I visited the daughter of a dear friend of mine last summer. It was her 12th birthday party, which I wouldn’t have missed for the world – I’ve known and loved this young lady since before she was born. The party was held on a stretch of flat lawn below the house, which is a ~70-year old timber frame atop a tall knob in Asheville, North Carolina.

There’s a path with timber-crossed bark-backfilled steps winding down the hillside from the house to the lawn. At one point along the path there’s a little grove of tall hemlocks, blue spruce and Frasier firs with a rhododendron mid-story boundary that’s cool even in the heat of summer. An old rope swing that doesn’t look strong enough to hold anyone anymore dangles from a lone oak’s limb, a little shady clearing off the main path. There, blending unobtrusively amongst the firs and hemlocks was a different kind of tree – different enough to catch my attention sharply that day. So I collected a needled twig hoping to identify it when I got home.

It was as tall as the hemlocks, not as tall as the firs. Maybe 45 feet, conically shaped just like its coniferous neighbors, but with the oddest needle and twig pattern I’d seen in all my days. The needles paired off the twig opposite each other like hemlocks do, but each needle was an inch long. Hemlock needles are tiny in comparison, and fir needles grow at all angles. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, reminded me a little of some fern-like throwback (but this was definitely a conifer tree). When I asked my friend she told me she didn’t know its name, but did know it’s very rare.

I’d forgotten to look it up when I got home, found that saved twig and now dry needle-leaves folded in a page of newspaper just the other day when cleaning out the shelves near my computer (shows how often I clean them out!). Decided it’s about time I went looking to identify this strange tree that looks like it belongs here, but which I’ve never seen anywhere else in all my hikes in these mountains. Of course I went surfing…

I went to a dozen different conifer identification sites. Federal government, state government, academic departmental, professionally scientific. Nothing quite like it except yew, and those are rare out east as well as having needles much shorter than my sample.

I added the adjective “rare” to my search, and suddenly three or four sites came up with something that looked an awful lot like what I had. Sure enough, it turned out to be Torreya Taxifolia. a confer so rare they say its only mature specimens are in botanical gardens under highly controlled conditions. It’s also called Florida Torreya because the only known wild members of the species grow in a tiny range along the Apalachicola River in 3 counties in the Florida panhandle. It’s closely related to the Florida Yew (Taxus floridana), the only yew in Florida.

My friend’s tree is a member of a species that got “left behind” after the last ice age, when its fellow northern climate trees repatriated themselves northward as the ice melted. The Torreya didn’t, and the only wild stands that remain are mostly shoots from old stumps. No mature trees at all in its only known wild habitat.

So how, I wondered, did my friend happen to have a healthy, beautiful, nearly 50-foot Torreya in her yard? …Looking as if it belongs there?

The answer to my question came from Rewilding Torreya taxifolia. Seems there’s an effort to re-naturalize Torreya in its original habitats, and to do that they’re following an old lead. The only grove of mature “wild” Torreya happens to be located at the Biltmore Gardens in Asheville. It originated in 1939 when a dozen specimens were transplanted from the Apalachicola stand. All the original specimens are still alive and still producing strong seed after more than 65 years. Clones are being raised elsewhere in controlled environments.

The Rewilding website has a great story tracing the details, and about how squirrels have been spreading the seeds over the last half-century plus from Biltmore’s grove. My friend’s tree is not distant at all from Biltmore’s managed forests and gardens (as the crow flies maybe two or three miles). It’s probably one of the natural, squirrel-abetted ‘escapees’ from the first viable seeds those original transplants produced.

It’s a striking-looking tree, graceful and well-shaped. It caught my attention directly (in a small grove of mixed conifers set as part of the landscaping, not a focal piece) when I wasn’t looking for anything unusual. I told my friend to save me cones or berries or seeds or whatever the tree produced in the way of seed (turns out it is seeds and not cones, none evident when I met it), as I would love to have a nice standing row of these along the property line and would take good care of them. I have old American Chestnut stumps here that still grow shoots. They live to about 5 (not long enough to fruit), then die of the blight that wiped their parents out in the 1930s. I’m trying to save those too…

I beg to differ with Nearctica’s information that “the only mature individuals of the species remaining are in cultivation.” The Biltmore transpants have been producing offspring for as long as they’ve been producing seeds, and some of their offspring are gorgeous. This is a tree that obviously belongs here. But because it’s as rare as my chestnuts, don’t tell anybody I know one personally. I’m gonna have to press harder to get some seeds from my friend, see if I can’t have two or three growing here in my yard. A repatriated ice age conifer might find an open niche here, you never know.

