Non flowering Sorrel in Australia

Sorrel is a perennial leaf vegetable that I always considered growing, but was not sure how good it is or if I would like it.  It is reasonably difficult to find so I never bothered tracking it down.  Living in such an extreme climate I do not have space or water to waste on novelty vegetables, I need hardy and productive plants.  We also dont have the money to throw away if it turned out not to be worth growing.  

Every source of sorrel I can find only had seeds, no one seemed to offer plants and the seeds were seemingly from poorly maintained stock and never from improved plants.  I considered buying some seeds, but dont want to waste money on inferior plants or start another breeding project.  One day someone kindly offered me a sorrel plant in a trade.  They offered it as well as something that I really wanted so I figured I had nothing to lose.

Sorrel plant

When the sorrel turned up it was a small red green stump with no leaves and very few roots.  Apparently that is how they are best posted and it is how they settle in the fastest.  I planted it and figured it would be a few weeks before I saw any real growth or got to try a leaf.  The next day it had a new leaf and a few days later it had grown several leaves!  I tried a tiny piece of a leaf to see what it tastes like.  It was like any leaf vegetable really but also lemony.  My kids love lemony things and often eat anything sour that they can find so I was happy.

It did not take long before I was able to divide the plant.  I divided it several times by digging it up, ripping it into pieces each with a growing point, removing the leaves, and replanting.  Winter came and the growth slowed, frosts did not seem to worry it.  Some people say that it goes a bit dormant over winter, this may be the case but my winters can be mild and it did have some protection so it kept growing.  Over spring it grew like crazy, I should have divided it into a bunch of plants but kind of forgot about it.  Summer hit pretty hard, the leaves got burned by the heat a few times (as did the leaves of every fruit and vegetable I grew this year) but they kept on growing.  When the weather cooled down the sorrel took off again, this time I dug it up and divided it a little.  When dividing sorrel they do best if you cut off all of the leaves, it seems harsh but it will grow new leaves soon enough.

Sorrel leaves ready for cooking/eating

I have read that sorrel usually has separate male and female plants, sometimes it has a plant that has male and female on the same plant, rarely the highly sort after non-flowering plants turn up.  Flowering stops leaf growth for a while and also makes the leaves bitter so growers often talk of removing flower heads to extend the leaf harvest.

This plant was seed grown by its previous owner so it could have been anything.  After growing it for a while this appears to be a non-flowering (or at least very reluctant to flower) individual.  This means that instead of putting energy into flowers and seeds it puts all of its energy into leaf growth and dividing itself.  It also means that there is no chance of it becoming a weed or crossing with anything else.  When regular sorrel flowers the leaves become coarse and inedible for a while, by not flowering this plant has a much extended harvest period each year. 

Sorrel leaf - non flowering means more leaves

As far as I am concerned, this plant is exhibiting every trait that I would have tried to breed for, this is an improved variety!  There is apparently a variety of sorrel sold overseas known as "Profusion" which sounds similar to mine.  As profusion does not flower (so it does not set seed) and importing the plants is next to impossible my variety is the closest thing we have in Australia.

Growing sorrel is simple.  It likes water, good soil and full sun but grows happily enough if it is a little dry or in the shade or with poor dodgy soil or with competition from other plants.  I have yet to see any pest or disease issues of any kind but am told that a leaf miner bothers it in some gardens.  They say if a leaf has leaf miner to remove that leaf, destroy it, and the problem is solved.  Apparently if the plant gets a lot of leaf miner before you notice you can remove all the leaves and destroy them, sorrel will grow new leaves soon enough.

Sorrel has deep roots so mines nutrients from the subsoil and brings them to the surface in its leaves.  The soil life under sorrel is amazing and healthy.  Permaculturalists grow sorrel as a dynamic accumulator and a compost activator.  It out yields comfrey tremendously on my property, lacks the irritating hairs of comfrey, and unlike comfrey seems to be readily eaten by poultry.  I consider all of this a win.

