Things to say about this: 1. Dahlias are nearly done for the year 2. If you are local and want to make your own $15 bouquet of dahlias tomorrow (Wednesday) at 6pm in West Philly, let me know by 8am! 3. My dear friend Mendal and her partner Lisa Suzanne are visiting from North Carolina and helped harvest dried dahlia seed pods and then eat dahlia petals 4. The bottom right is one of my favorite seedlings from this year 5. The bottom middle and the top right are the same variety, which we are calling Princess Isle because it was mislabeled before I got it but it may be A La Mode by the looks of it. 6. Our favorite tasting petals so far are Bodacious, Princess Isle, and Jane Cowl. 7. Dahlias are called Cocoxochitl in Nahuatl and their tubers and petals are eaten in Mexico. #cocoxochitl #acocotli #dahlia #dahlias #dahliaoftheday #edibledahlias https://www.instagram.com/p/B3YZ-_8A6o3/?igshid=12etv2bss6r6m
A similar (if not the same) West African variety of bearded upland rice was grown widely by enslaved Africans on the coast of the Carolinas and as far west as Mississippi as a familiar taste of home in an unchosen land, and as a variety that needed no irrigation or “swamps”, meaning fewer mosquitos and disease. In exchange for fighting with the British against those who enslaved them during the War of 1812, many Gullah Geechee people were relocated to Trinidad where they continue to call themselves Merikins. Trinidadian ethnobotanist Francis Morean (@francismorean) grew up planting this rice with his mother and grandmother, and is working to expand stewardship of this grain beyond the 40 families who still grow it on the island. He added: “As a descendant of that long-forgotten hardy band of African and African-American men and women who were almost literally abandoned in the forests of Moruga by the British colonial powers after the War of 1812, I feel a special sense of what one may call group identity and pride - for want of a better expression - regarding our hill rice narrative.” He says: “The Merikins were NOT the first persons to introduce rice to Trinidad and Tobago, notwithstanding the fact that they have most definitely played a major role in the evolution and persistence of the tradition and the survival of the genetic resources.” He has found historical documentation of upland rice culture in Trinidad at least 9 years before the war, likely thanks to African communities predating the Merikins. The New York Times and NPR pieces featuring this rice story got a lot of the facts wrong (as many of us do with seed stories) and I appreciate Morean’s commitment to integrity by correcting the story and his assertion that research is a continual process. Aleya Fraser (@naturaleya) of Black Dirt Farm Collective went back home to Trinidad and met with Morean and hill rice growers, and sent some seed to my partner Chris, who asked me to also grow them as a backup. Now Amirah Mitchell, who is focused on African Diasporic Crops and rice in particular, has adopted this crop at Truelove Seeds. #morugahillrice #uplandrice #oryzaglaberrima https://www.instagram.com/p/B3qKwt1AWJ1/?igshid=bs4384og4mkp
Dr. Khem Fatimi grows peppers from Kalimpong, India where she grew up before houses had electricity and attended school barefoot. More than half a century later, she has helped to build a library and teacher training center back in her home village, while living and working on Long Island, from across the oceans. The round peppers are very spicy and called Dallai - which means round, and can also be what you call a short child. Dr. Fatimi shared a pepper sauce made with these and some peaches and plums and it is delicious, alarmingly hot, and sweet. The smaller peppers are more mild and have the same name as cumin or caraway: Jeerai, which is also similar to the word for stubborn. I learned you don’t put peppers directly into someone’s hands - it is bad luck and can cause a fight! I also learned cooked nettles are eaten regularly back in India and Nepal with something like corn grits or polenta, which helps with their slimy texture. I loved talking plants and foods with Dr. Fatimi, who is my friend Meena’s mom. We were all up for our friend Jane’s 40th birthday at @riseandrootfarm, where they have high tunnels full of edible flowers and spicy greens for market. Specifically, they love and grow long rows of our Mizuna Landrace seed, which was bred by Tobacco Road Farm in Connecticut for cut-and-come-again winter spicy greens, though in the big scheme of things they are quite mild flavored. Check out @riseandrootfarm and check out our Mizuna Landrace seed at www.trueloveseeds.com for your winter salad mixes! #dallai #dallekhursani #jeeraikhorsani #jeerekhorsani #seedkeeping #seedsaving #mizunalandrace #mizunarubasoi (at Rise & Root Farm) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3mPSXPgx6m/?igshid=1p6jphvk3masc
