Szechuan Buttons or Toothache Plant – Rock Star of the Garden

A person holding onto some flowers in their hand


Szechuan Buttons – Secret Ingredient of Celebrity Chefs and Master Bartenders

One of our best selling herbs is the Toothache Plant or Szechuan Buttons. Spilanthes oleracea, also known as Acmella oleracea is a low-growing plant with bronze-purple leaves hosting yellow/red “gumdrop” flowers that bloom repeatedly summer through fall. The medicinal uses of spilanthes have been around for a long time. A mouth rinse of spilanthes extract can be used daily to promote gum health. In vitro testing has shown that the plant’s extract has strong effect against E.coli, pseudomonas, salmonella, klebsiella pneumonae and staphylococcus albus, as well as inhibiting the growth of candida albicans. Improves digestion, eases flatulence, improves the appetite, and helps to overcome nausea and vomiting by its stimulating effect on the salivary glands.

We don’t sell spilanthes soleley for its medicinal properties but also for its “Rock Star” qualities. NPR has a story about using the Szechuan Buttons in high-end restaurants and bars. The Washington Post did one as well. We were very intrigued and had to grow these amazing little plants last summer to see for ourselves, had a nibble of the traditionally used leaves and it makes your mouth tingle. It is like the old pop rocks candy, a very effervescent feeling. The fresh buttons sell for somewhere around $40 for a bag of 30 buttons, but if you grow them yourself it’s around $3.50 for a packet of 30 seeds, and you’ll grow hundreds of buttons! Freezing does not hurt their buzz, so you can have them year round.

Get your seeds here!

We also had to try out the buttons on a cocktail. What follows is a short photo essay of this experience. We would highly recommend growing the plant for its rock star presence but also for the beauty it adds to the garden.

 

Starting with this –

A plant growing in the dirt on a sunny day.

Szechuan Buttons in the garden

 

We selected three great specimens.

A plant growing in the dirt on a sunny day.

Szechuan Buttons ready for use

 

With the ingredients gathered, we were ready to start.

A plant growing in the dirt on a sunny day.

All ingredients are ready

 

After the drink is made, the magic is ready to be put into play! The Buttons must be pressed into the rim of the glass firmly, as the bud needs to be slightly crushed to release the “Buzz”.

A plant growing in the dirt on a sunny day.

Szechuan Buttons in action

We were surprised at the strength of the tingle and how long it lasted. Any part of our mouths or tongues that touched the rim of the glass had an immediately noticeable tingling or buzzing feeling, along with some numbness of the tongue that lasted at least 20 minutes. The height of the effect easily lasted 10-12 minutes, with a slow tapering off toward the end.

Seeing how easy it is to grow these, you can be the producer of a lot of “Buzz”!

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Dijon Roasted Heirloom Beets

Roasted Heirloom Beets


Heirloom beets are one of the earlier crops to be planted, and one of the first to be enjoyed early in the Spring. Here’s a great recipe with an unusual preparation that really brings out the earthy goodness of fresh home-grown beets. The secret is slow roasting at about 300°F for almost an hour. I prefer to do this in our charcoal fired Kamado grill, a Japanese clay covered BBQ which holds the heat amazingly well and gives an incredible rich but lightly smoky flavor. The beets turn out heavenly, and I’m often asked what I did to make them so delicious. Oven roasted is a very good second choice, just make sure to roast them slow and long – it caramelizes the sugars in the beets, making them a surprise all of their own. 

The Dijon mustard plays a nice counterpoint to the richness of the beets. For some additional flavors, add some heirloom carrots or overwintered onions to the mix- roast along with the beets! Keep in mind that young beets – less than 2 inches in diameter- are sweet like carrots.

Dijon Roasted Heirloom Beets

  • 3 pounds beets, about 2 inches in diameter
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
  • Juice of one orange
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon fresh minced rosemary
  1. Trim stem and root from beets. Place whole beets in roasting pan; add 1 tablespoon olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss to coat.
  2. Roast at 400° for 45 minutes or until beets are tender. Beets are tender when easily pierced with a fork or toothpick.
  3. While beets are roasting whisk mustard, orange juice, sugar, and vinegar in bowl. Whisk in remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil and rosemary. Set aside.
  4. When beets are cool enough to handle, rub to remove skins; cut into quarters. Add warm beets to bowl and toss with dressing. Let stand 30 minutes while beets absorb dressing.

