In Depth

Is it possible to be self-sufficient? No, and that’s ok.

Posted on March 13, 2017

Is it possible to be self-sufficient? Is that even a goal someone should strive for? Here are out thoughts on those questions…

Is self-sufficiency possible? 

We love growing organic food and making things. There’s no way to express how rewarding it is to take a tiny seed the size of a freckle and nurture it all the way to harvest, producing delicious food and countless seeds for future growing seasons.

We grow lots of organic produce using regenerative/sustainable methods, like these heirloom winter squash. Our aim in doing so is to help grow a better world, not to become isolated from the world we want to make better. We have no interest in becoming self-sufficient, and don't believe that aim to be attainable.

We grow lots of organic produce using regenerative/sustainable methods, like these heirloom winter squash. Our aim in doing so is to help grow a better world, not to become isolated from the world we want to make better. We have no interest in becoming self-sufficient, and don’t believe that aim to be attainable.

We also feel a deep kinship with other organic/permaculture gardeners, farmers, and foragers. As such, we feel the need to provide some constructive criticism about certain language that we’d like to see permanently “weeded out” of our shared lexicon…

Please, please, stop talking about how you’re self-sufficient or marketing your company’s products/services towards making people self-sufficient. It’s not true — and it’s not possible.

No, you’re not self-sufficient and neither are we

If you’re reading this sentence, you’re not self-sufficient. The phone, tablet, or laptop you’re using is made of products mined in dozens of countries and assembled in factories across the world.

You likely didn’t grow, process, and weave the clothes you’re wearing.

Your truck? You probably didn’t make that by hand either. If you walk around your home, you’ll likely find that most of the things in it were not sourced or made on your property by your own hands.

And that’s ok!

The only human beings that have ever truly been completely self-sufficient independent of other human beings are those unfortunate souls who happened to be marooned on an isolated island and forced to fend for themselves with every waking hour. That’s not a good way to live and it’s not attractive to people on or off that proverbial island.

Your hunter-gatherer ancestors? No, they weren’t self-sufficient either. They likely lived in tight-knit communities of about 150 people, all of whom were highly dependent upon the group for their continued survival. We are social organisms, like it or not. 

Thus, in our opinion, the goal of permaculture or the organic food movement is to help build regenerative communities, economies, and ecologies, not to create social and economic isolation.

Just as plants thrive and are made resilient through interconnected, biodiverse ecosystems, so too are human beings and human communities. Friends, let’s aim for that target, and tailor our language accordingly.

What’s better than self-sufficiency? Deep engagement and thoughtful community. 

Now, let’s assume you don’t want to live in complete social isolation without computers and cell phones. Let’s also assume you don’t want to produce 100% of your food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and other technologies.

What’s a viable alternative to self-sufficiency? How about creating rich interconnected communities who are thoughtful about their relationship with nature (or which they’re a part) and each other (of which they’re a part).  

It’s perfectly reasonable to be more than a little disgusted by cheap products made by de facto slaves overseas, CAFO-grown meat, or the latest greatest combination of synthetic pesticides designed to make monoculture crops survive. The best way to combat these deficient answers is not alternative deficient answers or social disengagement, it’s deeper engagement. 

Create thoughtful alternative solutions that make your and other peoples’ lives better. Care about what you buy and how/where it was produced, doing your best to price in negative externalities. Invest in quality over quantity. Invest in people and companies doing things better/right — and try to build yourself into one of those people and develop one of those companies. 

Again, self-sufficiency isn’t possible or broadly enticing so let this NOT be your aim, just as it’s not ours.      

KIGI,

3 Comments

  • Reply
    Manu Sharma
    March 14, 2017 at 5:45 am

    Hello Aaron & Susan,

    I know a couple with two grown kids now who grow cotton on their homestead alongside other crops. They exchange it for cloth with a weaver in a nearby village who keeps a part as his compensation. (By the way, thirty years ago both were university professors in a city.)

    Fifty years ago, the village in which my father grew up, before he moved to a city, was pretty much self sufficient for almost all their needs. The only two products they purchased from outside was salt and soap.

    While as you correctly said, it’s hard to be self sufficient for all your needs, but if you’re able to produce enough for your family’s primary needs – food, fuel, clothing and shelter – that counts a lot.

    I believe that it is only when one is truly independent can one participate in a community with absolute honesty. For example, if I am dependent upon my community to provide food for my kids I will never be comfortable expressing an opinion that does not confirm with that of the majority. Forget about dissenting.

    • Reply
      Aaron von Frank
      March 14, 2017 at 10:22 am

      Thanks Manu! Yes, it was somewhat common for whole villages to be relatively self-sufficient. However, what I’m referring to in this article is the notion that a person living in 21st century America can become entirely self-sufficient, independent of external human communities. While it is technically possible, it would likely not be a good life or one that others would want to emulate. If our aim is to make the world better, we need live in a way that inspires others to adopt similar behaviors/thought processes. As Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

      Re participating in community with honesty, I would posit that we all have dependencies and needs, although we may exist at different tiers on Maslow’s hierarchy. I’m not sure those are avoidable or should be avoided. Truly honest participation in community may instead require that we are as aware of others’ needs as keenly as we are aware of our own. Structural separation (the gated community and private school effect) has profound impacts on our society’s ability to honestly make decisions that are truly in our enlightened self-interest.

      • Reply
        Manu Sharma
        March 16, 2017 at 2:42 am

        Aaron, I see that the term “self-sufficiency” seems to have become someone’s pet peeve. 🙂 But I can assure you that it’s based on a notion of the term that needs to be better informed.

        Self-sufficiency does not mean the proverbial man on island who must survive using only the material at his disposal. It does not mean abandonment of everything produced by society, even tools, rejection of community, all organisation and all social institutions.

        What you’re referring to is total self-sufficiency, an extreme end of the spectrum of what it means to become self-sufficient. Nobody wants that and nobody means total and absolute self sufficiency when they use that term today.

        There are degrees to which one be self-sufficient just as the degrees to which one can be dependent on others. Someone who can fix flat tire of her bicycle is self sufficient in that regard compared to a rider who has never done it and has no clue.

        Here’s how Google defines the term (with added emphasis): “needing no outside help in satisfying one’s basic needs, especially with regard to the production of food.” If you regard self sufficiency this way you will see no harm in the way permaculture community uses the term.

        Let’s say a family decides to live off grid at a farm. They produce much of their food and prevent rainwater from running off the farm. They are self sufficient in energy, food and water. That’s a wonderful thing regardless of the fact that they may have a couple of cars, a multitude of mobile devices and other industrial goods.

        “If our aim is to make the world better…”

        Personally, my aim is only to live according to my values. I’m done trying to make the world better. I’m done trying to educate someone or even become an example for others to follow. All are invited to my life and I’ll be happy to explain to those who are curious about it. But I’m not spending one more minute to try to convince those who do not wish to be convinced.

        “Knowledge of the truth lies not in proclaiming it but in living it.”
        – Book 2

        Back to self-sufficiency. I hold it as a fine aspiration and as E F Schumacher writes below in his forward to John Seymour’s “Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency”, self-sufficiency is needed to exercise our inborn creativity.

        We can do things for ourselves or we can pay others to do them for us. These are the two “systems” that support us; we might call them the “self-reliance system” and the “organization system”. The former tends to breed self-reliant men and women; the latter tends to produce organization men and women. All existing societies support themselves by a mixture of the two systems; but the proportions Vary.

        In the modern world, during the last hundred years or so, there has been an enormous and historically unique shift: away from self-reliance and towards organization. As a result people are becoming less self-reliant and more dependent than has ever been seen in history. They may claim to be more highly educated than any generation before them; but the fact remains that they cannot really do anything for themselves. They depend utterly on vastly complex organizations, on fantastic machinery, on larger and larger money incomes. What if there is a hold-up, a breakdown, a strike, or unemployment? Does the state provide all that is needed? In some cases, yes; in other cases, no. Many people fall through the meshes of the safety net; and what then? They suffer; they become dispirited, even despondent. Why can’t they help themselves? Generally, the answer is only too obvious: they would not know how to; they have never done it before and would not even know where to begin.

        John Seymour can tell us how to help ourselves, and in this book he does tell us. He is one of the great pioneers of self-sufficiency. Pioneers are not for imitation but for learning from. Should we all do what John Seymour has done and is doing? Of course not. Total self-sufficiency is as unbalanced and ultimately stultifying as total organization. The pioneers show us what can be done, and it is for every one of us to decide what should be done, that is to say, what we should do to restore some kind of balance to our existence.

        Should I try to grow all the food my family and I require? If I tried to do so, I probably could do little else. And what about all the other things we need? Should I try to become a Jack of all trades? At most of these trades I would be pretty incompetent and horribly inefficient. But to grow or make some things by myself, for myself: what fun, what exhilaration, what liberation from any feelings of utter dependence on organizations! What is perhaps even more: what an education of the real person! To be in touch with actual processes of creation. The inborn creativity of people is no mean or accidental thing; neglect or disregard it, and it becomes an inner source of poison. It can destroy you and all your human relationships; on a mass scale, it can – nay, it inevitably will – destroy society.

        Contrariwise, nothing can stop the flowering of a society that manages to give free rein to the creativity of its people – all its people. This cannot be ordered and organized from the top. We cannot look to government, but only to ourselves, to bring about such a state of affairs. […]

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In Depth

Fermentation: tend your microbial “garden” for better health

Posted on January 17, 2017
Fermentation: tend your microbial "garden" for better health thumbnail

In this fermentation article, we’re going to try to take a complex subject and boil it down into something accessible and useful. We hope our efforts translate into you learning something interesting and inspire you to incorporate fermented foods and beverages into your diet!

You are a microbial garden — and that’s a good thing 

Living things are complex. There was a time when human beings were thought of as single, solitary beings. Bacteria and all those other critters only visible under a microscope were gross, and if we wanted to be healthy, we needed to live in sterile, sanitized environments and eat sterile, sanitized foods.

Then various fields of science started to notice that we’re actually covered, inside and out, with a massive complexity of microbial lifeforms. In fact, for every human cell in your body, there are about 1.3 microbial cells. Yes, you’re outnumbered.

What are all these organisms and what do they do? Thankfully, there are very smart people with very advanced computational equipment who are devoting their lives to figuring out the answers to these questions. And what they’ve already found out is beyond amazing…

Gut biota: the garden of life inside your GI tract

You probably know that your immune system is your body’s defense system: the thing that keeps you from getting sick/infected and helps you recover when you are sick/infected. But where and what is the immune system? In your mind, can you picture your immune system like you can a heart or a brain?

No. The reason why is that your immune system is distributed, not centralized; layered, not single-function. And it’s not just your immune system – you’ve got help.

Neutrophil with anthrax.jpg

Roar! A neutrocyte (a type of white blood cell) engulfing anthrax bacteria. CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Even though your immune system is distributed, about 70% of it is found in your gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Given this high percentage, you might guess that what happens in your GI tract is rather important to your health and wellness. You’d be right.

The GI tract also happens to be home to the highest density of microorganisms in your body. If you’re healthy, there may be 100 trillion microbial cells and upwards of 1,000 different species of bacteria in your gut microbiome (collectively weighing about 2-3 pounds).

Are they good or bad? If your gut ecosystem is in equilibrium, the percentages should be about 85% good microbes to 15% “other” (which means either benign or bad). An interesting side note, this is the same ratio of beneficial insects to pest/benign insects in an healthy outdoor ecosystem (perhaps an emergent biological pattern?).   

Florida predatory stinkbut eating Harlequin bug

A Florida predatory stinkbug (“good” insect) eating a Harlequin bug (“bad” insect) at Tyrant Farms.

What are all those microbes doing in our GI tract? For starters, without your microbes, you couldn’t fend off pathogens, produce antibodies, or even access much of the nutrition in your food.

As Lita Proctor, Ph.D., the Human Microbiome Project’s program manager at the National Human Genome Research Institute says,

“Humans don’t have all the enzymes we need to digest our own diet… Microbes in the gut break down many of the proteins, lipids and carbohydrates in our diet into nutrients that we can then absorb. Moreover, the microbes produce beneficial compounds, like vitamins and anti-inflammatories that our genome cannot produce.”

The brain in your gut

Another recent and rather revolutionary finding is the “brain in your gut,” aka the enteric nervous system (ENS). As it turns out, what you eat – and what you feed to the microorganisms that digest your food for you – has a profound impact on your mood, health, and the way you think.

No, the brain in your gut doesn’t do math calculations or plan your garden, but it does communicate with the brain in your head via your central nervous system (CNS). Interestingly, the conversation is somewhat one-directional, since 90% of the fibers in the vagus nerve (the nerve that connects your gut brain to your head brain) carry information from your gut to your brain, but not the other way around.

Now, given the fact that the microbes in your gut make neuroactive compounds that your head brain uses to communicate and regulate mood (serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine), how might various compositional changes in your gut flora impact your state of mind?

One tantalizing result: scientists recently inoculated the guts of healthy mice with bacteria from depressed human beings. The result? The previously healthy mice began showing signs of depression and anxiety. But when the vagus nerve was snipped, thus cutting off communication between gut and brain, the bacteria no longer had an impact on the mice’s behavior. Woah.

How might your diet and microbes be impacting your thoughts and behavior?

Bad news then good news

If you’re reading this article, it means there’s a high likelihood that you eat the “Western diet” characterized by lots of refined sugar, highly processed starches, and “bad” fats. It also means you have high levels of synthetic pesticide residue in/on your food.

If you’re looking for a perfect recipe to be overweight, sick, diseased, and reliant on increasingly expensive healthcare to stay functional/alive, then the Western diet is a good match.

Fast food 01 ebru.jpg

It’s truly a mystery as to why everyone is sick and overweight… Burger and fries photo by ebru – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, Link

The Western diet has also wreaked havoc on the non-human part of you: especially, your gut microbiota. Research has shown that the Western diet starves or kills many of the species of good bacteria you need for optimal health while encouraging the bad microbes to over-proliferate.

Improve your microbial garden and your microbial garden can improve you

The good news is that by learning about these problems and how to fix them, you can start choosing what you feed to your gut microbes more wisely. When you do, you might be shocked at the difference it makes in how often you get sick, how you feel, your mood, your mental clarity, energy levels, etc..

Perhaps the single best way to quickly and dramatically improve the quantity and diversity of beneficial bacteria in your gut flora is to consume high quality fermented foods/beverages.   

veggies for sauerkraut - probiotics

Cool season, organic garden veggies chopped and ready to be made into sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is one of the best fermented probiotics available. There are hundreds of delicious fermented foods and beverages you can make at home, and we highly recommend getting The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz to learn how..

As a study published in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology concluded:

…we argue that the consumption of fermented foods may be particularly relevant to the emerging research linking traditional dietary practices and positive mental health. The extent to which traditional dietary items may mitigate inflammation and oxidative stress may be controlled, at least to some degree, by microbiota. It is our contention that properly controlled fermentation may often amplify the specific nutrient and phytochemical content of foods, the ultimate value of which may associated with mental health; furthermore, we also argue that the microbes (for example, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria species) associated with fermented foods may also influence brain health via direct and indirect pathways.

