Favor Curry When You Want to Curry Favor

As part of the spirit of scientific inquiry, we believe strongly in inculcating an adventurous streak in the garden.  Naturally, therefore, when we encounter a new or unusual plant in the nursery, we are apt to bring it home without asking too many impertinent questions.

Such was the case a couple of years ago when perusing the herbs at Farm Patch and we discovered something called a “curry plant”.  We vaguely knew it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with curry seasoning, as curry seasoning is A) yellowish-brown, while the “curry plant” is a vibrant, icy blue, and B) made of a variety of herbs and seasonings, rather than just one, something we are familiar with from having listened to a learned discourse beyond our ability to follow on the part of competing cooks hailing from the Indian subcontinent.  You think religious conflicts can be contentious?  Just get two chefs together with a different idea about what constitutes good curry – make sure you have a good solid surface to hide behind, first, though.

Nevertheless, we brought home our plants, stuck them in the ground (with an admixture of chicken poop and neglect which is almost universally healthy for garden plants), and watched them grow.

Once we were certain that they would “make it” through the hot Texas sun and also through the freakish snow storms we have experienced the last four or five years, we decided to figure out what we actually had on our hands.  Turns out, it’s an unusual plant for most gardens in the U.S., but it is not at all a “rare” plant.  The proper name is Helichrysum italicum, and it is well known in Sicily, not as a culinary herb, but as a medicinal herb, and also (more commonly) as a cat deterrent.

The name “curry plant” probably got afixed due to the strong pungency of the herb; it does, in fact, smell a lot like a good curry – regardless of whose definition of “good curry” you happen to be using – and the flowers, which come out on wonderfully odd bulbous extensions, like a pair of eyes on stalks, are a bright, vivid yellow, adding to the impression that it just somehow has to be related to curry, in spite of all the accumulated logical evidence that it ain’t so.

The pungency is strongest in the floral extensions, although you can smell it year round.  Historically, an oil was pressed from the petals of the florettes, and used as an anti-inflammatory, a fungicide, and as an astringent.

We have not made any of these uses of the plant, though we have enjoyed it as an interesting perennial, providing color even when most of the rest of the herbs have frozen to the ground.  The color is more like a blue-spruce pine tree than anything else to which we might compare it; it provides a lovely contrast to the deeper olive tones of the rosemary bushes and the some-time vibrant oregano, which is also a perennial, though not as hardy.  Our lavender plants also bear some resemblance to the curry plant, and between this cluster of perennials, our herb garden is never completely bare.

We have also observed that the pungency of the curry is exceptionally useful as an attractant for our local bee population, and, as the Sicilians have long known, as a repellant for feline garden intruders.  This is particularly important in our garden, as we want as many bees as possible, but we also want as many hummingbirds as possible, and having cats lurking in the herb garden is less-than-optimal as far as the hummingbirds are concerned.

Then, too, we are growing catnip for a variety of reasons – it makes an excellent tea, it looks lovely in herbal bouquets, and it is part of an effective triumvirate of mosquito repellant plants – but obviously having a large bed of catnip would be like an open invitation to the copious feral feline population.  By masking the catnip smell with the curry plant smell, we hope to minimize the unintended consequences of growing our more cat-friendly plants.

Depending on the size of your garden, you may not have room for an inedible herb; if you’ve got the space, though, let us highly recommend Helichrysum italicum.  Curry plants are quirky, stinky, and hardy.  Exactly the qualities likely to curry favor with Myrtle.

Happy farming!

Hot Enough For Ya? (Late Winter Edition)

Birds do not have the mammalian form of the neurotransmitter receptor known as “vanilloid receptor subtype 1” (VR1).  Mammals have this ion channel receptor, which is stimulated by heat and physical abrasion, in addition to exposure to chemicals from the vanilloid family.

Why do we care, you might be asking.  As it turns out, one of the more common vanilloid chemicals, readily available in most home gardens (or at the very least, in virtually every farmer’s market or grocery store), is capsaicin, the chemical responsible for the “heat” of hot peppers.

