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Stinkhorn!
What is that? There was a surprise in our garden this afternoon. We were weeding and planting a flower seed mixture around the back of the house, and suddenly my daughter excitedly shouted, “Stinkhorn!” I didn’t take offence. I was excited, too. What she was referring to was a reddish, odd-looking fungus that had emerged from the ground next to a rose bush. This fungus makes a rather unpleasant odor, which attracts flies who then carry off the spores. A pretty tricky plant. We had our first and only stinkhorn emerge last year in a different part of our yard, and I was afraid that with all the walking and weeding done in that area, that it wouldn’t be back. Silly me. The fungus was traveling!
Flies enjoying the stink and spreading the spores Then shortly after this discovery and only a few feet from it, I was digging up weeds and found what I thought was a reptile egg. We thought that maybe it was an egg from Mrs. Sabatini, the Western pond turtle that we found on our property and released into our upper pond, never to be seen again. Or perhaps a snake egg.
Not a reptile egg When I felt it, however, it was firm and had a little give to it, like it was made of soft rubber. My daughter figured it out. She had read where the stinkhorn spores grow into an egg-shaped, um, thingy, which breaks open underground revealing the slimy gooey part which then pushes up through the ground and begins stinking. The slimy part has the spores on it.
The shiny green interior will thrust out of the ground Fungus is incredible and wonderful. The threads of fungus hold together the soil, feed us, medicate us and yet we know so little about them. An incredible book to read is Mycelium Running: how mushrooms can help save the world, by Paul Stamets. Although most people wouldn’t welcome a stinkhorn into their perennial border, we think it is very cool, as long as there aren’t too many of them!
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Midsummer Garden
When I’m in the garden everyday, I find that I forget that only seven months ago, things looked radically different. I’ll post some before and now photos below:
View to pond, before 
View to veg now 
Out to neighbors before 
View to neighbors now 
Entryway before 
Entryway now 
Middle property before 
Middle property now 
Lower yard before 
Lower yard now What a difference six months can make!
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Home Remedies
I’ve been going to physical therapy for my sprained wrist, and fortunately the therapist is someone who believes in diet and herbs as a viable alternative to or complement of conventional medicine, as do I. We started discussing home cures, and I began to think over how many that I knew because my mother used them. I was born when my parents were in their early forties, and they were born before the 1920’s, before World War II and the scientific revolution. Before everyone turned to petri dishes for the ultimate answers. Medicine made great progress in finding vaccines for heartbreaking diseases such as polio. However, its successes gave it a blanket approval, and suddenly scientists could do no wrong. Many medicines are derived from plants, such as simple aspirin which has the main ingredient salicin that is found in willow trees. Scientists found a way to synthesize salicin so as to put a patent on it and make money, just like so many other drugs. When pharmaceutical companies took hold, that is when we lost control of our traditional medicine and our health. Health is a business, and what is in the drug stores has little to do with getting well, but is mostly about making money. Most medicines treat symptoms and provide enough relief to make you re-buy the product, but won’t eliminate it because then you will have no need to buy it again.
Home remedies have for the most part become lost in the past as post World War II parents disregarded the ‘old fashioned’ methods and turned to the pharmacy. Thus, the traditions were not passed on to their children, so the remedies have been lost. Only in reading old books do we hear them mentioned. Or we can surreptitiously inquire at a health food store, where much of the same buying tactics are at play, and clerks are not medical professionals. The desperation for cures is such that people would often believe strangers rather than doctors, well-written propaganda rather than documented success, and that is dangerous. I was shopping at Henry’s last week, standing with my empty basket looking at the herbal tinctures section, and a woman pops around the corner and holds up a bottle of sesame oil and asks if it would be a good choice to use as a carrier oil for a tincture she had at home. Fortunately for her, I’ve been involved with herbs for thirty years, and I knew what she was talking about, and gave her I think accurate advice and warnings, which included doing some sound Internet research on her own. I don’t know how a short, middle-aged woman with an empty shopping basket would appear to be knowledgeable, but perhaps anyone would have done as well for her.