Susan’s (as in Susan The Tyrant) sister is Dr. Lisa Durette, MD, DFAPA, a Board Certified Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, and the Medical Director at Healthy Minds in Las Vegas, NV. This topic area is of particular interest to her as well, so we thought we’d add her statement:

“The American Psychiatric Association recognizes the connection between mood and food. Several researchers conducted symposia at the 2014 annual meeting highlighting the evidence between psychiatric illness severity and diet. In my own practice, I have found the benefit of discussing daily diet with my patients-and the benefits from dietary changes on mood. For example, eliminating frequent fast food consumption as well as cola, and the addition of probiotic rich fermented foods, has led to reduction in anxiety symptoms in some of my patients more so than medication intervention.”

What Is Fermentation?

Simply put, fermentation is the chemical breakdown of a given substance by bacteria, yeasts, or other microorganisms.

Fermentation is not a new hipster discovery, and you don’t need a beard or skinny jeans to enjoy fermented foods/beverages.

In fact, humans were “intentionally” fermenting their food at least as far back as 10,000 years ago. Archaeologist unearthing the Neolithic village of Jiahu in Henan province in China found that a mixed fermented beverage made of rice, honey, and fruit was being produced and consumed there.

Long before that, our pre-agricultural ancestors were likely to have benefited from “unintentional” fermentation in various wild fruits, veggies, and honey. A funny non-human example of this is animals in South Africa getting drunk off of fermented marula fruit (see video below):


  

Types of Fermentation

The intentional fermentation techniques that human civilizations around the world have developed can generally be categorized as follows:

  1. textured vegetable protein / example: tempe
  2. high salt amino acid-rich sauces / example: soy sauce
  3. lactic acid fermentation / examples: sauerkraut, cucumber pickles, olives, yogurt, milk kefir
  4. alcoholic fermentation / examples: wine and beer
  5. acetic acid & vinegar fermentation / example: apple cider vinegar, kombucha
  6. alkaline fermentation / example: Japanese natto
  7. leavened breads / example: sourdough bread

There are some types of fermented foods/beverages that fall into multiple categories. One thing that all fermented foods/beverages have in common is that they are “probiotics.” Some are also “prebiotics.”

Fermentation. One of our favorite summer beverages is tepache, aka Mexican pineapple beer. We make it from the skins of our homegrown pineapples and our neighbor's honey - it's delicious, slightly alcoholic, and very pleasing to our gut flora (so they tell us).

One of our favorite summer beverages is tepache, aka Mexican pineapple beer. We make it from the skins of our homegrown pineapples and our neighbor’s honey – it’s delicious, slightly alcoholic, and very pleasing to our gut flora (so they tell us).

Probiotics and Prebiotics: What’s the Difference?

  • Probiotics already have beneficial microorganisms in them, usually beneficial bacteria. Think of probiotics as an “inoculant” you can use to help establish and maintain colonies of beneficial bacteria in your digestive system.
  • Prebiotics are relatively sterile fibrous carbohydrates that your body can’t digest, but help feed the beneficial microorganisms already in your gut. For example, fiber found in whole foods (whole grains, veggie & fruit skins) are excellent at feeding/promoting the beneficial bacteria already in your gut.
Whole foods like this anthocyanin-rich napa are great building blocks for kimchi, which is amazing for your gut health.

Whole foods like this anthocyanin-rich napa are great building blocks for kimchi, which is amazing for your gut health.

7 recommendations for improving your gut flora (and health)

Now that you know a bit more about the link between the health of the microbial communities in your gut and your own health plus the benefits of fermented foods/beverages, we’d like to leave you with these seven tips:

1. Eat a diversity of homemade fermented foods/beverages.

Nope, this doesn’t mean go buy a bunch of unregulated pills which claim to have probiotics and prebiotics in them. Make or buy actual living fermented foods or beverages. Sauerkraut, kimchi, pickled daikons, kombucha, tempeh… just to name a few.

Consuming a diversity of fermented foods and beverages ensures you’re getting quality fermented products with high beneficial bacteria and yeast counts, and you’re introducing a diversity of different species of beneficial microorganisms. Just as in a forest or other ecosystem, biodiversity in your gut flora is a good thing.

2. Learn to make fermented foods/drinks that you and your family enjoy.

Yes, food is medicine, but it shouldn’t taste like medicine. We LOVE the way our ferments taste, not just the way they make us feel.

There are thousands of fermented goodies you can make. The best book we know of to teach you how-to’s and useful recipes is The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz. And for Pete’s sake, get a good German crock pot, which will more than pay for itself after a few batches of sauerkraut.

Some of our favorite fermented recipes we’ve published on Tyrant Farms:

3. Eat prebiotics in your diet.

Eat whole foods, not refined/processed foods. Basically, picture a fast food “value meal” – yeah, don’t eat any of that stuff.

Meals made with whole grains, tubers, fruits, veggies, herbs, roots – these foods help feed the beneficial microorganisms in your GI tract. Conversely, processed foods encourage pathogenic microorganisms which directly impact how you think & feel, and your body’s ability to fight microorganisms that cause sickness and disease.

Since the most commonly consumed processed food in the US is white bread, here’s a 5 minute whole wheat artisanal bread recipe that will rock your world (and thrill your beneficial gut microbes).

4. Use organic foods in your fermented products (and non-fermented products).

The American Academy of Pediatrics noted that by switching to organic diets, children were shown to drastically decrease the amount of pesticides in their urine. We’re not sure if there is much research out there as to how various types of neonicotinoid, pyrethroid, and organophosphate pesticides that are commonly found in conventional foods (but not allowed in organic production) might impact your gut flora, but our guess is the answer is not good, especially for babies/children undergoing rapid development (and microbiome development).

So, if at all possible, switch to organic foods.

5. No more sodas, diet or otherwise.

As you probably know, regularly drinking sugar water isn’t great for your health, so we won’t bother to go into the reasons why here. What you may not know is that drinking diet soda probably isn’t any better.

It appears that the artificial sweeteners in diet soda alter your gut microbiota such that you may end up with: 1) increased intestinal permeability, and 2) glucose intolerance (e.g. higher than normal blood glucose levels).

This may explain why people who regularly drink diet sodas actually put on weight without increasing their caloric intake. (More on the topic of diet sodas.))

6. Only use antibiotics if absolutely necessary.

Got a cold or flu? Truly sorry about that. But antibiotics can’t do a thing about it – they kill bacteria, not viruses.

If you take antibiotics every time you get sick, you’re simply increasing the odds that your body becomes a breeding factory for antibiotic-resistant pathogenic bacteria, aka superbugs. Instead, let your body heal and inform your immunological memory, allowing it to better fight off bugs in the future.

If you want to reduce the severity and duration of your cold or flu, get some high quality elderberry syrup.

7. Expecting a baby? Plan for vaginal birth & breast feeding.

When/how does your microbiome form? As it turns out, having a vaginal birth inoculates your baby with a range of important beneficial bacteria that immediately inform/charge up its immune system. 

Studies are conclusively showing that people who were born via c-section have an elevated lifetime risk of various metabolic and immune diseases, so if at all possible have a vaginal birth… or take these measures if you have to have a c-section.

The same thing is true with the living milk that your body produces for your baby. Breastfeeding is a beautiful, essential step to ensuring your baby has optimal health – don’t let anyone shame you into thinking or doing otherwise.

Now go forth, ferment, and nurture your microbial gardens! The human parts of your body will be well-served for your efforts.

 

Fermentation: how to tend your microbial garden for better health. #microbiome #guthealth #probiotics #prebiotics #tyrantfarms

If you found this post about fermentation and your microbiome useful, please pin it!

 

KIGI,

Get fermenting with other articles from Tyrant Farms:

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    Gardening

    Winter gardening with low tunnels

    Posted on January 9, 2017
    Winter gardening with low tunnels thumbnail

    For most areas of the United States, winter gardening is easy to do and full of delicious rewards. 

    We live in Agricultural Zone 7B on the outskirts of Greenville, SC, at the base of the Appalachian Mountains. This area is considered a moderate/average climate region: not too hot, not too cold. Goldilocks would like it here.

    We love all-season gardening, including winter gardening, since it gives us the opportunity to taste each season. We can tell the time of year based on what’s on the dinner table. This practice provides quite a bit of dietary diversity, while allowing us to more richly experience earth’s journey around the sun.

    Winter gardening: Baskets of cool weather garden veggies keep us feeling great even when the weather outside is frightful.

    Baskets of cool weather garden veggies keep us feeling great even when the weather outside is frightful.

    Many gardeners actually enjoy fall and winter gardening more than spring and summer gardening. Why? Plant diseases and pest insects are virtually non-existent. Plus, if you live in an area that gets rain once every 7-10 days like we do, you probably won’t need to irrigate at all once your cool weather garden plants are older than shallow-rooted seedlings.

    Winter gardening: We have many mouths and duck bills to feed, so growing edible plants year round is helpful.

    We have many mouths and duck bills to feed, so growing edible plants year round is helpful.

    Resilience: The Key to a Successful Garden In Any Season

    With extreme weather becoming the new norm, extreme cold, hot, drought, floods, etc. are becoming more and more common experiences for gardeners and farmers alike. If your farm’s or garden’s productivity is directly tied to what’s happening outside, you tend to notice these things a bit more than the average person.

    Over the past few years, we have personally experienced many weather extremes: an extreme 150 year drought that brought forest fires; hail and nearby tornadoes; temps well over 100 degrees; and in the winter, temps that we could count on one hand.

    Winter gardening: It feels good to be able to walk outside on a cold winter day and pick mounds of gorgeous, healthy food.

    It feels good to be able to walk outside on a cold winter day and pick mounds of gorgeous, healthy food.

    For gardeners and farmers, this means we all need to place an increased focus on designing “resilience” into our systems year round. In our opinion, the four critical factors to designing a resilient agroecosystem are:

    1. Soil health

    Probably the most important factor is building biologically active soil that is teeming with beneficial, microbial life. Combinations of cover crops, mulches, hot/Berkeley compost, and/or compost teas are the methods we use to promote biological soil health.

    Healthy soil is critical for feeding your plants, nutrient & water cycling, and keeping pathogenic microorganisms under control. Conversely, unhealthy plants fed synthetic nitrogen fertilizer are magnets for pest insects and disease-causing pathogens.

    2. Plant biodiversity

    If one crop fails, you’ve got plenty of others to fall back on. Plus, it’s been proven again and again and again that plant biodiversity equates to better system performance and the ability of that system to endure extreme weather events.

    3. Plant selection/breeding 

    Selecting plants that are both ideally suited to your changing growing conditions/climate region and “tough” plants that can survive various environmental stresses and extremes.

    That means:

    4. Technology 

    You’ve probably noticed that humans are very good toolmakers. Gardeners might not have to be as high tech as a large scale organic farm operator, but using technologies that help you understand, plan, design, and respond to your specific growing and climate conditions, can help your garden be more resilient.

    Something we take for granted today that would have seemed like magic 100 years ago – the ability to predict freezing weather, storms, etc. – can allow you to take protective measures in advance that can save your garden plants.

    Winter gardening: Under that pile of snow is a low tunnel with a pile of Napa cabbage under it.

    Under that pile of snow is a low tunnel protecting a pile of Napa cabbage.

    Winter Gardening: Selecting The Right Plants

    There are plenty of delicious garden plants you can select for your fall or winter garden that can easily survive a deep freeze. The most cold-hardy winter greens we grow are:

    • spinach
    • kale (especially varieties bred for extreme cold tolerance)
    • cilantro
    • chickweed
    • claytonia
    • parsley
    • Austrian winter peas

    We’ve had all these survive uncovered down to about 10°F.

    There are also plenty of cool weather plants that will also grow throughout the winter in sub-freezing temps that would otherwise kill them IF you provide them with additional protection. (This is where new technology can really help.) This plant list could probably include hundreds of plants, but here are some examples of familiar ones:

    • root veggies (beets, turnips, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas) *some of these can technically survive sustained freezing temps, but they’ll die back to the roots and go dormant
    • broccoli
    • bok choy
    • cabbage
    • chicory
    • rapini
    • lettuce
    • mustard greens
    • komatsuna
    • arugula
    Winter gardening: An attractive mix of green veggies harvested in early January: bok choy, broccoli, Napa cabbage, komatsuna. Without protection from sub-freezing temps, this harvest would not have been possible.

    An attractive mix of green veggies harvested in early January: bok choy, broccoli, Napa cabbage, komatsuna. Without protection from sub-freezing temps, this harvest would not have been possible.

    Winter Gardening Using Low Tunnels

    Since we like to grow a wide diversity of plants on both of the above lists in our winter garden, we use low tunnels.

    Winter gardening: Low tunnels on the side of our home.

    Low tunnels on the side of our home.

    Low tunnels are affordable, reusable, and incredibly simple to set up and take down. They’re basically wire caging that you stick into the ground then cover with special polyethylene plastic sheets. We’ve had our tunnels and polyethylene for over three years and they work as well as the day we bought them.

    If you want to buy low tunnels for fall or winter gardening, here are the ones we’d recommend: 

    Small Garden Lowtunnels:

    If you want to buy everything you need in a single kit, this is a good one. It’s 9 ft long x 2 ft wide x 18″ tall. If you only have one or two garden beds to cover, this is probably ideal.

    Large Garden Lowtunnels:

    If you have a large garden with many beds and/or want to make tunnels with custom sizes, you’re better off buying individual “parts” and making your own tunnels using:

    • 6 mil clear greenhouse film (this is what we use). *Note: You can’t just go to Lowes and get this type of plastic; most plastic sheets will not work and/or will break down very quickly. This is a type of polyethylene made specifically for greenhouse/outdoor applications. 
    • We’re going to retire the square wire frames and get these taller hoops instead. We love the height of them – many of our veggies get smashed up against the roof of our relatively short tunnels now. We also wish we’d originally gotten round hoops like these to better keep water and/or snow from accumulating on the top of our current setup.
    Winter gardening: Low tunnels on a terraced hill in our back yard. These look downright toasty here, but...

    Low tunnels on a terraced hill in our back yard. These look downright toasty here, but…

    Winter gardening: Same angle, same tunnels, buried under a blanket of snow. Brr.

    Same angle, same tunnels, buried under a blanket of snow. Brr. In this photo, you can also see why we wish we’d gotten round hoops (listed above) instead of the square frames.

    Tips For Using Low Tunnels In Your Garden

    Here are some helpful tips and considerations when buying or using low tunnels:

    Round or square caging for low tunnels? 

    We opted for square caging since we figured it would allow us to grow more plants right out to the edge of the tunnels due to the increased roof height relative to round hoops. In hindsight, we wish we’d chosen round hoops.

    The reason: we think round hoops would be far less likely to allow water and snow to pool on top, which can cause them to collapse.

    Being careful about temps inside your low tunnels… 

    Temperatures inside your low tunnels will be anywhere from 5-15°F warmer than the outside temps, depending on the weather conditions.

    • If it’s sunny out, the temperature differential will be in the upper end of that spectrum;
    • If it’s cloudy or nighttime, it will be in the lower end.

    When should you remove the plastic covering on your low tunnels?

