Stuffed Red Mustard Leaves – Recipe

Stuffed Red Mustard leaves with pinhead oats

Last year we sowed red mustard leaves, Brassica juncea ‘Osaka Purple’, in neat rows in our salad bed in the vegetable garden. This year it is coming up all over the vegetable gardens and beyond. The large floppy red leaves are mottled green and the flowers are yellow and typical of the cabbage family.

It grows easily and rapidly, their hot flavour is delicious when mixed with salad greens, but there is always too many of them. The majority of the plants end up going to seed and hence, their random and rapacious appearances grabbing land and spreading faster than Genghis Khan. So what to do with all these lovely leaves? The answer, perhaps it is stuffed leaves with pin head oats…

INGREDIENTS
- 12 large red mustard leaves
- 1 Onion, chopped finely
-1/2 Chilli chopped
- 1/2 cup of pinhead oats
- Dessert spoon of honey
- Handful of raisins
- 1/2 cup of water
- Oil for frying

METHOD
1. Remove the base of the leaf stalk, and put the leaves in a steamer to wilt the leaves. This makes them easier to roll. Place them face down on a flat surface.

2. Fry the onions until they are soft. Add the chopped chilli and the oats. Fry to toast the oats, stir continuously, about ten minutes.

3. Add the water, raisins and honey, and cook until the oats are softened slightly, about 15 mins.

4. Remove from heat and put a heaped dessert spoonful of the oat mixture on each leaf.

5. Roll the leaves around the mixture and fold in the ends.

6. Place the rolls into a Pyrex dish, you can stack them if you need to, cover them with water and place on the lid.

7. Put in a heated oven 190 Celcius and cook for an hour. Check occasionally to make sure the water does not boil away completely. Add a little if needed.

8. When done, remove from oven dish and transfer to a serving dish. Drizzle over some rapeseed oil.

Serve hot or cold.

Red Mustard- Brassica juncea “Osaka Purple’

Red Mustard Leves (centre) in rows in salad bed

Spruce Shoot Jam – Recipe

New spruce shoots

Spruce trees are a common site in the west of Ireland, not just as part of the alien forestry that covers much of the land, but also you see groups of old trees close to houses, derelict old cottages and lived in houses like ours.

Spruce trees beside our house

That is exactly what we have close to our house, very close. I guess that these spruce trees were originally planted so as to provide shelter from the frequent and strong west winds.Now they have grown tall and cast a shadow over the garden in the evening time. We plant exotic woodland species under them, and hostas thrive there.

The species often seen is Sitka spruce, Picea sitchensis, a fast growing species. It is the most widely planted forestry tree, a non-native species that is controversial. It is favoured by forestry companies due to its rapid growth but it does not do much for enriching the wildlife of the country. Beneath them nothing grows and they have a big impact on acidification of soils.

Spruce trees are a common sight in the west of Ireland

Spruce has been traditionally used as a cough syrup, in fact it is sold in health food shops in that form. Spruce syrup can be made which is quite tasty and sweet and also spruce cordial. I made the cordial which is very nice and refreshing when diluted with sparkling water. The spruce shoot jam is very good too, an almost caramel like flavour with a hint of, spruciness…

 

To make the jam I first cooked the spruce shoots in water, i used about 2 cups of shoots and covered them with water and cooked simmered for about four hours. After it cooled overnight I strained it through a muslin cloth and then kept the spruce liquid in the fridge.

Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of spruce concentrate (see above)
• 3 Large dessert apples, peeled, cored and chopped finely
• 2 bottles (2 x 360ml) of apple juice concentrate
• Juice of one lemon

Method:

1. Wash the spruce shoots in cold water
2. Add the apples, lemon juice and fruit concentrate to the saucepan
3. Cook with a medium heat until the apple pieces are soft (about 15 minutes)
4. Add the spruce concentrate
5. Turn up the heat and cook until the jam starts to thicken, about 15-20 minutes
6. Spoon or pour into sterilized jam jars and put lids on straight away

This made three jars of jam.

Fresh new growths in May on spruce tree

Primrose Petal Jam– Recipe

Petals in measuring jug

Primroses carpet the ground under an old hawthorn tree in our garden, the clothe the soil with a fragility and light, their gentle perfume is a delight. Primula vulgaris is a native plant, a wild flower that is always welcome in our garden. Each year they bring freshness and beauty to the Spring.