I have been researching home remedies for reducing inflammation, since my sprained wrist hasn’t healed and I have arthritis and bursitis (wow… just bury me now! What happened to youth?) among other casualties of the physical working life. It made me think of my mother and all the vitamins she gave us and home remedies, as well as enforcing a healthy, balanced diet when meat and potatoes were the standard.
One cure she passed on from her European grandmothers was the mustard plaster for chest colds. Mix dry mustard powder with water to make a paste, put it on an old cloth and slap it on your chest. She used old diaper cloths. I still have them! If you have tender skin or are a child, then a film of vegetable oil on the skin helps protect from the burn. I believe that the way it works is to stimulate blood flow to help the body clear up congestion, and warm up the body to help sweat out the toxins. Capsicum from peppers works the same way in arthritis medicines. Vicks Vaporub replaced the mustard plaster, using menthol from eucalyptus and mints (now synthesized) to clear the sinuses as well as help the chest. The petroleum jelly in it links us to our dependence on oil, whereas mustard grows in most places and people would harvest the weeds, using the fresh leaves for a spring tonic and the seeds for food and the mustard plaster. Another remedy was blackberry juice for.. um… the ‘runs’. It ‘binds’ the intestines quickly. She’d use a little Manischewitz Blackberry Brandy diluted in warm water, and it would not only stop the problem, but relieve the cramps and make a sick kid sleep. I’ve always used it and it has always worked, as well as plain blackberry juice. Some blackberry brandys don’t have real juice in them, so beware. There is also the cider vinegar and honey remedy which was very popular in the late 1960’s, and has cyclical resurgences. Cider vinegar is slightly fermented from apples and should have a murky, stringy bit in the bottle. That is the ‘mother’ part of the yeast which is alive, and which you can use to ferment other things if you make your own. It is also claimed to be very healthy. Mom would give us apple cider vinegar mixed with honey and warm water to drink along with dinner. I have a fondness for it, even though it brings me back to a childhood which I would rather forget. Every now and then I read about how great vinegar is and mix some up. In fact, I think I’ll do so today and see if it helps with my wrist!
Let’s see what else… prunes for.., well, the opposite of what blackberry is for. Ginger ale to settle a stomach when throwing up. The carbonation helps, but it is mostly the ginger, which eases car sickness, morning sickness, or a sour stomach. Of course, garlic, which is the cure-all to many illnesses it seems. I figure that people reeked so badly of garlic that no one would get close enough to them to give them any germs. Then there is arnica for bruises. Arnica cream is a standard in my medicine cabinet (you can learn more about them here), and when my daughter reminded me of it this week and I started applying it to my wrist at night, I had a noticeable difference in the morning. Honey for many things, including local honey for hayfever, applying it to dry skin, using it for its germicidal properties, and mixed with lemon for coughs. Raw, unheated honey kills germs and bacteria. When people had dirt floors they used strewing herbs such as rosemary and lavender on the ground when. Not only did they help with the smells of the household (which were considerable), they had medicinal properties. Rosemary kills germs. In my research for anti-inflammatory herbs, along with some Asian herbs that I’m unfamiliar with and probably can’t get, the four main common ones are garlic, ginger, pepper and turmeric. Turmeric is a yellow powder from the turmeric root and is used in curries here, but used in many medicines in India. I’m planning on creating a tincture of the four of them and applying it to my wrist to see what happens.
Of course there is always the simple Irish remedy, as is hailed on one of our traditional Irish music CD’s: ‘Have a drink of whiskey to soothe away your pains’.
If you have proven home remedies, I’d love to hear about them!
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Pepinos
They look like white eggplants There is an unusual plant in my garden, one that I mistook for a white eggplant. Indeed, it is from the same Solanum family as eggplant, potatoes and tomatoes. The plant right now is small and has dark, shiny attractive leaves and flowers that remind you of eggplants. Then there are the egg-shaped and larger than egg-sized white fruit, which have purple striping. The plant arrived in my garden via Roger Boddaert, the landscape architect who has been working on my property, and there was no name on it. My daughter and I speculated on what the plant could be. A couple of years ago when we were traveling in Ecuador, we were usually served fruit with a sugar syrup for dessert. One of the fruits served was called a Tree Tomato. It was a local treat. It was one of the most god-awful things I’d ever put in my mouth. Thin, red bitter skin filled entirely with small hard seeds and sour pulp, it was everything we could do to eat enough of it to be polite. In our research for what this plant was, the Tree Tomato came into mind and we were apprehensive that we were now the owners of a white version of this disgusting fruit.