Plants from the Capsicum genus have evolved a particularly handy means of protecting their seeds from the grinding molars of mammalian herbivores, whilst and at the same time allowing avian fruit foragers to consume the seeds whole, then distributing them far and wide in ready-made packets of fertilized seed pre-treatment (gross, but effective).  The seeds of hot peppers (and related plants) do not contain any capsaicin, but the surrounding tissue – particularly the whitish placental tissue, though to a lesser extent all the rest of the fruit as well – is chock full of the stuff.

Birds feel no effects whatsoever when eating these fruits and seeds, which is why chili powder is considered a good squirrel deterrent in bird-feeders.  The squirrels can’t stand the stuff (more on that in a second), but the birds are entirely unaffected.  Provided you don’t scare them off with unusual scents or sights, you can get your birds to eat spicy versions of their current favorites, and they won’t even notice the difference.

So.  Why are squirrels (and other mammals) affected by hot peppers?

Recall that the VR1 receptor is stimulated by heat and physical abrasion, in addition to the presence of these chemicals.  Essentially, the vanilloid chemicals (in this case, capsaicin) overwhelm the neural pathways in tissues which have been exposed, resulting in altered heat and pain responses.  A 1997 research team first found that capsaicin selectively binds the TRPV1 protein, which resides on the pain and heat sensing neurons.  TRPV1 typically opens between 98.6° and 113° fahrenheit, but in the presence of capsaicin, it opens below 98.6°. 

Obviously, this is body temperature.   Under normal conditions, then, the nerves responsible for telling you that it is hotter than Hades outside – say, 114° or so – will start giving their “Danger, Will Robinson!” full body S.O.S. signals whenever you eat a sufficiently spicy pepper, regardless of what the actual temperature is.  And since the heat-sensitive neural pathways may be overwhelmed, conceivably the pain network might get in on the act, too. 

A little bit of the essence of pepper, say from a packet of hot sauce from your favorite taqueria, might make you notice:  “Ooh, this is spicy!”  A lot of the essence of pepper, say from a bhut jolokia “Ghost Pepper” on a hamburger, a la Man v. Food, might make you really notice:  “Oh, my.  Please douse my head in a bucket of frozen water, give me an intravenous morpheine solution, and maybe euthanize me for good measure.  If, you know, you’ve got time.  Otherwise, I’ll just crinkle up and die right here.”  A little bit of capsaicin tells you the ambient temperature is extremely hot, even if it isn’t.  A lot of capsaicin tells you you have just been impaled in an iron maiden, set on fire, and thrown off the Chrysler building. 

We love the stuff.

There are all sorts of ironic medical uses being investigated which take advantage of these neurological effects of capsaicin, including pain medications, diabetes medications, and topical treatments for arthritis or fibromyalgia.  Even lung cancer is on the radar for researchers trying to take advantage of the intense response of mammalian neurons to capsaicin.

We are not recommending anything so revolutionary in the home garden.  We are instead intent on focusing on a new application for the use the plants themselves make of this chemical.

We have a critter problem in our chicken coop, you see.  There is a creek which runs roughly parallel to our western property line, from which a long series of oppossum trespassers, for generations, has made the trek to our yard, first for the cover of the underbrush which we have painstakingly cleared, and then for the delicious goodies left in the chickens’ feed dish, and then for any eggs we may have missed on our evening collection run.

Mice, too, take advantage of our hens’ domestic arrangements.  If our birds could be free-ranged, we might not have to worry so much, given that they would be gathering their daily nutritional needs from a wider range, but since they have to stay cooped up thanks to the zealousness of the College Station city council in protecting our neighbors from marauding hens, every rodent in the neighborhood has at some point decided to partake of the evening buffet.

Heretofore, our solution to these problems has been to do our best to regulate how much feed is left out, and to do our best to gather all the eggs before turning in for the night.

Now, however, a solution is at hand.

We just need to sprinkle copious quantities of hot chili powder on the chicken’s feed, and on their laying boxes; we will also feed table scraps with peppers to the chickens, instead of putting such items in the compost bin, as we have been doing until now, on the assumption that hot peppers would somehow disagree with the birds.