Their flowers appear delicate but they are robust plants. The petals of each flower untie at their bases to form a narrow tube that attached to the green stalk. Given a gentle tug, they detach easily from their bases. You can munch them and they taste nice, an unique flavour. I imagined a jam made from them…

Primrose flowers

Based on recipes for rose petal jelly and adapted to include some apple for abit of body here is a jam I made from primroes petals gathered in our garden last weekend. It is deilcious, a flavour which is a mix of fruity sweetness and a late hint of turkish delight…

Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 litre of primrose flowers. When foraging for wild food, do not collect flowers, leaves or fruits from beside busy roads, or areas where they are exposed to possible pollution.
• 2 cups of water
• 1½ cup of fruit sugar Ii used Fruisana, a fructose based sugar which is lower in calories and has a lower GI rating than ordinary sugar).
• 2 Apples, peeled, cored and diced finely
• Juice of one lemon

Primrose flowers in saucepan

Method:

1. Wash the flowers in cold water.
2. Add the flowers petals, water, lemon juice and apple pieces into a saucepan
3. Cook with a medium heat until the apple pieces are soft (about 15 minutes)
4. Slowly add the sugar, stirring until the sugar is dissolved
5. Turn up the heat and cook until the jam starts to thicken, about 25-20 minutes
6. Spoon or pour into sterilized jam jars and put lids on straight away

This made nearly two jars of jam.

pouring Jam into a jar

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Spicy Fried Dandelion Flowers – Recipe

Spicy Fried Dandelion Flowers

Dandelions, Taraxacum officinale , are the bane of many a gardener’s life. They pop up everywhere, their happy flower heads cheekily appearing in the lawn, in the borders and even in the driveway. They are however nice flowers, they spread like a golden coat over the spring green fields at this time of year. Soon their fluffy seedheads will take to the wind, only to settle in gardens, roadsides and fields. There the seeds will germinate and grow a deep tap root that breaks when gardeners pull them out. Even a small portion of the root remaining in the soil can grow back to taunt us. Well, revenge never tasted so good…

Dandelion flowers in the colander

Recipe

Ingredients:

• 30 dandelion flowers, collected when fully open and fresh. When foraging for wild food, do not collect flowers, leaves or fruits from beside busy roads, or areas where they are exposed to possible pollution.
• ½ cup of flower, we used wholegrain spelt.
• ½ teaspoon of cumin
• ½ teaspoon of coriander
• ½ teaspoon of paprika
• pinch of chili powder
• salt and pepper
• oil for frying, we used rapeseed oil.

Fry the flowers until golden brown (2-3 minutes)

Method:

1. Remove the green calyx from the backs of each flower (that is the green leafy bits attached to the base of the flower).
2. Wash the flowers in cold water. Don’t dry them.
3. Mix spices in a bowl with the flour.
4. Heat the oil in a frying pan.
5. Dip each flower into the flour and spice mixture and place flower side down on the pan, about 2-3 minutes.
6. Fry until golden brown and turn the flowers over, let them brown, another 2 minutes.
7. Remove from the pan and drain on a sheet of kitchen towel.
8. Eat immediately, savour the flavour and think of all the dandelions that wont be growing in your garden next year!

Drain the fried dandelion flowers on a piece of kitchen towel

A tasty snack in the evening after pulling weeds in the garden for a few hours.

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Gorse Flower Cordial

Gorse bushes can be seen all over the countryside, their florescent yellow bloom light the hillsides, a blaze of colour across the land. Unfortunately sometimes their blaze is literal, their oil rich wood all too quickly ignites in dry weather and fires of gorse burn fiercely every year. The truth is that gorse is often hated, it spreads like, well, wild fire, and land is quickly colonized by its spiny stems.

Ulex europeaus; gorse, furze or whin, growing on the road near our house

Even in our own garden, the one acre of land that we endeavour to tame and reclaim from the wild clutches of vegetation, we have a love and hate relationship with this shrub botanically called Ulex europeaus. When the blooms are out their sweet fragrance drifts through the air, along the roadsides as we take a morning walk the sweet coconut scents waft along the country lane. In early morning sunlight the blooms glow bright, it is beautiful, yet we cut it from the garden. There is an old Irish saying that says that the time for kissing is when the gorse is in blossom, Iuckily it is not just our spring walks that are enhanced by this terrible beauty, but at any time of the year you can find a gorse bush in flower.