Small sorrel plants a few weeks after being transplanted and having all the leaves removed

Being perennial means it is low maintenance, I plant once and then can forget about it and know that it will still be there if I want to harvest it, I do not need to collect seeds or remove flowers or anything like that.  Sorrel is nutritious, like many leaf vegetables it is very high in vitamin C.  Many people say that they do not let sorrel flower so that leaf growth is encouraged, with my sorrel this is unnecessary as it does not flower most years.

There are a lot of old (pre-1900) recipes that include sorrel as an integral component of the dish.  Some dishes contain sorrel and very few other things, this is not just a nice herb or a garnish, it is a decent vegetable.  Today sorrel features as a garnish, is often used when cooking fish to impart a lemon taste, is occasionally made into a fancy French soup, and is one of the main ingredients of green borscht.  You can eat sorrel raw but it is high in oxalic acid (like many other vegetables) so it is best not to eat too much.  Oxalic acid is water soluble and cooking removes most of it so you can eat cooked sorrel to your heats content.

Sorrel was commonly grown in every vegetable garden all over the world for hundreds of years then it pretty much disappeared overnight.  I know of very few people who have ever grown or tasted or even know of this productive plant.  The reason for this is that sorrel can not be harvested and stored and shipped to consumers, it must be harvested and used pretty much immediately.  For a reliable supply you must grow your own, but that is very simple to do.  For many years now people have stopped growing vegetables because they have no land, as such they miss out on tasting treasures such as sorrel.  

I hope that more people grow sorrel, I especially hope that more people grow improved non-flowering forms such as this one.  I would hate for this to disappear if I happen to lose my stock.  I am planning on building up my sorrel in Spring, until then I can sell it in small numbers through my for sale page.

Read More..

Yellow pear tomato

Yellow pear tomatoes are beautiful to look at and highly productive.  They are an old heirloom variety of tomato that dates back to the 1700s and it is still widely grown today.  They are reasonably common in Australia today and sometimes even appear in supermarkets.  Being so old and still being widely grown today means that this variety must have something going for it.  Each year after the season is over I kick myself for not taking photos as they are truly beautiful.

Yellow pear tomato

Yellow pear was one of the first yellow tomatoes that I ever grew back when I was a teenager, I also grew Banana legs and another one that I cant remember the name of.  Back then no one grew heirloom tomatoes and no one in my area knew that a tomato could be anything other than red.  In those days "Apollo" was new and was heralded as the best tomato variety.  Apollo did not perform well in my climate back then and in my opinion is a bland dogs breakfast of a tomato.

The year my first son was born I got some yellow pear tomato seeds.  The plants and fruit were amazing.  We have saved seed and planted them each year since then, partly out of sentiment and partly because I like this variety.

Yellow pear tomato seeds

My kids love the yellow pear tomatoes, they are sweet and delicious and the plants produce them by the bucketload.  When my second son was learning how to walk we had yellow pear tomatoes growing in a raised garden.  He used to walk around holding on to the garden edge with one hand and trying to feel for tomatoes with the other.  Now that my kids are older they gladly eat every yellow pear tomato that they can get their hands on.  If these tomatoes are put out in a bowl next to a bowl of chocolate the tomatoes are the first thing to be eaten.

Yellow Pear Tomatoes - I wish I took more pictures earlier in the season

One year we had a mouse plague, apparently it was the largest one since the 1980s.  During this plague I lost most of my tomato seeds and was left with a single precious yellow pear tomato seed.  I could easily buy more seeds if I wanted, but I have been caring for this strain since my kids were born so wanted to protect it.  I carefully grew it and saved a lot of seed that year.  That one plant survived right through two winters and proved its worth to me.  This year that plant died due to the frost.  This shows how hardy the yellow pear tomato plant is.  I assume in a frost free climate they can be grown as a short lived perennial.

