Uncategorized – Page 3 – Brennah's Backyard

Rose Hips Take the Stage

This time of year is often not the easiest to find good photography opportunities; it is not yet really snowy and there are no interesting icy displays on the creek, and most of the plants and insects are dormant by now. The wild roses provide one exception to that (not the only exception, but it’s the one I’m focusing on today). The fruit of the rose plant, the rose hips, are not only at their most colorful right now, but also at their most flavorful. Like the autumn olive berries, rose hips get tastier after they’ve been through a few freezes. They are also extremely high in vitamin C and other nutrients.

A couple years ago we tried harvesting some of them. There are a couple of different species of wild roses around, and the ones with larger hips (about the size of a blueberry) seemed like they would be more practical to harvest than the tiny ones of the species in the photo. They were more practical, but we soon realized that the tiny ones were the ones that actually tasted good. The larger ones were tasteless in comparison. This was a problem, though, because each of those tiny hips were stuffed with seeds that needed to be removed. There was no way to do that at all quickly, and the results didn’t seem worth it. This year, a better use for them has come to mind. We have been making kombucha (which is a fermented tea) for a while now, and while experimenting with different ingredients to flavor it, one that was particularly popular with us was rose petal. Rose hips have a similar (although I think slightly sweeter) flavor, and using them as a flavoring for kombucha would not require removing the seeds. And if all else fails, at least they are fun to photograph!

Winter Garden Volunteers

I didn’t get to planting greens for winter in the hoophouse this year. Exactly when they need to be planted depends on the specific crop, but even the quickest growing greens (like spinach) shouldn’t be planted later than September in this area. (At least, they shouldn’t be planted later if you want them for harvesting over the winter. They’ll still grow, but they won’t be ready until spring.)

Radish growing on a path in the hoophouse.

Last year, I planted quite a variety of things in the hoophouse to see what would do well over winter. It was our first year having it and was one huge experiment, but it went pretty well for the most part. Some favorites were identified, as were some that seemed more trouble than they were worth. And then there were some that seemed worth a little extra trouble. This year, though, I had to give my bees top priority. For that and various other reasons I didn’t end up planting much in the hoophouse for this winter. But as I was looking around inside it recently, I noticed that there were a few different greens and other vegetables growing amongst the weeds. There were radishes, mizuna, lettuce, Tokyo bekana, chard, maché, mustard greens, leeks, and what appeared to be a Tokyo bekana/mizuna cross. I had left some of the plants we had been eating over the winter go to seed to collect seeds from in the spring. I’m sure some of them ripened and fell early, or late, or just got missed, and wound up on the ground.

Sorrel, a perennial plant, growing in the hoophouse

That accounts for most of what is growing out there. A small amount of it I did plant, and some of it is perennial plants that were planted last year. Eventually, the hoophouse will probably be full of mostly perennials, but some of the very best cold tolerant winter crops are annuals, so there will always be a place for them too.

The Land

The land that is the setting for most of my photos and activities, Crossing Hedgerows Farm, came to us in 2013 covered in about seven acres of woods, and thirteen acres of field. The field had been being conventionally farmed until we bought it, and was planted with a rotation of corn and soybeans. The canopy of the woods was (and still is) composed mainly of oak, maple, sycamore, and hickory. The maples are silver maples, which are also known as ‘swamp maples’, which is fitting, since we are in the Huron river watershed and much of the woods and field area is flooded in the spring. The maples dominate the wettest areas of the woods. There are also elms, muscle-woods, and spicebushes in the understory throughout all but the wettest areas. The spicebushes are probably the most numerous of the larger woody plants in the woods.

Once the field was released from being farmed, it promptly sprouted a thick covering of giant ragweed. This was undoubtedly due to the high amounts of herbicides still in the soil. Giant ragweed, one of the so called ‘superweeds’, has developed resistance to the herbicide used on the field and was one of the only plants that could survive at first. The first year, giant ragweed was about all that grew in that field. It was impressive, standing taller than an average adult. Over the next few years the plants growing in the field slowly changed from pure giant ragweed to a variety of common weeds, to a wildflower meadow, and now it is growing a number of woody plants like autumn olive, cottonwood, willow, and dogwood. The wildflowers are still there, among the shrubs and young trees. The giant ragweed, on the other hand, is almost completely gone, although it is still common in the neighboring fields that are still being farmed.

The woods have not changed much over the time we have been here, but pretty much everything else has, and will likely continue to change, as our farm ecosystem comes together and matures.