Gorse shrub flowering by the stream that runs behind our garden

These days a gorse covered field is seen as a waste land, but in times past the gorse, which is also called furze or whin, was seen as a sign of prosperous land. The old Irish saying “An t-ór fé’n aiteann, an t-airgead fé’n luachair agus an gorta fé’n bhfraoch”, says gold under gorse, silver under rushes and famine under heather. Around our garden are rushes, heather and gorse. Heather grows in the bog, rushes in wetter soil but gorse grows on the drier soil. In the past gorse hedges made great barriers for lives stock and walking sticks were made from the wood. But I am sure if you ask most people if there is any use for gorse they will say there is none.

On the way home with the harvest

Each morning as I smell its fragrance on the air if makes me hungry, it has a sweet foody smell, surely there is a use for gorse? After searching for a bit I found a recipe for gorse flowers, gorse cordial. With some enthusiasm my wife Hanna and I brought our wheel barrow for a short walk along the road and cut some flowering shoots, quite a few flowering shoots in fact, a whole wheel barrow full. We wore thick gloves and brought our loppers, they are incredibly spiney. We then brought them home and removed the flowers with a scissors. Below is the recipe that we used, it is quite delicious!

Ingredients

• 1.5 litre of gorse flowers
• 250g of fructose sugar (fruit sugar)
• 900ml of water
• Juice of one lemon

Squeezing lemon juice

Method

1. In a saucepan slowly add the sugar to the water and stir to dissolve. Boil for ten minutes with the lid on.
2. Place the prepared flowers in a large bowl and pour the sugar and water over the flowers
3. Add the lemon juice.
4. Cover with a plate and leave to cool over night
5. The next morning squeeze the flowers and water though muslin cloth.
6. Bottle the cordial in sterilized bottles.

Serving

• Dilute the cordial with still or sparkling water, about 1:10 (cordial:water or to taste). Refrigerate the cordial after opening.

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Gardening with Children – Teaching The Teachers…

Tools and Equipment- Teacher Training Workshop, Castlebar, Co. Mayo, Ireland

One of my earliest memories from my childhood is being with my grandfather when he was digging potatoes in a garden in Wexford. He used to do some gardening work for a neighbour after he had finished his postman’s work for the day. I remember too, shifting wheel barrow loads of gravel with my dad and a neighbour to make a drive way when we w moved to out house in Swords, I was seven, probably more in the way of the two men shovelling than I was of any great assistance. But I did shovel gravel into the barrows and I felt like a man, working alongside the grown ups.

My mother had always dreamed of a garden, that is why we moved to a semi-detached cottage two miles from Swords village in north County Dublin in 1977. The front of the house looked over fields which were planted with barley or potatoes each summer, the fields stretched over the county as far as Naul. Often on an afternoon after school or on a summers day, I helped my parents in garden, digging, cutting long grass with a shears, picking strawberries, getting dirty and collecting ladybirds in a jar.

I am very fortunate to have such good memories from my childhood, of those days spent “working” in the garden, my parents doing what their parents had done with them, passing on the experience of working in the garden together. Unfortunately our lives have got a bit complicated and busier, priorities have changed and there has been a disconnection with our garden and our families. Many parents do not have the knowledge and experience to pass on to their children nor to experience such moments themselves and to pass on simple memories and experiences to their children.

Schools are increasingly taking on the role of teaching gardening to children. Perhaps it is time to recognaise that gardening is a necessary life skill, just as everyone should be able to tie their lace they should be able to grow food for themselves and also experience the beauty of nature; the scent of a bloom, the intricate beauty of pattern on flower petals or watch a butterfly flitter past. There is a healing in the soil, my grandfather always said that the answer is always in the soil. therapeutic both also fun and social.