We were wonderfully incorrect! The plant in our yard is called pepino, or Solanum muricatum, or pepino melon, or sweet pepino, it is a South American shrubby plant with incredible sweet fruit. It is a relative of the Tree Tomato, and that only goes to show how different members of the same family tree can be! The fruit as it ripens doesn’t become particularly soft; in fact, when it wrinkles it is overripe. The fragrance of the uncut fruit is marvelous. When you open the fruit it has a small center of easily scooped small seeds, and flesh that isn’t too soft or too crunch and has a taste of a ripe melon with a hint of fresh cucumber.
A pleasant fruit with an exotic taste and fragrance The scent is intoxicating, and reminded one friend I showed it to of some elusive childhood fragrance. The perfume is even better than the fruit, but the fruit is wonderful cut up in a fruit salad. The bush itself is attractive, especially with the egg-like fruit dangling from it.
This small bush can grow up to seven feet tall Although pepinos are new to me (I’m always amazed at how many things I don’t know about, even with reading about five books a week and keeping my eyes and ears open in life), they’ve been in San Diego since the late 1800s, and are often grown in greenhouses. They’ve been eaten in the Andes, Ecuador, Peru and Chili from whence they came for so long as to appear in some artwork. If you have a spot in your yard for an unusual and highly satisfactory fruit, look for pepino. The fragrance of the fruit alone is worth it!
- Gardening adventures, Other Insects, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Rain Catching, Vegan, Vegetables
Beginning an Edible Forest Garden
Pumpkins by the chickens An edible forest garden is a mode of growing that mimicks the relationships between plants in a forest, while substituting food producing plants for humans. To achieve this, you have to examine what plants grow in forests near you. Here in San Diego County, we have chapparal communities, along with some pine and oak forests in the mountains. I cannot replicate a forest such as found in, say, Olympia, because we have completely different climates, soils, and plant interrelationships. Even for people who live in deserts, you can examine what once was there before the area was a desert, or what plants are in a nearby oasis if you have one. I’d substitute plants for more desirable ones, such as lemonade berry for its cousin poison oak. Plants should provide canopy, groundcover, mulch, nitrogen-fixing, and insect attracting. After these plant guilds mature they will provide fertilizer and moisture for themselves.
However, most of us are far away from this type of gardening, or just don’t want to go that far. Integrating your ornamentals with food plants, though, is not radical anymore and entirely practical. Any nook in your yard can be a place for food producing plants. Too many squash or tomatoes? Take them to a local food pantry.
Melons by a dead lime tree trellis 
A single Cinderella pumpkin vine under an apricot 
Zucchinis make lush bushes 
Watermelons suppressing weeds Tomatoes are a vining plant which will use any upright structure on which to climb.
Can you see the tomato plant? (Its up the palm trunk) Is your produce sprouting in the house? Try planting it instead of composting. Onions make particularly pretty plants with flowers that attract pollinators and hummingbirds. You may collect the seed from them as well. If the produce doesn’t survive, its okay: you’ve just buried compost.
Plant sprouting produce for ornamentals and to gather seed Sweet potatoes are perennial plants that produce swollen rhyzomes rather than swollen roots as other potatoes do. Plant them where you can dig up some of the roots but leave the main plant to thrive for years, depending on your climate. Their leaves are beautiful, and the plants are often sold as ornamentals.
Sweet potatoes have beautiful leaves Herbs in the shrubs, strawberries in the flowers, and melon and squash under the trees all make for a beautiful edible landscape that will provide food, compost, mulch and habitat while you study up for your edible forest garden.
Strawberries with yarrow 
Apple mint attracts pollinators and is good on fruit 
Passionvines are a host plant for Gulf Fritillary butterflies 
Hops are vigorous, tall vines for brewing and sleep pillows 
Grapes will hide a chain link fence - Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian
Scarlet Runner Beans, A Perennial Bean for Food and Beauty
Scarlet Runner Bean Seeds Scarlet runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) are beautiful plants that are easy to grow, and are often grown just for their red flowers.
