Another Edible "Weed".

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By chance this week, we discovered another edible "weed": Purslane.

It turns out a lot of the weeds we have been pulling from our raspberry rows are actually an edible plant. Also referred to as "Little Hogweed", Purslane is not only a tasty annual succulent, but also a very healthy one. Loaded with Vitamin E and Omega-3, every part of this plant is edible from the leaves to the stems and its flowers.

Purslane (or Little Hogweed)

Not only is this a fine edible, but by retaining moisture in the soil, it is also a good companion plant.

It was then up to me to challenge Chef to introduce this green to the menu. It turns out this was easily done.

Ryan has been using the Purslane in salads, as a green addition to our cheese plate, but also on his Pizza di Paese.

Pizza di Paese: Tomato Sauce, fresh Sweet Corn, Paradiso Cheese and ...Purslane

On the farming front, we were quite lucky to have our friend (Alois Dober) from Switzerland back in town. Being a Swiss forester, Alois has been a tremendous help in clearing the brush on the front portion of our land. In the process, we've discovered a small grove of Butternut trees.

Clearing land and discovering another potentially useful crop: the Butternut (or White Walnut)

I also have to report on our grape propagation experiments. We were actually quite pleased that after just one week, some of our cuttings are already leafing. Things actually look quite promising.

Our grape propagation is already showing promise: the Concord cuttings are leafing

On another front, we have discovered a new pest. For some reason, we found that quite a few of our new golden raspberry leaves were damaged (basically eaten).

Leaf damage on golden raspberry canes

The culprit turns out to be a nasty scarab: the Japanese Beetle.

The Japanese Beetle feeding on a raspberry leaf

We have not yet identified a suitable organic spray to be rid of this beetle. There are pheromone based traps available, but we have heard that these can have nasty consequences (basically attracting more beetles to our site). As such, we have basically been picking them off and killing them by hand (apparently the scent of dead beetles can repel others). So far this has been somewhat effective and their counts are rapidly declining.

In the meantime, we have also continued our Melomel (fruit Mead) experiments. The first, based on a Pyment (Mead with Grape Juice) and Purple Raspberries, was ready to be racked.

Our first Purple Raspberry Melomel...ready for racking

We filtered the berries and placed the wine in a carboy....of course we could not help getting an early taste of the results. It turns out that the Pyment did pick up the flavours of the raspberries quite well. With all sugars turned to alcohol, we ended up with a reasonable wine. However it is dry and very tart as a result of the raspberry juice. Once racked, we decided to add a bottle of our raspberry cordial in an attempt to mellow the wine a touch. We will see in a few weeks if things work out as planned.

I close this week with the photo of a small visitor. Alois had left his shoes outside overnight and we were quite surprised when Dean (the tiler working on the house entrance) discovered this little critter crawling out of the shoe.

Adidas: a new home for a small bat

We placed the shoe under the veranda where we know some bats our nesting. But this little fellow would have none of it and crawled right back into the shoe. I don't think Adidas ever had this in mind for the use of their shoes.

Going right back to bed.