Links:

Torreya taxifolia Arn

Rewilding Torreya taxifolia

Florida Torreya

In another [post] the idea of porch and kitchen gardens was introduced. Growing herbs and some vegetables in containers in your own kitchen (if it has a sunny window or two), on your deck, porch or patio can be a lot of fun, and can lend personality to your environment through the different types of containers you choose and arrange.

There are some great ideas out there, as well as some wacky ones. You can add height with hanging planters, accessibility with window boxes, depth with different size containers arranged in groupings. You can build your own, go ‘thrifting’ at your neighborhood garage sales and secondhand shops, or raid the shed, garage, basement and attic. Heck, you can even put those discarded fixtures from when you remodeled the bathroom to eclectic use!

Old copper teakettles, worn out cowboy boots, old 55-gallon trash cans with holes (metal or plastic, cut short), old buckets, boxes and drawers… anything that will last awhile in the weather, can be made to drain water and will hold dirt can be made into a planting container or patio/yard conversation piece.

How about an old toilet with flowers growing in the tank and a bird bath in the bowl? An old claw-foot bathtub on the patio edge with a recycling fish tank water pump fall, water lilies and goldfish? That rusty old oil space heater can be sanded and painted, set in the kitchen or porch corner to hold that gallon-size copper kettle full of basil.

Old Easter baskets can be turned into hanging containers, just line with plastic and attach some chain or rope. Those 55-gallon plastic trash cans can be cut down and filled with enough dirt to grow tomatoes, peppers and herbs all planted together and trellised into nice arrangements. Paint them any color you like, add some decals or designs.

Coffee cans and cookie tins make excellent planters for herbs. Your kids’ old toys and wagons work nicely as containers, either for small succulents (in the bed of that big old Tonka dump truck) or a nice clip-able lettuce crop. An old chest of drawers can make a very nice kitchen planter, with drawers opened step-wise and sectioned with boards to hold dirt only in the space of their opening.

Check out some of the cool links below, and see what you can create from the ‘junk’ you’ve got sitting around!

Links:

6 uses for your old bathtub

Weird, Wonderful and Whacky Planters

Unusual Ideas for Planters

DIY Network: Container Gardening

“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of Elderberries!”
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail

In The Homesteader’s Medicine Chest we broached the subject of cultivated and wild medicinal herbs like black cohosh, ginseng and goldenseal. In this late fall period it’s time to harvest one of the most useful medicinals that mother nature offers for free… Elderberries. Sambucus canadensis.

Elders are shrubby trees that grow to about 12 feet tall on the edges of rural clearings and farm fields. They produce flat sprays of lacy white flowers in the summer, sometimes a foot across. In the fall these bear clusters of deep purple berries that are hard to miss. Also called the “country medicine chest,” elder flowers and berries have a history in folk medicine and folk lore going back to the Stone Age.

Elder flowers make a sweet-smelling wine, an aromatic tea to treat colds and sore throats, and impart a savory flavor to foods. The fall berries produce the famous port-like elderberry wine said to be a perennial favorite of fairies, elves, leprechauns and gnomes. The Egyptians applied elder flowers to improve complexion and treat burns. The Russians and English believe that elder trees ward off evil spirits, planted them for luck near their houses. Sicilians believe sticks of elder can kill snakes, and they’re probably right. Most any stout stick can be used to kill a snake!

Elderberries contain the most vitamin C of any herb other than rose hips and black currants. They are also rich in vitamins A and B, as well as cartenoids, amino acids, flavonoids, tannins and sugar. Elder leaves, flowers, berries, bark and roots all have traditional medicinal uses. Elder has been shown to contain anti-viral properties and preparations make effective cold medicine, cough syrup and flu remedy. Elderberry wine makes a fine base for tinctures and any elderberry preparation (juice, tea from dry berries, wine, vinegar) makes a good general health tonic to boost the immune system.