    • Any time the daytime temps are going to be over 55°F for several hours (especially if it’s sunny out), you’ll need to remove the polyethylene. Just peel back from one side and bunch it on the ground on the other side. If you don’t remove the polyethylene, the hot interior temps are going to stress your plants. If this keeps happening, you’ll cause your plants to think it’s spring and they’ll go to bolt early.
    • Any time it’s going to rain, even if temps are going to be in the 30s.

    How to weight down the sides of your low tunnels: 

    You’ll need to use something to hold down the outer edges of the polyethylene. This doesn’t have to be fancy – 5 pounds rocks will do. Don’t go too light on your weights or wind gusts will blow your polyethylene sheets off, leaving the plants underneath exposed.

    Will low tunnels work in cold climate regions?

    If you live in Maine or Alaska, can you grow food in low tunnels throughout the winter? Probably not – at least not without some modifications.

    If you’re desperate to grow green edible plants in the winter in these frigid regions, you’re probably better off growing in a greenhouse or inside your home under grow lights (grow lights are also great for growing microgreens).

    However, you might be able to use soil cables in your low tunnels to make this system work even in extremely cold climates. The heat inside the tunnels would also help melt the snow that might otherwise bury the tunnels. If you’ve got experience winter gardening in extremely cold climates, we’d love for you to weigh in down below in the comments!

    Winter gardening: A patch of Napa cabbage growing under low tunnels.

    A patch of Napa cabbage growing under low tunnels.

    Good luck with your winter gardening! Questions? Ask us in the comment section.

    KIGI,

    Other fall and winter gardening articles you might enjoy: 

    8 Comments

    • Reply
      New green thumb
      September 20, 2020 at 11:32 pm

      Hi! Live near the Pacific Southwest and just started growing turmeric and ginger from the store bought Oraganic veggies themselves and it seems it’s taken forever for them to grow. Now finally I started seeing a leaf from the turmeric grow from the ground about 1/2 a Ft. from the ginger plant that now has about 7-8 leaves, but now they seem to be browning. I’ve been watering them daily sue to the intense heat we’ve been having. Wondering how much longer will these plants take to harvest? Also I’m trying to grow green onions in the same method? Please anyone? Thanks for your response

      • Reply
        Aaron von Frank
        September 24, 2020 at 11:03 am

        Hi! In our experience, it takes quite a while for dormant ginger or turmeric rhizomes to leaf out – probably about 6 weeks under ideal conditions. It sounds like you may be over-watering your plants and causing the rhizomes/roots to rot, which would explain the brown leaves. Don’t water them for a few days to give them and the soil time to dry out. Then only water 1-2 times per week at most. Also, ginger is a bit more sensitive to really intense heat and sun than turmeric is so afternoon shade (or shade cloth) may be advisable in your growing zone. When you harvest either is a bit subjective. You can harvest “baby” ginger or turmeric much earlier than mature roots. Even in our cooler Zone 7b climate, we’ve found that turmeric can overwinter in-ground here with a thick layer of mulch on top, so we’ve started leaving ours in the ground and just harvesting it when needed. Ginger rhizomes don’t overwinter outdoors here, but would probably do fine in your zone. Lots more info about growing ginger and turmeric here: https://www.tyrantfarms.com/how-to-grow-organic-turmeric-and-ginger-anywhere/

    • Reply
      Chris Reed
      August 9, 2020 at 2:54 am

      I like

    • Reply
      ngrrsn
      October 28, 2017 at 12:20 pm

      Hi! Wow! I wish I lived as far south as you do. I live in the Pacific Northwest. The biggest problem we have isn’t cold; it is day after day of 30 degree temps and rain and clouds. Least number of days of sun in North America. 🙂 Here is my question; isn’t sunlight, and not just hours of light but intensity/wavelengths, critical to growth? That is, what can you grow in areas where there are limited/short hours of sun and cloudy days? I can’t afford greenhouses, heaters, lights, etc….they would have to thrive under low tunnels. Also a question about your section on temps; I tried some 6 ml tunnels and found temps could jump 20 to 30 degrees above outside temps, but at night crash to pretty close to ambient temps. Also soil temps (critical for nutrient uptake dependent on bacteria action) may warm up a little, but it is sort of like floating a glass of warm water in the ocean — the ocean is so vast the glass water stays close to the temp of the ocean and doesn’t warm up. All this has been so frustrating when I see wonderful pics like yours. Can’t help but think I must be missing something!

    • Reply
      Tina Hua
      January 10, 2017 at 1:09 pm

      Your article and pictures are very inspiring. Do you prefer to plant from seeds or baby plants bought from store? Thank you!

      • Reply
        Aaron von Frank
        January 12, 2017 at 6:49 pm

        Tina: Our first couple seasons gardening, we bought starts. The problem with that is: 1) you’re limited to what the stores have which is quite limited and usually somewhat “vanilla” varieties, 2) a packet of quality organic seeds will cost you $3 and (depending on the variety) will contain dozens or hundreds of seeds that you can grow into mature plants. Compare that to the cost of a single nursery plant, and it makes a lot of sense to start from seed. Plus, we LOVE seeing seeds come to life and bringing them all the way to maturity. It’s a magical experience that never gets old.

        • Reply
          Tina Hua
          January 13, 2017 at 10:27 am

          Yes, that makes perfect sense. I will try to grow some veggies myself this year. Thank you!

          • Aaron von Frank
            January 18, 2017 at 12:51 pm

            You’re very welcome! Good luck and reach out any time you have questions. Thankfully, spring is right around the corner (which means no low tunnels necessary) but this setup really comes in handy during the cold months.

    Leave a Reply

    Gardening

    How to grow citrus in pots (in any climate zone)

    Posted on January 3, 2017
    How to grow citrus in pots (in any climate zone) thumbnail

    Find out how to grow citrus in pots, to open a world of new, unusual, and shockingly delicious citrus varieties you won’t find in grocery stores!

    We can’t understate how much we love citrus. For years, one of our favorite experiences was going down to visit family in Tampa, FL, for Christmas. The neighborhood where our family lives was chock full of large citrus trees and winter was the season the fruit would ripen.

    Thankfully, our family’s neighbors had so much citrus that they were more than happy to let us stuff our faces, otherwise we’d likely be serving time for theft and trespassing. Tangerines, oranges, kumquats, grapefruits… walking down the alleys and streets was like an all-you-can-eat citrus buffet.

    Citrus greening disease: the end of citrus as we know it?

    Over the years, many of those trees began to die, including the ones in my grandmother’s yard. The culprit: citrus greening disease, a pathogen caused by a bacteria that is carried tree-to-tree by Asian citrus psyllids (a tiny flying insect).

    Citrus greening caused widespread damage and citrus crop failure throughout Asia, where it originated. Then it spread to Africa. Now it’s wreaking havoc on Florida’s $11 billion citrus industry, with nearly 90% of the citrus trees in the state infected.

    How bad is it? In 2004, Florida produced 240 million boxes of oranges. In 2016, it produced about 70 million boxes and in 2021 it produced 52 million boxes. This downward trend is expected to continue.

    Unfortunately, citrus greening has recently spread to citrus farms on the west coast as well.

    How are farmers dealing with citrus greening?

    There are no known cures for citrus greening, and until recently, there were no known resistant citrus cultivars. Researchers at University of Florida have recently bred a mandarin orange variety named ‘Bingo’ that is resistant, so there’s hope that conventional breeding can provide an answer.

    Experiments are also underway with antiobiotic treatments and genetically engineered citrus, but these methods aren’t too popular with consumers.

    In the meantime, many citrus growers are engaging in all out war on the psyllids with various types of neonicotinoid, pyrethroid, and organophosphate pesticides. As always happens, the target insect — in this case psyllids — have begun developing resistance to the insecticides used, so new ones — or new pesticide combinations — have to constantly be developed.

    Unfortunately, synthetic pesticides don’t tend to discriminate between good insect or bad insect (or reptile, amphibian, bird, or farm worker). 

    Good news: you can grow your own citrus — even in cooler climates! 

    We live in ag zone 7b on the outskirts of Greenville, SC. Our winters are far too cold to grow nearly all citrus varieties in-ground (there are a few exceptions like Yuzu), but we can grow citrus in pots. This allows us to move our citrus trees to protect them when the weather dips too cold. 

    Even if you live in a colder climate region than ours, you can still grow your own citrus — and grow it organically, like we do. Growing your own citrus allows you to grow unusual and delicious varieties and to take advantage of other edible parts of a citrus tree, such as their flower petals. 

    how to grow citrus in pots: Variegated Pink Eureka Lemon

    Our ‘variegated pink eureka’ lemon fruit (left) and blossoms (right). A secondary harvest you can get from all citrus: flower petals. Read: How to grow and make lemon blossom tea (and other citrus).

    Perhaps the biggest benefit of NOT living in a warm region? No risk of citrus greening, since the Asian citrus psyllid can only live in climates where temperatures don’t stay well below freezing for long periods of time. (Even in our mild climate, we have winter nights that stay in the low 20s and teens followed by days that don’t go above freezing.) 

    What citrus varieties should you grow?

    There are seemingly countless citrus varieties to choose from. The varieties you choose are going to likely come down to:

    1. What types of citrus you like best, both for fresh eating or for recipes. 
    2. How many citrus trees you plan to go (more citrus = more variety). 
    how to grow citrus in pots: One of our neighbor's honeybees foraging nectar from our Buddha's hand citron flowers.

    Buddha’s hand citron certainly wouldn’t be our first choice of citrus to grow, but we have two in our collection since we grow lots of citrus. From left to right: 1. One of our honeybees foraging nectar from Buddha’s hand citron flowers; 2. A ripening Buddha’s hand citron; 3. A harvest of Buddha’s hand citron fruit. 

    Our potted “citrus grove” started off innocently enough with a single Meyer lemon tree. (If you love lemons, we highly recommend getting a Meyer above any other variety.) Over the years, our collection has grown to include the varieties listed below (with links to where we bought them):

    1. Lemon, ‘Meyer’ (2x) – Hands down the best tasting lemon we know of. When fully ripe, the skin is almost orange and is so mild and sweet you can eat them whole, skin and all. 

    Our first Meyer lemon came from Lowe’s, but we’ve gotten many of our citrus from Hirts and have always had a great experience – large trees & very healthy.

    how to grow citrus in pots: Satsumas. It's awesome being able to walk out our front door and stuff our faces on these and other citrus varieties.

    The Meyer Lemon plant that started it all. When you have a pile of ducks eggs and a pile of fresh Meyer lemons (right), there’s only one thing to do: duck egg Meyer lemon curd!

    2. Lemon, pink variegated ‘Eureka’ – Our 3rd or 4th citrus tree, this one was a gift. Gorgeous variegated foliage and fruit skin, with light pink pulp. Perfect for truly pink lemonade! 

    We’d recommend Hirts if you want to buy one.

    3. Blood orange, ‘Moro’ – The most delicious oranges we’ve ever eaten. Picked early in the season, they taste like really good tangerines. By the time they’ve fully ripened (their skin blushes red/purple) they have strong notes of sweet blackberries. 

    Our Moro came from Four Winds Growers, another great place to get citrus.

    4. Satsuma Mandarin, ‘China 7’ – One of the more cold hardy varieties we grow. The perfect tangerine/satsuma flavor and incredibly prolific. 

    We bought her from McKenzie Farms in Johnsonville SC, but Four Winds Growers (‘Owari’ is the closest variety to ours and is really cold hardy) is another good source.

    5. Makrut lime (aka Thai lime) – We got a makrut lime for the wonderfully flavorful leaves (a key spice in Southeast Asian cuisine) but were pleasantly surprised by the insanely flavorful fruit and flower petals. (Read: How to grow and use makrut limes) 

    A makrut lime was on our “want” list for a while and we had a hard time finding it reasonably priced. We finally found it at McKenzie Farms, but you can also buy them from Thai Greenhouse. 

    how to grow citrus in pots: Makrut limes. If you’ve ever experienced a delightful lime-like zing in Asian cuisine, there’s a good chance it was from a Makrut lime leaf. A single leaf added to soup packs an amazing punch. The fruit is intense, and we enjoy making it into limeade.

    Makrut limes. If you’ve ever experienced a delightful lime-like zing in Asian cuisine, there’s a good chance it was from a Makrut lime leaf. A single leaf added to soup packs an amazing punch. The fruit is intense, and we enjoy making it into limeade.

    6. Kumquat, ‘Nagami’– A small-fruited citrus that you eat skin and all. We LOVE kumquats, but not everyone is as crazy about them as we are. 

    We don’t remember where we bought our kumquat tree from, but both Brighter Blooms and Four Winds Growers carry them.

    7. Australian blood lime – An unusual variety. It’s similar to a finger lime (aka citrus caviar), from which it was bred.

    Ours was a gift, but it came from logees. 

    8. Calamondin orange (aka calamansi) – Very cold-tolerant and produces huge quantities of small 1-2″ fruit. (Read: All about calamondins with recipe roundup)

    This was our first tree from Hirts and probably one of our favorites. 

    9. Citron, ‘Buddha’s hand’ – All pith, no pulp? Yep. The most visually striking citrus fruit we know of, but certainly not one for fresh eating. Makes wonderful candies, teas, simple syrups, and zest though. 

    Our Buddha was a gift, but Sheila’s Tropicals and Four Winds Growers both carry them.

    how to grow citrus in pots: Buddha's hand citron candy. Alt.

    Mmm, Buddha’s hand citron candy.

    10. Limequat – Love key limes? Love kumquats? We sure do. And we like the hybrid child the two lovebirds produced: limequats, which you can eat skin and all. These make killer desserts. 

    You can buy a limequat tree from Hirt’s.

    how to grow citrus in pots: Makrut limes. If you've ever experienced a delightful lime-like zing in Asian cuisine, there's a good chance it was from a Makrut lime leaf. A single leaf added to soup packs an amazing punch. The fruit is intense, and we enjoy making it into limeade.

    Some of our citrus in various stages of ripeness. Left to Right: 1. unripe ‘Moro’ blood oranges; 2. ripe ‘China 7’ Satsuma; 3. unripe Meyer lemons; 4. ripe ‘Nagami’ kumquats.

    Citrus comparison chart:

    Here’s a handy citrus comparison chart we made (of the varieties we grow) that might help you decide what citrus to get as you start building your citrus collection:
    citrus comparison chart: how to grow citrus in pots

    How to grow citrus in pots in moderate climate zones

    We live in the Upstate region of South Carolina, e.g. we can’t just plunk a citrus tree in the ground and expect it to be happy where we live. Our winters are relatively mild, but temps in the 20s, teens, and even single digits are fairly common. 

    That means that all of our citrus plants are grown in pots. After 10+ years of growing citrus this way, we’ve learned quite a bit about how to keep them happy, healthy, and productive. 

    During that time, we’ve never used a single drop of synthetic fertilizer or synthetic pesticide, e.g. we use organic growing methods. 

    If you’d also like to grow citrus in pots using organic methods, here’s how

    1. Pot selection:

    Factors to consider:

    a. Plastic or clay pots?

    We started with clay pots, but they weighed so much and would break far easier than plastic/resin pots. So, over time we’ve transitioned all of our large citrus plants into ~20″ x 20″ plastic pots.