Makes approximately eight servings.

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Planning and Planting Your Spring Garden

Moscow Spring Garden


Now that the days are becoming slightly longer, the holidays are over and life is getting back to whatever consists of normal for you and your family, it’s time to dig into our garden seed catalog and start planning the eternally anticipated Spring garden.

After spending a little time reading – and realizing that you want to plant one of everything – the realization sinks in that this could be some work, and that’s before the real work of actually digging in the garden even begins!

What to plant, how to plant, when to plant, what will grow for me, should I start my heirloom tomatoes from seed or just buy starts, what do I need to do for my soil, and what exactly is succession planting are all questions that crop up and need answers.

All of a sudden, a garden seems pretty intimidating, definitely not for amateurs and something that might be best left to the experts. Well guess what? Everyone was an amateur at some point, starting out with not much knowledge and needing some help. It is easier to start your home garden today than in any other time in history, as there are mountains of information and education out there and it is all pretty easy to find. The Internet is full of good gardening advice in many areas.

What we will look at today are some points to consider about your home garden, we’ll do some initial planning and pass along some tools that will be very helpful in building your toolbox of gardening knowledge and problem solving. Let’s get started!

Now is the perfect time to start planning for what you want to do in your garden next year. Just get the planning started, then work on it as ideas bubble up from your subconscious. This way, you won’t be caught short when time becomes an issue in a couple of months.

To help you get the process rolling, we have the following points to consider, along with some tools to help get you there sooner.

1. Review last year’s garden. How did it do? Did you start enough seeds/seedlings to compensate for losses due to transplanting, weather, critters etc.? Were plants healthy and productive, or were there issues that need some researching, such as pests, insects, disease, weather conditions to plan for or try to mitigate?

We found that the rabbits and deer were a factor we didn’t even consider in planning how much of the White Eagle corn we planted as a test plot for growing our own heirloom seed corn. They took out almost a third of our crop! This is something that we will be planning for (in a couple of ways) in this year’s planting.

2. Plan early for varieties that might need a longer growing season, or take longer to germinate. This isn’t just a beginner’s mistake, many experienced gardeners get caught out on the timing for their garden. We’ll show you how to do the date planning later on in this article. Then it is just a matter of writing down the seed starting dates on a garden calender and sticking to the plan.

If you give yourself at least a week “cushion” on the timing, you won’t be stressed if you can’t get the seeds started or transplanted on the date you’ve chosen, whether due to busy schedules or the weather or some other unforeseen happening.

3. Try one new variety this year that you’ve never had out of your garden. It may be something that you don’t think you’ll like, or it may just be something that you’ve never had fresh just moments before from your own garden.

This was eggplant for me, and I now love it- from my own garden. This year it just might be turnips, as I’ve never had fresh turnips!

4. Make a garden plan. This can greatly help with spacing, intensive planting, succession planting and growing more food in your existing space. Also helps with small space/container growing.

Download and use our Garden Journal for more information and help.

Mother Earth News has a Vegetable Garden Planner that has several short videos showing how to get started. It is free for the first 30 days, and is $25 for a years subscription. There are other free garden plannersif you do a search online.

5. Grow an herb this year. You won’t believe the exquisite flavor that one fresh heirloom herb can bring to your kitchen and meals. If you’ve grown herbs before, or are growing some now- try a new one.

To start, try something that is used extensively in cooking like Basil, Oregano or Thyme. All of these can be dried and used year round, with the added benefit of saving you money buying expensive dried herbs.

6. Plant some pollinator attractants. These can be herbs or flowers and will dramatically help your garden’s production. Just one or two varieties planted throughout the garden can make a huge difference.

