The Waning of the Light

The light has shifted, the days are cooler, and mist and rain are beginning to replace the sun and warmth of July. The summer is waning. But some beautiful wildflowers and wild fruits are now arising in the hedgerows, including Harebell, Fireweed, Yarrow, Devil's Bit Scabious and a plethora of ripening Blackberries. Elder berries and Wild Rose hips will soon be ready for gathering - they are both valuable ingredients for winter cough syrups and make delicious, vitamin-rich jellies or jams. We are seed collecting also, beginning with English Bluebell - their papery seedcasings are filled with minute shining black seeds. This beautiful native wildflower is becoming scarce due to the prolific nature of the imported Spanish Bluebell and the resulting hybrids, so we'll be spreading its seeds throughout the coming weeks.

We've also collected the seeds of Devil's Bit Scabious and are searching for those of Ragged Robin - both populations are in decline due to habitat loss, mainly stemming from modern agricultural practices and the draining of wetland environments. We've collected and sown seeds from Jack-by-the-hedge, also known as Hedge Garlic and Jack-in-the-bush, in a corner of our garden - its leaves and young flowerheads have a mild garlic flavour and can be added to salads or sandwiches or made into pesto. I will be posting more on this plant soon.

In the garden, the courgettes, or zucchinis, were an epiphany for us this year - such generous and prolific plants.

We grew four plants in large pots and they've given us about two dozen courgettes so far. We pick them when they are about 3 -4 inches in length. We discovered a wonderful recipe for zucchini bread (a cake really due to its sweetness) - the best we've ever tasted - and we've made several beautiful loaves with our own lovely produce plus as many local, organic ingredients as possible. Here's the recipe:

Courgette/Zucchini Bread Recipe

(Please note: We're using British measurements)

2 cups/300 gr plain unbleached organic flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp allspice or ginger
1 cup/150 gr organic sugar
2 large free range eggs, beaten
100 ml organic rapeseed or sunflower oil
250 gr of grated courgettes, with the skin left on
1/2 lemon, juiced
Dash of agave or honey
(You could also include 3/4 cup walnuts, and/or 1tsp organic vanilla extract.)

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Pre-heat the oven to 150C/300F. Grease and flour a 9 X 5 inch loaf tin. (Alternately you can grease and then line with baking paper).

Sift the flour, salt, soda, baking powder, and spices into a large bowl. Whisk in the sugar.

Beat the eggs and rapeseed oil (plus vanilla extract if you're using it) together. Add the grated courgettes and lemon juice, then mix.

Stir the wet mixture into the dry mixture, mixing until well combined. Stir in the walnuts if you're using them and add honey or agave to taste. 

Bake in the heated oven for 55 min - 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the loaf comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin for about 15 minutes or so before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Delicious toasted and served warm with some cold butter, or with homemade jam.


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Botanical names of wildflowers used in this post:

Devil's Bit Scabious; Succisa pratensis
Elder; Sambucus nigra
English (or Common Bluebell); Hyacinthoides non-scripta
Fireweed (or Rosebay Willow Herb); Chamerion (or Epilobium) angustifolium
Jack-by-the-hedge (or Hedge Garlic; Jack-in-the-bush); Alliaria petiolata
Harebell; Campanula rotundifolia
Ragged Robin; Lychnis flos-cuculi
Rowan; Sorbus aucuparia
Wild Rose (or Dog-rose); Rosa canina
Yarrow; Achillia millefolium

The First Small Harvests

Here in the fells we are enjoying our first small harvests : crunchy, sweet mangetout (sugar or snow peas), garlic, chives, the first small onions and courgettes, and our very first tipped pot of early new potatoes (they were late this year). Plus lots of greens: garlic mustard, rocket, various lettuces and Japanese mizuna and mibuna. And the nasturtiums have finally begun to spread - their leaves and flowers are edible, and have a distinct sweet, peppery flavour. We also have two blackcurrant bushes which are bursting with fruit, and a lovely gooseberry bush - last year it had three berries - this year its branches are full of lovely, sweet, gooseberries - I found a variety in a local market last year which has pale purple fruit rather than green, and it has a truly delectable flavour which I would liken to slightly tart raspberries. 

We are surrounded also by wild brambles, or blackberries, which are now in flower and covered each day with buzzing insects - bees, hoverflies, flies, butterflies and countless others which I have yet to identify.

