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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Ciao Italia! A Conversation with Mary AnnEsposito

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Ciao Italia! A Conversation with Mary AnnEsposito
  • Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 00:10:25 +0100



I once saw the "hunger gap" referred to as "starving time" in medieval Europe. Isn't that nettle used as a medicinal?

Yes but it is then mostly the root of the nettle (Urtica dioica) that is used in powders and tinctures. This root is as tough as rawhide (can be used as twine to bind things up) and not really edible if you want to keep your teeth in condition. But nettle here is one of the first to boom out of the ground in Spring and the tops make a fine cooked vegetable. Dilicious and nutricious. Just a bit painfull to pick for most people since they nettle you. I have personally no problems with them even with my bare hands. (pure laziness on my side since I don't like to keep carrying gloves around or run for them every time I want to pick or pull a nettle)


Not familiar with garlic cress.

Peltaria alliacea is not an onion at all. We pick the leaves as long as it grows. It is one of our spreading "Trifids", almost impossible to exterminate once you have got it in the garden and there are few enough plants that behave like that here and that are nice to eat.

Is it garlic chives?

Allium tuberosum does quite well here too. Stong plants as fat as good leeks.

I'd guess that climbing spinach is New Zealand or Malabar, not true spinach.

Not a true spinach, Hablitzia tamnoides, It is a Skandinavian vegetable called tjernemelde in Sweden.


Is wheat or potatoes widely grown there? They grow other grains?

Ireland is the country of potatoes. Almost every family used to grow their own until maybe 50 years ago. These days a lot of what potatoes are consumed are imported and large potato farmers in Ireland don't make much money since they have to spray against blight almost weekly. (we have never sprayed our's) Last year a metric ton of these chemical potatoes could be had for about $ 80.
I don't know about relative acerage of grains grown. Barley and wheat are the most common with oats as an after-thought. And that is about it. Quinoa grows quite well in Ireland but that can not be harvested with a combine here since that matures over a few weeks and not all together. Too much handwork for an Irish farmer.

What keeps well in the ground through winter?

Tubers of any sort are very suitable here, much more than top fruit.
In winter we have a variety of brassicas; rutabagas (locally called swedes), turnips, kales and cabages and land cresses, lettuce, leeks,beet and chards, celery, carrots, parsley, miners lettuce and lambs lettuce and quite a few other greens. We have fresh greens every day in winter and never need to freeze crops. We dry beans and peas mostly.

John

On 4/24/2014 1:07 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
We are months away from peppers, tomatoes and beans. Plenty of winter crops left but many of them are going into flower now. Not bad to eat either those flower tops. Spring perennials are up such as climbing spinach, sweet cicely, garlic cress, alexanders and a good few others. And then there are of course the edible "weeds" like stinging nettle and dandelion. Nothing against nettle soup or stir fried dandelion flowers.
Traditionally this period of the year was called the hungry gap. Not because there is nothing to eat but rather because a lot of nice edibles are not recognised as food by native Irish people.
John


Ciao Italia! A Conversation with Mary Ann Esposito
http://www.i-italy.org/bloggers/11713/ciao-italia-conversation-mary-ann-esposito

Had to run this one as my partner cooked Italian when she was big enough to reach the kitchen counter, and her mother from Compania. Like Mary Ann she's been telling me simple cooking with good ingredients is best and easiest, and growing best tasting vegetables is the best way to start. she's got me growing
friariello peppers now with our strain of tomatoes & romano beans to come soon. After all people had to eat before supermarkets & industrial farms, and will again.

paul

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