damaged what is left of the taproot will actually keep growing and just be weird shaped. If the voles are doing significant damage you can apply a product called VoleBloc or Permatill, which you add to the soil to make it less pleasant for them to burrow in and thus they go looking for easier places to make tunnels and burrows.

 

“How long can I keep frozen harvests in the freezer?”

The average amount of time to maintain frozen vegetables is 8-12 months assuming no freezer burn happens. Now freezer burn is basically when frozen food suffers the effects of dehydration and oxidation which creates dry areas in the frozen foot that lose pigmentation and may be tougher. Freezer burn can change the flavor of frozen food in general which can be a problem for vegetable storage. You can prevent freezer burn by vacuum sealing things or using quality freezer bags with as much of the air pressed out as is possible. In general I keep fresh harvests in the freezer for no longer than 12 months, though for extremely seasonal things like Alabama Blue Collards, these greens are only eaten on New Year’s so twelve months or longer might be possible but these greens do get double-wrapped.

 

 

“How do I save seed?”

 

Sesame Seeds are of that 'let them fall out of their pods after they dry' type and as you can see here from last year, a lot of pods but the seed is small and needs a glass dish with sloped sides to catch what comes out.

            This is a very open question. The issue is that for every single plant there is a differing way to go about collecting seed and a different set of methods for determining when to harvest seed for drying and storage. For instance, with Cow Peas, you want the pod to be completely dry and then you open it and extract the beans that are undamaged and set them out on a tray to dry for about a week after which you inspect them for insect damage or deformities and pick the best ones to go in storage under plastic. This is not the same process as harvesting tobacco seed where you tip over the little seed capsules and let the black powder-like seed pour into whatever container you have. After this you then let that Tobacco seed sit a week making sure to stir it a bit to ensure even drying and then put it under plastic when the seed is a grayish-black color. The topic of saving seed is VERY nuanced and as I said before varies per plant, in some cases it’s straight forward, and in others like with tomatoes, it involves letting the fruit ferment which is incredibly ‘aromatic’ bordering on the neighbors wondering if you’re hiding a decomposing corpse.

Castor bean seeds are easy to harvest if you can get through the spiky pods and air try them properly for storage.

 

 

With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog. Also, as of the start of 2019, my booth can now process credit or debit cards thanks to the acquisition of s a Square reader so your payment options have doubled. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic vegetables, herbs and fruiting shrubs come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

 

This Week's Market List:

Summer Veggies & Herbs: ($3.00 each)

Sungold Cherry Tomato

Chocolate Cherry Tomato

Sweet Hundreds Cherry Tomato

San Marzano Improved Paste Tomato

Aunt Lou’s Underground Railroad

Paul Robeson Tomato

Cherokee Purple Tomato

Ghost Pepper ($4.00)

Canary Island Sage (Larger Size, $4.00)

 

Ornamental Stuff:

Zanzibar Castor Beans ($3.00)

Special Perennials

Spearmint 5" pot ($5.00)

Bristol Cross Oregano 6" pot ($6.00)

 

Coming Soon:

Comfrey (Mid summer)

Pepper Assortment (More to come as they mature)

Mountain Mint

Oregano

Walla Walla Sweet Onion (Plants)

Lemon Drop Tomato

Wonderberry

Ground Cherry

Chia

Cotton, Erlene's Green

Okra, Jing

 

 

We have a new place to share information and work on groovy sustainable stuff!  You can look for Sustainable Neighbors in our own Nextdoor.com group under the name “Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville”. You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join but it is a private group so feel free to request to join us if you are signed up on the Nextdoor.com site.

 

https://nextdoor.com/g/ybvdm226x/?is=nav_bar

 

Unfortunately, Covid-19 is still mucking up the works in terms of meeting in person. The good news is that Sustainable Neighbors does have a Discord Server. You can request access through our Meetup.com page or you can request access via our Nextdoor.com group. The meetup.com page is below for anyone looking to join us.

 

https://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/

 

Since our meetings have an open-door policy you don’t need to buy anything or maintain any sort of attendance standard, you can come on in and join the meetings. When this Covid-19 mess calms down we may be able to resume normal in-person meetings. If not, you can always send me questions through this blog or visit the farmer’s market. This brings to a close the ninth LITFM post of 2021; stay tuned the next episode which should be posted on the 14^th of May. There will be more garden updates and other cool stuff.

Technical Difficulties and whatnot

Welcome back to another episode of Lost in the Farmers Market.  As you will notice this post is late, and this is getting to become a habit. The work making the YouTube videos is eating up more time than I thought it would and it’s producing longer videos of improved quality that I hope you all are enjoying. I’m going to try and keep this blog to the twice per month schedule and align its content with the video content. The next post up here which is due next Friday will align with the 30^th video LITFM Garden Shorts video. Basically the written transcript of the video will be up here and you can see more details than were available in the video. This post although a week late, is going to focus on cool stuff going on in the test gardens.

Before I get into the lavish photographs of plants you have a mighty need for in your gardens there is one more thing. As a point of obligatory social responsibility I have to state here, that we are in the grips of a pandemic. While I will not dare speak of how the rest of the world is handling it, I can say that United States has not done so well. We haven’t even finished the first wave and now states that thought bravado would suffice, and bought into the falsehood that summer heat would defeat the virus and that once you had it you are immune are ironically now being hit with the virus. The problem with Covid-19 is that it kills 1% of those it infects which is still a little over three million people if you consider the United States population of 328.2 million as of 2019. That’s a lot of dead people, but that in a full nineteen percent of the people it infects they are left with permanent lung and heart damage, circulatory issues, the damage from strokes and other maladies that may take them out of the workforce and put them on some form of disability. That’s 20% of the entire potential and or existing workforce gone, that is why this pandemic is no laughing matter. The intention of this statement is to hammer home the point that has been made by so many health professionals across the world, if you are out and about limit your trips, avoid crowds, practice social distancing and wear a facial covering that securely covers the mouth and nose. This is as much for you as it is for everyone around you. I have personally already had three close calls with Covid-19 and two of them were because of a third party’s negligence. Being required to wear a mask is not an infringement of your first amendment rights, it is not going to kill you with C02, and anyone who prints out those fake ADA cards to get around doing the right thing should feel ashamed for being so selfish. If you want to make Covid-19 and this stupid Pandemic go away and get things back to normal, wear the damn mask!