7. Plan to save one variety of seed this year. Start with something easy and something that you are interested in. Read our Seed Saving articles to get started, or take a look at these books- “Saving Vegetable Seeds” is a new book that has great illustrations and introductions, while “Seed to Seed” is the established reference for all things seed saving.

8. Plant enough to share with a neighbor/senior center home or food bank. Plant an extra row if possible, a couple of plants extra if space is small. The difference even one gardener can make in another’s life is extraordinary!

Plant a Row for the Hungry is a public service program of the Garden Writers Association and has donated over 14 million pounds of food since 1995 to feed hungry folks in our local neighborhoods and communities across the nation. This is without government assistance, oversight, subsidy or bureaucratic red tape – just people helping people. It was started in Anchorage, Alaska by Jeff Lowenfels to provide food for Bean’s Cafe, a local soup kitchen.

9. Get your kids or grand-kids involved. Have them help plan the garden and plant something just for them. Don’t have kids or grand-kids? Use the neighbors, friends, etc. Start them on growing food and learning where our food comes from and how it gets to the plate. You will be surprised at how interested kids are in the garden once they are there. Combine this with #7 above and help them learn the full cycle of the garden from planting a seed to harvesting a seed.

10. Cook a meal with those kids mentioned above. Plan a simple, easy to make meal. Have them help harvest, clean and prepare the meal.

11. Review our website. If you have questions or need help, please, email or call us. We’re here to help you be more successful in your garden. We make our living on the sale of heirloom seeds, tools, books, etc. but if we can help you be more successful in your garden, everyone wins.

Here’s how we see it: you have a better garden, more fresh veggies and more food. You give some to your neighbor, who notices your garden is much more productive, disease, insect and pest resistant and they ask how you do it. You share what you’ve learned and they have a better garden with more food. They then help create a better, more resilient local food system.

Yes, we may get a few more customers, but that isn’t the point or the focus. Another possibility is that you do plant a row to donate, and make the local food bank, soup kitchen or retirement home’s day with fresh, healthy and tasty food.

All right, then- now that you’ve got plenty of ideas of what to do with your garden this year, how do you get started?

Getting the timeline down is one of the hardest parts, as there is some real confusion on when to start seeds, when to till the soil, when to direct sow these seeds and transplant those to get some great food growing in your garden. There is no fail-proof method, as even experience can be tripped up by an early spring followed up by a sneaky late cold snap that kills your tender seedlings.

Here is a good tool to get some real world, historical weather data from the three closest weather stations to your zip code- the First and Last Frost Dates by Zip Code. Once you are there, add in your Zip code, click Go and this is similar to what you will see:

A plant growing in the dirt on a sunny day.

First and Last Frost Dates by Zip Code

We are using our Zip code of Chino Valley, AZ for this example. Click on the photo to make it bigger.

There is a lot of useful information here, so let’s break it down a bit to make sense of all of this. The three weather stations are included for locations that might not be really close to any one of the stations, so you can make an educated guess on dates. We are closest to the Chino Valley weather station, so that is what we will use.

The first box says this-

  • Each winter, on average, your risk of frost is from October 5 through May 26.
  • Almost certainly, however, you will receive frost from October 22 through May 5.
  • You are almost guaranteed that you will not get frost from June 15 through September 17.
  • Your frost-free growing season is around 132 days.

This is good information to use in planning your garden and in choosing varieties to plant that will be able to grow in your garden, with your growing season. For instance- if your growing season is 60 days, like our friends in Flagstaff, AZ, then you want to be careful in choosing too many things that need 90 days to produce food, if you don’t have a greenhouse or shelter for protection. This information also gives you a good idea of first and last frost dates, but we can get more selective with the information below this top box.

The next three boxes are the historical data from the closest weather stations to your Zip code. The top line of each box is the chance- in percentage- of a frost happening. So 10% is a really low chance, while 90% is a high chance. The temperatures on the left side represent the different frosts- 32F is considered a light frost, 28F is a moderate frost and 24F is a killing or hard frost. For garden planning, look at the 32F line. I usually choose the 50% column to start, then work from there. In our example 50% chance of a 32F frost in Chino Valley in Spring is May 4. This corresponds with the traditional time to direct sow and transplant of May 7-10 locally. Direct sowing cool season crops can be done up to 4-6 weeks earlier in some locations.