    We’ve also noticed that terra cotta pots seem to cause moisture loss much faster than plastic pots, which means increased watering requirements.

    b. Pot shape

    We learned this one the hard way… Do NOT get vase-shaped pots that get smaller at the top. When you have to remove the trees for root pruning or to be “potted up” into larger pots, a vase shaped pot (larger on the bottom, smaller on top) makes tree removal much more difficult. (We’ll discuss more about root pruning citrus below.)

    Instead get pots that are either not angled at all OR larger at the top and smaller at the base. 

    A happy makrut lime growing in a perfectly-shaped citrus pot.

    A happy makrut lime growing in a perfectly-shaped citrus pot.

    c. Pot size

    Pot sizes are notoriously difficult to determine due to different dimensions and lack of standardization. (See GrowJourney’s Garden pot sizes decoded.)

    We prefer to give our plants a lot of room to grow, even when they’re relatively small. Minimum pot size might be a 5 gallon pot for a sapling, but within a year, we’ll pot it up into a 15+ gallon pot.

    The final pot size for our citrus trees is 25 gallons (usually about 22″ in diameter), like this attractive pot. If 25 gallons is too big or heavy for you, don’t despair – your citrus will be fine in smaller pots, but you’ll need to do more regular root pruning, watering, and fertilizing, especially as the plant gets older/larger.

    d. Pot holes

    Often times, the large plastic pots do not come with holes in the bottom. They have to either be drilled or the pre-carved “knock-out” holes have to be popped out.

    Make sure any pot you use has holes so that the pots can drain, otherwise you’ll end up with boggy anaerobic conditions in your pot, which will soon kill/drown your citrus plants!

    • Drainage Plates – In the cold months, if you’re going to have your citrus indoors, you’re going to need to have drainage plates under your pots. Plan accordingly.
    • When to Buy – You can get pots really affordably in the late summer-fall when nurseries and garden centers are trying to get rid of their summer inventory. Buy your pots out of season, and you’ll save a bunch of money!
    how to grow citrus in pots: Probably our favorite fresh-eating citrus that we grow: blood oranges. These are a little early in the season before the full red color has developed. We zest them before eating, to get a secondary product. We would not recommend consuming the zest of non-organic citrus.

    Probably our favorite fresh-eating citrus that we grow: Moro blood oranges. These are a little early in the season before the full red color has developed. We zest them before eating, to get a secondary product. We would not recommend consuming the zest of non-organic citrus.

    2. Soil mix

    Citrus needs well-draining, yet highly fertile soil. Many new gardeners don’t realize that you can’t simply put garden soil into a pot and expect plants to grow well – the soil will soon turn into an impenetrable brick.

    That’s why “garden soil” and “potting soil” are sold separately at garden centers. If you’re a beginner, simply buy organic potting mix (FoxFarm offers an excellent potting mix) for your citrus, then add fertility as recommended below in #4.

    Or if you want to make your own potting soil own, you’ll want to do something like this:

    • 5 parts pine bark fines;
    • 1 part sphagnum peat OR coconut coir;
    • 1-2 parts perlite;
    • 1 part good compost (hot/Berkeley compost) and/or worm castings.

    We also put a 1-2″ layer of wood chips on top of the soil surface in each pot to help with moisture retention, soil temp maintenance, and to encourage beneficial microbial activity. 

    3. Watering

    The consistency of your soil in each pot should be like a wrung-out sponge: damp, but not wet. Too wet, and the roots can’t get the oxygen they need to function, and anaerobic/pathogenic bacteria start to proliferate. Light, regular watering is better than infrequent heavy watering.

    • Warm Weather – In the hot sunny days of summer, potted citrus will need to be watered at least twice a day.
    • Cool Weather – In the cooler months when temps are in the 40s-60s, we’ll water once ever 1-2 days as needed.

    If you grow multiple citrus trees in large pots like we do, we HIGHLY recommend getting drip irrigation. Our drip irrigation system is easy to set up, saves us countless time during the warm months, and keeps our citrus trees much happier.

    Read: How to set up drip irrigation for potted plants

    4. Nutrition

    Since your citrus is contained in a pot, its roots and fungal symbionts can’t go beyond what’s inside the pot to source additional fertility. We’re big on biological soil fertility, which establishes microbial communities that both feed and protect your plants in the same way that the human microbiome functions in people.

    Citrus are heavy feeders. To fertilizer our citrus, we use a combination of:

    • organic citrus fertilizer (if you only use one thing, use this!); 
    • liquid gold (it’s free!);
    • liquid kelp and/or fish emulsion;
    • *worm castings and/or compost, top-dressed about 1/2″ deep then mulched;
    • *we also make sure each of our pots has worms in it, which helps keeps the soil aerated and ads some microbe-rich fertilizer as well. 

    Our citrus fertilization schedule:

    • Spring – we apply a small amount of fertilizer once every 2-3 weeks.
    • Summer – fertilize once every 3-4 weeks.
    • Winter – fertilize once every 6 weeks. 

    5. Root Pruning

    If you want to continue to have healthy, highly productive citrus trees grown in pots, you’ll need to do some root pruning in the late winter/early spring at least once every 2 years.

    Instead of going through the how-to’s of root pruning here, we’d recommend you check out our detailed article/video about how & when to root prune your potted citrus. 

    6. Pest & Disease Control

    We have yet to experience any serious pests or diseases that impact citrus where we live – when our plants are outside.

    Outdoor Citrus Pests & Diseases – We did have a foliar fungus begin to effect a satsuma tree we had in a spot that was too damp/shady outside, so we moved it to a sunnier spot and immediately applied a 3 parts milk : 7 parts water dilution as a foliar spray, and the fungus was gone within a week (the same mixture works with powdery mildew on squash plants).

    Indoor Citrus Pests & Diseases – Ironically, the only severe pest insect problems we’ve encountered happened indoors during the winter. Dry indoor growing conditions combined with lack of predatory/beneficial insects to help with pest control can cause citrus pests like spider mites, scales, and aphids to proliferate.

    What to do? Use a neem oil spray. (Size options: small ready-to-use spray bottle or large concentrate bottle to dilute and add to your own sprayer.) 

    Neem oil works by coating the tiny pest insects in oil which quickly suffocates them. It also helps prevent plant diseases. Make sure to apply outdoors so the neem oil doesn’t make a sticky mess in your house! Once the oil dries, you can bring your tree(s) back inside.

    7. When to bring citrus indoors or outdoors

    We’re in a warm enough climate (Zone 7B) that we very seldom have many days in a row with below freezing temperatures. As such, we put our citrus in our garage on days/nights when temps are below freezing. We have a small space heater to make sure the garage stays well above freezing. 

    If you live in a colder climate zone where temps are typically below freezing for days or weeks at a time, you’ll need to make sure your citrus gets enough light (the equivalent of 6+ hours direct sunlight) with:

    • a sunroom or room with a sunny, south-facing window, or
    • indoor LED grow lights (we use these adjustable LED tripod grow lights on our indoor potted plants and highly recommend them!).

    8. How to move large potted plants

    Once your citrus plants are in large pots, they’re not easy to move. Hand trucks don’t work all that well and can break the branches.

    We started off by using a heavy duty plant dolly with wheels, which worked pretty well. However, after we got our 20th citrus plant into a large pot (yes, we’re citrus addicts) a dolly simply wasn’t going to cut it.

    Thankfully, we were able to commission as engineer friend of ours to build a customizable, heavy-duty pot moving device that works wonders. I can now move 20 large pots into or out of our garage in about 15 minutes!

    The Tyrant moving demonstrating how easy it is to move large potted citrus trees. -Tyrant Farms pot moving device

    The Tyrant modeling our pot moving device with a potted kumquat tree. 

    Don’t worry: if you don’t have a crazy engineer friend, a good hand truck or quality plant dolly with wheels will do the trick, especially if you only have a few plants to move.  

    We hope this article was helpful! If you have questions about how to grow citrus in pots, let us know in the comments section.

    KIGI,

    Other articles citrus-lovers will enjoy: 

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      Foraged In Depth

      Fungi Tales: Mushrooms, Exxon, and Elon Musk

      Posted on December 31, 2016
      Fungi Tales: Mushrooms, Exxon, and Elon Musk thumbnail

      One of the reasons we love immersing ourselves in natural history is that it helps make sense of the world we live in. Without a basic understanding of our “pale blue dot” and how it works, we’d be blind, deaf passengers born on a ship with no discernible sails or compass. How would we know where we came from, where we are, or be able to chart a course forward?

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        In Depth Recipes

        Move over coffee, matcha is in the house (plus matcha making video!)

        Posted on December 28, 2016
        Move over coffee, matcha is in the house (plus matcha making video!) thumbnail

        Here’s why we love matcha — and why you should too. 

        There was a time when my wife (The Tyrant) and I didn’t like coffee. We’re not sure when or why, but that all changed. Over the past few years, we began to really LOVE good coffee.

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          In Depth

          Can mushrooms boost Vitamin D and beat the winter blues?

          Posted on December 1, 2016
          Can mushrooms boost Vitamin D and beat the winter blues? thumbnail

          Got the fall or winter blues? In this article, we’ll share some simple steps you can take to boost your Vitamin D levels and elevate your mood — including a fascinating trick using shiitake mushrooms! 

          Winter blues? The link between Vitamin D and your health… 

          In the cold, dreary days of fall and winter, one of the most important thing you can do to battle winter blues and keep yourself feeling great is to get lots of vitamin D, aka the “superstar vitamin.”

          Shockingly, up to 40% of Americans may be Vitamin D deficient. Chronic Vitamin D deficiency can impact more than your mood… It can potentially lead to hundreds of different disorders and diseases, including bone softening, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and diabetes.

          How much Vitamin D do you need?

          Until recently, the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for Vitamin D was 600 IU per day. Not that much. 

          Now, many nutrition scientists and medical organizations say that a healthy adult should be getting far more than 600 IUs of Vitamin D per day. For instance:

          • the Vitamin D Council recommends that adults take 5000 IU of vitamin D3 daily,
          • the Institute of Medicine (IOM) established 4000 IU daily as the upper level of intake,
          • the Endocrine Society Practice Guidelines state that up to 10,000 IU of vitamin D3 daily is safe for most adults.

          Further complicating matters is that factors such as age, Body Mass Index (BMI), genetics, and other health factors means that recommended daily intakes of Vitamin D might vary significantly by person.  

          No, don’t get your Vitamin D from pills

          Just go to the store and get some vitamin D pills, right? No!

          Despite the fact that we all grew up believing vitamin pills were the foundation of good health (thanks to million dollar marketing campaigns), modern scientific research has found that — with rare exception — vitamin supplements have no health benefits or even worse: actually cause harm. Vitamin D pills are no exception.

          If you’d like to read more on the bad science and false claims behind vitamin supplementation, here’s a brilliant article in The Atlantic about Linus Pauling, the man credited with starting the vitamin craze in the 1970s. Pauling’s voracious vitamin consumption (and public promotion thereof) likely caused his and his wife’s deadly cancer. Unfortunately, despite the lack of efficacy and negative health effects, vitamin supplements continue to be a multi billion dollar industry in the US today.

          As Harvard Medical School says, for optimal health you should get your vitamins and nutrition from real, whole foods, NOT from pills.

          How to make or eat your own Vitamin D

          “Vitamin D” is actually a broad term that refers to a range of different secosteroid compounds. The vitamin D compounds that matter most to humans are:

          • D2 (ergocalciferol) – from non-animal sources (plants, fungi, etc);
          • D3 (cholecalciferol) – from animal sources or sunlight.

          Vitamin D3 from sunlight

          Thankfully, your body can actually make its own vitamin D. When you’re outdoors without sunscreen on, the sun’s energy turns a chemical in your skin into Vitamin D3, which is carried to your liver then to your kidneys, where it is transformed into active vitamin D3 utilized by your body.

          How much Vitamin D3 can your skin make?

          If you’re a light-skinned person who walks outside in the summer (without sunscreen on) wearing shorts and a tank top, your body will be able to make about 1,000 IU of vitamin D per minute of full sun exposure. So, after 7-10 minutes, you’ll have all the vitamin D you need for the day (7,000 IU).

          If you’re wearing sunscreen, elderly, or have dark skin, you won’t produce as much vitamin D in the same time period. 

          Getting Vitamin D3 and D2 in the winter

          How do you get Vitamin D in the fall and winter?

          If you live north of Atlanta, we’ve got bad news: there’s no way your body can produce enough vitamin D in the winter from sun exposure alone. The sun simply isn’t high enough in the sky for enough UVB rays to penetrate the earth’s atmosphere — and there’s a good chance your skin is covered with warm clothes anyway.

          If you can’t take supplements or get enough sun exposure, how do you get enough Vitamin D in the winter to stay mentally and physically healthy?

          Your diet. No, we don’t mean a fad diet, we mean eating real, whole foods.

          Duck eggs and garden veggies.

          Fresh duck eggs and garden veggies – frittata time – and Vitamin D time!

          Some foods are particularly high in vitamin D. Wild caught salmon is one of the highest sources of D3 available (interestingly, farm raised salmon has 75% less D than wild caught).

          Our personal favorite source of vitamin D3 is the eggs from our ducks. Similar to wild salmon, ducks and chickens raised outdoors on healthy diets produce eggs that have 4x more D3 than standard eggs. As we’ve written about previously, duck eggs are even more nutritious than chicken eggs.

          A simple hack to massively boost Vitamin D in shiitake mushrooms

          Magic mushrooms? No, we’re not talking about that kind of mushroom.

          Surprisingly, you can also get huge amounts of Vitamin D2 from mushrooms. In fact, delicious shiitake mushrooms are one of the most vitamin D rich mushrooms available.

          Shiitake Mushrooms on plate at Tyrant Farms

          A nice harvest of shiitake mushrooms, gill side up, ready to soak up some sun rays to make Vitamin D.

          Here’s an amazing hack you can use to drastically boost your vitamin D intake from shiitake mushrooms: place dried or fresh shiitake mushrooms gill side up in the sun for a day. Doing so, will increase the Vitamin D in your shiitake mushrooms from 100 IU/100 grams to 46,000 IU/100 grams. (For reference, one serving of regular shiitakes contains 145 grams Vitamin D.)

          That will get your batteries charged up and blast away those winter blues! 

          You can often find shiitake mushrooms at high end grocery stores. Or you can grow your own… Read our guide How to grow shiitake mushrooms if you’d like to grow your own delicious, medicinal shiitake mushrooms at home.

          Now go forth and conquer your fall or winter blues using whole foods, sunshine, and Vitamin-D charged gourmet mushrooms!

          KIGI,

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            Ducks

            All About Duck Health: Issues, Links, Resources, Recommended Reading, Treatments & Diagnostic Tools

            Posted on November 30, 2016
            All About Duck Health: Issues, Links, Resources, Recommended Reading, Treatments & Diagnostic Tools thumbnail

            We did a presentation on raising backyard ducks for the 2015 South Carolina Organization for Organic Living’s (SCOOL) annual conference. As promised to presentation attendees, this article has additional helpful links, recommended reading, and other resources for duck owners seeking to identify and treat various duck illnesses and health problems. 

