Spring Time= Stinging Nettles and Dandelions

Hello!  It has been quite a while since I have updated this blog and I am trying to rectify that now.  I feel like I have a good reason for not being active for such a long time....we are expecting our first little one any day now!  We found out in the middle of summer and I was just not feeling well enough to write or take photographs.  Then it turned to fall and winter and there was not much I wanted to write about, not to mention baking a baby is exhausting!  Now that it is spring again and the garden is starting to burst, I am becoming inspired once more.  Plus I am on maternity leave at this point and I have some extra time on my hands.

Iz's apprenticeship went very well.  It ended at the end of October and he misses the farm.  Luckily our yard has been keeping him busy!  I will have other posts dedicated to our plans for the season after I get some more photos taken.

The topic today is Stinging Nettles (Urtica dioica) and Dandelions.  Some people are lucky and have Nettles growing wild on their property, just like Dandelions do; but we are not so lucky, so we planted some last year.  Early Spring is the best time to harvest Nettles so we got to work today!  Once the Nettles bloom later in the summer, it is best to just keep cutting them back and throwing them in the compost or just let them go for next year and cut them back at the end of the season.

When harvesting Nettles, make sure you wear gloves.  They really do sting!  Iz used regular gardening gloves for harvest and moved to food safe gloves in the kitchen when removing the leaves from the stems. He had to double up on the gloves as he was getting stung through one layer.

We are making two things with our Nettle harvest. A potato and nettle soup and a nettle hair rinse.  Both recipes are in one of our favorite herb reference books: The Complete Herb Book by Jekka McVicar.

Scarlett and the Nettles

The hair rinse is as easy as making tea.  Add a large handful of nettles in a pot on the stove, bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes covered.  Strain into containers and let cool.  To use, pour through your hair after shampooing. We just made this so I will have to report back about how it works. This is good for general conditioning of your hair but also good for preventing hair loss, itchy scalp, and dandruff. (McVicar)  I was "Googleing" around looking for other nettle inspiration and came across another blog post about making the nettle hair rinse.

The soup includes nettles, potato, onion, milk, lovage, lemon thyme, oregano all blended after cooking together.

We had a bunch of leftover nettles so we are using a borrowed dehydrator to dry the leaves to use as tea as needed.  According to McVicar, nettles are used as a diuretic, for anemia, and as a tonic to get useful vitamins and minerals we might lack during the winter, including vitamin C and Iron.

It is important to note that to eat nettles, you must cook them!  Eating the plant raw can cause kidney damage and poisoning. (McVicar)

Here are a few external sources talking a little more about Stinging Nettles as a plant and uses.

We have plenty of Dandelions growing all over our yard.  If you are going to harvest in your yard, make sure that there haven't been any herbicides or other chemicals sprayed on or near your crop.  You don't want to eat that! Also, try to harvest away from the road as there can be all kinds of yucky stuff coming off of cars and the road. Try to harvest the leaves when they are a young as possible as they will be more tender.

All we are doing with the Dandelions is cleaning off the roots to roast and keeping the leaves to eat in salads or I'm thinking about adding them to an herb pesto with thyme and leftover nettles.

Roasted Dandelion root is used commonly as a coffee substitute.  I have not tried this yet, so I will be report back.

When dealing with herbs on your own, I strongly recommend doing a little research first to make sure there are not any contraindications for your own health status.  Some herbs can interact with drugs, and specific medical conditions.  Read more than one source to make sure you get a well rounded profile of the herb and the opinions of several experts.  Some of the resources we use are as follows:

Mountain Rose Herbs

Books by Richo Cech, owner of Horizon Herbs

Susun Weed

and as I mentioned before Jekka McVicar

CSA share, pickles and garlic

Another week has gone by! I'm afraid that the Summer is going by too quickly.  I am trying to savor it as much as possible.  This week's CSA share is below:

Summer squash, zucchini, carrots, potatoes, beets, fennel, cabbage, one beautiful heirloom tomato (first one!), four green and one purple pepper, two yellow onions, two head of garlic

Some people were worried about the last post when I said I was starting to get a little overwhelmed with the volume of veggies.  No worries!  Almost all of the veggies we get are eaten, "put up" or shared with others.  If there is any waste, it goes into the compost. (I like to think of it as recycling).  