Flu season is almost upon us, so it’s a good time to stock up on elderberries. Recent research from Israel and Panama has demonstrated elderberry juice (as a syrup) directly inhibits the influenza virus. Flu virus forms tiny spikes that are laced with an enzyme that helps the virus penetrate the cell walls of a healthy organism. Then the virus sets up reproductive shop. The active ingredients in elderberries disarm the enzyme within 24-48 hours, halting the spread of the virus. In a double-blind study against placebo, those taking the elderberry syrup recovered from flu symptoms twice as fast and also demonstrated higher levels of antibodies against the virus in their systems. This effect was demonstrated against 8 different influenza viruses.

There are a host of recipes for elderberry, from jellies and jams to catsup and fritters. One can follow one of the many recipes for elderberry wine or simply purchase straight juice or wine from specialty wineries like Nuyaka Creek or Wyldewood Cellars.

In light of recent FDA actions to take over the counter children’s cold medicines off the market, there is renewed interest in elderberry as the traditional remedy, a safe and effective alternative to those synthesized drug and alcohol concoctions that too many people use to put the kids to sleep more than ease their discomfort. And which harbor a host of not-fun side effects.

Elderberries can be dried, juiced and/or frozen. A syrup concentrate can be added to vodka for a stronger tincture base, in which sassafrass or black cherry barks give up their qualities, making a stronger by-the-spoonful cough and sore throat medicine. There’s great information out there on the web, so check some of the links below and see if you can find some elder trees in your area that can help get you through the winter!

Links:

Harvesting the Elderberry

Herbal Information Center: Elderberry

Alternative Medicine: Elderberry

Prodigal Gardens: Elderberries

People who choose to live close to the land, to do for themselves as much as possible, and to learn to live in harmony with nature will also tend to want to assume some responsibility for their own health maintenance whenever they can. This commitment may play out in the garden by growing a variety of healthful foods and culinary herbs, and many homesteaders will also cultivate a variety of useful medicinal herbs while they’re at it – because they can.

Those who have chosen a rural environment and have managed to gain control over several acres of land will also want to become familiar with the many useful wild herbs that grow in their region and perhaps even on their property. Some of these are endangered in the wild due to over-harvesting (ginseng roots, for instance, are worth their weight in gold in the medicinal market), so you’ll be happy to learn that a good many homesteaders are making good economic use of their patches of shady woods and forested acres to cultivate these wild herbs as cash crops or homestead medicines.

There is a good deal of information out there about cultivated garden herbs, some linked below. Here I’d like to talk about the usually wild, forest-grown offerings, particularly Mayapple, goldenseal, ginseng and black cohosh.

Black Cohosh

When we purchased our 10-acre ‘stead here in the southern Appalachians, all but a bit over an acre of cabin, yards and garden terraces were still in hardwood forest, last logged back in the 1930s. This means some of our tulip poplars, oaks and maples are stately, interspersed with a lower level of dogwoods and sassafras as well as saplings that keep the forest floor well shaded for most of the year. We were also lucky enough to have some significant natural growth of useful and endangered botanicals.

In fact, we have an entire slope on the eastern side of the ridge that is blanketed with black cohosh and ferns amidst median growth hardwoods with a few 100-foot poplars to form the upper canopy. A local conservation society would pay me a fee every year not to harvest the roots, as black cohosh is becoming seriously endangered in the wild. I don’t take the money for a couple of reasons. First, I’m not fond of the idea of having ‘inspectors’ roaming my woods, when it’s enough of a pain in the neck to have agricultural ‘inspectors’ wandering my garden every other year to make sure i’m not cheating on my organic certification. Secondly, I can manage the stand just fine on my own, while cultivating the plant for harvest at the shady edges of my yard.

In crowded patches I dig a few of the smaller plants in the fall, cut away any remaining greenery stem, and replant them where I want them. They come up nicely the very next spring, and the wild patch has room to generate more. So far this has kept us in enough fall-harvested roots to sell some to local dealers and enough to make tinctures for the women in my life who are still experiencing womanly health issues. Black cohosh is an estrogen precursor useful for treating menstrual cramps, PMS symptoms and the frustrating issues of menopause.

Ginseng

Some of the wild ginseng plants down in the bottomland on both sides of the ridge were more than 25 years old, and the “big mamas” stood an impressive 3 feet tall. The way ginseng grows, there is usually an elder “mama” plant in the middle of the patch, with younger daughters growing around it where the seeds that don’t get consumed by deer fall and get covered by fall leaves for the two years it takes the seeds to sprout.

