Carol Deppe on Leafy Greens (audio with Jim Phillips)

January 11, 2012 show

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Why she focuses on the leafy part of the green vegetables rather than heads (biggest nutritional bang for the buck), advantage to growing heads instead of leaves is storability, transporting (7m); why to grow potherbs, and the power of Green Wave mustard (10m); special way to grow it - "eat all vegetable patch" - broadcast in a bed in late March, thin if necessary by dragging a rake, it'll grow 2 months, a foot high, harvest top 8" of plant with sickle or knife, 4'x16' broadcast patch = 16 lbs edible greens, turn in the rest and the roots for tomatoes...bunch, slice to 1" width, boil for a couple minutes, eat some, freeze the rest with a bit of broth in ziploc boxes for several months supply of cooked greens (12m30); info for cooking in soups (16m); basic idea of eat-all veg patch is plants produce a lot of leafy greens rather than stems, grow fast so w/in 2 mos can go through and harvest lots of greens, she serves about a pound (cooked!) of Green Wave mustard in a serving (17m); why she doesn't bother growing spinach - mostly air and water (18m); other things that work in the patch (fall planting doesn't work for Green Wave mustard cuz not tender enough) include Amaranth greens esp. 'Green Callaloo' (late spring, summer, fall), she puts anywhere she's got a gap in her corn patch, etc., Chenopodium giganteum 'Magenta Spreen' similar to Lamb's Quarter but more leafy and a little more cold hardy, edible Chrysanthemum 'Shungiku' used in Sukiyaki, growing window spring and fall, leaf radishes grow really fast, as little as 30-40 days, currently all hybrids 'SaiSai' (20m); why it's hard to grow Daikon radishes in the NW, except in areas that flood (32m); the vegetables Carol focuses on are green leaves for almost all our vitamins and minerals, including big batch of kale - and tomatoes, too, of course (33m); fine to eat all the brassicas, you can judiciously snitch leaves off, young carrot tops, cow pea and runner bean and sweet potato shoots and young leaves, tall growing nasturium in the corn patch, onion and garlic greens, esp. Egyptian (or Walking) Onion greens available in the wintertime (35m30); harvesting Egyptian onion greens judiciously to get onions, too (38m15); Lovage, young horseradish leaf in spring (39m30); tricks to using perennial greens: 1. cook because strong flavor, 2. mix and match with milder flavors (41m30); Scorzonera, mild like lettuce but leaves held out of the mud, perennial so really shoots in spring, also pea shoots, e.g. Austrian field peas as cover crop, also Fava beans but some people find them toxic (favism!) (43m30); how to pair this kind of salad with a dressing - something that's oily and something that's sour, the oily could be a handful of nuts or chopped eggs(47m); save the broth from cooking greens because it's got all the water-soluble minerals, for soups or just to drink like tea (51m); Russian Hunger Gap and other kales (52m30); Turnip greens, too... cooked with fat and vinegar (56m); on indoor and overwintering greens including Russian Hunger Gap (58m30); growing pea shoots (64m); Russian Hunger Gap Kale at Adaptive seeds, most frost hardy, bolts later than everything else to fill period between the overwintering greens and spring greens (66m); wild leafy greens - dandelion (before flowering), chickory (careful), lamb's quarter, nettles (when 6-8" high), purslane - all best in early spring when short other greens (74m); the Grand Alliance - the biological community that accompanies people (81m30)

Carol Deppe on Growing Food in Times of Climate Instability (audio with Jim Phillips)

January 3, 2012 show

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What "global warming" isn't (7m); climate instability - we've got to be nimble (10m); monoculture is a bad idea for normal times, for 100 years we've had an unusually stable climate (11m); diversify in every possible way you can, how potatoes deal well with extreme weathers especially early and late freezes, wind storms (12m); Irish potato famine, role of large land ownership and export crop (oats) in famine (15m); the 6th staple: fruit and nut trees, think of annuals and perennials differently, with annuals you can afford to gamble, with perennials plant conservatively, it's a big investment to lose, plant will within the hardiness rating, such as -1 zones (16m); more on choosing which plants (20m); in the NW in a bad year, you'll be glad when you grow one of the high-yielding short season varieties (23m30); seed saving including how many years of storage - enough seed for the rest of her life for an acre! The Hopi had a rule to grow and store enough for two years to both eat and replant (26m30); seed-saving, better vigor, and why it's a good idea to have tons of extra seed, and how to save corn, bean, and squash seeds for nearly forever (34m30); "you want to be able to set up your neighbor with enough seed, and that's going to be thing that's best for yourself, too, you want to be a part of a neighborhood where people are working together, not a neighborhood where people are starving" (37m30); first and most important step: don't eat the best ones! (39m); recommendations for evaluating the potential resilience and problems with your own land and region: 1. USDA soil survey maps, 2. Pay attention to which crops are grown commercially in your area, 3. website for your local land grant college for local crop info and limiting factors, to help choose varieties, 4. Discover what the Indians did with the land, 5. Talk with people who have been doing agriculture or big gardens for decades, ask questions like "what's the worst year you've ever had for corn?", etc. (45m45); notes on tomatoes - focus on Stupice because early and good in cold weather, some Amish, 8 plants total, 1 of a couple other things, grow the transplants indoors to where they're big, put them out big (48m); increasingly wet spring weather, so look for any time starting in February to till, avoid labor bottlenecks (52m); what she does for a new piece of land: get a soil test, add the minerals, then use cover crops from then on out for fertility (54m); the reality of needing to irrigate cover crops nowadays in the NW! (55m30); on taking the thousand-year view, including the 'Cascade Ruby-Gold' corn as the ultimate survival crop (57m30); we're not used to think in terms of disasters that are REALLY large, but mega-9 earthquake in the NW 3x per 1000 years (59m30); on the Amish, who saved the draft breed of horses, and what the tractor-makers did to displace horses, the efficiency of horses for smaller operations (64m); my parents taught me to swim, they taught be to swim because I might fall into deep water some time... and likewise it's a good idea for people to teach their children to swim, to do basic first aid, and to grow food and save seed(67m30); most people aren't going to grow all their own food because with hand tools it takes too much time if you have a full-time job (69m); on reinventing cornbread from home-grown corn and the need to know how to prepare food, too (71m); on the soul-satisfaction of growing your own staples: "if you've ever watched a squirrel storing nuts in a log, you can just sense the satisfaction of that little critter: 'Now, I've got a whole hollow log full of nuts!' (78m); "I really don't think any amount of money could make me feel as happy inside as a big pile of beans" (80m)

