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Garlic Duck

If you came here expecting a recipe, you’ve come to the wrong place.

garlic_duck1

Do you see it there in the middle?

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Here’s a closer look…

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Here’s the whole thing.

It the past I’ve had hedgehogs, birds nests, wasps even ants, but I’ve never before had a duck’s nest in my garden.  Snuggled comfortably between the Red Toch and the Russian Softneck, with it’s home in the straw.  Three eggs are waiting with the next generation inside.

I discovered her a few days ago, after being in the garden for a few hours.  Completely unaware of her, I got a little too close causing her to fly away in a panic.  I don’t know who was more frightened, her or me as a duck suddenly took off almost vertically from my garden about a meter from where I was standing.

I have not seen any slugs or snails this year!  It could just be luck, but I think I’ve already encountered the first benefit of having a resident garden duck.  I’ve seen other garden bloggers joke about a slug or snail problem really only being a matter of a duck deficiency.  Well I can assure you, I have no such problem!

According to what I’ve read on the Internet, duck eggs take about a month to hatch, so for the next several weeks she and I will both have to share the garden space.  Fortunately she picked a part of the garden I don’t need to go into often these days.

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GM Sugar on it’s Way to Europe and Beyond

According to this recent article on the GRAIN website, sugar made from GM sugar beets has already been approved for import by the EU because — according to Monsanto, the refined product no longer contains GMOs.

For some time now Europe has been a major producer and exporter of sugar and sugar beets, but this is due to change in 2009.  After recent reorganizations in farming subsidies, the EU is left with just a few small centers of sugar beet production, and will go from being a net exporter to an importer of sugar.  Even though growing GM sugar beets is not allowed on a large scale at the moment in Europe, the importation of refined GM sugar is about to begin.

Following Monsanto’s logic that the refined product no longer contains GMOs, it seems likely GM sugar will also eventually find it’s way into certified organic products.

Sugar beets are strongly out-breeding plants, and their pollen is spread long distances in the wind.  Sugar beets will also cross pollinate with common beetroot.  In some places there are also naturally occurring weeds that can cross pollinate with sugar beets, potentially acting as a reservoir for the modified genes like what’s happened worldwide with GM rape (canola).  These contaminated weeds are potential ‘super weeds’ in that they can have resistance to Round Up.

For now purchasing European sourced sugar, as well as sugar labelled as ‘cane sugar’ will ensure you are not getting a GM product, but this will almost certainly change.  Work is well under way on GM sugar cane, and it’s likely to soon be grown on a very wide scale.  It also seems likely approval for growing GM sugar beets in Europe is not far away.

One the the main driving forces behind the massively large scale growing of sugar beets and cane is demand for biofuels in the US and Europe as well as other places.  This threatens to create ‘sugar deserts’ across large parts of Latin America as tons of glyphosate herbicide are dumped on these crops killing everything except the monoculture sugar crop itself.  The land used for this comes from deforestation or use of land that should be used for food production.

With respect to sugar cane, which is seen as the cheapest form of sugar production, very hard physical labor is required to harvest the canes.  Workers are often exploited and under paid.  Every year a number of workers die as a result of physical exhaustion.

The world does not need refined sugar and biofuels at this price!

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Fruit and Vegetable Guide

I recently came across this Fruit and Vegetable Guide in Dutch (intended to be printed out and folded for easy reference while you are shopping), made by Dutch food organization Weet Wat Je Eet (WWJE) (Know What You’re Eating), and I thought the information in it was interesting enough to take a stab at a translation.  Of course the information is firstly most interesting for Dutch people, then for people living in Europe, but there is some more general stuff as well.  We do live in the age of the global marketplace.  It’s the kind of thing that those of us who buy fruit and vegetables from the supermarket should really be thinking about.

As well as buying certified organic products, another good way of choosing your supermarket produce is according to what usually has high levels of pesticides.  For example, if you know bell peppers (in particular from Spain) are normally high in pesticides it might be a good idea to look for organic bell peppers.  On the other hand, there may not be a lot of point looking for organic cabbage, because this doesn’t normally have a lot of pesticide residue anyway.

[begin translation]

Fruit and Vegetable Guide

Don’t take a risk!

As consumers we consume chemical pesticides residues every day.  WWJE found 14 different residues in a box of strawberries.  Is this bad?

It’s certainly something to be concerned about.  Scientific studies show even small amounts of these chemicals can still be bad for our health.  Combinations of pesticides are also a special risk.

Children?  Pregnant?  Don’t take a risk!  Eat sufficient quantities of fruits and vegetables, this is important for your health.  In particular for born or unborn children, choose food you know is safe.  Growing children who are exposed to too many agricultural poisons can have learning and attention problems, as well as neurological and developmental problems.  Therefore, don’t take a risk and always buy clean fruits and vegetables.

How do I buy fruits and vegetables without chemical residues?

Fruits and vegetables are delicious and healthy, especially if they contain little or no agricultural chemical residues.  Unfortunately you can’t see these chemicals.  How do you know if produce is clean?  This Fruit and Vegetable Guide will give advice for this.  Take it with you in your wallet or purse!