            First off, we recommend that duck owners/parents always have a duck first aid kit on-hand to treat minor injuries before they become problems. We provide a detailed list of recommended duck first aid kit items in our article Duck Health Guide: First Aid Kit Items, Tips and Recommended Reading

            Other Helpful Links & Resources

             duck health: diagnostics 

            • Majestic Waterfowl’s Diagnostic Chart: If your birds are ill, start here. Very helpful in narrowing down illnesses based on symptoms. There is also a wonderful book written by the founder/president of Majestic Waterfowl Sanctuary that you NEED to buy if you plan to get pet ducks. You can find it on Amazon.

             duck health: legs & feet 

             duck health: eggs & vent

             
            Egg Binding - signs & symptoms
            1. rapid or labored breathing
            2. lethargic
            3. pelvic area will feel like a hard mass, or you can actually feel the egg that is bound
            4. swelling
            5. constipation
            6. fluffed up feathers
            7. straining/tail-pumping
            8. feces contain egg yolk could mean egg perionitis

            This is a very uncomfortable and sometimes painful condition for birds. If you notice one of your ducks experiencing signs/symptoms of egg binding, please consider seeking medical attention. Our vet bill ran almost $300, which is very reasonable considering we had her tube fed, x-rayed, an extensive blood panel done and were given 2 medications + oral calcium. If you can’t afford a vet visit, you may be able to find a sympathetic vet who will give you something to help deal with the inflammation and pain without requiring a visit.

             duck health: ducklings 

             duck health: digestive system 

             duck health: general 

            How birds (humans & insects) breathe:

            If you made it this far, congratulations! You’ve found one of our favorite things: www.tabletopwhale.com’s infographic.

            Birds are crazy-cool animals. But one of the most interesting things about them is the way that they breathe. Birds don’t have a diaphragm to assist with the inhalation and exhalation of air.

            Instead they have highly specialized structures called air sacs. These air sacs act like bellows that fill the stationary lungs (their lungs don’t inflate and deflate like ours do) and allow them to TAKE IN oxygen on EXHALATION. It’s this adaptation that enables them to quickly supply lots of oxygen to their bodies thereby allowing them to fly!

            If you love geeky things like this, go check out www.tabletopwhale.com. She’s got so many educational, animated infographics. We love her website!

            KIGI,


             
            the impractical guide to keeping pet and backyard ducks banner

            Be sure to check out our other posts about raising ducks!

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              Recipes

              Recipe: Thai red curry slaw

              Posted on November 13, 2016

              This Thai red curry slaw recipe is easy to make and a great way to put scrap garden greens to work. Broccoli and cauliflower leaves? Kohlrabi leaves? Put them to work using this slaw recipe! 

              Thai red curry slaw.

              Tyrant Farm’s Thai red curry slaw made with garden-fresh brassica greens.

              Making slaw with your fresh garden greens

              If you have lots of extra greens laying around (kale, spinach, chard, kohlrabi, cabbage, beet, broccoli), then this is the perfect recipe for you!

              Thai red curry slaw has become one of our go-to ways to enjoy cool weather greens. It’s so easy to make, super nutritious, and tastebuds-swooning kind of yummy.

              The curry gives you a bit of galangal with lemongrass and a hint of makrut lime. The olive oil with egg really smooths out that tiny bite that you would usually find in eating raw leafy greens.

              I can not stress this enough: in this recipe, the secret really is in the sauce. Please note: your typical store-bought mayonnaise won’t yield good results. Nope, don’t even try using it. 

              Typical mayo is too heavy. The Tyrant Farms version of mayo uses an olive oil and grapeseed/safflower oil base, so it’s not too thick of gloopy. It’s truly a different experience. So use our garlic aioli provençal garlic mayonnaise recipe as a base for this recipe! 

              As long as we are all on the same page (NO STORE BOUGHT MAYO), let’s proceed…

              Recipe: Tyrant Farms’ Thai red curry slaw

              Print

              Thai Red Curry Slaw

              Course: Salad, Side Dish
              Cuisine: Asian, thai
              Keyword: salad, slaw, thai
              Prep Time: 20 minutes
              Author: Susan von Frank

              Use up those extra cool weather garden greens with this delicious and easy to make Thai red curry slaw recipe! 

              Ingredients

              Thai Red Curry Sauce

              • 3/4 cup Tyrant Farms garlic mayonnaise (see link above recipe section)
              • 2.5 tbsp Red Curry paste (adjust to your taste). Also note that Green Curry works well, too)
              • 2 tsp curry powder
              • 1.5 tsp spicy paprika Use regular spicy paprika if you don't have spicy.
              • sea salt to taste

              Greens

              • 1 bunch Brassica leaves (cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi, etc). We usually use about 15-20 leaves; after chopping it's about 5 cups of leaves.

              Instructions

              1. In a small bowl, whisk to combine all the sauce ingredients to make your base: Red Curry Sauce.

              2. Chop leaves into 1/4" strips, then cut in half so you're left with roughly 1/4" x 1/4" pieces. Kale, spinach, chard, cabbage, beet greens, broccoli greens, cauliflower greens, kohlrabi greens, collards... Any leafy green will do. Our favorites for this recipe tend to be the cole crops though!

              3. In a large bowl, combine your greens & sauce. Depending on the flavor & consistency you want (sauce : greens), add more or less mayonnaise. 

              4. Optional ingredients you might want to add for extra flavor and texture: diced apples, carrot matchsticks, raisins, walnuts, daikon radish matchsticks, kohlrabi stem matchsticks. 

              5. Refrigerate for a 15-30 minutes and serve!

              Additional recipe note: 

              Whether we’re making an old recipe or coming up with a new one, we typically let our tastebuds guide the final spicing decisions. It’s the best way to tell if the sauce is where you want it to be or to experiment with new spices.

              Usually you want your sauces to taste a bit strong before you dilute them or mix them in with other ingredients. If the sauce tastes a tad strong (meaning heavy on the spices), you’ve probably gotten it where you want it. If it’s sort of weak (or how you want it to taste when it’s mixed in to the recipe) then add more spices, curry paste, etc.

              This is a great recipe for lunch and dinner (or leftovers throughout the week), so don’t be shy about making a bunch of it.

              Enjoy!

              KIGI,

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              Gardening

              A Quick Look Inside Your Incredible Edible Pumpkin

              Posted on October 29, 2016
              Tyrant Farms' Winter Squash & Pumpkins

              Learn about interesting pumpkin history and folklore (including where the jack-o-lantern came from), plus modern pumpkin facts that will change the way you look at this delectable fall food.

              Pumpkin History & Folklore - Tyrant Farms

              Continue to Pumpkins Part 2: How to Make & Eat Your Halloween Pumpkin

              The History of the Jack-O-Lantern

              If you’ve driven through a typical American neighborhood in the fall, you’ve probably noticed that many people have a carved pumpkins on their porch. These “jack-o-lanterns” are often carved into scary, ghoulish caricatures.

              The reason for this tradition is adults’ desire to warn kids of what they’ll look and feel like if they choose to make high fructose corn syrup candy the staple of their diets, instead of good wholesome fruits & veggies like pumpkins.

              Halloween Jack-o'-lantern.jpg

              Image by Petar Milošević – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link.

              Scary!

              In all seriousness, our modern versions of Halloween and the Jack-o-Lantern are marvelous cultural mashups of “New World” and European folkloric traditions whose origins date back thousands of years.

              Rather than go through all the historical details about those ancient traditions here, anyone interested in learning more about their origins should read more about Samhain, the Gaelic harvest festival. You’ll also see origins of our modern Halloween tradition in the Catholic celebration known as All Saints Day.

              The original jack-o-lanters weren’t made from pumpkins?

              The American tradition of carving pumpkin Jack-O-Lanterns dates back to at least 1836, and was borrowed from the European tradition of carving jack-o-lanterns from large turnips. (Europe didn’t have pumpkins when the tradition started, because pumpkins are native to the Americas.)

              In parts of Europe, there were folktales of a clever farmer named Jack whose favorite food was turnips. In one of the most popular stories about Jack, he managed to trick the devil into becoming a silver coin. Then Jack held the devil hostage in his wallet with a cross, rendering him powerless.

              In exchange for Jack releasing him from his wallet, the devil promised Jack he wouldn’t take his soul. However, Jack may have been too clever for his own good…

              He was supposedly too sinful throughout his life to be granted entrance into heaven, thus dooming him to a state of purgatory here on earth. Since the devil couldn’t take Jack’s soul, he spitefully threw Jack an eternal flame from hell. Jack then used the flame to light the inside of his favorite food, the turnip, where his soul would take up shelter during each fall harvest season.

              For the rest of the year, Jack’s flame could be seen wandering through Europe’s marshes, bogs, and swamps. This folktale provided a much-needed explanation for the spooky blue orb-like flames that hover above these bodies of water as a result of ignited, “cold-burning” swamp gasses, aka “ignis fatuus.”

              In other parts of Europe, people also used their turnip jack-o-lanterns to ward off evil spirits from entering their homes, since these spirits were said to be particularly active during the “dark half of the year.”

              So, when you’re lighting your jack-o-lantern, make sure you say hello to ol’ Jack. Also, make sure that you save your pumpkin when the candle goes out. After all, pumpkins are one delicious, nutritious food that you don’t want to waste — especially if you got them from an organic farm or grew them organically yourself!

              Amazing Pumpkin Facts & Figures

              2009 Circleville Pumpkin Show champions.jpg

              As big as the pumpkins in this picture are, they’re nowhere close to the world record holder. Each year, the previous record seems to get broken, with the world’s largest pumpkins now easily topping 2,500 pounds. Image credit: User:Nyttend – Own work, Public Domain, Link

              A native of North America, pumpkins are actually a winter squash in the family Cucurbita.

              Pumpkins range in weight from a few pounds to massive “Atlantic Giant” varieties, which can easily top the scales at over 2,000 pounds.

              Archaeologists excavating a tomb in central Mexico, unearthed the oldest known pumpkin seeds ever found, which date back 10,000 years!

              Pumpkins are also one of the most versatile foods on the planet, They’re used in a huge variety of foods and drinks including:

              • breads,
              • pies,
              • puddings,
              • pastas,
              • soups and stews,
              • dressings,
              • alcoholic beverages,
              • coffee flavoring and more.
              pumpkin pie fresh out of the oven at Tyrant Farms

              Our adorable niece, Alli, patiently observing a homemade pumpkin pie made from an organically grown Tyrant Farms pumpkin, fresh out of the oven.

              Pumpkins are big business, and they can be big hits in your garden too

              The US now grows over 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins per year. 95% of those pumpkins are grown in Illinois.

              85% of all pumpkins grown in the US are produced by Libby. Libby is a subsidiary of Nestlé, the massive Swiss-based company that is also the world’s largest food company by revenue.

              Most people in the US with access to a lawn or a public shared garden can easily grow their own pumpkins from seed using organic methods. There are dozens of heirloom pumpkin varieties to choose from, each offering different sizes, shapes, colors, and flavors.

              We’ve already made a bunch of new, delicious pumpkin recipes from our pumpkins’ flowers, leaves, seeds, and meat this season. The sweet, intense floral aroma and taste of our organic home-grown heirloom pumpkin puree is a night-and-day difference versus the store-bought canned pumpkin.

              We love scooping out the pumpkin seeds and cooking them in our wok. Then we roast the pumpkin flesh skin-side-down in preparation for making it into puree for delicious meals throughout the year.

              Maybe you want to learn how to give ol’ Jack’s soul a place to hide in a homegrown, heirloom pumpkin. Or maybe you want to learn how to eat every part of a pumpkin plant — flowers, leaves, seeds, and flesh.

              Read Part 2 of our Incredible, Edible Pumpkin series to find out how to process and eat your incredible edible pumpkin! 

              KIGI,

              More pumpkin articles you’ll love from Tyrant Farms:

              1 Comment

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              Cob Oven

              Part 2: How to Cook In A Wood-Fired Oven (Cob Oven)

              Posted on October 25, 2016
              Part 2: How To Cook In A Wood-Fired Oven (Cob Oven) thumbnail

              Cooking in a wood-fired cob oven is equal parts art and science. In this article, we’ll cover the basics of wood-fired cob oven cooking. 

              If you’ve ever had wood-fired bread, pizza, meats, or baked-goods made in a cob oven, we don’t need to explain to you how amazing they are. If you haven’t, you need to find a restaurant near you where you can try some.

              Once you do, you’ll have all the motivation you need to use our step-by-step guide to build your own wood-fired cob oven in your backyard, so you can start making the best food you’ve ever eaten.

              Continue Reading

              4 Comments

              • Reply
                tanime
                October 7, 2019 at 2:46 pm

                A great introduction to the process! it seems very involved at first, but I am sure it gets easy with practice and the food probably all taste amazing and makes it worth the prep!

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  October 7, 2019 at 4:29 pm

                  Thanks! Yes, cooking in a wood-fired cob oven might seem daunting at first, but after a few rounds of cooking, you’ll get the hang of it. Then intuition and habit kick in, giving you the benefits of experience.

                  Imagine reading about cooking on an electric or gas stovetop for the first time – yikes! Complicated. But it seems quite simple in hindsight. The hardest part of most new things worth doing is getting started in the first place.

                  • Reply
                    tanime
                    October 7, 2019 at 4:39 pm

                    Absolutely! My ultimate goal is to one day build a cob home, but first I want to build a small sauna. i figured a cob oven would be a good first project though 🙂 Your site is great, thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience.

                    • Aaron von Frank
                      October 8, 2019 at 1:50 pm

                      We’d love to have a cob home, too!

              Leave a Reply

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              Cob Oven

              How To Build a Wood-Fired Oven with Cob

              Posted on October 19, 2016
              How To Make a Wood-Fired Oven With Cob thumbnail

              Want to make your own wood-fired cob oven? Here’s a detailed step-by-step guide showing you how to make your own cob oven. 

              Newly risen loaves of bread dough, stuffed heirloom pumpkins, blueberry cobbler, uncooked homemade pizzas and a giant pot of venison stew are all lined up on an outdoor table, ready to enter the scorching hot, labyrinthine interior of the wood-fired oven. The baker removes a rounded, water-soaked wooden cooking door, and throws a pinch of flour on the fire brick floor of the oven to check the interior temperature. The flour quickly blackens, sending up a small puff of smoke.

              “Still too hot, probably about 900 degrees,” she says.

              No, this is not a first-hand account from a rustic French restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It’s taking place in our back yard in Greenville, South Carolina.

              Continue Reading

              13 Comments

              • Reply
                Dave
                March 2, 2024 at 4:22 am

                Great post, we’re just finishing our base and nearly ready for the firebricks. Did you lay your bricks ‘loose’ on the fine layer of sand?

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  March 2, 2024 at 11:03 am

                  Hi Dave! Glad our DIY cob oven article was helpful for you. Just to make sure I answer your question accurately, I’m interpreting “loose” to mean that the fire bricks were not set or mortared in any way. If so, yes, that’s correct. We laid the bricks on top of the packed, leveled layer of top insulating sand on the oven’s base. Let me know if that clears things up or you have additional questions!

              • Reply
                alicia
                November 11, 2020 at 8:09 am

                Thanks for a great post! So you recommended potters clay is the best clay if your soi has low content. Does this have to be powered or is this not necessary? Also how much would you recommend for a project like this?

                Thank you so much!