Speaking of "putting up" or preserving vegetables,  I tried my hand at two different pickles this past weekend.  Our cucumbers are going crazy and we still have some garlic scapes leftover from a little while ago.  I decided to make refrigerator pickles with the cucumber and lacto fermented garlic scapes.  I don't have a photo of the pickles yet, they are sitting in the fridge waiting for lids, so I will get around to that this week.  Here are the scapes:

I made three jars full and I can't wait to taste them in about a week!  I think I mentioned the blog where I got this recipe in my last post.  Here it is!  I pretty much followed the recipe, except I didn't have any whey so I used more salt.  I changed the spices to what I had on hand: fennel seeds, yellow mustard seeds and black peppercorns.  Smaller Footprint was cutting back their dill.  Isaac mentioned that I wanted to make pickles so they gave him the dill flower heads to take home.  They are the best! So I added probably two tablespoons of dill as well.

Here is the recipe for the refrigerator pickles.  It was not hard at all.  Notice that I haven't delved into any actual canning...I'm taking baby steps.  I'm looking forward to eating lots of homemade pickles this summer!

I ordered this so I can get my sauerkraut on, hopefully soon.  Of course, I will report back.

While I was at work on Saturday, Isaac harvested all of our garlic. If I remember correctly we have about 40 heads total.  Some of this we are going to save and plant in the Fall for next year's crop. But honestly, this should (along with the garlic we get from our 2 CSAs) last us all year, until next season.  You know when it is ready when the greens start to brown or if you know the growing time, that would be your indicator as well.  All you do is pull them out of the ground. Shake the dirt off the bulbs, you will want to make sure most of the dirt is off.  Then you want to let the garlic cure outside in a shady well ventilated area for a few days.  This will allow them to dry out and will keep longer.  When you bring your garlic inside, store it in a cool dry place.  Here are some photos from the harvest.

bundled and hanging outside

garlic looks nice in black and white

On a final note, the greens are starting to dwindle as the summer crops start thriving.  As a last hurrah until they start coming in again in the fall, I experimented and made a greens (chard and kale) pie with feta, walnuts and lemon slices.  I use this recipe for the dough. I doubled it so I could make the (poorly formed) lattice on top and I used all butter.  I really liked the slices of lemon.  They really mellowed as they roasted in the oven. I'm being lazy and not posting the recipe here. If you would like one, please let me know. It's one of those things where I made it up as a went along, but I think I could point you in the right direction.

That is all for now! We are going to Michigan in a couple of weeks to visit Isaac's family.  The plan is to obtain as many blueberries that will fit in the car.  (We look forward to this all year!)
Stay tuned!

CSA Week 7

This is getting ridiculous.  We are getting quite overwhelmed with vegetables.  I am on a mission to get a lot cooked or preserved this week to give our poor overstuffed refrigerator a break.  We are up to three heads of cabbage and way too many zucchini to count, especially now that ours in the garden are coming in.  I made a chocolate zucchini cake, but that barely put a dent in the supply.  I think I am going to make a few loaves of "regular" zucchini cake and send some to the farm with Isaac. 
Here is what we got from Hazelfield Farm this week:

Swiss Chard, green beans, cabbage, green peppers, yellow onions, zucchini and zephyr squash, new potatoes, carrots, beets, fennel, and garlic.

I'm planning on making vegetarian stuffed peppers, something kind of like this, but probably with rice instead of couscous.  I'm also going to roast all of the carrots we have and cook down all the greens (kale, chard and beet greens).

We made mini goat burgers last night with tzatziki sauce to go with them.  Isaac got some ground goat meat from a neighboring farm in Yellow Springs.  We invited some friends over and had a little barbecue. Delicious!

As I was looking up quick pickling recipes for the remaining scapes, I came across the blog cook.eat.think.  She has a recipe for lacto-fermented scapes which I think I will try.  She also shares her CSA share for the week and is also linking to other blogs sharing their CSA baskets.  If you are curious about what other people get in different regions of the US, click here and here!


On a farming note.  Check out the article "Illegal Food is better for you" from the blog Instead of the Dishes.  The article discusses Polyface Farms and the farmer/owner Joel Salatin.  He discusses many of the food regulations in the country that are contradictory to what is actually healthy for humans. One quote I will take from the blog in which they took from his discussion: “Opt out and do it.  We vote three times a day on the legacy that we will leave our grandchildren, one bite at a time.”  I can't stress this enough, we need to take a direct interest in our food, how it is grown/produced and supporting the small farms that make it possible.  This matter needs to be dealt with on a local level, not in big government.  Take a look!

CSA and Garden Update

I hope everyone had a nice Independence Day! The holiday has thrown me a little off schedule, but here I am-better late than never.