Mangetout blossom

I wanted to share a little more about how we're gardening. Since we opted to expand our container garden this year, we've had to buy about ten bags of peat-free, organic compost. But we've been composting our kitchen and garden waste since arriving here, and hope to have our own source of compost soon. We mulch everything. This both keeps down on weeds, and conserves water in the soil. I collect spent bracken stalks and leaves for mulch, plus I use grass clippings (before it goes to seed) which I spread thinly over the garden. It dries quickly and makes a light, useful mulch. I've also mixed in sheep's wool around the edges of the garden beds - we live in sheep country, so there is plenty of wool strewn about the fields. I've been told it also has the added benefit of deterring slugs -  it seems to be working, though I suspect that the weeks of warmth and sunshine have been the true deterrents... and perhaps also the resident frog that we see each evening in the garden...

Courgettes (Zucchini) in Container

 
Our water is piped in directly off of the fell, and though there is of course plenty of rain here, we are still very keen on water collection. For this purpose we are using a large green bin in the field garden and several smaller buckets in the container garden.  I'm also making nettle 'tea' for fertilising in another bucket - I fill up the bucket with nettles, add water and let it sit for a few weeks - this solution, diluted and added to the watering can, is a good source of nitrogen for the garden (which supports stem and leaf growth), with trace amounts of iron, magnesium and sulphur also. It is particularly helpful for plants grown in containers which need their soil regularly topped up with nutrients. If I was growing comfrey, I would be doing the same with it - it is especially useful for flower and fruit production due to its potash content. 

Freshly harvested Courgettes

Our courgettes are growing especially well - I grew them from seed and now have four containers full - which I hope will be enough for two adults. I'm picking them every few days now, when they are about 4 inches long. We're using them both raw and cooked, and are about to experiment with making both bread and muffins with them. 

Gardening, and the gathering of wild foods, by their very nature, bring us into alignment with the seasons. Eating seasonally - having access to vitamin-rich, freshly picked fruits and vegetables, experiencing flavours and textures that are entirely different from what we can purchase at the supermarket, and saving countless food miles by growing as much as we can within our own backyard - this is both a revelation and a joy.

"I Burn"

Last year we had a small patch of nettles growing up on the fell behind the house, so I cleared around it and cut back the brambles which grow everywhere here. This year the patch has expanded beautifully. We love nettles for their young tops and fresh green leaves - these are rich in vitamin C, minerals, including iron, and protein, and can be eaten as a spring vegetable, steamed, or added to soups and stews. We like them in pasta and potato dishes.
 
More importantly however, nettles are a valuable source of food and habitation for more than 40 species of insect here, including the caterpillars of several butterflies such as the Comma, Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock.

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica)

Here in Britain the loss of wildflowers and wild meadows is a considerable threat to the welfare of many pollinating insects, which of course effects the entire ecosystem - including the health of orchards, gardens and farms everywhere. All are connnected. I try to think about this when I'm 'weeding'. Though I want my own crops to do well and to flourish, I practice permaculture principles, which to me is a new name for old wisdom, and leave masses of space for wild plants to flourish. I don't 'tidy' too much, and hope that wildlife will also thrive in the spaces that I'm choosing to garden. 

I came across my first common toad in the garden a few nights ago, and today, a common frog!

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A few facts about Stinging or Common Nettles (Urtica dioica):

Their generic name 'Urtica' stems from the Latin 'uro', meaning "I burn" or 'urere', "to burn."

Their common name 'nettle' stems from the Anglo-Saxon 'noedle', meaning 'needle', which may refer either to the fine stinging hairs found upon the stems and leaves or to its use in making cordage or thread, which was once a widespread practice in western Europe.

Hedgerow plants near our house, including Nettles, Herb robert, Cleavers and Tormentil

A small excerpt from A History of Herbal Plants by Richard Le Strange:

"The stem fibre of the plant was also spun coarse or fine and woven into  rough or fine cloths, sailcloth, sacking and table linen, or was spun into rope or twine for fishing nets. A green colouring matter extracted from the leaves was once a popular wool dye, while the roots boiled with salt or alum yielded a beautiful yellow, for use on yarn... 

The dried herb... makes excellent fodder, increasing egg and milk yields. Chopped up fresh it was at one time added to feed, to make the animals' coats and eyes shine."

Medicinally nettles have a wealth of applications. They are astringent, diuretic and tonic. They support and strengthen, cleanse and purify our whole body. They are considered a specific for skin conditions, especially eczema in all of its forms. The aerial parts of the herb are used, collected when the flowers are in bloom.

As well as all of this, in late summer nettles produce huge quantities of seed, providing a valuable source of food for many of our seed eating birds. 