To get the timeline correct on starting seedlings like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant- subtract at least 6-8 weeks to allow the seedlings time to grow and get strong enough for transplanting. The more time seedlings have, the bigger and stronger they will be. They will also take up more space, so allow for that as well. We try to give the tomatoes and peppers a minimum of 8 weeks before transplanting them, as we always seem to have some weird weather event that causes havoc with younger, more tender seedlings. We’ve found that the larger ones blow through a heavy wind or late frost without too much worry.

So here is how the math looks and works-

In our example May 4 is the earliest date to direct sow and transplant tender varieties. We want to subtract 8 weeks from that to determine our seed starting date for transplants such as tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. This takes us to March 9, give or take a week or so. This is where the beauty of planning comes in, as you can “fudge” the dates by a week or so on each end if needed and still be very successful. For example: you are swamped the week you are scheduled to plant seeds for transplants, and get them planted one week late. On the other end, you can very easily just wait one more week if needed (weather, hectic schedule) before transplanting the seedlings into the garden. Getting them started a little earlier and waiting a little longer will only give you bigger, stronger transplants.

This tool also works very well for planning your timeline for direct sowing those early season, cool weather crops that go in earlier than anything else. All of our seed packets have planting instructions on the back, and some will indicate that they can be planted a certain number weeks before the last frost.

One last tool to leave you with is your local Master Gardeners. Click on the link, select your state, then county to see where your local Master Gardeners are located. These are volunteers through the land grant universities in each state. They will have really good, accurate information on your local conditions, pest and disease pressures and general gardening information. They are good folks to get to know. Some are mainly flower gardeners, while others focus more on vegetables, so talk with a few of them.

The Master Gardener manual lists good planting timelines for local conditions for pretty much all of the garden crops, what kind of production can be expected for each crop and how many feet of garden to plant per person. You can also do a search for “Arizona planting guide” or “Arizona garden planting guide” substituting Arizona for your state. The search results will show something like “Arizona Master Gardener Manual”. You can then download or print this to have for your future reference. The local Master Gardener office can also make copies for you if you ask.

There you have it, a lot of information to help you get more out of your garden and some great tools to get the planning and timing under control. It can seem daunting at first, so start small and simple, get a good feel for how it works for you, then expand as needed. Make sure to use the Garden Journal to keep track of what worked well and what didn’t so you don’t get frustrated and repeat your mistakes. As always, we are here to help and advise you on growing a better, bigger garden!

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Organic Food Production Can Feed the World


Barry Estabrook is well-known for his new book “Tomatoland” that shows how, exactly, those perfect red, round, hard and tasteless tomatoes show up on our grocery store shelves. Here is an article that he wrote on the ongoing debate of how are we going to feed ouselves- all of us- in the coming years. Please take the time to look at the links to articles and studies, it’s well worth your time!

The Atlantic Home

Read the original article online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/organic-can-feed-the-world/249348/

Organic Can Feed the World
By Barry Estabrook

“Given that current production systems leave nearly one billion people undernourished, the onus should be on the agribusiness industry to prove its model, not the other way around.”

“We all have things that drive us crazy,” wrote Steve Kopperud in a blog post this fall for Brownfield, an organization that disseminates agricultural news online and through radio broadcasts. Kopperud, who is a lobbyist for agribusiness interests in Washington, D.C., then got downright personal: “Firmly ensconced at the top of my list are people who consider themselves experts on an issue when judging by what they say and do, they’re sitting high in an ivory tower somewhere contemplating only the ‘wouldn’t-it-be-nice’ aspects.”

At the top of that heap, Kopperud put Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle, a contributor to Atlantic Life and the author of Food Politics, the title of both her most well-known book and her daily blog.

“There’s a huge chunk of reality missing from Dr. Nestle’s academic approach to life,” Kopperud wrote. “The missing bit is, quite simply, the answer to the following question: How do you feed seven billion people today and nine billion by 2040 through organic, natural, and local food production?” He then answers his own question. “You can’t.”