Use taller stakes than I did! A trellis or 8-10′ pole is necessary because the vines wind their way up high.
Eat green beans when small They produce a broad bean that can be eaten very young when green, or allowed to dry and the seeds harvested for storing and cooking later.
Shell the pods to store in a dark, cool place The seeds are a spectacular purple and black, making this whole plant ornamental. Cook the seeds before eating them.
Beautiful purple and black seeds The entire plant is also edible, including the starchy roots. The flowers and young tendrils dress up a salad. Although the vine will die down for the winter, the roots will live on in areas where they won’t receive heavy frost. They are native to many places in South America and have been harvested for hundreds of years. This is a perennial bean which will live about six years with care. It is also a nitrogen-fixer, which is excellent for your soil. How fantastic is that?
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Candying Kumquats
An army of kumquat halves We have two small but prolific kumquat trees. Kumquats are very small citrus that are tart and sweet at the same time, and you eat the skin and all whole. Kind of scary. Not wanting to waste food, my daughter picked a whole batch of them and was determined to juice them. And she did, one tiny half at a time! There was about half a cup of juice in all, which she froze in plastic butter molds for future use in drinks, etc.
De-pithed kumquat shells Then we had all these little half shells, so she carefully scraped the pith out of all of them and candied them. The idea was to make little candied shells in which we’d put little scoops of vanilla ice cream, lemon sherbet, or something yum. We tried a couple with homemade vanilla ice cream, and it was worth all the work.
Cooking kumquats in simple syrup The kumquats needed to dry round, like little bowls, so I picked some more kumquats (yes, there are still more!), halved them and used them as molds for the shells, which were put onto the halves like little hats.
Using kumquat halves as molds for shells All the split ones were set aside, and then everything was sugared and dried. Several years ago we candied orange and lemon peel and I pulled some out of the bags now and then for use in baked goods. Now we have candied kumquat peels and shells.
Sugaring the peels and letting them dry But we still had all those kumquat halves that we’d used as molds. We also had half a saucepan of simple syrup in which the kumquats had been cooked. So, not wanting to waste, we put the kumquat halves into the syrup and boiled it again until the halves were candied and then I put them in jars and sealed them. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them, but they can be used to decorate desserts.
Candied kumquat preserves in syrup I also had another ginger beer recipe that called for slicing the ginger, cooking the slices in a sugar and water mixture until reduced, then using the liquid as a base for a ginger drink. The slices could then be sugared and dried and eaten. I keep candied ginger from Trader Joe’s in the car to snack on, because ginger helps with car sickness or an upset stomach. These homemade ginger slices were quite hot, so I think I’ll save them to use in cakes and pies instead.
Stored candied kumquat shells and peels So it was a day of sugaring, preserving and messing about in the kitchen. We now have seven quarts of pickles, a couple of bags of dried kale that is not only good to munch on, but great to crumble over rice or noodles, jars of candied kumquats, a jar of sugared kumquat peel, a bag of candied ginger slices, some miscellaneous jam, and lots of zucchini with more to come!
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Dutchman’s Pipe
Vigorous Vines There are a few very peculiar specimens in my garden, thanks to Roger Boddaert. They have nothing to do with edible forest gardens, drought tolerant plants or permaculture. They simply are fun. One of which is the Dutchman’s Pipe (Aristolochia), named that because it’s very odd buds look something like… well… the pipe a Dutchman might smoke, I’m guessing. I’m thinking that the Dutchman was either blind or drinking heavily to put something that looked like this in his mouth! Another less imaginative name for this variety is Calico Flower. They look like hanging squash when they are immature.
Many buds waiting to open There are many varieties of this vigorous vine, each having different sized flowers. Mine has flowers in Summer and Fall, and they are sizable.
Flower Opening The vines can grow 30 feet high, and the plant can easily cover the side of a house. They originate in the Southern United States, preferring moist soil.
Flower opening more This is the larval host plant for the blue and black pipevine swallowtail butterfly, which don’t migrate this far west. Perhaps something else will find it useful.