I first want to send a little shout-out to a new reader, Nazneen.  She was nice enough to mention one of my blog posts in her blog Coffee and Crumpets.  Her blog post is about visiting her local farmer's market and shared the lovely vegetables that she purchased and her intentions for them.  Take a look!

Speaking of Farmer's Markets, I am back with photos of the CSA shares from Hazelfield Farm and Smaller Footprint.

Above: left to right

Garlic, summer squash (zephyr and zucchini), sweet peppers, new potatoes, green beans, onions, basil, beets, cabbage, kale, carrots, lettuce-phew!

 

Smaller Footprint: leaf lettuce, green beans, broccoli, zucchini, kohlrabi, kale, swiss chard-not shown: wild blackberries, a couple tomatoes and eggs

Of course the lettuce is devoted to salads.  I also added some chopped carrots, onions and kohlrabi to the salads.  Kohlrabi is in the cabbage family.  It has a mild taste but is crunchy and fresh tasting in a salad.

During our cooking extravaganza we have the day before Isaac goes back to the farm, I kind of made something up that turned out pretty good.  I found a recipe online, but I couldn't find it when it was time to cook, so I tried to go from memory.  

Mashed Potato and Zucchini Cakes

You will need to make a batch of mashed potatoes.  Make them however you usually like to.  We just boil potatoes, skin on, until tender, then drain.  I throw in a lot of butter, sour cream and half and half and mash it all up with the potatoes.  Salt and pepper to taste. I made about 2-3 cups worth.

As the potatoes are cooling, grate two medium sized zucchini on the large holes of a box grater.  Either wrap them in a clean towel, or place in a fine mesh strainer and squeeze out as much water as you can.  Once you do this, add to the potatoes and mix.  Add one or two eggs, depending on the size you have, I used one duck egg.  Mash to all together so the egg is combined. This will hold the cake together better as they cook. Add salt and pepper and any herbs you like.  We used lemon thyme.

On a large plate, place breadcrumbs and grated Parmesan cheese.  Form the potato mixture into approximately 2" wide patties and dredge in the breadcrumbs on both sides.

In a large skillet heat about 1" of oil in the pan.  When the oil is hot, fry the patties until golden brown on both sides.  Remove from pan, drain on paper towels and sprinkle with salt.

I am thinking about making sauerkraut with the cabbages that are accumulating in the refrigerator.  I need to find a large crock to do so.  If I do, I certainly will report back!

The garden is doing relatively well.  We mulched and weeded quite a bit last week, but there is always more to do.

 

 Above: Looking at the yard from the back.
Right: The large garden is doing well.  The giant green in the back are Jerusalem Artichokes.  They will bloom a pretty yellow sunflower-like bloom very soon.  We need to dig up a lot of them as they spread quickly.

A portion of the front part of the largest raised bed.  Clary Sage blooms flank chamomile (German and Roman), California Poppies (see other photo), white poppies and amaranth (not yet blooming)

One of our Elderberries is blooming, we didn't expect any blooms this year as they are new transplants, so this is exciting!

Some peas have escaped the jaws of the rabbits that hope about in the garden frequently.

Zucchini is coming in! If I knew what I was doing, I would stuff those blooms.  Maybe someday...

I added some more photos to our Flickr page. Take a look!

CSA and National Day of Action

Well, Isaac put away the veggies too quickly on Sunday for me to get a photograph and then I was too lazy to pull them all out of the fridge again.  So, here is this week's list: One head of lettuce, one cabbage, one head of broccoli, zucchini, beets, new potatoes, carrots, a bulb of fennel, and green onions. I am doing this from memory, so I may have missed something, but I think that is it. 

Isaac and I had a cooking marathon on Sunday, we made him a lot of food to take to Yellow Springs such as egg salad, cole slaw and Five Spice Beet Soup.  The soup was very easy, we cut up the beets as the recipe describes and roasted them with olive oil in a covered casserole dish in the oven at 375 for about an hour.  We decided to add some mushrooms for more flavor so we reconstituted some dried chanterelles in red wine for about an hour.  We got two beautiful red onions from Smaller Footprint so I sauted them in some olive oil. I added the beets, the mushrooms and the ginger and the vegetable broth to the pan and let it all simmer.  We didn't have pre-blended Chinese five-spice, so I "Googled" the ingredients and found that we pretty much had all the whole spices. So I ground those up in a mortar and pestle and threw them into the pan.  We didn't have any celery but we do have lovage, so I tossed in a small handful of the leaves at the end. Lovage is similar is taste to celery but a bit stronger. We use the stalks like celery sometimes as well in tuna and egg salad.  After all the ingredients simmered for about 10 minutes, I used an immersion blender to smooth everything together. I love this thing; it is much easier than moving hot liquid into a blender or food processor, but if you don't have one, you can use the others.  I ended eating the soup cold with a dollop of sour cream, it was very good. I was pretty aggressive with the spice, but I think I would still add more if I made it again. If you don't like beets, you may still like this soup, the "earthiness" of the beets and the rich texture is muted by the other ingredients. Plus it is a beautiful reddish color.

