Farm Day: Little Red Bird Botanicals - Roots and Seeds

Where did the year slip off to? It seems just last month I was photographing budding cohosh and baptista in the garden. But the blossoms have all withered, the vibrant reds, yellows, purples and greens have mostly all faded to browns, and the time of the root is thick upon us.

While the backyard ornamental and vegetable gardeners may already be knitting their winter sorrows, the herbal gardener knows better. 

Late fall is the time to harvest root medicine and save seeds for next year's garden.

On a surprisingly warm day at the end of November I joined Holly of 

Little Red Bird Botanicals to harvest and close up shop for the winter. 

There were many surprises hiding around the garden. The rue was still in full swing, as if it hadn't noticed the cold, several Praying Mantis egg sacs were found, holding the almost microscopic bodies of hundreds of next generation predators, and some shockingly vibrant colors were unearthed in our root digging process as we harvested echinacea and ginger.

We dug the marshmallow root that has been growing for three years and foraged for yellow dock and dandelion roots. We even harvested a whole bucket of sunchokes that we layered between levels of dirt for storage for the winter. 

Praying Mantis egg sac

Mullein 

Echinacea root buds in neon pink

Ginger roots

Echinacea 

Tiny sprouts on the Marshmallow Root 

The pinwheel seeds of the Marshmallow - a trademark of the whole family

the sunchoke harvest

Farm Day: Little Red Bird at Clagett Farm

Holly of Little Red Bird Botanicals tends a small plot at Clagett Farm. Amidst the farmyard chaos and despite the screech of the turkey she's managed to carve out a little slice of herb filled peace over the last five years. There's an air of quiet anxiety when a gardener first visits their piece of land after a hard winter. A held but hopeful breath. 

Will the plants come back? What was lost? What survived?

Keesa enjoying the sunshine

My experience with farming and gardening has always been with with the more macho sense of the word. Beefy tomato plants get yanked and discarded at the end of the growing season, seeds are snatched and hung if they are even kept at all, and a quick batch of winter-kill field peas gets thrown into the ground to the mercy of the first freeze.

An herbal garden is much different.  

Peonies 

As we approached the bed Holly and her mother started to call out the name of plants. 

"Oh look at the Mullein popping up."

"Good, we've got peonies here and over there the hyssop is looking good already."

As we surveyed the survivors I was struck by just how different this first day felt from past first days on agricultural farms. There was such palpable rebirth and regeneration here. 

Like seeing old friends at your old favorite bar. 

Black or perhaps Blue Cohash

I spent the morning with Holly getting acquainted with her herbs, my head reeling with all the new plant names. We attended to each plant as individuals. Some budding plants needed to be freed from smothering encroachers, others we covered in a soft blanket of pine needles and others we just simply recognized with a few words before moving to the next.

As you weed an herbal medicine garden you learn that the traditional foes of farming: the chickweed, dandelion, plantain leaf and dead nettles, aren't really foes anymore. But even friends can overstay their welcome and butt in where they aren't invited so out we plucked them. We made a tidy little pile of chickweed for Holly to bundle home and mix into her smoothies. She praised their superior nutrition and invited us to take chickweed as well. 

But wait. If they are so nutritive why cast them out of the garden?

"I don't bother growing things like chickweed in my garden when it's so abundant in our environment. Why plant something I can easily wildcraft?" Holly explained.

And she's right. Walking from my car to my apartment later that day I spotted chickweed growing between sidewalk slabs and clustered around the front steps. It's everywhere if you know what to look for. But where does one wildcraft in the city? How does one know where it's safe? 

I still have much to learn it seems.

The time passed quickly with multiple hands at work and before we knew it the weeds were gone and it was time to wake up the nursery and start planing some seedlings. I watched and chatted with Holly as she placed the chamomile seedlings in neat little rows.

"I wish it was possible to get just one seed in each little hole, you know. It always ends up being these little clusters that you have to pull apart. But I'm going to plant them pretty close together so they grow up kinda bushy, like one big chamomile bush."

The slow, intentional act of planting is such a calming experience. 