During the week I gave two workshops to a group of teacher in Castlebar, Co. Mayo. It was a great experience and they learnt a lot too. On the first evening we discussed ways of integrating gardening into the school day; filling a simple vase with flowers or branches from the garden, the way to school or children’s garden. Even a bare branch of a birch tree has a beauty in winter. The world of flowers is filled with stories to enthrall children; Fuchsia magellanica, from the exotic continent of South America, the explorer magellan and his exploits! Not only in the classroom, parents can do this at home too.

I told a story of the seed, told in such a way to create a feeling for a seed that a seed is a living thing that aspires to grow and needs our care.Then we dissected the seed so that the teachers could see what a seed is from a scientific perspective, not that it would be doe by the children. We made newspaper pots and sowed nasturtium seeds. School gardens could be beautiful places for learning and social interaction, not just a collection of raised beds.

On the second evening we made a raised bed outside. Some people used a powered screw driver and a saw for the first time. We dug the soil, filled the bed with top soil, planted plants. I finished the workshop with a hugely positive feeling, that there will be more children enjoying gardening in their school days.

Teacher Training Workshop, Castlebar, Co. Mayo, Ireland

Constructing the raised bed

Materials:

• 3 x 2.4m decking timber 28mm x 130mm
• 1x 2.4m garden stake  50mm
• wood screws (6×70) approx 14 screws

Tools

• Powered screw driver with philips no.2 bit
• Rubber or wooden mallet
• wood saw
• spade
• shovel
• wheel barrow
• measuring tape
• bamboo canes
• builders line or twine

Raised beds offer a number of advantages including increased periods of workability as you do not need to walk on the soil in order to cultivate and plant. Raising the beds can also improve drainage, increase the depth of the topsoil and make working easier as you dont have to bend as far.

Old scaffolding planks can be used instead of treated timber, they have the advantage of being untreated and hard woods and the fact that they are being recycled is a good environmental plus. They can also be half the price. The downside is that they are thicker and harder to get the screws in to and they are wider, therefore more soil will be needed in order to fill the beds. Getting good quality topsoil, cheaply can be difficult.

Position beds in sunny situations, shelter from winds is best for vegetable crops. Avoid over hanging branches of established trees. Construct the beds no wider than 1.2m to ensure that the centres of the beds can be reached from the sides. In theory the beds can be as long as you want, but in practice if the beds are too long, gardeners end up taking short cuts across the beds, this means compacting the soil and in a school situation it creates an unnecessary hazard. 2.4 metre beds are a good size.

Start with cutting one of the decking boards in half, this will give you two ends for the bed.

Mark out the area for the beds using twine and bamboo canes. If laying out a number of beds in a geometric pattern ensure that the beds are square, use pythagoras theorem for getting the corners square and making sure adjacent beds are parallel.

Where grass is present the sod (top 5cm of soil can be removed. this can be buried under the topsoil when digging the or placed in a compost heap.

Place the sides and ends of the beds in position and align the corners. Put two scres from the sides into the end boars and two from the end boards into the sides at each corner.

Ciaran hammering in a post - Teacher Training Workshop, Castlebar, Co. Mayo, Ireland

Check that corners are square and then hammer in posts at each corner and on the sides inside the boards half way. Use a wooden or rubber mallet. The posts should go into the soil as much as the height of the sides. Cut the 2.4 m stake into required lengths for this purpose.

Now that the beds have been constructed, it is time to fill them. It always surprises me just how much soil it takes to fill beds. As the beds are being filled, tread over the soil to settle it, natural settlement will occur anyway, but this reduces it.  As you fill in the soil, look out for weed roots and stones which need to be removed.

Teachers around the newly constructed raised bed - Teacher Training Workshop

Some things to watch out for when building beds for schools. Avoid sharp edges on the beds. Look out for any sharp materials that may be in topsoil, things like glass pieces, bits of metal.

Note: 1.2m beds are quite good for adults, perhaps narrower beds of 1 metre would be more suited for young children.

Ciaran and the teachers, teacher training Workshop, Castlebar, Co. Mayo, Ireland

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Planting Potatoes in Plastic Bags

Harvesting New Potatoes

Early potato tubers are usually chitted before being planted outside. This involves placing the tubers in a well lit, frost free place. The shoots develop from the eyes of the tuber and will then be planted outside when the soil has warmed to 6° Celcius.