1.  Choose Organic –  [the guide then gives some information about what the EKO (Europen Certified Organic) means and how to find stores that sell certified produce in the Netherlands]

2.  Choose the right Supermarket – [The guide then gives some advice on which supermarkets sell produce with the lowest pesticide residues in the Netherlands, according to WWJE tests].  The green stripe is the number of products tested that didn’t have any residues.  The red are the products that did contain residues.  The red circle with the slash were the number of products where the residues were above legal standards, and the skull and crossbones shows levels that represented health risks.

3.  Choose Dutch produce – The Duch food authorities tested produce in 2007 and found 2% contained residues above legal levels.  For other countries in and outside of the EU on average this was 10%.  In particular produce from Turkey, Italy and Spain were regularly seriously contaminated.  In addition, since combinations of pesticides can pose a special risk, it should be noted that products from Turkey contained on average 4 different chemicals, while Dutch products contained on average 1.3 different chemicals.  Our advice:  buy Dutch products.

4.  Choose clean products.  Research by the Dutch food authority has shown that some types of fruits and vegetables are normally clean, while others are normally contaminated with residues.  In the table you can see which are the cleanest and dirtiest.  It should be noted that in general vegetables are cleaner than fruits.  For children and pregnant women our advice is:  choose the cleanest types.  If you want to eat mandarines or grapes, buy organic!

Fruit

Cleanest

  • Kiwi
  • Passion Fruit
  • Plums
  • Bananas
  • Papaya

Dirtiest

  • Grapes
  • Mandarines
  • Lemons
  • Strawberries
  • Oranges

Vegetables

Cleanest

  • Green Cabbage
  • Red Cabbage
  • Asparagus
  • Cauliflower
  • Onions

Dirtiest

  • Cucumber
  • Bell Peppers (especially from Spain!)
  • Leaf Lettuce
  • Iceburg Lettuce
  • Endive

The law does not offer enough protection.  Unfortunately what is legal and what is safe are not the same thing.  It happens often that foods are legal, but according to international norms are unhealthy.  WWJE therefore holds supermarkets to stricter rules, as long as the laws are not sufficient.  A number of supermarkets in Germany have adopted their own stricter standards than what the law requires.

[It then goes on to explain their ongoing campaign in the Netherlands, and gives websites to look for more information]

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Fava Beans as Cattle Feed?

Sue recently left a comment on my fava bean post, and asked the following question:

Can Fava Beans (dried seed) be used to feed cattle? And if so is there anything that needs to be done to them?

It’s a great question, but unfortunately I don’t have the answer.  Is there anyone out there with cattle experience who could answer the question?

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1 Year Old Asparagus

asparagus_1yearold

So I started asparagus last year from seed.  There’s not a lot of information about this on the Internet, and what’s there is often conflicting.  I thought I would do a post here about some of the things I’ve learned.

I decided to start my asparagus from seed, because crowns here tend to be overpriced and of unnamed varieties.  I wanted to grow OP varieties, so getting seeds seemed the best way to get started.  When you start asparagus from crowns, you need to wait 2 years before you get a normal harvest, and with seeds you have to wait an additional year.  I was prepared to wait 3 years for a normal harvest.

Asparagus likes rich ground, and I discovered last year I had problems with not enough nitrogen in my garden.  I decided to address this by planting beans as companion plants with the asparagus.  This may not have been the best decision, because in the first year the asparagus plants were very small and weak, and the beans grew over and crowded them.  Many of the asparagus plants didn’t survive, and this may have been part of the problem.

When I started this I was under the impression most of my asparagus plants would survive, and in any case I was expecting it to be black and white, either they would survive or not.  I planted 2 beds with 12 plants each, expecting to perhaps lose a couple of plants in each bed.  This is certainly not what happened.

What happened was different asparagus plants grew with different degrees of success, and quite a few simply died after the first year.  It’s not completely clear how many survived, but it’s certainly less than 50% and many that are still around don’t look healthy and strong.  A few of the plants are doing fine, like the one in the picture above.

Another one of the issues I’m aware of is there are male and female plants.  I’m quite happy to have a few female plants in my garden, because I would like to have seeds for future planting, but most people only want male plants as they produce better asparagus spears.  I’m under the impression when you buy crowns, they’ve usually been sexed and are always male.

I also started my seeds indoors.  I’m under the impression this wasn’t necessary and I didn’t really gain anything by doing it.

Lessons

Starting asparagus from seed is certainly possible, but it’s a little bit more trouble.

I suggest planting seeds with about 6in (15cm) spacing in rows 1ft (30cm) apart.  For the first year plan on growing crowns for transplant, so don’t worry too much about providing the perfect spot for the plants.  Plant at least 4-5 times as many plants as you expect to need crowns for.  You will want to be able to pick the best and strongest plants for transplanting, and will probably want to discard female plants.  You can direct seed in the garden, about 2 weeks before the last frost date in your area.  Germination rates can be low, so consider sowing more thickly and thinning out the plants later.

The following spring, transplant the crowns.  Soilman recently did a great video on this.