This will serve multiple functions, which as you know is something we at Myrtle’s place really like.  First and foremost, capsaicin in everything edible in the chicken coop ought to provide all the deterrence we need for opossum and mice.  This is what happens in the wild; it ought to happen in our little domestic slice of heaven, too. 

Next, we already get significant numbers of volunteer tomato and basil plants growing from the numerous seeds which find their way into the garden compost which, as we have mentioned early and often, is basically just recycled deep-bedding from the chicken coop – leaves and chicken poop, a little water and a little neglect, that is the secret to happy plants.

Now, we are likely to also start getting volunteer pepper plants sprouting up all over the place.  We can think of no happier design than a garden in which plants of all varieties randomly crop up in the healthiest, though unexpected, locations.

In the spirit of scientific inquiry, we have verified that our chickens do not, in fact, seem adversely affected by capsaicin, at least not in any visible way.  We put out some jalapeños which had not only started to turn red, but had also started to shrivel.  The hens naturally went for the rice and strawberry tops which were also in the slop bucket first, since they go for the familiar at all times.  However, they did then start pecking at the peppers, and seemed to warm up to them, but only in the metaphorical, aesthetic, sense.  Otherwise, they may as well have been munching on bell peppers or cucumbers.  No jumping around screaming for water or anything.  And trust us, our hens are not shy about jumping up and screaming, should they feel so inclined.

So, along with our “chicken processed” volunteer tomatoes and basil, we will now add another form of volunteer nightshade.  And this will give us plenty of excuses to make even more salsa.  This is a win-win all the way around.  We defy you to produce a healthier or tastier form of mammalian pest control.

Happy farming!

The Alpha Egg and the Omega Chicken

Casual observers of food marketing probably cannot get past the barrage of catch-phrases and keywords with which various advertising media are awash.  Leaving aside for another day a discussion of the whole “corn sugar” propaganda campaign – a campaign which would make Leni Riefenstahl proud – there are some legitimate terms out there which get misconstrued and misapplied and just generally misused, which lead to even greater confusion for the average consumer.

Myrtle can’t hope to correct all such errors, not being trained in nutritional science beyond what we have been able to glean from various sources on our own, but we hope to shed a little light on one such misunderstood nutritional concept, and we hope to make some suggestions for the home garden which may help spread a little heart-love around.

“Omega-3 fatty acids are a family of unsaturated fatty acids that have in common a final carbon-carbon double bond in the n-3 position; that is, the third bond from the methyl end of the fatty acid.”  Clear enough?  So, we lifted a definition straight from Wikipedia.  A definition from Webster’s wouldn’t really be much clearer.

But despite the fact that, for non-chemists and non-biologists, the nature of what an omega-3 fatty acid really is defies easy comprehension, the effects of these useful nutrients are far more easily understood.

A diet rich in Omega-3 can be directly correlated to lower LDL (low-density lipoprotein, or "bad cholesterol") and higher HDL (high-density lipoprotein or "good cholesterol") in the blood.  A proper LDL/HDL ratio is directly correlated to a lower incidence of coronary heart disease, lower blood pressure, more likelihood of weight control, better immune function, better endocrine balance, and a more satisfying sex life. 

Nutritionists refer to this as “a good thing”.

Omega-3 “essential” fatty acids are so-called because as early as the first part of the last century, nutritionists realized that several fatty acids were necessary for normal growth and development, first in laboratory animals, and later in children.  Omega-6 fatty acids are also necessary in the human diet, but are not often found lacking, except in populations affected by famine.  Omega-6 acids, in fact, are found in excess quantities in the typical American diet, being primarily found in meats and fried foods.

Omega-3 fatty acids, however, are frequently lacking in not only the American diet, but in the diets of many populations around the globe, particularly among landlocked peoples, especially in arid regions or areas far from a source of fish.  Vegetarians are also especially prone to be deficient in Omega-3, although less so than omnivores who eat neither fish nor whole grains.

As it turns out, there are multiple potential sources of Omega-3, and no matter one’s food lifestyle, there are multiple options for correcting an imbalance.