Celosia is featured in the Lost Crops of Africa as an important and beautiful green vegetable. While we primarily know it for it’s gorgeous flowers, shown here through a loupe (except that center photo - I snuck a dahlia in), in places like Nigeria, Benin, and Congo, it’s nutritious, protein-rich, and stamina-building greens “are primarily eaten in a dish prepared from various vegetable greens, combined with onion, eggplant, hot peppers, palm oil (or other vegetable oil), and fish or meat. Sometimes, peanut butter is also added as a thickener. All the ingredients are added to one pot, and brought to a steady boil to produce a tasty and nutritious ‘soup.’” We offer seeds for this “Feathery Plume Celosia” Truelove Seeds, and while we primarily grow them as cut flowers and as a seed crop, we sometimes also prepare them as callaloo. #featheryplumecelosia #celosiaargentea #plumecelosia #lostcropsofafrica #seedkeeping #seedsaving https://www.instagram.com/p/B3lKTIogZbr/?igshid=2hetvi0cd12k
This morning, I ate another delicious Philly-grown pawpaw that came from my friends Suzanna and Ryan’s tree, which they got from Philadelphia Orchard Project in 2010. This grafted variety is either Rebecca’s Gold or NC-1. While I was sitting on the porch, nursing my spasming back, the mail came with Michael Judd’s new book For the Love of Pawpaws: A Mini Manual for Growing and Caring for Pawpaws - From Seed to Table. It was just in time: while I knew to keep pawpaw seeds wet and cold at all times before planting, I didn’t know you should either plant or put them in the fridge immediately; that they keep each other moist (without a paper towel); and that you should poke holes in the bags to help release extra moisture. I also appreciated the map with their native range as well as their names in various indigenous languages. With its ancestors in the tropics, this large custard-like fruit travelled north over 40 million years in the stomachs of mastodons and glaciers, and has evolved and has been selected by humans for flavor, size, growth habit, and fibrous bark (for footwear and baskets) for a couple thousand years in North America. As always with saving seeds, I’m honored to play a small role in the proliferation, preservation, and selection of this amazing plant. Thanks to Suzanna, Ryan, Philly Orchard Project, and Michael! #pawpaw #asiminatriloba #fortheloveofpawpaws @permacultureninja @phillyorchards @ediblealphabet https://www.instagram.com/p/B2CTiBvgB9h/?igshid=13u2fkg36akek
Hoda Mansour and her children came to harvest 16 pounds of molokhia! (Here, maybe they are holding half a pound, for the photo). Growing up Palestinian, displaced in Lebanon, she remembers sitting with her grandmother for hours, plucking the leaves from the plants for cooking their family’s staple dishes. It was boring, tedious work but she wishes she savored every moment, since she’d be sitting all day with her sisters drinking tea - it was a family event. When they get home today, she and the kids will sit around plucking the leaves, and will flash rinse it and freeze it in portioned bags that will last them a year, just like they did last year from our greens. Since she was a baby, her daughter Noor’s favorite preparation has been when it is minced and cooked as a “nice slimy soup that goes right down”. Now 13, Noor says “I want to grow molokhia and I want to keep the tradition alive. So that obviously starts with me sitting down watching my mom and every step of the way asking her ‘how does this happen, how do you make this, what’s the spice that you put into this’ and just hopefully catching on and learning how to make it for my future kids if I have any. I want to definitely grow it for me, I want learn how to make molokhia!”. #molokhia #jute #egyptianspinach #seedkeeping #palestinianfood #middleeasternfood https://www.instagram.com/p/B1fKDRwHSKc/?igshid=158afa9a1hf2p
The Scarlet Eggplant is also called the Garden Egg, likely because it is shaped and often colored like a chicken or duck egg when unripe, at the eating stage. White Garden Egg is grown for our catalog by farmers at Novick Family Urban Farm here in Philadelphia and is very popular with West and Central African customers. In their homelands, this crop is extremely economically important - especially for women farmers. The purple eggplants we most associate with Italian, Asian, and Middle Eastern food are a whole different species that traces its origins to two separate domestications in South Asia and East Asia. Scarlet Eggplants (Solanum aethiopicum - photo 1-3) and Gboma (Solanum macrocarpon - photo 4) originate in tropical Africa. Pea Eggplants (Solanum torvum - photo 5, by @novickurbanfarm) originate in Central America, and have naturalized and become important in tropical Africa, and many other tropical parts of the globe.