Opened flower is flat The flower develops as a miniature version of its large self, and then continues to grow into these sack-like buds. When ready, they fold open to become flat, with the seed pod in the back. The flowers catch the wind and twist on their stems like decorations. Or like those things in the original Star Trek that flew across the cave and attached themselves to Spock’s back. So another fun and kind of creepy plant, which will provide shade, food for butterflies, and a lot of conversation starting. Gotta love it!
The one on the right is laughing! -
Zucchini
I have four vigorous zucchini plants. Why four? Because in winter with a lap full of comforter and gardening catalogs, the January eye peers back at July’s garden and the plants are smaller, the harvest never enough. What if something happens to one spindly seedling? Then there would be no zucchini, and summer without it just wouldn’t be the same. So four tiny sprouts went into the ground and four large plants are what I have. The zucchini harvest began several weeks ago. My daughter and I have happily eaten sauteed zucchini, seared zucchini, broiled zucchini and have even made sun-dried zucchini chips. It has been too hot to make Rosemary Zucchini Soup (see my recipe section). Zucchini bread uses far too little zucchini for the amount of calories it contains. The problem with zucchini recipes is that they use far too little zucchini! Zucchini has many health benefits, and is low-calorie, versitile, and is the butt of many summer-harvest jokes. I say this while considering who I know that I might unload some of the harvest upon.
Zucchini Chips ready to sun-dry on the roof We’ve both been harvesting under the enormous leaves this year’s zucchini plants have produced, and have kept up with it with few surprises. Until today.
In summer the days can run into each other with a speed that is breathtaking. We’d gone two days without checking. Then this morning after a second morning of trying to teach our old dog General the new trick of not hunting the chickens, which we were allowing out of their coop, we were on our way back to the house. It was hot already, the morning mist having burned off as if with an acetyline torch. My daughter carried strawberries in her hat and I was headed up to water stressed plants stranded without irrigation. Then I caught a glimpse of something along the edge of the raised bed. It was green. It was wedged against the corner and pressing against the edge of the wooden end. It was trying to break free. Trembling and exchanging fearsome glances with my daughter, I lifted a spiny leaf: There lay a six-pound zucchini.
This might not impress you. Perhaps you’ve recklessly gone on a summer vacation and forgot to mention to your neighbors that they should keep a cool eye on the big plant in the veg bed, and returned to find a green Moby Dick sucking up all the water in the garden. Perhaps you know already that the world’s record zucchini weighed 65 pounds. The world’s longest was 69.5 inches long, which is 6 and a half inches taller than I. Yet to find a six pounder trying to break down my much-cherished raised bed was something of a shock, especially when there was only a two-day gap between checking. This zucchini is only slightly less weight than my daughter at birth. Yet, I feel strangely deprived of maternal instincts toward it.
Big Zucchini How luxurious it is to complain about too much food. I’ll make steaks out of this big one, and perhaps donate the smaller ones to the Fallbrook Food Pantry. And begin to harvest the squash blossoms more vigorously!
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The Importance of Leaving a Mess
Animal tunnels through a brush pile A clean yard is usually a pleasing sight. Picking up loose boards, plywood, sticks and logs keeps people from tripping, is encouraged by the fire department to reduce fuel for fires, and makes for more room to walk. Also, things live under debris and we’ve always been told to not poke our fingers into dark places (excellent advice! If a giant stuck his huge finger into our bedroom window we’d try to hurt it to make it go away, too!), and by eliminating so-called debris we reduce the chance of bites by snakes, spiders, or whatever bitey things may be living in your part of the world.
However, by reducing the debris, we also reduce habitat. Those bitey creatures need a place to live, as do the non-bitey creatures we are also displacing by removing wood. All these creatures are part of the intensely woven food web that keeps our planet populated and working. I cannot disagree about making your yard safe for children and pets, but if you have a space, make an area for habitat, too. Rope off a corner of your yard and tell your children and pets not to go into there, and leave bundles of sticks, pieces of plywood, old logs, piles of leaves, etc. in that corner. This is a home for the wild things, and your children can understand, observe and respect the fact that the world should not be made clean for them. Teach your children not to hunt and catch wild things, not to tear apart nests and destroy habitat. Observe and wonder instead.