My habit was to plant 5 or 6 of the seeds out from the mama, then bring the rest up to the woods near the garden and plant them in marked-off beds. Sometimes I did harvest some of the smaller 3-4 year olds from a wild patch and replant the small roots in the cultivated patches. Ginseng is seriously endangered in the wild, worth as much as $650 a pound for dried roots from one of the licensed ‘sang brokers. An elder “Man-Root” may go for a thousand dollars on the black market in China, though ginseng roots older than 15 years (or younger than 5 years) are illegal to sell in the United States.

Ginseng (Asian or American) has legendary healing properties. It’s tonic as an immune system booster and stamina enhancer, a traditional treatment for erectile dysfunction, hepatitis C and menopausal symptoms, and research has demonstrated its effectiveness for lowering blood glucose levels and blood pressure. Some of my beds are 6 years old now, which means the seed-grown plants are 4 years old. I start a new bed every fall, which means I now have 6 ginseng beds. I won’t sell any roots until at least a year after the plants havev started producing seed, at which point they’ll be closer to 10 years old than 5. It’s a long-term investment, but I do enjoy watching them slowly grow.

Goldenseal

Goldenseal [a.k.a. Yellow Root] grows in abundance on our property in thick stands among the trees in the bottomland near the spring-creeks on both sides of the ridge. It is not yet endangered, but its popularity has driven up the price and its survival in the wild is becoming a concern. I manage this resource much as I manage the more endangered wild plants – by carefully planting mature seeds in managed forest beds and occasionally thinning the natural stand by moving younger plant roots to managed beds. I do use some of the wilding harvest – I like to keep a jar of powdered goldenseal roots on hand for general purposes – but never enough to threaten the stand’s regeneration.

Goldenseal was used by the Indians to treat skin diseases, ulcers, liver ailments and gonorrhea. More modern uses are for control of bleeding and hemorrhage, colds and upper respiratory infections, diarrhea, eye infections and vaginitis. It also seems to have some effectiveness in treating cancers and canker sores.

Mayapple [a.k.a. American Mandrake] grows in the early spring, often the first green-green to appear in the root-line of trees. They resemble foot-tall green umbrellas blanketing the root spread of a tree or group of trees and sport a single white blossom that develops into a green fruit. Also called “Cancer Root” in some herbals, a powder ground from the dried yellowish roots is called podophyllum. This powder is usually mixed with Benzoin (from a tree grown in the far east) and used for removal of warts. It is also used in a beeswax/olive oil salve with cleavers and poke root for treatment of basal cell carcinomas of the skin.

Mayapple is difficult to cultivate, but is in no danger from overharvesting in the wild. Just take what you need and leave the rest, which will regenerate the following season. If you have it growing beneath trees on your property, careful management will ensure there is plenty every season.

There are many other useful plants that grow wild in my mountains. Mountain Mint, also known as “Heal-All” is gathered in mid-summer, as is wild-growing St. Johnswort. The ubiquitous poke plant not only provides tasty greens (must be double-boiled) in the spring, but their tuberous roots and berry juice are useful for treating skin eruptions, cancers and warts. There’s plenty of small witch hazel growing along the driveway and trails. I harvest the small branches and flowering twigs in December and January, chop them up good and steep them in alcohol as a fine astringent.

We’ll talk more about medicinal plants from the woods, yard and garden in future posts, so stay tuned and do check out some of the links below!

Links:

Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Preserving wild by cultivating your own

Medicinal Herb Plants Nursery

eMedicinal: Medicinal Herbs, Herbal Formulas

Healing Herbs Guide

In the last post I talked a bit about planning to use your yard space in such a way as to minimize expanses of lawn that serve no purpose other than making you mow them regularly. Before getting into the fine points of ‘naturalizing’ your yard space, I wanted to talk a bit about planning your herb and kitchen garden.

This is the most fun and useful bit of growing green things any homesteader can do, and it will add a great deal of pleasure to your living space with wonderful scents, beautiful plants and flowers, and the tastiest fresh herbs for your cooking that you could ever find anywhere.