For dinner we grilled some fresh sausage and some thick slices of zuchinni that were marinated in olive oil. So simple and delicious!

I have to get on my soapbox for a moment once again, so please bear with me.  As many people know the federal budget is in deliberation in the Senate right now.  The Senate is proposing to cut "$1 billion for fiscal year 2012 to the Conservation Stewardship Program, the Environmental Quality Incentive Program and the Wetlands Reserve Program.  These cuts will require USDA to break contracts with farmers who have committed to conservation practices and they are disproportionate to other spending cuts"

Please call your Senators today! Here are some talking points.

Now, I know we can expect the government to fix all of our agriculture problems.  I am a big supporter of grass roots support, where the people make choices about their food and support their local farms. However, a lot of local farms rely on some sort of government program and we can't let the government undervalue the importance of sustainable, small and local farms. I understand that this country is in a financial crisis, but there are other ways to make sure that the budget is balanced without taking steps backward when it come to sustainable agriculture.

Stepping off soap box.
Thanks for letting me add that! I will be back with more photos soon. I'm  planning on taking some pictures of the garden for an update. We will also be taking a trip to look at more land this weekend, so I hope to have an update on that as well.

First CSA pick-up

After a two week delay due to the wet and cool weather, we were able to pick-up our first CSA basket at the Hyde Park Farmer's Market yesterday.

Included in this week's pick-up: Three different lettuces (buttercrunch, romaine, and red leaf); Green Onions, Broccoli, oregano, mint, radishes, garlic scapes and swiss chard. I wanted to weigh everything, but I couldn't find the kitchen scale as the kitchen is still not all the way put back together. I will start doing that next week, Isaac found it after I had used some of the veggies.
I made a giant salad last night to eat through the week with some of the lettuce Isaac brought home from the farm, the buttercrunch lettuce here, radishes and green onions. I will add walnuts, Craisins and chopped garlic scapes when we are ready to eat it.

 This is what the scape looks like on one of our garlic plants. They grow on the hard-neck varieties of garlic. This will be the bloom and eventually seed of the plant if left on. They taste like garlic but much milder. You can leave the scape on if you want to save the seed, but removing it to eat will allow the plants energy to focus on growing a larger bulb. Here is more information!

I make my own salad dressing with lemon juice, olive oil, a crushed and chopped garlic clove, dijon mustard, honey, thyme and oregano and salt to taste. I make it in a mason jar and shake it until it is nice and emulsified.

Most of this CSA will be devoted to many salads which is fine with me because I don't think I will ever tire of eating salads. Now, cooked greens I can make me a little weary after a while, so I'm making Kale chips to share with family today.  We have Tuscan Kale growing in our garden and Isaac brought home a curly variety from the farm.

I think I mentioned making Kale chips before. Isaac's sister turned me on to them. I highly recommend them to people who aren't sure if they like greens or are tired of cooking them the same way all the time.  Try seasoning them with different spices. I'm making batches with salt, black pepper, and hot Hungarian paprika. Here is the recipe I'm using today.

 Finished, with many more batches to go.

I am also making an asparagus salad with asparagus from the farm, green onions and radishes.  It will be kind of like the recipe here, minus the mushrooms.

I hope everyone is having a pleasant Memorial Day! We are thankful to all of those who have sacrificed their lives for our country. I am happy that I get Isaac one extra day this week.

Catching Up&Weeds

It's been raining cats and dogs here this April.  It has literally put a damper on our outside activity so far this month.  Isaac only has one more week at home and we are scrambling to finish some home projects before he leaves.  We are currently in the middle of a medium sized kitchen remodel which has also kept us from the yard.  Despite all of this, we have had a little garden activity.