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  November 11, 2020 at 5:28 pm

                  Hi Alicia! I’ll start by copying and pasting what we say in the article first in case other readers missed it: “Clay – this is more difficult to tell you precisely how much to use. Dry powder clay and wet clay are different weights. We had two large tupperwares full of dried clay scraps from an old pottery studio that we had to reconstitute with water. Err on the side of getting more clay than you think you need, so you don’t run out mid-project.”

                  Also note that the size of the oven you plan to build is going to dictate the quantity of materials. In the book Build Your Own Earth Oven, which we recommend in the article, the author recommends the following quantities:
                  -22.5″ oven – (8) 5 gallon buckets of oven mud + (8) 5 gallon buckets of insulation mix/cob
                  -27″ oven – (12) 5 gallon buckets of oven mud + (10) 5 gallon buckets of insulation mix/cob
                  -36″ oven – (17) 5 gallon buckets of oven mud + (13) 5 gallon buckets of insulation mix/cob

                  Hope this info helps you make your cob oven! Please let us know if you have any additional questions as you go.

                  • Reply
                    dave nadolny
                    May 5, 2021 at 9:46 pm

                    is it necessary to have gravel in the base under the bottle/sand layers or can we use a previously built grill base?

                    • Aaron von Frank
                      May 6, 2021 at 7:18 am

                      Hi Dave! The purpose of the gravel and sand in the base of the cob oven underneath the bottle/sand layer is: 1) to fill up the area and bring height to the final oven so you don’t have to squat down to use it, and 2) to provide a structurally sound foundation to the layers above it. You DON’T want the layers inside and underneath your oven to settle or you risk the whole thing cracking or the oven floor collapsing. With that in mind, I’m not quite sure about the specifics of your previously built grill base – perhaps you could provide more info? If your grill base addresses point #1 and #2 above, it should be fine, but I can’t really weigh in without more info.

              • Reply
                Renee Mattingly
                May 24, 2020 at 8:23 pm

                What was the diameter of the sand castle?

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  May 25, 2020 at 3:18 pm

                  If you make your cob oven to the same specifications as ours, the sand dome would be ~19” tall (from the top of the firebrick to the peak of the sand dome). The diameter of the sand dome will depend on the diameter of your oven foundation. You’ll want to make sure you have enough room to put on 6 1/2″ layer of clay, cob, and plaster. For instance, our oven foundation has a ~50″ diameter, so the sand dome had a 37″ diameter.

              • Reply
                Typical Troll
                May 7, 2020 at 2:11 pm

                Wow you guys never cease to amaze.
                I just keep running across you guys in my searches!
                Start somewhere else but end up here.

                Search for ducks, there you are.
                Ponds, check.
                Killer recipes, yep
                Growing your own food, uh-huh.
                Now cob ovens too?!

                Though looking at dates this is I suppose the “prequel” lol.

                Keep doing what you do, love you all!

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  May 11, 2020 at 6:33 pm

                  Ha! Well, that’s good to hear. Google can be a little ornery from time to time and change our page ranking on certain topics – not always for the better. Hopefully, this is the most detailed and well-photographed “how to build a cob oven article” out there, so it will continue to show up high in search results. As always, reach out any time you have a question about a similar project you’re working on, whether that’s ducks, cob ovens, recipes, foraging, or growing food. 🙂

              • Reply
                Marty Kelley
                September 3, 2019 at 7:20 pm

                I just finished my own cob oven based on these directions. Sadly, I didn’t have any duck helpers, but it still seemed to come out well. The only major difference was that I did not use a concrete pad. For the heavy winters and freezing/thawing we get here in NH, I opted instead to dig an 18″ deep hole and fill it with crushed, packed gravel. I then built the stone foundation on top of that. So far, so good! Thanks so much for the really helpful directions.

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  September 4, 2019 at 10:19 am

                  Thanks for the input! Good idea on the base modifications in your climate region. We’re down in South Carolina, so our winters aren’t nearly as cold. So digging a deeper foundation or using materials less likely to crack under extreme freezing conditions makes a lot of sense. Hope you enjoy years of great meals in your cob oven!

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  September 4, 2019 at 10:19 am

                  Thanks for the input! Good idea on the base modifications in your climate region. We’re down in South Carolina, so our winters aren’t nearly as cold. So digging a deeper foundation or using materials less likely to crack under extreme freezing conditions makes a lot of sense. Hope you enjoy years of great meals in your cob oven!

              Leave a Reply

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              Gardening

              How to extend your tomato growing season

              Posted on August 20, 2016

              Find out how to extend your tomato growing season and get another big round of tomatoes before first frost using tomato suckers from your current plants!

              Here on the outskirts of Greenville, SC in Agricultural Zone 7B, the summer growing season has already peaked and is starting its slow descent towards fall.

              All of our cool weather seed trays are sown and we’re looking forward to all the yummy produce that comes with cooler weather: broccoli, cauliflower, kale, carrots, cabbage and more. However, that doesn’t mean we’re ready to give up on getting a bunch of warm-weather produce while we still can.

              To accomplish this aim we have a few little tricks that help extend our summer growing season. If you love tomatoes as much as we do (and our ducks do), then you’ll enjoy having some simple tricks up your sleeve to help you get another big round of tomatoes out of your garden before the first frost of the year.

              Tomato growing temperatures – how cold is too cold for tomato fruit set? 

              As long as your day and nighttime temperatures stay above 55°F, you can continue to get fruit set from most tomato varieties. 

              What are the most cold tolerant heirloom tomato varieties?

              There are also some tomato varieties that are much more cold tolerant and can continue to set fruit down into the upper 30s! 

              Bred for short/cool summers in the far north, these cold-tolerant heirloom tomato varieties are:  

              • ‘Glacier’ from Sweden,
              • ‘Stupice’ from Czechoslovakia, and
              • ‘Siberia’ from Russia.    

              However, by midsummer, most tomato plants are well past their prime, having been drained of energy from fruit production or succumbed to various tomato diseases (late blight, fusarium wilt, etc.) 

              Paul Robeson Tomato atop an Atlantic Giant Pumpkin - Tyrant Farms

              ‘Paul Robeson’ heirloom tomato taking a nap atop an ‘Atlantic Giant’ pumpkin. 

              What are “tomato suckers”?   

              The term “tomato sucker” refers to the new growth that emerges from the joint between a primary stem and branch on a tomato plant. 

              What's a tomato sucker? Here you can see tomato suckers growing on a rather leggy 'Matt's wild' cherry tomato plant growing in a shady spot in our garden. Small-fruited tomato varieties can actually grow and produce some yield in part to nearly full-shade spots. 

              Here you can see tomato suckers growing on a rather leggy ‘Matt’s wild’ cherry tomato plant growing in a shady spot in our garden. Small-fruited tomato varieties can actually grow and produce some yield in part to nearly full-shade spots. 

              Many people recommend keeping your tomato suckers trimmed off throughout the growing season to get larger fruit and healthier plants. However, we grow way too many tomato plants to keep all of our suckers cut, so we don’t bother to remove them.

              We haven’t noticed any difference in our plants’ health, yields or fruit size either way, and we like not having to spend hours each week suckering all of our tomato plants. 

              Tomato suckers can form new tomato plants? 

              Tomato suckers removed to be grown into new plants.

              Some freshly cut tomato suckers that will be used to grow new tomato plants at Tyrant Farms. 

              As you may know, tomato plants root very easily. The “fuzzy” white texture you see on their stem surface are actually adventitious roots, that can actually become new soil roots.

              Each year between mid-July and mid-August, we cut off suckers from some of our favorite tomato varieties and grow a last batch of healthy new plants that yield an abundance of late-season fruit. You could do the same thing by starting new tomato seeds, but growing suckers gives you a big jumpstart. 

              Step by step: How to extend your tomato growing season by growing suckers

              Step 1: Remove suckers from old, but otherwise healthy tomato plants. 

              Cut off a few healthy suckers from some of your favorite tomato plants that are already past their prime, but not dying from disease. Use suckers that are at least 4-5″ long and already have a couple of healthy leaves/branches on them.

              Plop them in a glass of water to keep them wet before the next step. Rooting Tomato Suckers- Tyrant Farms

              Tomato suckers removed from plant and waiting for the next step in the process. 

              Trim all but the very top leaves/growth tip on the sucker. If the suckers are large enough to already have flowers on them, pinch off the flowers so that the new plant can put its energy into root growth rather than trying to set fruit.

              Cutting the first few leaves off the tomato sucker. - Tyrant Farms

              Cutting the first few leaves off the tomato sucker. We’ll also pinch off the flowers here.

              A completely trimmed tomato sucker just before planting - Tyrant Farms

              A completely trimmed tomato sucker ready for the next step in the rooting process.

              Step 2: Dip tomato sucker base in rooting hormone.  

              Dip the stems of your suckers in rooting hormone. Because tomatoes root so readily, this step is optional, but will yield better results. 

              Dipping the tomato sucker in rooting hormone. - Tyrant Farms

              Dipping the tomato sucker in rooting hormone.

              Step 3: Pot up your tomato suckers. 

              Put the tomato sucker in a small seedling pot filled with quality seed starting mix or potting soil. Bury the stem up to the first leaves.

              Remember, the adventitious roots on the stem we mentioned earlier? Yes, those will all turn into new roots. The more roots, the healthier the plant will be.

              Use a small bamboo skewer to help make the hole and guide the plant in. - Tyrant Farms

              We use a small bamboo skewer to help make the hole and guide the plant in.

              Keep the new plants moist and out of full sun! A shady or at most part-sun location is ideal for the first ~7 days as the roots get established. Mist or water daily as-needed to keep the soil damp or if the plants look limp. Also move them into full shade if they look limp.

              Step 4: Harden off & plant in the ground.

              After about 7-10 days, your suckers should have established new roots. You’ll notice their vigor increase and healthy new leaves start forming once the new roots have started forming.

              Allow your new tomato plants about a week to harden off to full sun again. Generally, we follow this schedule for hardening newly rooted plants:

              • Days 1-2: 2-4 hours full sun;
              • Days 3-4: 4-6 hours full sun;  
              • Day 4-6: 6-8+ hours full sun.

              Keep your eye on your plants for signs of stress. If they look limp, it’s either heat stress or lack of water. If the leaves start to brown, they’re getting sunburned.

              Finally, once your tomato plants are hardened off, find a good, sunny, tomato-friendly location and get them in the ground as soon as possible! 

              Step 5: Harvest. 

              Where we live in South Carolina, we often don’t get our first frost until late October or November, so we can get a lot more tomatoes before fall sets in. Select smaller-fruited tomato varieties with lower days to maturity if you’re worried about not having enough time to get a good harvest before first frost (larger-fruited tomatoes take longer to ripen).

               

               
               
               
               
               
              View this post on Instagram
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               

               

              Gonna miss these. Getting close to the last of the monster heirloom tomatoes. So long until next summer, beautiful beasties. #heirloomtomatoes #organicgardening #GrowJourney

              A post shared by Tyrant Farms (@tyrantfarms) on

              If you want to push the season even further, consider using frost blankets or old bed sheets on cool/cold nights to keep your tomatoes going beyond their normal growing season.  

              Or if you see a frost about to hit before your large tomatoes are fully ripe, you can always make a big batch of green tomato marmalade, a delicious treat made from unripe green tomatoes that we’ve fallen in love with over the years.

              Again, the tomato season-extension methods in this article don’t require any seeds and produce new, robust plants far faster than growing them from seed. We hope this information helps you get a big late season tomato harvest this summer – or maybe even fall! 

              KIGI,

              Other tomato articles you may enjoy: 

              1 Comment

              • Reply
                beverly
                November 11, 2014 at 12:07 pm

                I topped my tomatoes this fall to encourage tomato growth and stop the flowers. I now have some nice size ripening tomatoes on spring planted tomato plants. I love the rooting sucker idea. I will try next year.

              Leave a Reply

              Recipe Rating




              Gardening Recipes

              Recipe: Garden huckleberry preserves (a nightshade berry)

              Posted on July 27, 2016
              Recipe: Garden huckleberry preserves (a nightshade berry) thumbnail

              Garden huckleberries (Solanum nigrum var. melanoserasum) are a fruit in the nightshade family that have earned a “must-grow” status in our summer garden. Here’s more about the fruit, plus a delicious garden huckleberry preserves recipe. 

              The many edible wonders of the nightshade plant family

              Admittedly, we have a bit of an infatuation with plants in the nightshade family. Each year, our garden is loaded with eggplants, tomatoes, tomatillos, ground cherries, cape gooseberries, wonderberries, and other berries that all belong in the Nightshade family (Solanaceae).

              Yes, tomatoes and eggplants are technically berries, not vegetables.

              Golden ripe ground cherries, perhaps our favorite summer fruit.

              Golden ripe ground cherries, perhaps our favorite summer fruit.

              Each nightshade is uniquely delicious in its own regard, and really shouldn’t be compared. We usually make savory dishes out of our eggplants, but have also made an acorn flour, eggplant cake that was to die for.

              Most gardeners have plenty of recipes for tomatoes, but unless they’re familiar with Latin American cuisines, they may feel a little lost when it comes to preparing tomatillos (which are fantastic eaten raw, made into salsa verde or various cooked sauces). 

              Ground cherries and cape gooseberries rarely make it back inside because we devour them on the spot. When it comes to garden huckleberries or the closely related wonderberries, many gardeners haven’t heard of them, or if they have, wouldn’t know what to do with them at harvest.

              The truth is that there is a huge range of nightshade berries that American gardeners either don’t know about or grow. We think there is enormous potential for many of these varieties to become popular with adventurous home gardeners and gourmet chefs. (Not to mention, the potential to breed “new heirloom” varieties.)

              Wonderberries vs. Garden Huckleberries – What’s the Difference?

              As it turns out, the names wonderberries and garden huckleberries are often used interchangeably, but they’re not the same plant. The berries of each are vastly different in both flavor and how they need to be prepared prior to consumption.

              Both plants likely have a common ancestor in Africa, as this fascinating report from the National Resources Institute at University of Greenwich details. And, no, they’re not genetically related to true huckleberries in the Ericaceae family, which we call “blueberries” here in the southeast.

               

               
               
               
               
               
              View this post on Instagram
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               

               

              Wonderberries, a nightshade fruit dating back to (at least) the time of Luther Burbank, whose plant breeding work was the catalyst of plant patenting which started in the 1930s. These are quite good – very sweet with blueberry notes. You’ll never see these in a grocery store because picking the small berries is very tedious work and the thin-skinned fruits damage easily while picking giving them a very short shelf life. One of the nice things about gardening is profitability doesn’t have to factor into your plant selection. Your garden should be as weird as you are. 😛 #wonderberries #heirloomseeds #organicgardening #gardening #gardenideas #gardentotable

              A post shared by Tyrant Farms (@tyrantfarms) on

              About Wonderberries, aka sunberries 

              Wonderberries were bred by the famed botanist and plant breeder Luther Burbank, who introduced as many as 1,000 new cultivars of fruit trees, veggies, flowers and other plants during his remarkable career. Burbank supposedly bred wonderberries by stabilizing a hybrid between two other nightshades, S. villosum and S. guineense.

              As the story goes, he then sold the rights to wonderberries to another seed company, which then renamed them “sunberries.” Apparently, this set off a feud between the company and Burbank that spanned decades, leaving his reputation somewhat tarnished.