What is notably lacking in the “conventional” versus organic debate are studies backing up the claim that organic can’t feed the world’s growing population.

As a journalist who takes issues surrounding food production seriously, I too have things that drive me crazy.

At the top of my list are agribusiness advocates such as Kopperud (and, more recently, Steve Sexton of Freakonomics) who dismiss well-thought-out concerns about today’s dysfunctional food production system with the old saw that organic farming can’t save the world. They persist in repeating this as an irrefutable fact, even as one scientific study after another concludes the exact opposite: not only that organic can indeed feed nine billion human beings but that it is the only hope we have of doing so.

“There isn’t enough land to feed the nine billion people” is one tired argument that gets trotted out by the anti-organic crowd, including Kopperud. That assertion ignores a 2007 study led by Ivette Perfecto, of the University of Michigan, showing that in developing countries, where the chances of famine are greatest, organic methods could double or triple crop yields.

“My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you can’t produce enough food through organic agriculture,” Perfecto told Science Daily at the time.

Too bad solid, scientific research hasn’t been enough to drive that nail home. A 2010 United Nations study (PDF) concluded that organic and other sustainable farming methods that come under the umbrella of what the study’s authors called “agroecology” would be necessary to feed the future world. Two years earlier, a U.N. examination (PDF) of farming in 24 African countries found that organic or near-organic farming resulted in yield increases of more than 100 percent. Another U.N.-supported report entitled “Agriculture at a Crossroads” (PDF), compiled by 400 international experts, said that the way the world grows food will have to change radically to meet future demand. It called for governments to pay more attention to small-scale farmers and sustainable practices — shooting down the bigger-is-inevitably-better notion that huge factory farms and their efficiencies of scale are necessary to feed the world.

Suspicious of the political motives of the U.N.? Well, there’s a study that came out in 2010 from the all-American National Research Council. Written by professors from seven universities, including the University of California, Iowa State University, and the University of Maryland, the report finds that organic farming, grass-fed livestock husbandry, and the production of meat and crops on the same farm will be needed to sustain food production in this country.

The Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute is an unequivocal supporter of all things organic. But that’s no reason to dismiss its 2008 report “The Organic Green Revolution” (PDF), which provides a concise argument for why a return to organic principles is necessary to stave off world hunger, and which backs the assertion with citations of more than 50 scientific studies.

Rodale concludes that farming must move away from using unsustainable, increasingly unaffordable, petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides and turn to “organic, regenerative farming systems that sustain and improve the health of the world population, our soil, and our environment.” The science the report so amply cites shows that such a system would

  • give competitive yields to “conventional” methods
  • improve soil and boost its capacity to hold water, particularly important during droughts
  • save farmers money on pesticides and fertilizers
  • save energy because organic production requires 20 to 50 percent less input
  • mitigate global warming because cover crops and compost can sequester close to 40 percent of global CO2 emissions
  • increase food nutrient density

What is notably lacking in the “conventional” versus organic debate are studies backing up the claim that organic can’t feed the world’s growing population. In an exhaustive review using Google and several academic search engines of all the scientific literature published between 1999 and 2007 addressing the question of whether or not organic agriculture could feed the world, the British Soil Association, which supports and certifies organic farms, found (PDF) that there had been 98 papers published in the previous eight years addressing the question of whether organic could feed the world. Every one of the papers showed that organic farming had that potential. Not one argued otherwise.

The most troubling part of Kopperud’s post is where he says that he finds the food movement of which Pollan and Nestle are respected leaders “almost dangerous.” He’s wrong. The real danger is when an untruth is repeated so often that people accept it as fact.

Given that the current food production system, which is really a 75-year-old experiment, leaves nearly one billion of the world’s seven billion humans seriously undernourished today, the onus should be on the advocates of agribusiness to prove their model can feed a future population of nine billion — not the other way around.