A lot of our two year old parsley did really well over the winter, we were able to dig under the snow and clip off a few sprigs of fresh parsley which was nice during this past bitter winter.  However, this parsley is biennial, which means that it during the second year it will flower, set seed and die. Parsley is a very nutritious herb and easy to grow. It is a great staple if you have limited garden or container space for your herb garden. Here is some nutritional information about parsley.  Although the parsley we have is abundant (5 very large chunks) all of it is going to flower soon, so we are trying to use it up before then.  Isaac removed three large plants and we made pesto with it.  I LOVE pesto!  Fresh basil pesto is my favorite, but I will eat it made with parsley, thyme and arugula to name a few.  We don't really follow a recipe, just eyeball everything (that is how I make salad dressing too).
All you need it a food processor or blender. If you are really hardcore, like some people we know and admire, you can make this with a mortar and pestle.

Take a handful of your herb, in this case parsley.  Place in your mixer of choice.  Add 3-4 smashed cloves of garlic. (This can be more or less to taste, but for me garlic, next to the herb, is the most important flavor in pesto.)  Next add 1/4 c. or so of nuts.  We use walnuts because they are cheaper than pine nuts, but you can really use any kind of nut or seed. Add 1/4 c. of Parmesan cheese, either grated or in small chunks.  Add a small amount of your oil of choice, we use olive, to the rest.  Pulse the processor until the ingredients start to incorporate. Next add more olive oil until the ingredients start to blend finely and becomes a loose paste.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Add to pasta, sandwiches, veggies, bread etc.


We also had quite a bit of red Russian kale that overwintered nicely.  It was starting to bolt so we pulled it up and made Kale chips!
I learned about this from Isaac's lovely sister.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Wash, dry and separate your kale. Spread on a baking sheet. Spray or drizzle olive oil onto the kale. Sprinkle with sea salt and any other seasonings that you like. Bake for 10-15 minutes until the kale shrinks and starts to crisp and lightly brown. Let cool and enjoy! These taste like or better than regular chips. They are light crispy and almost melt in your mouth. If you get kale at the farmer's market, your yard or even the store-give it a try! Here is a very nice blog post about kale chips. Here is a photo of some of our kale chips after they came out of the oven. Ignore the messy stove!

 

I suspect many of the plants are enjoying the warmer weather and copious rain. Including the "weeds".  We don't weed in the garden per-se, only when the grass or trees or other somewhat large or invasive plants start growing where we want other stuff to grow.  We treat the plants that volunteer in our garden as allies.  Dandelions aerate the soil and bring up nutrients with their long tap roots and attract pollinators, clover fixes nitrogen and is food for the rabbits (instead of our veggies!), dead nettle is a nice ground cover as their roots grow mainly lightly along the top of the soil, they also attract bees and other beneficial insects.  Here is a photo of all three hanging out in the garden.

So before you start spraying the RoundUp, spend hours on your hands and knees or call your local chemical lawn service.  Remember that lots of these plants are beneficial to your soil, food for animals, attracts beneficial insects and look pretty as well!  Here is another informative blog post on this matter.
I hope to be updating this much more often.  This week will be busy for us, but I should have more time to blog once Isaac is settled and the kitchen is back together.
I'm sure I speak for everyone, I am so happy that it is getting warmer and greener everyday!

New Plants

*Click on the Links for more information about the plants mentioned!*
Last post I showed you some new plants we bought from Companion Plants.  We are slowly finding homes for them and others that have been waiting for attention for a little while.
One of the homes for several plants is the finished compost pile I shared with you in an earlier post.  Here is the pile now:

It's hard to see, but there is a species (wild) rose: Rosa sancti-andreae (syn. R. villosa?) at the top of the pile.  It will get rather large: 6ft tall and spread; and have small pink flowers.  While this plant will be beautiful in its own right, we are also growing this for its hips that will emerge after the flowers fade. Rose hips are high in vitamin C among other things. Surrounding the rose are small clumps of Roman Chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile) that we are hoping will spread all around this pile. I think most people are familiar with Chamomile tea. Once the plants start blooming, you can collect the flowers and the leaves to make a soothing cup.  Ideally, when the hips on the rose form, we can collect the hips and the chamomile to make an even more nutritional tea. The final plant in this arrangement, to the left and bottom of the pile, is Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) that Iz collected from my most gracious parents who have too much of it. It likes moist and shady places and we hope that the shed next to it and the Paw Paw behind it will give it enough shade in the hot summer months.
Sweet Woodruff is used medicinally for stomach ailments as well as in culinary applications such as to flavor teas and juices.  It is also used to flavor May Wine which is a punch made with Woodruff infused white wine, oranges, pineapple and sugar. This is only one example of May Wine as apparently there are other versions with different flavors. We are really looking forward to making herbal teas from the garden once again. There is nothing like gathering a bunch of fragrant herbs and making a nice iced tea with honey to drink on a hot summer evening. Perhaps that will be a blog topic in the near future!