The plants grow vigorously, we have had plants grow to well over 6 feet tall in the past.  We try to stake the plants as best we can, honestly I am a bit too relaxed with that kind of thing.  If you do not stake them the plants gladly root anywhere they touch the soil creating a giant patch of a tomato plant with tempting delicious fruit that is fairly inaccessible without stepping on the stems.

Yellow Pear Tomato flowers

Each plant will send up clusters of half a dozen or so flowers, these clusters will appear pretty much all over the plant.  As these tomatoes produce fruit and begin to ripen the plant will continue to grow and send up more flower clusters.  Like pretty much all tomatoes they are simple to grow from cuttings so you can increase your numbers easily even with a small number of seeds (or a single seed).

They taste rather sweet, but they do lack the rich taste of a nice paste tomato or something like that.  We mostly eat them raw in salads or out of hand while walking in the garden.  They can be cooked or turned into sauce but there are better varieties that have a deeper taste and darker colour if that is your plan.

Yellow pear tomatoes, slight variation in fruit shape

This one was a bit old so the colour is a little off

 Like many other things I grow I do sell seeds of the yellow pear tomatoes on my for sale page.  I plan to grow these each year so should have fresh seed each year.

Read More..

Freckles lettuce

Sometimes people give me vegetable seeds, they have different reasons for doing this, I dont always know why they do it but I do know that I really like it.  I particularly like it when I get surprise seeds from some dedicated seed saver.  Unfortunately I can not always grow every seed that I am given (although I certainly try my best) and sometimes I have to wait until the correct season to grow them, but only the best are kept from year to year.  One type of seed that I have recently been given is from an old heirloom variety of lettuce.

Freckles lettuce plants

I have never been overly fond of lettuce as it tends to be fussy and goes bitter at the drop of a hat.  Lettuce also tends to want to die, if there is anything around that eats plants the lettuce somehow calls it over for a munch.  The varieties I have grown in the past have required large amounts of water and weeding to deliver less than inspiring yields.  For these reasons I normally would not grow lettuce, but for some unknown reason I gave this one I go.

This variety is called "Freckles", it is an apple green variety with leaves that are uniquely speckled and splashed with deep red.  The pictures I took do not do it justice, the red is a lot darker in real life and the green more vibrant.  This plant has red blotches on top of the leaf as well as under the leaf.  Interestingly the blotches do not go the whole way through the leaf, the pattern on top of the leaf does not match the pattern under the leaf.

Freckles lettuce is a survivor!

It is mostly used as a loose leaf variety of lettuce.  I believe this variety can be cooked and used as a substitute for spinach but am yet to try that myself.  I like learning the history of the vegetables I grow, this one seems to have an interesting past.  From what I can gather it was originally a Dutch variety which was carried from the Netherlands to Canada by a Mennonite immigrant (named Urias Martin) in 1799.  Prior to that its history seems to have been lost.  I have also been told it was one of the lettuce varieties carried to Australia on the first fleet but unfortunately have not been able to confirm the accuracy of that claim.

I grow this lettuce mostly in the cooler weather, it does not appear to be bothered by frost.  I grew it in a bed where I thought it would have the best chance, unfortunately it is also a bed that had mustard plants flower and drop seed so the lettuce has to grow in amongst countless purple mustard volunteers.  Even with this high level of competition the lettuce performs rather well.

Freckles lettuce (green) amongst many purple mustard volunteers

Being reasonably dry and hot I expected the lettuce to bolt to seed and go bitter, yet it seems to hold on ok and has not yet gone bitter.  Being so dry it is not growing as fast as it probably could, but it is still growing reasonably fast.  I would be interested to grow this using aquaponics and see how it can perform given ideal conditions.