In addition to culinary herbs that you’ll use a lot of, there are some handy medicinals that can also be grown in a yard-based herb garden, and more herb seed and plant suppliers are offering these usually wild-growing seeds, roots or plants for home gardeners and yard ‘naturalizers’. Which means you won’t have to displace any wildings in your area in order to grow your own supply conveniently to your kitchen.

Some will find it easier to begin with potted herbs on a shelf or sunny sill in the kitchen proper, then add to the collection with pots and stands arranged on the porch. Or you could grow your herbs in pots on the porch and just move the most commonly used into the kitchen during the winter. Some will want to plan a formal or informal herb garden to take up a significant portion of the yard, with raised beds and walkways covered with fabric and mulch, pebbles, flagstones or bricks – no mowing, and weeding raised beds isn’t too much of a chore.

I’d go ahead and advise collecting the herb seeds and plants you most want to grow from a supplier and starting them in pots even while you’re planning and constructing a more formal garden space in the yard. You can always get more later, and the root-propagated herbs you’ve already got growing will just keep on multiplying as you get more and more accustomed to dealing with them.

Choices should not begin with anything particularly exotic, just the basics that a homesteader will use a lot. Parsley, thymes, basils, rosemary, sage, chives, tarragon. Be wary of the pretty herbs you’ll want to plant in your garden but tend to become invasive – the mints, nasturtiums and wormwood are the worst offenders. Even out in the garden it’s a good idea to keep these crops in containers. Otherwise they’ll grow right past your bed confines, into your paths, into other beds, and show up in places you don’t want them and can’t seem to get rid of them.

When you plot the garden – even if it’s all in containers – be careful of the height requirements for the different herbs. Things like dill and fennel are tall and gangly when they’re grown, not really strong enough to hold themselves upright and more than three feet tall. If you plant them close to the path border they’ll fall right over onto the path and make a mess of your pretty design. Put them at the back of the bed, preferably against a fence, wall, or planting of self-standing taller plants like 5-6 foot tall sunflowers (very pretty!), or a stand of Joe Pye. Joe Pye can grow to 10 feet or more in height, but will stand and when in bloom is a better butterfly attractor than butterfly bush!

Conversely, you’ll want low-growing plants near the path borders. Thyme is good for this, and will tend to creep over the border. It smells great, is beautiful in bloom, and more useful than phlox. Chives behind the thyme gives an 8-inch level and the purple poms of their blooms are lovely. If you plan properly, the growth levels in your beds will complement the flowers and herbs they front or support, and everything will be easily accessible.

And if you choose to take up a chunk of the yard with an herb and kitchen garden, don’t forget to plan the veggies you grow as carefully as you plan your herbs. Establish some perennial beds for such herbs as rosemary and sage, and such edibles as rhubarb and artichokes. I have seen a kitchen garden centered around an artichoke patch that was beautiful. ‘Chokes can grow to 10-12 feet, and if you don’t harvest the buds in time they go on to become huge purple thistle-like blooms. Surrounding these are the shorter Jerusalem artichokes, which are a wild sunflower. You’ll be digging for some tubers in the fall, but artichokes have to be separated every year too, as does rhubarb. When you thin these perennials from the formal kitchen garden, you can always transfer the excess to a section of your truck crop garden, where they’ll happily keep right on producing food even if you let the formal plantings just look pretty.

Lettuces, several colorful varieties of kale and chard, even dark green collards can be planted in spaces among the herbs, harvested and replanted two or three times through the season, and they will add to the beauty of your plantings. Lettuce and kale also grows well in pots or flats, so can also be part of your porch or window garden. I like the leaf lettuce mixes, where you get everything from light yellow-green varieties to deep purple oak-leaf lettuces. When the plants get 2-3 inches tall, just clip them off (leaving half an inch) with a pair of scissors and you’ve a fine young leaf lunch salad. Spinach can be grown this way as well – these plants have shallow roots, the flat need be no more than 3-4 inches deep. Mix good potting soil with real garden dirt to get the most nutrition from the plantings, and it’s okay to fertilize with a little Miracle-Grow or organic fish fertilizer once a month.

Check out some of the resources below or seek your own on the magazine racks or library. Once you’ve aimed your mind in the direction of growing things, you’ll begin to notice there’s information everywhere! Take your time, start with some pots and cuttings from a friend, or try your hand at mixing good dirt and planting seeds. You may find you’ve a positive flair for it!