This first photo is of “Striped Toga Eggplant”, a name that causes many to assume origins in Togo. There are several striped varieties of this “Gilo” type of African or Scarlet Eggplant, but it is difficult to find African sources of information about “Striped Toga”. African eggplants are traditionally eaten while green and/or white, before they become colorful and develop hard seeds, though many Western seed catalogs and chefs say to eat this variety when orange, and many simply promote it as an ornamental plant. If you are African (or from anywhere else!) and recognize this variety as your traditional food, we would love to hear more about how you grow and cook with it!
The photos and videos at the end of this post are of Striped Toga seed extraction at our farm earlier today. I stomped them in a bucket, added water, popped the unopened fruits with my hands, and poured it into a container to ferment overnight to make seed cleaning easier tomorrow. I’d leave it a couple days, but I won’t be there this weekend to process them.
Pulling out the best cobs for seed and the rest for food from our Sehsapsing Flint Corn harvest. Each of the 6 boxes represents the yield from a different seed source: our growouts from 2016, 2017, three different individual cobs from 2018, and seed from the USDA. We learned that the seed from 2016 and cob #3 from 2018 yielded the best quality and quantity (we will grow only from that stock next year), and the USDA seed was slightly crossed and unimpressive. It’s a Lenape variety, kept until 1985 by Nora Thompson Dean, an Unami Delaware/Lenape herbalist who dedicated her life to preserving the culture and traditions of her tribe. This variety was brought west to Oklahoma by her mother, Sarah Wilson Thompson. Many Lenape people moved west over hundreds of years, continually pushed onward by white settlers. Our original seed comes from William Woys Weaver and the Roughwood Seed Collection. We primarily grow this corn to rematriate it to Lenape people, and to its original territory. #sehsapsing #sehsapsingcorn #zeamays #seedkeeping #rematriate https://www.instagram.com/p/B25hHqpANfF/?igshid=1vs8d44vc3ajt
Gandules somehow didn’t get wiped out by the frost, unlike our dahlias and squashes (not shown, to protect our memory of their glorious lives). Just this morning, I was at @enyfarms in Brooklyn, picking up their first harvests of these seeds - if all goes well with more seed ripening and germination tests, we should have this northern-adapted variety available by January! #pigeonpeas #gandules #seedkeeping (at Newtown Square, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/B30U6qRAt-T/?igshid=vbihkiyp1ddo
Mantises, Dahlias, and Egusi Melons, photobombing each other, and on their own. The three don’t have much to do with each other - I think this mantis species is from China, Dahlias are known in Nahuatl as Cocoxochitl and are an Aztec food crop, and this species of Egusi Melon (bred specifically for its edible seeds) is the same as Watermelon - which is from West African. But today it was hard to get a photo of one without the other. Let’s focus on the dahlia: I’m trying for the first time to control which plants contribute the pollen to my mother plants for my intentionally created dahlia hybrids. I grow my “fancier” dahlias separately from my open-centered dahlias (which the bees, butterflies, and humming birds consider more appealing and delicious and “fancy”, I’m sure), as this decreases the likelihood of getting open-centered dahlias from saved seeds of the ones that I consider fancy. I just learned how to control this even more by hand pollination, thanks to an article by Larry Parr in Garden Guides dot com. I harvested lots of my favorite fancy dahlias that had just started to open their centers but before their pollen-covered stamens emerged. I pulled the petals off, labeled them, and put them in a glass of water in a sunny window to further mature and make pollen. I bagged other flowers that hadn’t opened their centers yet to keep pollinators off them as they mature and expose their sexual parts. At that point, I will rub the sexual parts of the flowers together (choosing two similar types), transferring pollen to the “mother” plant (maybe repeating the next day too), and keeping the flower covered for a few weeks to keep the pollinators off it while the seeds develop. Crossing fingers that crossing these flowers works! In the mean time, I’m harvesting plenty of dahlia seeds from open pollinated plants too, including from our isolated best-tasting dahlia patch. #dahlia #cocoxochitl #dahliabreeding #egusimelon
1. Bumblebee drinks from a flor de Frijol Gandul.
2. Snail eats Skirret seeds, as fast as they can do.
3. Lady Mantis waits for a lover and a meal.
4. My first Moringa blossom: you know how I feel.
5. If the blossoms make, it’s a new dawn for our Moringers!
6. Our Perilla flowers look like towers of blushing singers.
7. Their lovely cousin Besobela crowns herself a work of art.
8. Taro catches sunshine that they dreamed of from H-Mart.
9. Papalo finally pops a flower bud on autumn’s first day.
10. Honeybee waits like I do for the flowering of Huacatay.