To begin with, Omega-3 has to compete in our diets with Omega-6.  The more beef and deep-fried potatoes we consume (burger and fries, anyone?), the less Omega-3 our bodies will assimilate, even if we drown ourselves in fish oil supplements.  Increasing Omega-3 therefore begins with decreasing Omega-6 – not to the point of elimination, just to a level more consistent with what our bodies evolved to digest.  If you want to eat red meat or pork, two or three times a week ought to be your maximum.  The typical American diet now begins with one or both of these meats and asks “what do we have to go with our steak/pork loin/bacon-wrapped steak/pork-and-beef sausage/etc.”?

This is just asking for trouble.

Chicken or other poultry can also cause Omega-6 problems, though less so than their fattier dinner counterparts.

Fish, on the other hand, in addition to being the best source of Omega-3 (particularly the fatty fishes such as salmon or tuna, and to a lesser degree catfish or tilapia), also frequently have a good balance with not too much Omega-6.  Even fishes which do not contain all that much Omega-3 at least have the advantage of not being overloaded with Omega-6.  Sturgeon, pike or trout are all better for you than mutton, pot roast, or ham.

Then, too, there are “Omega Eggs”.  Although the number of studies available is somewhat small, there is good evidence that chickens fed on appropriate greens produce eggs which are high in a-Linolenic acid (ALA), the most common form of Omega-3 available from vegetable sources.

Which brings us to the main consideration when deciding how to get Omega-3 into your diet – there are many, many forms of this nutrient, and not all of them are readily available in your garden.  In fact, the two most important forms of Omega-3, Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) are not available in any terrestrial plants – that is, in any plants which grow on land.  They are only available from plankton; they are also available from a form of algae known as “spirulina”, a nutritional supplement you can find at most health food stores.  Fans of psyllium will have no problem ingesting yet another swirly, gritty beverage, but those who do not wish to consume their EPA and DHA in this less-than-appetizing form will have to settle for the next best thing:  fatty fishes.

No animal is capable of manufacturing any of the Omega-3 fats on their own.  All animals rely on consumption of vegetable matter in order to maintain these fats, and in turn those carnivores or omnivores who wish to get their Omega-3 from animal sources will have to make sure they are eating animals who have themselves eaten an Omega-3 vegetable diet.

Since EPA and DHA are only available from fish like salmon, tuna, cod, etc., we recommend strongly that these fish be included in your diet.  Vegetarians would likewise do well to either bend their rules to include fish, or at the very least bend their rules far enough to include fish oil supplements.  Those who are worried about toxic levels of heavy metals in fish meal can at least rest easy with fish oil supplementation, because mercury and other toxic metals bind with proteins in the meat rather than with the fatty acids – even fish from polluted waters will produce relatively safe oils, depending on how they are processed.

Vegans who for ethical or other reasons adamantly refuse to include fish can still be healthy, of course, because EPA and DHA are simply the most readily available Omega-3 fatty acids.   The body requires a lot more work in order to process ALA and the other Omega-3’s, but it can be done.  There are a wide variety of plants which can increase the natural Omega-3 levels in a vegan diet:  black currant, flax, shiso, chia sage, lingonberry, purslane, black raspberry, butternut, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, and even cannibis sativa are high in ALA.  In fact, the readily available ALA in the oil from marijuana seeds may be one of the strongest arguments available for why this herb ought to be legalized.  Even without cannibis, though, there is clearly a large enough list of garden plants to choose from.

And for those of us who eat eggs, there are obviously enough choices here to provide feed for our backyard chickens to improve the quality and nutritional content of their eggs.  Henbit, purslane, dandelions, sunflowers, rye grasses, etc. ad nauseum, find their way into the coop on a daily basis.  The increase in ALA in the chickens’ diet has led directly to a decrease in LDL and an increase in HDL for Mr. Myrtle Maintenance which cannot be attributed to any other factor, as his diet has not really improved all that much between the last and most recent cholesterol tests he has taken – the single most important factor, in fact, is purely a decrease in red meat consumption and an increase in consumption of backyard eggs, from happy weed-fed chickens.