Links:

The Herb Garden

Kitchen Herb Garden

The New Kitchen Garden by Anne Pavord

Planning Your Homestead Landscape

I’d like to take a bit of a break from the hard (and not hard) physical work of basic carpentry, plumbing, maintenance and repair around the homestead. We’ll get back to these subjects often enough over time, as there is always work to do. Let’s talk about living things, because one of the very best parts of choosing where you live is choosing the living things you’ll get to live with.

There are other aspects of how one chooses to live that are important if you’re planning to have a happy life without trading a majority of your time for money you have to pay to other people to keep your own life going. Ideally a committed modern ‘homesteader’ has been smart enough to seek his or her ‘stead well away from the gated communities of Yuppie retirement dreams, farther out in the ‘real’ countryside where land is still reasonably cheap and little old ladies on some zoning board aren’t spending their lives making yours miserable.

Even a single acre of land is easily 4 times the space of your typical suburban development lot, offering a considerable amount of room for growing herbs, vegetables, fruit and nut trees, a few grape vines, even some useful wildings to encourage birds and which can produce useful products for the family. The very last thing you want is an acre of boring lawn to mow once a week when you could be doing something fun – or just relaxing in your hammock in the shade of the grape arbor, drinking lemonade.

If you’ve an acre or two or three, the next thing you need to do is develop a plan. What you plant, where you plant it, and how much work it requires to keep up with are all serious considerations, and these must have a long-term view. What’s the house like, what will enhance its beauty and functionality as part of the land, what your outdoor play-spaces should be and look like, how you can make it work for you as both sustenance and income, etc., etc.

Even on an acre or more, the actual yard space – the areas covered by grass that require mowing, trimming and must endure lots of traffic in nice weather – can be kept to a minimum by planning your landscaping carefully. Pathways can be paved any number of clever ways, grades can be stepped just as cleverly, beds can begin right at the edges and go up from there with native perennials (these can be shade, partial shade and sun-growing, depending on your needs) that start just a few inches tall and are backgrounded with ever-taller plants and shrubs. Pebbles, seashells, rocks, used bricks and old timbers make great edges and rises, can serve as planters themselves, and the plants can be put into landscaping plastic and covered with mulch to keep grass and weeds at bay. It looks better than a boring flat expanse of grass and adds to the value of your homestead.

If you’ve too much an expanse of treeless green when you start, you’ll want to plant trees for welcome shade and to anchor landscaped garden spaces. Sure, the pretty weeping chokecherries, Bradford Pears, redbuds, dogwoods, tulip trees and Japanese maples are lovely yard trees for purely aesthetic reasons. But if you want flowering trees, fall colors and nice shade there are some wonderful grafted miniature fruit and nut trees you could plant instead for about the same price. Then you’d get the added benefits of fresh cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, pomegranates, almonds, hazlenuts, pecans, apples… whatever suits your taste buds!

Many a homesteader will choose to put a “Kitchen Garden” in whichever part of the yard is closest to the kitchen door, hopefully on the south, southeast or southwest side of the house. Many houses already have a kitchen porch or deck, or a handy homesteader can build one. It’s definitely worth it! This smallish porch or deck should be the first part of the kitchen garden. You can grow a variety of culinary and medicinal herbs right in pots and flats on the porch, and arrange them at levels around a seating space to make a comfy spot for morning coffee or late evening tea.

If there is an enclosed porch that can be insulated with plastic during the winter, the outdoor pots can be moved there during the winter, or even moved indoors to a sunny window. Basils, sage, rosemary, thyme, parsley… these culinary herbs are pretty to look at as well as tasty in your diet. And they can all be grown in pots.

If winters are mild you may wish to just replant the annuals every season, and rely on the kitchen garden off the porch for salad greens, dark green leafy’s like kale and collards, cabbage, peas and such that will grow well in cold weather with just a little care to keep them from hard freezes. In summer things can get a lot more varied. It’s close to the house, it’s easy to get to and keep, it’s a joy to tend, the food is your very own.

Next installment we’ll look at some well-planned porch, herb and kitchen gardens and what should be grown in them. Start looking around the place with your “future eyes,” and soon you’ll be picking strawberries instead of mowing the lawn!