Since the taking of this photo Iz has added more to this bed: Lemon Verbena (Aloysia citriodora) (another delicious herb in tea or putting under the skin of roast chicken); Codonopsis (Codonopsis pilosula), Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), and Meadowfoam (Limnanthes Douglasii)

In other plant news Iz planted the Goji Berries (Lycium chinese or barbarum). It is also known as Matrimony Vine.  The folklore attached to this plant states that one must not plant this vine near the home as it may cause "marital discord".

This is Iz planting the Goji in one of the beds at the front of the house, and with my permission, near the house! While the folklore is charming, the best place we have for the Goji is near the house. We promised to move it if we start lashing out at each other for no reason.  This is a vine and Iz added some stakes next to the plants to give them something to climb on.
I better end this now, we have more additions but I will leave that for later! I shall leave you with a little honeybee that was visiting our tulips. Bzzz Bzzz!

Road Trip: Companion Plants

Iz and I took a trip to Athens, Ohio this week to visit a nursery where Iz has bought a lot of our plants. We drove three hours to visit Companion Plants buy a flat of plants and then drove home! The drive through South East Ohio is beautiful, changing from flat farmland to rolling pastures to dense pine forests. There is really no major interstate that goes from Cincinnati to Athens, so there is plenty of scenery.

We have met the owner of Companion Plants before at and herb festival, but Iz took a moment to reintroduce himself and chat. The owner is so nice and knowledgeable! We took our time to browse, they offer around 600 different plants, and started to accumulate a nice stash of plants.


Click the images to see what we purchased.



Here is Isaac browsing in a small section of the greenhouse. Look at the eucalyptus tree!


There were some really cute terra cotta plant tags for sale but I abstained from buying any.


 We didn't manage to plant everything when we got home, but we found a home for the Kentucky Colonial Mint. Isaac divided the plant into three to give it more opportunity to spread around the bed.

 I can't wait to use it in tea and other yummy summer drinks!








Even though it was a short road trip, we had a great time!

Cover Cropping It

Since my last post was about working with your soil to get it healthy and nutritious, I thought I would continue on the theme and talk about growing cover crops.  Generally this is done after your last harvest of whatever you have grown for the season or if you are planning on leaving a plot empty for a season or two. This publication will give you a lot of specific information on choosing which plants to grow and all the benefits or growing cover crops and green manure.

I found a few good passages to put here to give you a better idea of what I am talking about.

"Green manuring" involves the soil incorporation of any field or forage crop while green or soon after flowering, for the purpose of soil improvement. A cover crop is any crop grown to provide soil cover, regardless of whether it is later incorporated. Cover crops are grown primarily to prevent soil erosion by wind and water. Cover crops and green manures can be annual, biennial, or perennial herbaceous plants grown in a pure or mixed stand during all or part of the year. In addition to providing ground cover and, in the case of a legume, fixing nitrogen, they also help suppress weeds and reduce insect pests and diseases. When cover crops are planted to reduce nutrient leaching following a main crop, they are often termed "catch crops."

A major benefit obtained from green manures is the addition of organic matter to the soil.

Cover crops will also aid in fixing nitrogen into the soil. provide a healthy ecosystem for beneficial bacterial and aerate the soil.

Iz and I chose to add some winter cover crops to our large raised bed last fall. We sowed seeds for winter rye, red and white clover, dandelion and alfalfa.  Since this was the first year for this raised bed, which is sitting on top of plain old Ohio clay soil, we wanted to try and break up the soil beneath the bed and encourage the worms and other nutrients to travel up into it.

It looks a mess but will be incorporated into the soil as it decomposes

A winter cover crop is planted in late summer or fall to provide soil cover during the winter. Often a legume is chosen for the added benefit of nitrogen fixation. In northern states, the plant selected needs to possess enough cold tolerance to survive hard winters. Hairy vetch and rye are among the few selections that meet this need. (From the ATTRA Publication)

We turned over the plants two weekends ago and found that the plants did a good job and rooting deep and providing some organic matter to build the soil as it decomposes.

Look at the tap root and root system of this red clover!

The nice thing about having dandelions in the mix is that you can eat the greens and dry the root for tea instead of turning them into the soil. They just might be the first edible crop you harvest from your spring garden! Enjoy!