Early varieties take between 75 – 90 days to mature. Harvesting can start in early summer. Irish people use St Patrick’s Day, 17th March, as the date by which you must have the early potatoes planted.

Not everyone has space for planting potatoes, in fact not everyone has a garden. However, just about everyone can enjoy harvesting a few of their home grown potatoes in summer using old plastic compost bags for planting. To obtain an earlier crop, tubers can be planted in a tunnel or glasshouse. Tubs or barrels can also be used. I decided to re-use a couple of old plastic compost bags. Here is what I did:

Step 1: I turned the bags inside out to reveal their dark side which attracts more heat, and looks nicer. I rolled down the bag so as to allow light for the shoots when they grow. Into the base of the bags I made a number of slits to allow drainage.

PLANTING POTATOES IN BAGS- 10 CM LAYER OF COMPOST IN BAGS

Step 2: From our compost heap I got a wheel barrow of lovely dark compost.  A 10cm (4 inches) layer was shoveled into the bags and then firmed with my hands.

PLANTING POTATOES IN BAGS- COVERING TUBERS

Step 3: The tubers I placed on the compost and then covered with a further 10cm (4 inches) of the good stuff, and firmed. Then the compost was watered.

PLANTING POTATOES IN BAGS- TUBERS PLACED ON COMPOST

Aftercare: When the stems grow to 15cm (6inches), more compost will be added, to a depth of 10cm (4 inches). As the plants grow the sides of the bags are unrolled to allow for greater depth. I will continue to add more compost as the stems grow until it is 5cm (2 inches) below the top of the bag. The potatoes will need to be well watered. They need a weekly feed of liquid seaweed fertilizer to promote growth. When the plants start to flower the crop will be ready to harvest.  As a true Irish man I can’t wait to cook the first potatoes; steamed and then eaten with melted butter and some chopped chives from the garden, yum!

• There is nothing quite like your own compost from the garden when growing vegetables. Learn about making compost on my other blog Ciaran’s Gardening Blog and download an information sheet on Home Garden Composting.

• Listen to a podcast of “In The Garden with Ciaran Burke” – Episode 13

• WATCH THE YOUTUBE VIDEO OF THE NEW GROWTH PROJECT HORTICULTURE COURSE. This is a free training course that we are running in our own garden in Co. Mayo, Ireland. For more info: THE GARDEN SCHOOL Each week we make a video of what the students are doing on the course.

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Gaultheria berries, some are good to eat

Gaultheria berries with yogurt

Some G. mucronata berries are quite tasty with some home made yogurt and brown sugar! Or enjoy them as a nice treat when in the garden. It is great to be able to pick a handful of berries and munch them while taking a break from weeding in the garden.

The small, narrow, dark evergreen foliage is densely packed along the stems, each little leaf ending with a short spine.  Masses of small white nodding flowers are produced in May, creating a cloud of soft white over the branches. In winter plump berries replace flowers, decorating pots and borders.

The berries remain on the plant for such a long time, already on show in September they will be looking good right through winter until late spring. Like marbles, they clutter the stems, the colour range from white to mulberry-purple. Named cultivars are sometimes offered for sale but more usually they are just sold incorrectly labelled as pernettya.

Gaultheria mucronata -red

The flowers of P. mucronata are dioecious, meaning that male and female flowers are borne on different plants. This is important to know if you expect to have berries on your plants.

One male plant should be sufficient for a group of  about 8 female plants. A low growing male cultivar called ‘Thymifolia’ is a good choice as a pollinator especially where a neater growth habit is favoured. There is a hermaphrodite plant which produces bright carmine-red berries called ‘Bell’s Seedling’ which is an Irish cultivar. One solitary plant can produce berries without the need for the company of a pollinator.

The edibility of Gaultheria mucronata berries is a subject clouded in confusion, with some texts stating that all members of the genus have poisonous berries.  I have eaten them, enjoyed them, and survived!

It is known that South American natives have valued the berries for their taste and health benefits.  The texture of the flesh is somewhat watery and the skin dryish, but it is not unpleasant at all. Recently I was tasting some of the berries in our garden, a friend was with me and we noticed that berries from one bush in particular had a far stronger and better taste than the others, while another had no taste at all. Selection of individuals for their flavour is something that could be worked on. What is quite amazing is how long the fruits stay and remain good quality onthe plants, from autumn until now in March.