As soon as we can complete our fish pond project, we will toy with growing spirulina as well, on the assumption that our school of tilapia will be even higher in the best Omega-3 varieties; even if the algae experiment doesn’t work out, though, an increase in fish consumption can only bring more benefit.  Plus, the chickens will certainly enjoy eating heads and offal, and their own health (and by extension, the healfulness of their eggs) will be improved, making it a winning idea all the way around.  Having seen them attack salmon scraps before, we have little doubt how much they will enjoy fresh fish.

If you can’t increase your EPA and DHA from fish consumption, we urge you to at least increase your ALA – put some Alpha in your Omega.  Gobble down those flax seeds and hazelnuts, and give some weeds to your chickens.

Happy farming!

Big Myrtle's Annual "Should we or shouldn't we" Post...

The fastest way to irritate a grumpy person who wants to complain about the weather is to tell them that their presumptions about the weather are wrong.

While the last two weeks have seen some record low temperatures bringing bitter weather to places where it is not uncommon to see people in bermuda shorts in the middle of January and February, the urge to call this a “cold winter” is entirely misleading.  On average, we have actually been well above normal temperatures for quite some time now.  A couple of weeks of colder-than-usual temperatures doesn’t change that fact.

What has happened recently is that the patterns have altered slightly.  There is still more heat in the atmosphere, overall, than has been true in the past; however, it has been distributed in a slightly different way, thanks to ridges of high pressure sitting over the Pacific Northwest, and off the coast of Greenland.  Any low pressure at all in the middle of that mix – such as we have had twice in the last two weeks – will result in the jet stream looping way down the plains into Mexico. 

Usually, the arctic stuff is swept left-to-right by the jet stream sitting high up in the contiguous 48 states, making North-and-South-Dakotacicles, but leaving Texans in our undershirts; instead, the arctic air mass pushed from up to down, leaving Texans huddled in our bedrooms, afraid to put our feet on the cold, cold floor.

We are about to return to a more typical pattern, though, which will see higher than usual temperatures for most of the country, for most of the Spring.  So, for those who wish to slap us for saying, “It hasn’t really been that cold,” you can soon relax.  Before too long, it really will be “that hot”.

This, of course, leads to our annual February conundrum.  How soon do we start putting Spring plants in the ground?

Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance has begun deliveries of herbal bouquets ($10 per container of herbs, write to her for details about subscriptions for weekly deliveries), and is a little concerned because, at present, her bouquets consist almost entirely of rosemary and oregano.

Nothing else is growing, except the curry plant, and that is not a culinary herb, it is an aromatic, misnamed for a style of cooking.  It is extremely good at repelling cats, but it is not particularly good as the basis for an aesthetically pleasing and useful kitchen herb bouquet.

So… we need more herbs, and soon.  Warm weather is just about here…. Do we risk it?

The answer, like so many of our answers over time, is both yes and no.

Yes, it is time to plant some things.  We are moving to a year long rotation of planting sunflowers on alternate weekends, for example, and next weekend is week one, since we are about six weeks out from the date of last frost.  Our odds for this week’s sunflower planting of making it through without any more subfreezing temperatures will be maybe 50%, and if there is a frost, then the percentage of plants surviving subfreezing temperatures would be maybe 25%.  So, this will be a boom-or-bust endeavor.  Fortunately, the seeds are cheap (and getting cheaper by the year, as we save each successive harvest), and the reward is fairly high.

Sunflowers serve multiple purposes in our plots.  They function first and foremost as an attractive flower, brightening the utilitarian greens and browns that dominate the landscape when you grow as many perennials and herbs as we do.  We plant a wide variety of sunflowers, too, ranging from pale yellows with multiple heads, looking a lot like Jerusalem Artichoke, to bright oranges and starbursts on medium sized stalks with medium sized heads, to huge maroons and crimsons, towering overhead and giving our garden a third dimension.