              Until recently, wonderberries’ scientific name was Solanum × burbankii, in honor of Burbank. However, they’re now technically supposed to be called Solanum retroflexum. 

              About garden huckleberries 

              Further complicating matters: there is another plant in the nightshade family that also produces small, black fruits that sound very similar in description to wonderberries: garden huckleberries.

              A nice harvest of garden huckleberries – this was a second harvest off of only four plants. The plants will continue to produce more berries throughout the summer.

              The scientific name for garden huckleberries is often listed under Solanum scabrum or Solanum melanocerasum or Solanum nigrum, depending on which seed company or university extension you reference.

              See why both the common and scientific names of wonderberries and huckleberries are often mixed up? Frankly, it’s very difficult to determine the correct scientific name for actual garden huckleberries. As best as we can tell from our research, it’s Solanum nigrum var. melanoserasum but that could change depending on which reference you use or future genetic analysis.

              Comparing wonderberries and garden huckleberries

              Beautiful clusters of garden huckleberries. You only want to harvest the berries once they’ve turned fully black in color and are very slightly soft when squeezed.

              Growth habit comparison:

              Wonderberries are smaller, less robust plants than garden huckleberries. We’d almost call them “dainty.”

              Their maximum height is about 2-3′. They get loaded with tiny green berries that turn black and soft when ripe. The ripe fruit is about the size of a small pea. Each plant will produce 3-5 cups of fruit in a growing season.

              Garden Huckleberries are larger, very robust plants. Apparently some subspecies in tropical African climates can even be short-lived perennials. Our plants grow to be about 3-4 tall, and have a similar growth habit to a large pepper plant, although they produce longer branches.

              All along the branches, clusters of berries form, turning from green to deep black when fully ripened. The mature berries are about the size of a big blueberry and have a tough, almost leathery skin. Each plant will produce 1-3 gallons of fruit in a growing season.

              Flavor comparison:

              Wonderberries offer a pleasant, sweet flavor when eaten raw right off the plant. The berries are very thin-skinned and will fall from the plant when overly ripe.

              They’re not quite as good as blueberries in flavor (in our opinion), but they’re definitely worth growing for fresh eating if you have the space in your garden or have some open pots. We’ve heard they make excellent pies and preserves as well, but we’ve never gathered enough to give it a try.

              Garden huckleberries are not good eaten raw. They have almost no flavor (similar to a raw eggplant) and the skin is quite tough in comparison to a wonderberry.

              If raw fruit was the only option, garden huckleberries wouldn’t be worth growing. However, when cooked and sweetened, something magical happens with garden huckleberries.

              They can be made into beautiful deep purple-colored sauces, pies and preserves—and the flavor is out of this world delicious. If you could combine the best flavors from blueberries and grapes into a single fruit, that’s what cooked, sweetened garden huckleberries (such as garden huckleberry preserves) taste like.

              Be sure to remove the garden huckleberry stems before cooking. If you don’t have enough to make into a recipe right away, put them in the freezer and continue to harvest until you have enough berries. They’ll continue to produce well into the fall in our Agricultural Zone (7b).

              Now that we’ve experienced how robust the plants are, how easy they are to grow, how many berries each bush produces, and the wonderful flavor their cooked berries have to offer, we’ve decided that garden huckleberries will be part of our summer garden every year hereafter.

              Tyrant farms garden huckleberry preserves.

              Tyrant farms garden huckleberry preserves, delicious served on toast, pancakes, ice cream, and more.

              Recipe: Garden huckleberry preserves

              Here’s a simple garden huckleberry recipe to get you started in the right direction. Once you’ve had a chance to experience the primary flavors, you can start experimenting with future batches: pure vanilla extract and other flavors would likely add nice nuance and variation as well.

              Yum! Garden huckleberry preserves on a whole grain English muffin with local grass-fed butter.

              Yum! Garden hucklberry preserves on whole grain English muffin with local grass-fed butter.
              Print

              Recipe: Garden huckleberry preserves (a nightshade berry)

              Course: Breakfast, brunch, Preserves
              Cuisine: American
              Keyword: garden huckleberry preserves, garden huckleberry recipe
              Prep Time: 10 minutes
              Cook Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
              Total Time: 1 hour 25 minutes
              Author: Aaron von Frank

              A delicious preserve made from a rare nightshade fruit that tastes like a cross between blueberry and concord grape jelly.

              Ingredients

              • 2 pounds roughly 8-10 cups of ripe garden huckleberries
              • 3 cups of organic granulated cane sugar
              • 1 package of regular pectin
              • 1 lemon zested and juiced (optional but citric acid is usually a good idea when preserving/canning)
              • 1/4 cup water used at the beginning of cooking to prevent fruit scald

              Instructions

              1. Sterilize your canning jars and screw lids by boiling them for at least 15 minutes (*don't boil the flat lids that actually go on the top of the jar or you'll remove the gum/adhesive seal).
              2. Sort through your garden huckleberries to remove any stems. Then rinse them in a strainer.
              3. Put berries and water in a large pot over medium heat. The 1/4 cup of water is added to prevent the fruit from scalding or sticking to the bottom of the pan. Bring slowly to a boil and allow to boil about 20 minutes to reduce water content.
              4. Add lemon zest/juice if you plan to use it.
              5. Boil for an additional 40 minutes. Many of the garden huckleberries will still have maintained their shape/form, so you might want to "mush" them a bit here. A potato masher works great.
              6. Add your pectin and bring back to a full rolling boil, stirring until all of the pectin has dissolved.
              7. Add sugar to the boiling garden huckleberries and stir until completely dissolved (only takes a few minutes). Remove from the heat.
              8. Ladle huckleberry preserves into your sterilized, hot jars. You'll want to leave room for expansion, about 1/4" between the top of your preserves and your jar lid (called "head space"). Using a magnetized canning lid lifter, dip each lid into the boiling water for about 10-15 seconds. Place lid on top of jar, and screw on rings—not tight, you want them to have a bit of give.
              9. Boil jars with preserves in them for 15 minutes, making sure the water is at least 1-2" over the top of the lid so that air bubbles out of the jars.
              10. Remove jars from boiling water and place them on heat-proof countertop or stove top. Each jar should make a single "pop" sound shortly after being removed from boiling water, indicating that it has sealed. The lid will also indent downward. If a jar does not seal, place back in boiling water for 5 more minutes and repeat the process. Do NOT eat unsealed preserves. If you can't get your jars to seal or don't feel like going through the steps above, freeze them or stick them in the fridge.

              Now you know what garden huckleberries are and how to use them in the kitchen! You’re on your way to enjoying one of the most delicious preserves you’ll ever eat. 

              Enjoy! 

              KIGI,

              Other similar recipes you’ll love:

              37 Comments

              • Reply
                Tracy
                September 13, 2024 at 6:30 pm

                I grew the berries for the first time this year (SW Manitoba) and the jam came together beautifully, the colour is gorgeous, and it’s just “chunky” enough, but the taste is, unfortunately, awful. I wonder if it’s one of those things, like cilantro, that some people actually get a different taste experience from than others?

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  September 16, 2024 at 12:29 pm

                  Oh no! Sorry, Tracy. I can’t imagine anyone disliking the flavor of the garden huckleberry preserves we make, but maybe so? To us, it tastes like a combination of blueberries and grapes. Everyone we know who’s tried it finds it equally enjoyable. Question: did you use VERY ripe black-colored fruit? I’d imagine underripe fruit would not produce a good end product.

              • Reply
                Tiffany
                September 3, 2023 at 2:59 pm

                I’ll be starting my canning experience with this recipe so I’ll need to collect all the materials needed. Was wondering if you could tell me how many of what size jar this recipe is best suited for?

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  September 4, 2023 at 10:24 am

                  Hi Tiffany! Sorry to say that this was a recipe we made many years ago and we didn’t record the exact finished quantity made. To be safe, I’d prep four 1-pint canning jars, which will hold up to 8 cups of finished preserves. That should be more than adequate. Best of luck on your garden huckleberry preserves — and your future canning endeavors!

              • Reply
                Homeschool Mom
                October 24, 2021 at 4:00 pm

                We grew garden huckleberries for the first time this year. We followed your recipe exactly, with the exception of adding a pinch of aluminum-free baking soda during the boiling process. When 4 members of our family tasted the bit of jam still in my saucepan that wasn’t going into jars for processing, I tasted a strong metallic aftertaste very quickly after the initial hit of wonderful-grape-blueberry flavor. Enough to make me crinkle my nose and not want more. My husband got the “aftertaste” after having swallowed the jam. One son did not taste an aftertaste or metallic taste at all, and another son thought there was a mild hint of aftertaste. I’m convinced that this taste, which is a tad bitter, is possibly from some of the fruits being not perfectly ripe and containing higher levels of the toxin solanine, which is also found in the green skin of potatoes exposed to daylight. From what I’ve read, to be safe, garden huckleberries should only be harvested about 2 weeks after the black berries have turned dull, or matte in finish, rather than shiny, and the fruits are soft. Our fruits were mostly dull (some may have been on their way there, but not having arrived fully, but were not all “soft” like a perfectly ripe blueberry. We have a shorter growing season where I live and needed to pick these before a freeze. If we grow them again, I’ll cross my fingers for a longer season and not serve any that may not be fully ripe to my family. I just thought I’d share as I couldn’t readily find a reason why some people are noting a metallic/bitter taste and others are not when following the same recipes.

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  October 25, 2021 at 12:19 pm

                  Thanks for the tip! We’re in Zone 7b in South Carolina, so we have a long summer growing season down here, plus we start our garden huckleberries indoors around early February. That means we always get VERY ripe garden huckleberries by the time we’re ready to start using them. Good to note that they can have an off flavor if not very ripe (even if cooked).

              • Reply
                Judy Morningstar
                September 18, 2021 at 10:40 am

                Next batch: this was successful. I have a really big pot.
                10 cups garden huckleberries, washed. Put in heavy big cooking pot with 1/2 cup water. Slowly bring to boil and cook for about 20 minutes on low temp, stirring often. Add 6 cups sugar, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/3 cup lemon juice. Mix and bring back to boiling. I used immersion blender here to mash, but did try the potato masher first. Boil carefully , stirring, till it reaches get stage (220F). That took about 25 more minutes. Bottle in sterilized jars and process. These were a bit riper and softer than the first batch, and taste a lot better. This made about 5 pint jars.

              • Reply
                Judy Morningstar
                September 16, 2021 at 6:29 pm

                I followed your recipe for preserves, and found it set too hard. It didn’t need the pectin, and maybe less cooking. I am going to experiment with more huckleberries tomorrow, and will let you know how I ca=hanged the recipe. The plants are extremely prolific! Our first year of growing them in Manitoba.

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  September 17, 2021 at 5:31 pm

                  Thanks for the feedback, Judy! We’ve had some people say the preserves didn’t set as well for them and others say it set too hard. We’re not quite sure what’s happening. It may be that people are using a different species of fruit since “huckleberry” is a common name that can refer to a wide range of fruiting plants. Please do check back in to let us know what you find with additional experiments.

                  • Reply
                    Frances Giles
                    September 18, 2021 at 2:33 pm

                    Dear Aaron, thanks for posting your info about garden huckleberries. About to do my first test batch in rural Southern Ontario. Re: jams setting too hard or too soft, the local humidity can make a difference to cooking times for jams. Likely your readers know – both are ‘fixable.’ See below. Cheers, Frances
                    Too soft – empty the jars unto the pot, add a bit more sugar based on running and quantity. Let sugar dissolve before boiling again. I usually do small batches of 4-5 jars, everything cooks more evenly.
                    Too hard, empty jars and cook again with more liquid. Distilled water keeps the product clearer, if you live in hard water areas.

                    • Aaron von Frank
                      September 19, 2021 at 12:48 pm

                      Thanks, Frances! This info will likely come in handy for other folks trying to get just the right consistency.

              • Reply
                Renee
                September 6, 2021 at 3:41 pm

                Hi! I’m making this recipe for the first time with the Garden Huckleberries I grew from Baker’s Creek seeds. I am also having a problem with the fruit scalding. I’m wondering if medium heat is too high for the reduction process. I’ve turned it down to low and seem to be doing better now.

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  September 7, 2021 at 1:35 pm

                  Adding a bit of water to the pot before putting the fruit in helps prevent scalding. Then once the fruit gets hot enough to burst (or be burst via a spoon, masher, or other kitchen tool, there will be more than enough liquid to prevent scalding. Still need to stir the mix though so the fruit doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot. Also, to your point, turning the heat lower until the fruit bursts can also help. Hope your garden huckleberry preserves turn out well!

              • Reply
                Brytanni Parrett
                May 2, 2021 at 2:49 pm

                Hi. I think I have some of these growing in my backyard, however I’m concerned they might be deadly nightshade or some other poisonous plant. After doing some research, I’m pretty sure it’s black nightshade and read somewhere that it is toxic but after it’s boiled, the poison goes away. Just to confirm, do the berries in this recipes have green insides? When I crushed one of the berries, it kinda looked like a small tomato with tiny seeds but it’s green on the inside. Also, I handled the leaves before reading that deadly nightshade leaves could irritate your skin and so far, my skin isn’t irritated. Please help! I would really like to put these berries to use if they’re not toxic!

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  May 3, 2021 at 9:59 am

                  Hi Brytanni! Unfortunately, I don’t have a 100% clear memory of the inside color of garden huckleberries and they’re not in-season now for me to check. If my memory serves, they are dark through-and-through when ripe. Given that garden huckleberries are a rare plant from Africa, it’s unlikely to be the same plant you have growing wild in your backyard despite some physical similarities. I’d be extremely cautious with wild black nightshades since some/many of them do contain high levels of toxic compounds, some of which are not degraded by cooking. While there are wild edible black nightshades, we’ve never bothered to try to delineate or use them given the health risks.

                • Reply
                  Aqualyn
                  May 13, 2021 at 10:42 am

                  I have tons of this growing wild in my backyard too. I forage as a hobby, so I have reference material citing it as safe to eat. The important difference between it and deadly nightshade (aside from being from different families) is the flower. Black nightshade has a white flower instead of a purple one. Another important difference is the insects love black nightshade leaves. Just make sure they are completely black before eating. If you aren’t sure what you have, finding several similar species online and learning to identify plants based on characteristics will help you be more confident.

              • Reply
                Allison
                October 18, 2020 at 2:50 pm

                Hello! I grew some of these, and you’re right, the cooked fruit is amazing.
                Can you reference the safe canning source you used for this recipe? I should have researched more before I grew them and I’m not finding much.

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  October 19, 2020 at 8:47 am

                  Hi Allison! Glad you enjoyed your garden huckleberries. I’d be happy to help, but I don’t quite understand your question – can you elaborate? We have safe canning instructions in the recipe card at the bottom of the article. You can use either Weck jars or standard canning jars – either is perfectly safe for canning/preserving if you do the water bath canning method.