Being a leaf variety rather than a head variety of lettuce means that we cut leaves as we need them and the plants keep on growing.  Any small or weak plants are removed so that only the stronger and better plants will eventually set seed.  Any plant that bolts to seed first is also removed so that slower bolting plants are the result.  Every time you save seeds you are adding selective pressure, I try to be conscious in selecting for traits that I find desirable so I end up with constantly improving stock.

Freckles lettuce growing well despite the dry conditions

What they taste like
One must keep in mind that this is a lettuce, so the taste will not blow your socks off.  I dont believe that any lettuce is truly remarkable as far as taste goes.  In my opinion lettuce is something you have with food, although it is certainly not bad for you it is not a food by itself.  Freckles lettuce tastes ok, it is not bitter or anything like that unless it is really a long way through flowering.  I guess I would describe the taste as pleasant and mild.  I have eaten many different home grown lettuces over the years and I would have to say that this one is my favourite.  I certainly plan to grow this variety every year as long as I have space.

I really should pull out some mustard

Where to get Freckles lettuce seeds
I will eventually try to sell seeds of Freckles lettuce, when I do they will be listed on my for sale page along with various other heirloom vegetables and perennial vegetables that I grow.  If I do not have it listed and you desperately want some seed let me know as I may have a little seed to spare.

Freckles lettuce - I will let the best plants go to seed when it is time

Read More..

What is the Difference Between Bio and Non Bio and why does it matter

When two forces in the universe secretively combine to test your scientific brain you learn the incredible value of those lessons covering scientific thinking back in the days. Im not even talking about early uni days, I mean when I was 10 years old and my teacher sent us home with an assignment to describe a simple scientific thinking process. Something simple we observed at home or on our way home. I was confident I was going to be awesome for I was by then an excellent student. I was also a very inventive child that counted on my personal report with electrocution by the age of 8 and a serious bacterial poisoning by the age of 6. Apparently by then two electrical wires attached to a nail do not work as a lamp magnet, and the raw egg mixture Rocky Balboa drank cannot be kept under ones bed for days.

Tough life my bulb-has-no-light-because-its-broken example did not account for the fact that maybe the Power Station was down that day! Tears invaded me as I learned a much valuable lesson: Humility, observation, discussion. These are stepping stones for a proper scientific approach.

This lesson helped me adapt to the inconvenient mysterious and secretive combination of two universe forces that united strengths to make me, for a period of 15 days, a very worried father.

When my son suddenly appeared with plain red patches resembling mild edemas all over his body, my overprotective father software kicked out. My wife started blaming different bacteria, virus, read long pages of "Parenting is for Pros" websites. But by the end of those 15 days we couldnt understand this sudden rash-type plain red edemas that would emerge all over his skin, stay for 10-15 minutes and then vanish like they never were.

It was after bombarding myself with extensive literature on the many stupid things kids tend to catch, and after visiting a GP that reinforced everything was alright and surprisingly no Paracetamol (a GPs best friend) wasnt a necessary therapeutics, that I accepted I could not figure out what that was.

The kid was not getting better but he wasnt complaining of anything either. It was just those red plain edema-like patches surging from nowhere to invade his whole body, stay for a quarter of an hour and then leave like it has never been there at all. Luckily nothing resembling meningitis. We did the classic glass test; he is even vaccinated for the type C strain though.

What could that be if not two mysterious simultaneous forces in the universe that combined to piss me off big time. One had been triggered by myself and the other one by his nursery. WE HAD BOTH CHANGED DETERGENTS AT THE SAME TIME.

I honestly had thought of that before and even tested him with a cotton bud and a sample of the new detergent we had, but seems like these tend to change from brand to brand. Very little changes can trigger allergic reactions, but in fact what happened is that both us and nursery had changed from non-bio to bio detergent. 

I always had in my mind that bio would be better. I mean, bio... ermmmm... biological, isnt that so? Non-bio... ermmm... non-biological, therefore not organic at all. Quite a stupid uneducated consideration have I realised, only after reading the available brand literature on the subject.

(click on images to enlarge)

Read More..