Such an incredibly productive and generous plant - it's time to head out and weed the nettle beds...

Cuckoo Flower

I've found Cuckoo Flower, or Lady's Smock (Cardamine praetensis) growing in the garden. It's a beautiful native wildflower which is both edible and medicinal.

Cuckoo Flower is rich in Vitamin C and minerals, including potassium, iron and magnesium, and can be eaten as a salad plant or taken as a tea. The fresh, aerial parts are used, i.e the young leaves, shoots and flowers. Because of its high levels of Vitamin C, it is a useful antiscorbutic, which means having the effect of preventing or curing scurvy. 

Here is a lovely description from Nicholas Culpeper's Complete Herbal from 1653:

"Ladies-Smock, or Cuckow-Flower:

Place : They grow in moist places, and near to brooksides.

Time : They flower in April and May, and the lower leaves continue green all the Winter.

Government and virtues : They are under the dominion of the Moon, and very little inferior to Water Cresses in all their operations; they are excellently good for the scurvy, they provoke urine, and break the stone, and excellently warm a cold and weak stomach, restoring lost appetite, and help digestion."

Discovering such unexpected flora is yet another aspect to the joy of gardening wild. I'm trying to be very mindful while creating this garden - I want it to be a place rich in wildlife, as well as a place to grow our food. This beautiful wildflower is a wonderful example of what is already here, and what could too easily be dug up or 'weeded' out. 

As there are only about half a dozen of them at the moment, I'm leaving their little area totally wild, and as they are perennials, I'm hopeful even more will come back next year.

A Garden In Progress

We've been living here in the uplands of Cumbria for about 18 months now, and we've learned, though a disastrous previous year, how much the rainfall and wind effects, and checks, plant growth. Last year was distastrous for gardening and farming in much of Britain, so we certainly weren't on our own. Observing which crops survived last year, through the most difficult of conditions, has definitely influenced planting this year. Potatoes, which we planted pretty much straight out onto the fells behind the house, did really well, particularly the earlies. After that, the lack of sunlight and levels of rainfall effected the yields quite significantly, though we did still manage a few small crops in pots. Garlic and onions also did well, as did greens that we protected in a small greenhouse - but greens outside of containers were devastated by slugs and struggled in the waterlogged soil. Broad beans and mangetout (also known as snow or sugar peas) cropped about a month late, but we did get a small harvest from the container grown plants. We began a small field garden last year also, which pretty much completely flooded, and all of the plants except for a few potatoes in the highest rows of the garden were lost.

So this year, we're sticking with what we've learned - we've expanded the container garden, planting garlic, potatoes, strawberries, mangetout, broad beans (both dwarf and standard varieties), yarrow, mint, chives, nasturtiums and jerusalum artichokes (last year these died from too much damp and extreme winds, so this year I dug up the tubers and planted them in pots - and they've grown beautifully!) We also have plenty of greens on the go including mizuna, mibuna, garlic mustard, rocket and various lettuces. They can now be better protected from the wind, and moved into the sun when necessary.  

We're going to try again with the field garden, but with a few changes - we've chosen to plant only at the top of the garden, as it is on a slight slope, and we've raised up the soil level in the beds also. We've planted early potatoes, onions, beetroot, a few carrots to see how they'll fare in our quite heavy clay soil, spring onions, and nasturtiums, both for the ground cover they'll hopefully provide, and for their peppery young leaves and delicious flowerheads. We've collected dried bracken stalks from the surrounding fells to use as a mulch.

We had let the field garden go completely wild through the winter as we didn't think we'd be using it again. Of course, it became filled with Curled or Yellow Dock (Rumex crispus), Stinging or Common Nettles (Urtica dioica) and various grasses. I've left the docks and nettles pretty much alone, only pulling up those which were in the spaces where I wanted to make beds. I've found that docks around the edges of the garden are a wonderful buffer against the insistent winds - I'm using them in the same way I would a shrub-layer, for protection of the young plants. And in the areas where I've pulled them the soil is now crumbly and beautiful, compared to the sticky clay of last year. Their deep roots have vastly aerated and improved the soil. The young leaves are edible and have a tart, lemony taste, bitter for some - due to oxalic acid - so caution should be used when consuming them.  

Stinging nettles are an important food source and habitat for the caterpillars of many butterflies and moths, and the young tops are delicious as a steamed, wild green. Both Curled Dock and Nettle are valuable medicines. I'll be posting more on both plants soon.

Curled Dock and Nettles surrounding the potato beds.

Potatoes & Onions plus Beetroot under bracken mulch