Now, that was kind of dark but, as promised I have some garden highlights that will perk you up not unlike a thunder-shower perks up wilted plants in the afternoon. Firstly as some of you might know it is pepper season. Pepper season is that magical three or so month’s right on the tail end of the Blueberry season when my wide array of pepper varieties start ripening. For years I’ve had this crazy idea that at some point I should do a composite picture with the pepper varieties marked and noted so customers could tell them apart when they buy the pepper bags at the market. Well in 2020 that idea became a reality with the first big pepper harvest of the year. I’ll do another sheet like this when other varieties are ready to harvest.

Here we have a mixture of varied Coneflower varieties that are so tall they are practically mocking your garden books! They are over three feet tall, and what’s not to love about one of the most widely known medicinal daisies?

This is Beach Rose (Rosa rugosa) in bloom, and what a lovely shade of pink. Beach rose is one of the few rose family members that can handle salt spray, sandy soils and will spread by underground runners at a somewhat slow pace. It produces the largest rosehips of the entire rose family and those hips are packed with vitamin C.

 

Oh look it’s the coneheads…but a week later. Literally a week after I noted the heights of my coneflowers in the picture above, they produces taller flower stalks that were at eye level on me, that’s six feet high folks! Remember what I always say, plants are illiterate, they don’t care what your books say.

 

How about them Hibiscuses! This is a Swamp Mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos) and it is one of the more tropical looking hibiscus that are perennial in your garden here in North Carolina. These herbaceous perennials are hardy from USDA zones 5 through 8.  But the real reward is those giant 6” super-red flowers that look like they belong in the tropics! That these plants can get to six feet tall in a growing season is a double bonus.

 

Ah yes, some of you know what this is, some of you do not know. These are the flowers of the ‘Hairy Balls’ Milkweed (Gomphocarpus physocarpus), they hang upside down and the bumble bees seem to love them. Honestly I like the white and pink coloration as it’s completely random to what you expect from Mlikweed. Once the seed pods form you can bet there will be photographs posted here.

Now this is not normal, here we have the bloom of a domesticated carrot (Daucus carrota). Its bloom resembles several poisonous lookalikes in the wild. I know it is a Luna White carrot because I grew it from seed purchased from a reputable vendor. I should note that a wild carrot is commonly known as Queen Anne’s Lace and such a plant has the same scientific name as a domesticated carrot. There are several deadly lookalikes such as wild parsnip and poison hemlock.

 

Lastly we have one hell of a prize, here is the flower of ‘Giant Mission’ Marigolds (Tagetes erecta). The seed for these annuals is only available through Burpee seeds and these marigolds can get up to three feet tall. Their flowers have a chrysanthemum style of petals and shape and if I am lucky the seed harvested will be viable enough to grow a crop next year. Even if not, just for truly giant Marigolds it was all worth it.

 

Lastly here are several of my last LITFM Videos, we're nearing 30 videos and the possibility of releasing a full-on playlist.

One about Lemon Verbena.

This one is about Lemon Grass.

Lemon Balm is in the mix too.

Of course Lemon Thyme had to be in here.

With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog. Also, as of the start of 2019, my booth can now process credit or debit cards thanks to the acquisition of s a Square reader so your payment options have doubled. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic vegetables, herbs and fruiting shrubs come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

Plants & Stuff Available Now:

 

Food Plants:

Okra, Baby Bubba: $3.00

Peanuts, African Runner: $3.00

Herbs:

Herb, Basil – Eritrean: $3.00

Herb, Basil – Holy: $3.00

Herb, Cuban Oregano – Cerveza & Lime: $3.00

Herb, Horehound: $3.00

Herb, Oregano, Italian: $3.00

Herb, Roselle – Thai Red: $3.00

Herb, Thyme – English: $3.00

Herb, Horehound, 5" pot: $4.00

Herb, Oregano, 6” pot: $5.00

Herb, Italian Oregano, 5” pot: $4.00

Herb, Bristol Cross Oregano –  6” Pot: $5.00

Herb, Sage,  5" pot: $4.00

Herb, Shiso, 5" pot $5.00

Herb, English Thyme, 5" pot:$4.00

Ornamental Plants:

Cotton, Erlene’s Green: $3.00

Cotton,  Mississippi Brown Lint: $3.00

Cotton , Red Foliated White: $3.00

Marigold, Pineapple Crush: $3.00

Marigold, Signet Red: $3.00

Zinnia, Golden Star: $3.00

Milkweed, Hairy Balls: $4.00

Rudbeckia, Prarie Glow: $4.00

Coming Soon:

[TBA]

Due to the current Covid-19 situation and the state’s requirement that all citizens are not to gather in groups of more than ten, the weekly Sustainable neighbors meeting is online. Please check the sustainable neighbors Meetup.com page for more info about how to attend our online meeting.

https://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/

Since our meetings have an open-door policy you don’t need to sign up for anything or join anything, you can come on in and join the meetings. If not, you can always send me questions through this blog or visit the farmer’s market. This brings to a close the thirteenth LITFM post of 2020; stay tuned the next episode which should be posted on the 24^th of July. There will be more garden updates and other cool stuff.