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)