                  • Reply
                    Allison
                    October 23, 2020 at 9:04 pm

                    Thanks for the reply!
                    I guess I’m asking how you know it is safe. Site your sources.
                    I’m looking to see if it is a tested recipe if you found guidance from a University Extension, a canning company, a book, or…?
                    For example, a source like those listed here: ehttps://www.healthycanning.com/reputable-sources-for-home-canning-information/

                    • Aaron von Frank
                      October 26, 2020 at 3:41 pm

                      Sorry, we haven’t conducted a lab analysis on this particular recipe. We’re the guinea pigs in that we’ve made and eaten this garden huckleberry preserve recipe multiple times over multiple years and continue to remain alive and healthy. 🙂 Of course, if someone isn’t comfortable canning in general or canning using the water bath method, they should avoid making this recipe or get a pressure canner to remove all doubt.

                    • Karen Crusher
                      October 8, 2022 at 3:39 pm

                      Oh my god Allison are you really this thick, or are you an insufferable know-it-all trying to prove some ridiculous point?!? If you’re too insecure to make traditional canned preserves, just pop them in the freezer and go on with life. This is not brain surgery, but I bet you have a website link all cued up that will back you up. You people always do.

              • Reply
                Elizabeth O'Ham
                July 21, 2020 at 1:51 pm

                grew these this year from the seed available from baker creek. I was afraid they would have an unpleasant metallic flavor as many seem to report, however i am pleased to report no such flavor detected by anyone in my household. I ad a pinch of baking soda at the beginning of cooking which may help. Also for anyone interested: Commercial pectin is not necessary for a great jam! these berries have enough native pectin, when simmered with more water for about an hour, to set up into a great medium firm jam. Commercial pectin is so expensive these days, and is an industrially processed additive, that I love to stick to simpler methods when possible.

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  July 24, 2020 at 5:46 pm

                  Glad you enjoy garden huckleberry preserves as much as we do, Elizabeth! We don’t get any metallic tastes from them either. Perhaps it depends on the soil they’re grown in or other environmental factors. Thanks for the pectin tip as well.

              • Reply
                medievaldigger .
                July 16, 2020 at 4:35 pm

                Thank you for the recipe! 🙂

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  July 20, 2020 at 12:09 pm

                  Sure! Hope you enjoy your garden huckleberry preserves. 🙂 It’s amazing how good garden huckleberries are once cooked and sweetened considering how non-exciting they are raw.

              • Reply
                Edward Snyder
                August 13, 2017 at 6:58 pm

                I have been making garden Huckleberry jelly for years. There are some steps I do prior to making the jelly. I parboil the fruit in baking soda water, then rinse several times to remove the baking soda. then I food process the berries. Lastly I strain them to take the seeds out. The resulting mix is then boiled, and strained. I repeat the process until the strained material no longer has the purple color to it. Then I boil the juice and remove any of the brown colored foam. The resulting juice mixed with lemon juice makes a very delicious jelly. It also can be mixed with another fruit such as blueberry or blackberry to make a delicious mixed berry jam. I also have saved the seeds of the largest fruit, and it has improved the size of the plants as well.

              • Reply
                Adventures in Self-Sufficiency
                October 25, 2015 at 3:10 pm

                I grew garden huckleberry for the first time this year, and am looking forward to trying this jam! Thanks for the recipe 🙂

                http://www.adventuresinselfsufficiency.com

                • Reply
                  Aaron
                  November 10, 2015 at 11:54 pm

                  Thanks for stopping by! Just subscribed to your blog. 🙂 Hope you enjoy this recipe.

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  February 4, 2016 at 12:59 pm

                  You’re welcome! Hope you enjoy yours as much as we’ve enjoyed ours.

              • Reply
                Micaela
                October 23, 2015 at 9:10 pm

                Thanks, Aaron. 2 pints is about exactly what I got (well, I’m doing them in the smaller jam jars, but I’m guessing it’s about 2 pints’ worth). I did have a lot of scalding of the fruit, though. Are you supposed to add water during the long boiling process? Maybe I was cooking it at too high of a heat. Also, I realized after I was done cooking them that I hadn’t allowed the pectin (or maybe it was the sugar?) to fully dissolve. I’m hoping it will do so while boiling in the water bath. Have you ever had that happen before? I was wanting to save these for Christmas presents, so I don’t want to open a jar tonight just to check to make sure it dissolved. Well, at any rate–it did taste yummy!

                • Reply
                  Aaron
                  November 10, 2015 at 11:59 pm

                  Micaela, Sorry for my delayed response! Just realized we’re not getting alerts when comments are posted. Hopefully fixed now. Yes, we add water at first to prevent scalding. Once the fruit bursts, you shouldn’t have to add any more unless your heat is too high. To prevent your pectin from clumping, quickly whisk it in a small bit of warm water in a bowl or glass to dissolve it, THEN add it to your pot of jam. Sometimes if you add the powder right to the fruit mixture it will clump. Hope things turned out well!

              • Reply
                Micaela
                October 20, 2015 at 9:54 pm

                Thanks for the information and the recipe! Can you tell me how many pints this makes?

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  October 21, 2015 at 3:46 pm

                  Micaela: Embarrassingly, we didn’t record exactly how much we made and most of it has already been eaten. Our estimate is that it will make roughly 2 pints. It may be a little under this but prep enough jars for two pints just in case. Hope you enjoy!

              • Reply
                gracie mead-rickman
                August 17, 2015 at 4:44 pm

                I ran my garden huckleberries through my food mill, which did not work well, but I got about 2 cups of juice as well as purple, turning to green foam that I eventually scooped off and washed down the sink. now what do I do with this? I did not cook my berries first which may have helped them go through my mill better. the juice is a beautiful dark purple color but I’m not sure i can proceed to make jelly or if it needs special processing or what. Anyone done this before?

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  September 9, 2015 at 10:02 am

                  @gracie_mead_rickman:disqus unlike many other physalis fruits, garden huckleberries really need to be cooked before being palatable. We also prefer not to waste skins, seeds, etc – which are all loaded with good nutrition and dietary fiber, so perhaps try the preserve recipe above to see what you think (all parts of the fruit are used)? Or just make a tasty pancaked sauce with them if you don’t want to go through the canning steps. Once cooked and sweetened, garden huckleberries are absolutely delicious; they have a blueberry-grape flavor.

                  • Reply
                    gracie mead-rickman
                    September 9, 2015 at 7:12 pm

                    Yes, about the cooking first, I learned that one too late for the first batch but live and learn….there are plenty more and I will make something tasty yet. TY for the encouragement. I’ll do jam next time!

                  • Reply
                    gracie mead-rickman
                    December 22, 2015 at 5:30 am

                    I tried again. Made jam and it was wonderful tasting and a gorgeous color. I also canned some pie filling.

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              Recipes

              Recipe: Soft and chewy sun-dried tomatoes

              Posted on July 6, 2016
              Sun-dried tomatoes at Tyrant Farms!

              Got more tomatoes than you know what to do with? Make your own delicious sun-dried tomatoes that you can eat throughout the year!

              Sometimes our garden creates a good problem: too much food.

              We’re eating our summer garden produce as fast as we can. We’re feeding it to our ducks. We’re giving away bunches of it to friends and family. No matter what we do, the piles of food on our countertops and in our fridge and on our tables are getting big enough to pose a health hazard.

              Recently, Bob the cat was nearly felled by a cascading pile of heirloom squash. After rolling in fresh catnip and taking a lengthy nap, he seemed fully recovered from the trauma.

              We even made a veggie fireworks display for July 4th.

              Tyrant farms' food fireworks finale

              Bob von Kitten was so impressed with our 4th of July food fireworks display that he woke up from his nap (for about 20 seconds).

              Every gardener needs to have a few long-term food storage methods

              So, what do we do with all the extra piles of squash/zucchini, tomatoes, melons, chanterelle mushrooms, beans and other produce that have piled up around Tyrant Farms? Sure, we do a good bit of canning and pickling, but most gardeners are already familiar with those food-saving methods.

              For the sake of brevity, we won’t delve into ALL of our favorite long-term storage methods for each type of excess produce. For now, we’ll just share one of our favorite ways to easily store a bunch of extra tomatoes: making soft & chewy sun-dried tomatoes!

              If you’ve got a bunch of extra tomatoes lying around that you don’t know what to do with, we hope you’ll find this information helpful.

              Looking for a quick & easy way to store lots of extra tomatoes? 

              Heirloom tomato at Tyrant Farms.

              A beautiful heirloom tomato at Tyrant Farms.

              We grew over 30 varieties of tomatoes this year, most of them heirlooms. One of the new hybrid varieties we’re growing is “Tumbling Tom” tomatoes. We wanted a few low-growing, cascading plants that produced huge amounts of early-ripening bite-sized tomatoes and our Tumbling Toms have done a beautiful job in this role.

               Our four Tumbling Tom tomato plants easily produce a colander-full of tomatoes per day, and they’re just getting started.

              Tumbling Tom tomatoes at Tyrant Farms

              A container full of Tumbling Tom tomatoes at Tyrant Farms.

              These small tomatoes are perfect for “sun-drying.” We’re using quotation marks on “sun-drying” because we actually dehydrate them in our trusty Excalibur dehydrator (which takes about one day) rather than using a true sun-drying tomato method which can take over a week (or longer if it’s raining frequently).

              Dehydrated sun-dried tomato recipe note…

              One year we made a bunch of sun-dried tomatoes that had a great flavor profile, but they were a bit too hard and crunchy for our liking. We tweaked our method by adding olive oil to try to get a softer, chewier sun-dried tomato. We’re pleased to say, our new recipe works and tastes great!

              Follow our recipe below to easily make your own sun-dried tomatoes and be sure to check out the process photos below the recipe card: 

              Recipe: Soft and chewy “sun-dried” tomatoes in a dehydrator

              bowl of sun dried tomatoes at Tyrant Farms
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              Dehydrated soft and chewy "sun-dried" tomatoes

              Course: Side Dish, Snack
              Cuisine: American, Italian
              Keyword: chewy dried tomatoes, dehydrated tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, tomatoes
              Prep Time: 15 minutes
              Dehydrator time: 2 days
              Author: Aaron von Frank

              A quick and easy recipe to make delicious, soft and chewy dried tomatoes that you can enjoy throughout the year. 

              Ingredients

              • Vine-ripened tomatoes (any quantity)
              • Extra virgin olive oil (1 tablespoon per 5 cups chopped tomatoes)
              • 1/4 teaspoon sea salt per 5 cups chopped tomatoes

              Instructions

              1. Step 1. Slice the tomatoes. 

                For small tomatoes, simply cut them in half and drop them in your bowl. Cut larger tomatoes into chunks about the size of a pingpong ball (they’ll shrink considerably when dried). See article images for ideal sizes. 

              2. Step 2. Add oil and salt.

                Once your tomatoes are all cut and in the bowl, gently toss them in olive oil (this is what helps keep the skin soft) and sea salt (for flavor and extra preservative). Optional - at this point, you can also add whatever extra herbs you’d like but we prefer to keep ours plain. 

              3. Step 3. Dry.

                Lay the tomato slices on your dehydrating racks at 125 degrees fahrenheit for about 24-48 hours. Do a taste test on your largest slices before considering them done. You do NOT want any moisture left in the tomatoes or they could turn bad during long-term storage. If you have any doubt that they're dried, continue dehydrating them. 

              4. Step 4. Cool & store.

                When they’re done, let them cool to room temperature, then store them in an air-tight jar or ziplock bag for future use. As you can see from the photos, tomatoes (like all fruits and veggies) are mostly water, so they’ll lose a huge percentage of their mass when dried.

              5. Step 5. Eat (our favorite step)! 

                We’ve eaten our sun-dried tomatoes over a year later and they still taste as good as the day they came off the rack. They’re absolutely delicious on homemade pizza, in pasta, or as a quick snack.

              Pictures to help show you how to make dehydrated sun-dried tomatoes:

              Sun-dried tomatoes going into the dehydrator at Tyrant Farms.

              Sun-dried tomatoes going into the dehydrator at Tyrant Farms. This shows the ideal size of tomatoes when prepped for dehydration. You can pack them fairly close together because they’ll quickly lose a lot of mass as the water in their cells evaporates.

               

              Hour 24: Sun-dried tomatoes at Tyrant Farms - all done!

              Voila! Sun-dried tomatoes all finished up. It’s amazing how much of the fruit is composed of water.

               

              Jar of sun-dried tomatoes at Tyrant Farms.

              A large canning jar full of sun-dried tomatoes at Tyrant Farms. These will taste REALLY good this winter!

              We hope you make and enjoy your own delicious homemade soft and chewy sun-dried tomatoes!

              Recipe: Soft and chewy sun-dried tomatoes made in a dehydrator. How to dehydrate tomatoes.

              Soft and chewy sun-dried tomatoes made in a dehydrator.

              KIGI,

              Other tomato articles you might enjoy: 

              12 Comments

              • Reply
                Samantha
                August 20, 2023 at 8:34 pm

                Was wondering if i could put am oxygen absorber in the jar for linger storage ?

              • Reply
                Audrey
                September 5, 2022 at 7:24 am

                Could we store these in olive oil?

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  September 5, 2022 at 11:03 am

                  Yes! Olive oil is a great way to store dehydrated tomatoes. Obviously, you’ll want to use the tomatoes and oil before the oil turns, so probably ~6-12 months max.

              • Reply
                Susie Helmboldt-Jones
                October 8, 2021 at 3:35 pm

                When you say air tight jar, do you mean like when canning boiling the tomatoes in the jars until the lid seals?

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  October 8, 2021 at 3:48 pm

                  No, your sundried tomatoes don’t have to be sealed like canned goods. Simply screw on the lid, and you’re good to go. 🙂

              • Reply
                Marnie
                September 13, 2021 at 1:45 pm

                24-48 hours in a dehydrator, it appears I took mine to my Mother’s house…how long should I expect in the oven, and at what temperature?

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  September 13, 2021 at 4:50 pm

                  Hi Marnie! To make “sun dried” tomatoes in an oven, cook them on a low setting (around 250°F) for about 3 hours or until they’re to the desired level of dryness. “Done” is going to vary a bit by variety (juicy beefsteak vs dryer Roma) and the size of tomato pieces you use. It’s definitely easier to go with a dehydrator but an oven is an ok alternative. Good luck!

              • Reply
                SK
                June 3, 2020 at 2:22 pm

                When I click on the link for the “Tumbling Toms”, they do not come up on the supplier’s website. Is there another name for them? Is the large tomato in the picture one of these? Also, do you keep the jars of sundried tomatoes in the refrigerator?

              • Reply
                Amber Zenner
                September 15, 2015 at 11:30 am

                How long do these last stored in jars? I have read that the tomatoes will reabsorb moisture from the air and get moldy. Is it better to store them in the freezer?

                • Reply
                  Aaron
                  October 22, 2015 at 4:30 pm

                  Amber: We store our sun-dried tomatoes in air tight jars and have had them last for a year. We’re not sure if they last longer than that because we’ve usually eaten them all by then. You can also add some rice in the bottom of the jars to help absorb any unwanted moisture.

                • Reply
                  Aaron von Frank
                  January 8, 2017 at 4:24 pm

                  Sorry, Amber. Our commenting system was broken, so you might not have gotten my original reply to your comment:

                  “We store our sun-dried tomatoes in air tight jars and have had them last for a year. We’re not sure if they last longer than that because we’ve usually eaten them all by then. You can also add some rice in the bottom of the jars to help absorb any unwanted moisture.”

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