In my yard, especially since I’ve had some sheds removed (in which racoons, wasps and possums raised families… I’m hoping to make a new place for them), I have stacks of plywood and old buidling materials which are good for recycling back into projects around my house. A junkheap, yes; a goldmine, yep. Under these stacks I have found such wonderful creatures that I didn’t even know came into my yard (perhaps they didn’t until the wood was left out).
The most exciting creature was a female Western pond turtle.
Female Western Pond Turtle In Washington, the Western pond turtles are endangered, and they are considered threatened in Oregon and are becoming rare in California and Baja California. Besides loss of habitat and an increase in pollution, one of the major factors in our native turtle’s slow demise is the release of non-native aggressive species such as the red-eared slider turtles. Red-eared sliders are America’s favorite pet turtle although they are native to the Southern United States. Due to releases they are everywhere. DO NOT RELEASE YOUR PET INTO THE WILD! As much harm has been done by and to domestic animals and wild animals by the releasing of pets as by habitat loss. A number of years ago there was a salmonella scare allegedly traced to pet turtles. The public’s response was to dump their children’s turtles in any waterway close by. Red-eared sliders have a distinctive red line by their eyes, and are named sliders because that family of semi-aquatic turtle can slide into the water quickly. They are omnivorous, aggressive, adaptable and become large. They eat anything that they can fit into their mouths, including the less aggressive smaller Western pond turtles.
Females have flat plasterons; notice her left stumpy leg. Finding a female Western pond turtle in the yard was fantastic, and I can only surmise that she had made her way up from the shallow streambed below the property to hopefully lay eggs. I haven’t found signs of a disturbed area yet where she may have layed, but am keeping the whole area protected just in case.
Long tails She is missing one front foot, probably bitten off while a youngster when something was trying to eat her. Before we knew she was a she, we thought of giving him a piratey name due to the missing foot and her semi-aquatic nature. Captain Blood was too fierce, but the author of that and other swashbuckling tales which had been made into movies is Raphael Sabatini. Now that is a terrific name. Go ahead and say it to yourself. See? So he became Raphael Sabatini until we checked her plasteron (the underside of her shell) and realized that it was flat not concave, which meant that she was a female. Males need concave plasterons so that when they are, um, amorous, they don’t fall off so easily. So she became Mrs. Sabatini. Long story… sorry. Nothing simple in my life. Anyway, we checked out Mrs. Sabatini’s health, and then released her into our small upper pond, which has an excess of mosquito fish and bugs, so that she wouldn’t be hurt with all the work that is being done down where she was found. We haven’t seen her since, so hopefully she is healthy and happy.
Good-bye Mrs. Sabatini! Under another piece of plywood I’ve found blue-tailed skinks (I couldn’t take a photo because they move too quickly), California Slender Salamanders,
California Slender Salamander gopher snakes, king snakes,
California Kingsnake and Pacific chorus frogs.
In a brush pile there are many birds hopping through, especially California towhees, Western fence lizards, alligator lizards, tree rats, mice and many other creatures.
In the ground are insects that you’d never expect. For instance while weeding one of my heirloom bulb beds I disturbed this huge caterpiller that had a horn tail.
White-lined Sphinx Moth Caterpiller The only horn tails that I’m familiar with are the tomato hornworms, but this guy was far away from my veggie patch, and instead of stripes had spots. We looked him up, and he is the caterpiller form of the White-Lined Sphinx Moth, also known as the hummingbird moth because of the way it hovers in front of night-blooming flowers to drink nectar. It is one of the important nighttime pollinators which few ever see. We put him back and left some weeds in for him.
Of course mason bees, among other pollinators, use holes in wood in which to nest. Some bumblebees nest in abandoned gopher holes, and they are the natural pollinators of many native North American plants such as blueberries (honeybees were imported from Europe with white settlers; until then native plants developed their flowers to attract and accomidate bumblebees, wasps, and hundreds of other native insects.)
All around my property there are logs and brush piles, and plywood layed down to choke out weeds in my veggie garden. Underneath there is a world of habitat. Isolated refuges for animals and insects who desperately need places to feel safe. So go ahead, throw down some mulch, some logs, a pile of sticks or some plywood. Know that you are doing the Earth a favor.
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