Sunflowers make a delightful centerpiece to an herbal bouquet, providing color on a small scale, and bringing warmth and cheer to any room, and accentuating the vibrancy of the more useful additions, like the basil, mint, lavender, rosemary, etc., which form the aesthetic backdrop for the dramatic flower.

They are useful for our other plants still in the ground, as well.  Sunflowers are a perfect trap crop, distracting the birds and insects from their more delicate neighbors.  We will still lose some berries and tomatoes and herbs to sparrows and mockingbirds, of course, but not nearly as many as we would lose if we did not have the screen of sunflowers in front of the blackberries and nightshades.

Sunflowers also aide in maintaining proper soil tilth, breaking up hard clays, and providing good stubbly mulch when dead, balancing hard-to-erode lignins with all the easily assimilated organic matter we get from our oak leaves.  The chickens also love to eat the leaves and attack the seed heads, so we get them in our compost either in situ, or else later, after having been processed as part of the chickens’ deep bedding.

Sunflowers also assist in water balance, as they draw water up, frequently being able to grow when the natural source of moisture is many, many feet below the surface.  This means we can afford to soak our other plants in neighboring beds without running the risk of overwatering, since excess moisture will be mopped up by the sunflowers.  Other Texas gardeners may be struggling for water, but with rainwater collection and a solar-powered pump dripping pond water on our herbs all day long (beneath the mulch, naturally!), we will be striving for moisture balance, rather than praying for any moisture at all, like we used to do.

However, because there is still a risk of that one final cold snap, we would be foolish to plant all of our sunflowers all at once.  We will roll them out, a few seeds at a time, over the course of the next seven to nine months, depending on weather and available space.  This gives us the advantage of being able to maintain something flowering in the garden virtually year round, with good balance, since we can see where we might be growing a bit thin, and where we might be a little overplanted.  It also means Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance will, within six weeks from now, never be short on flowers or herbs ever again.

There are other items we will be planting soon, too, some indoors, some out.  We will be starting our seed tomatoes and tomatillos indoors, not risking putting those precious commodities in until mid-March at the earliest.  We learned that lesson the hard way.  Same thing for our peppers – serranos, jalapeños, and bhut jolokia “ghost chili” (see “Man vs. Food” for information about that last one…)

We will be planting velvet beans and caigua directly in the garden, but again, not until the Ides of March.

Amaranth will not go in until late March or even the first week of April, depending on how long it takes the soil to warm up.  We do not want to work these seeds until the soil has reached an agreeable 65° fahrenheit.  We have several varieties, including some you will likely see in an herbal bouquet if you choose to order from Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance.  “Love-Lies-Bleeding” and “Elephant Head” are actually frequently listed as flowers rather than as food crops, although we intend to make use of them as both.

We will be planting our new fruit trees as soon as we are able; Crandall black currant is the one variety of currant which has been bred to tolerate our summers, and that can go in as soon as we receive the root stock from the orchard.  We intend to put in more grapes, more blackberries, some Dormand raspberries (again, the only variety available for Texas heat), some Rio Grande peaches, which have a fairly low chilling requirement (only 400 hours of temperatures below 45° F), and which produce later in the season – an important consideration, since we are aiming for year-round fruit production.

If we can find some inexpensive arbequina olives, we will put in a few more olive trees this year.  Likewise, if we can find the Bacon and Fuerza varieties of avocado, we will try to plant a couple of those – Haas avocado trees would also be welcome, but those are much easier to find.  These are low priority items, though; when your list is as long as ours is, you just work through it each year until you have to quit and wait for next year.  Our perennial produce is just that way, and will be until we run out of space.

And then, there’s the herbs.  Herbs, herbs, herbs.  Catnip, borage, mint, purple coneflower, anise, thyme, probably some more rosemary and lavendar, chamomile, and gude ainly kens wha’ else will find its way into our garden, starting this weekend, when we take a gander at what is in the herb bin at Farm Patch.  It’s time to plant some more herbs, and we are nowhere near satisfied – we’re just getting started.

The old saying is true, if you don’t like Texas’ weather, just wait five minutes, and it’ll change.  The change has come, and it’s time to get your fingers back in the dirt.

Happy farming!