Gaultheria mucronata - deep pink

Let the fruit ripen well so that the flesh is soft when gently squeezed. Be careful though, plants offered for sale are usually grown as ornamentals and not grown as fruit plants. Due to this fact there may be insecticides incorporated with the compost. Whether or not the plants have been treated with pesticides should be confirmed first before tasting the berries.

G. mucronata which hails from Chile and Argentina, was relatively unknown to gardeners from its introduction in the 1830s until plants raised by the Co. Down nurseryman T.Davis of Hillsborough were exhibited in London in 1882 and attracted attention. He showed plants which he had raised and selected over the previous 30 years. Sadly most of these cultivars are probably lost to gardeners of today but there are many others to choose from. They require acid soil, they are ideal for ground cover or can make attractive outdoor pot plants.

This text is an extract from an article (edible ornamental berries)  in the current issue of Organic Matters, the magazine of IOFGA (Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association) available in news agents countrywide.

Gaultheria mucronata -white

“In The Garden With Ciaran Burke” weekly radio feature in CRC FM

 

Ciaran Burke in the CRC FM Studio

Each week I join Johnny Oosten on CRC Fm in Castlebar Co. Mayo to chat about gardening, plants and growing your own food. This week we were talking about gorse bushes, Ulex europeaus, flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum and growing peaches. I also did a quick demonstration for Johnny of making a pot from a sheet of neswpaper. You can listen live each week at about 12.05pm on Fridays online at CRCFM

listen to the podcast by clicking the link below:

In the Garden With Ciaran Burke No.11

Information about growing peaches on The Garden School Website

More about gorse and flowering currants on my other BLOG

Peach Blossom

Sea buckthorn berries make good jam!

Top Fruit, Soft Fruit and Strange Fruit

I was getting ready to do a talk to the North Mayo Garden Club today, and as I was going through my presentation I remembered that I had a few pots of delicious apple and sea buckthorn jam left. Sea buckthorn berries are a super health food; one small berry can have a Vitamin C content equal to that of six oranges, packed with atioxidants and a number of omega oils, it is a wonder fruit. It is also a wondeful tasting berry. Eaten straight from the bush it may be a bit sharp for many peoples’ tastes, but blended with juices or as an ingredient in cooking it is delicious, unique and colourful.

Sea Buckthorn berries - Hippophae rhamnoides

The first of our bushes that we planted gave us a good crop this year, or to be more specific the female plant cropped well. We originally planted two varieties, Rudolph, a male to pollinate, and Raisa a female to fruit, both purchased in Finland while on holidays three years ago. Last year we had a few berries but this year we have lots in the freezer and enough to make jam. We have since planted five more female varieties, we are sure Rudolph will be up to the job, and are looking forward to great crops in the coming years.

To make the flavour of this year’s berries go further, I  mixed the berries with apple to make jam. It turned out great, it is one of my favourite jams, sea buckthorns are one of my favourite berries. Below is the recipe that I used for the jam. I am going to take  a jar with me to my talk tonight so that people can have a taste of sea buckthorn, for most it will probably be their first time. Perhaps some gardeners might be inspired to grow these great plants.

Apple and Sea Buckthorn Jam

Jar of home made Apple and Sea buckthorn Jam

900ml of sea buckthorn berries

3 litres of peeled and chopped desert apples

1 Kg of sugar

300 ml of water

1. Cook the berries, water and apples over a low heat for about fifteen minutes or until the apple is soft.

2. Slowly add the sugar, stirring well to ensure the fruit dissolves.

3. Turn heat up and cook the jam for about fifteen or twenty minutes.

4. Spoon the jam into sterilized glass jars and tighten lids immediately. (Wash used jam jars with soapy water, then dry off and place in cold oven an heat to 100 degrees celcius).

North Mayo Garden Club, talk tonight Tuesday 8th of November- Top Fruit, Soft Fruit and Strange Fruit- a talk by Ciaran Burke. Venue Merry Monk, Killala Road, Ballina, Co. Mayo, Ireland. 8 pm.

Talk will also be given to Claregalway  GIY on Wednesday 23rd November at Arches Hotel, Claregalway, Co. Galway at 8 pm.