Copyright © 2012 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

The most powerful, compelling statements of this article are in the last three paragraphs, appropriately enough. The statement by conventional, industrial Agribusiness advocates and lobbyists is repeated often enough, and with a chilling similarity to the GMO statements to make us believe them, just because we hear it non-stop. Interestingly, those statements are all about quantity, yield and production with no mention of nutrition, quality and health- of the soil, plants and the people eating them. One of the major disconnects of modern, industrial agribusiness is the intense focus on throughputs (chemicals) and outputs (production) that leads to profits, without acknowledging just what it is that the system is creating- food, the third most important ingredient in life, behind air and water. Food that should nourish, heal and energize us, not just keep us alive.

Conventional agriculture should be made to prove its mantra of being the only solution to feeding the world, seeing how at the same time it is failing to do just that by leaving 1 out of 7 of the current world population undernourished or starving. It is very curious to see how organic, local agriculture is dismissed out of hand as being an almost ridiculous fantasy notion, while there has been no proof offered at all to support its claim.

A rational, reasoned debate would be possible if there were a few studies that supported the industrial agribusiness’ position with the same quality of studies as those 98 showing organic, local agriculture can, in fact, feed us.

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Where Did My Favorite Heirloom Seeds Go?

My Favorite Heirloom Seeds


We often get phone calls and emails concerning a customer’s favorite variety of heirloom seed and why it is not offered on the website or catalog this year. There are several reasons that items come and go. Some will be back in a year or two, while unfortunately, others will probably not return.

Every variety that we offer is grown for us and undergoes a lot of scrutiny, inspection and quality selection. Established standards are reviewed for each variety to ensure that the crop is growing true to type, both in physical characteristics and fruit production. We look at many more things than just the fruit production, however.

Other characteristics such as germination time, leaf shape, blossom color and appearance, specific fruit shape, color and of course flavor all play a part in the selection process. If a variety does not meet our standards, it is pulled and put into the selection process, meaning it will be grown out, with each plant being hand inspected and selected for the physical characteristics, traits, and flavors that distinguish that particular heirloom variety. This selection process can take anywhere from 2 to 10 years. If it is determined that the selection process will take too long or does not have a good chance of success, a new source of seed is needed.

Other varieties require a multiple year grow out period to produce seed, such as the brassicas like cabbage, kale, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. The coconut geranium is very labor intensive to clean, as the seed is difficult to separate from the pod. Another example is the Cherokee Sweet Mint, which has been grown out for 2 1/2 years now. It has taken this long to produce a very small commercial quantity of seed for sale.

Something else we examine is sales history. If a variety is not a good seller, with a low sales volume, we may remove the item for a year or so and then reintroduce it. It is extremely difficult to keep fresh seed stock for such low volumes, as it is hard for growers to produce genetically viable seed in very small quantities, especially tomatoes and peppers. To prevent a genetic bottleneck, and the loss of desirable characteristics, a minimum population of a variety must be planted.

Some items just don’t meet our quality standards, or we find that they have too much genetic drift to enable a successful selection process in less than 10 years. In these cases we will usually try to find a variety with similar traits and characteristics to replace it.

When we remove an item or a variety, we try to replace them with new offerings. Sometimes we offer similar, but different varieties. Other times we will offer a new, never offered variety such as cauliflower. We’re constantly searching to find and offer really unique items not seen elsewhere, such as licorice. Some of the hard to find items that we do find are a bit more challenging to grow from seed, but with some patience can be done. A couple of examples are rosemary and lavender. Both of these have low germination rates, and a long germination period. The scent and flavor are well worth the time and effort required to grow them from seed!

A different example is corn, which is becoming increasingly hard to find due to GMO and hybrid contamination or cross pollination. We’re working with several different sources of heirloom, Open-pollinated corn to ensure a healthy, viable seed stock.

A few final reasons that we may not offer seed from year to year are crop failures, not enough seed produced to be able to sell, or damage to seed after harvesting or in shipment.

As you can see, there are many different reasons that an heirloom seed variety doesn’t reappear in the catalog or web site for the next year. We would rather remove the seed from sale then offer an older, out of date, lesser quality seed. This way you are assured of the highest quality, freshest seed possible.

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