Carol Deppe on Ducks (audio with Jim Phillips)

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Jim Phillips considers his awesome series of interviews with Carol Deppe. The topic of this episode is on Ducks, the last of her 5 staples.

Why a laying flock: not for protein but for long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, and not everyone can convert short-chain to long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, tho those that can may be able to get by with plants only, but difficult... "some people are obligatory omnivores" - and this only works for animals that are grown and finished on fresh grass, not grains or even hay! major deficiency in modern diet, a laying flock is the simplest way (7m30); fatty cold-water fish is the best, e.g. salmon or herring, wild game is also good if you eat the fats (garden rabbits!) (12m30); animals need to be really free range, running around and eating bugs (17m30); eggs and egg yolks are not responsible for cholestrol, sugary-fatty things are (21m); chickens vs. ducks, incl laying breeds of ducks - Cortlain(?) Khaki Campbells, etc., go to Holdereads hatchery (24m); but Khaki Campbells a scrawny little bird, so with the 50% males, you eat them - dual purpose breeds have mellower personalities, can hatch out their own eggs (26m); ducks vs. chickens - great in the damp northwest winters, can get all their protein from reasonably sized yard with slugs and snails, chickens miserable most of the year, if frozen much of the winter, would choose chickens because nothing can free range and chicken is a better confined animal, but if wet land, swamps, creeks, might consider ducks (31m); how to cook and eat duck eggs - cook at a lower temperature than chicken eggs, easy to overcook, how to fry a duck egg, to boil bring barely to a simmer than cover and leave for 15 min (34m45); getting the shell off a hard-boiled duck egg (38m); don't feed them fishmeal because will taint flavor (87m45); Considerations of ducks vs. chickens after climate - what kind of forage have you got? insects good for both, slugs/snails ducks, compost piles chickens (44m30); fencing and security for ducks vs. chickens - out at day, in at night, so what are your daytime predators? a 2 ft high fence will keep most laying ducks out of a garden, role of electric fencing (46m); ducks lay regularly in the morning, chickens lay at all times and need to go back to the nest box during the day (51m); creating cover for birds, pruning trees to 1.5 ft branch level above the ground (54m); Ducks as pest control - herd them, they love eating plants, slugs will leave the garden and go to the duck area because they love eating duck poop! duck area within 50 feet of the garden area, you can get rid of most of your big slugs, also turn them out into harvested area, also if you're supervising them, they'll clean out the slugs and stuff BEFORE they go for the plants, at least 10 min, but don't let them run around a salad garden any time close to when you're going to harvest (60m); protect rows of seedlings with lattices, sticks, whatever to keep them from walking on them (65m30); summary for pest control: 1. supervise, 2. keep time short, 3. keep them out of salad gardens, 4. protect seedlings from getting tromped on (66m30); more on compost/chicken synergy (68m); CHICKENS ARE ALWAYS A BETTER CHOICE FOR CONFINEMENT (69m30); feeding ducks - free range + poultry chow or if not available, table scraps plus any grain you can grow, commercial chow should be cooked potatoes, squash, slugs enough protein in winter, and more(71m30); For larger flock, 100 years ago, a farm would have 100 dual purpose laying birds, would have good forage, would feed them all their butcher waste and family waste, also dry scrap meat from urban butcher, the modern equivalent is commercial broiler chow, two containers so birds can pick and choose - high protein commercial chow, then a grain of some sort like corn or wheat, in summer time maybe 1 bucket corn to 4-5 buckets chow, in wintertime 1:1 or even not eating chow at all because of slugs and nightcrawlers (74m30); need to supplement calcium - provide oyster shell grit free choice, for broilers rock grit is fine, oyster shell will give calcium and help digest (80m); you can save eggshells and add them back into the diet, oyster shell is a good thing to stockpile (81m); how many males you want for flock reproduction - 1 to 4-5 for ducks, 1 to 12-20 for chickens, maybe one extra male, but don't keep more! (84m)

Midwinter salad

All of these plucked from the garden just 10 minutes ago. It's been a warm winter. Served up with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a bit of lemon juice. Sweet, nutty, spicy, and tender!