I'll be helping Holly throughout her growing season this year and documenting the growth of the garden and I can't wait to learn more. She sent me home with a hyssop and several little chamomiles of my own that I dutifully planted in close knit rows. Now all there is to do is water and wait. 

Herbalism: Centro Ashe Medicinal Mushrooms Workshop

On a chilly morning in November I pulled up to Centro Ashe. 

In a rural neighborhood a squat sprawling house and an oversized garage sit back from the road a bit. A tiny slat board sign out front reading: Centro Ashe est 2012, is the only things that sets it apart from the other houses. 

I followed painted signs and shuffled into the garage. A ring of metal chairs in the center of the room were filled with other future medicine makers and curious counterculturists. 

We sat tentatively, sipping nettle tea and milling about to look busy.

Holli is no white-coated doctor. She's not even the flowy skirt, patchouli kind of doctor. 

She's a fungaculturalist - she grows mushrooms for a living.

But she's not ignorant to the abundant healing powers of mushrooms. But many of us were.

We started by introducing ourselves and talking about our relationship with mushrooms.

Answers ranged from:

I eat mushrooms

 I've tried those Whole Foods grow kits without success

I drink mushroom tea, but I don't really know what it does

I've foraged once, but someone else knew what we were looking for

And my personal favorite: I've taken some really magical journeys with mushrooms

She started off our day of fungal fun by asking us to guess what percent of modern medicine is derived from mushrooms. 

10? 15? 20?

No idea.

Turns out that since the medicinal properties of the ennoki mushroom were first studied and proven in Japan in 1972, more than 40 percent of our medicines have been derived from mushrooms.

Now that's not to say we didn't use mushrooms before that. It's just that the scientists, those white coat guys I mentioned before, hadn't approved them yet. Once the powers of mushrooms were chronicled for all to see the fungus hit the pill stands pretty quick.

According to Holli: 

 "Humans are more closely related to fungi than to any other kingdom, including plants, protozoans, and bacteria, and we have developed similar defenses against mutual disease-causing enemies. The idea is that because fungi and animals suffer from many of the same diseases, fungal medicines are active against many of the organisms that infect humans. Though ancient cultures have known this for centuries, scientific studies have only confirmed their incredible healing powers within the past few decades."

The main fear of using foraged mushrooms is the well known fact that some mushrooms are poisonous and many mushrooms look alike. 

A cute little mushroom saying we learned goes like this:

There are old mushroom hunters, There are bold mushroom hunters,

But there are no old AND bold mushroom hunters.

The main rule when hunting for mushrooms is: When in doubt, throw it out.

Holli brought in some specimen for us to ID.

The four mushrooms above are all either Turkey Tail (known to be anti-malarial, anti-microbal, anti-oxidant, and anti-tumom), or look alikes. When fresh and attached to trees their colors are very similar and it is only by a few tells - mainly the texture of their undersides, that can give you a true ID.

Along with the 4 types of undersides there are four basic types of mushroom in the  fungi kingdom:

Sacrophetic - the type that decomposes matter and releases acid

Microryzol - the vast networks that sync up with roots under the ground. Very difficult to cultivate but crucial to healthy plant and soil relationships

Endophytic - the type that invades plant tissue but leaves the host functioning and healthy - these can be grown sans-host

Parasitic- the type that feed on the weak, these slimy specimens don't usually produce a fruit body of their own

Innoculting wood with reishi plugs

As we learned about hyphae and spore prints and tried to wrap our brains around the scale of the underground network attached to the tiny umbrella shaped fruits we cal mushrooms, our eyes started to glaze over from overload. 

Holli wisely put away the power point and started getting us to just jump in and try it. 

For the second half of the class we learned how to inoculate wood for mushroom cultivation and make little fungus boxes to take home.

The general steps were: find some fresh wood that isn't too big around, drill holes into it, hammer the plugs in, cover the whole with wax, bury, wait. 

We learned some interesting do's and don'ts of the cultivating world.

DO:

-Start with Oyster Mushrooms - as they are most forgiving to cultivate

- Learn your wood - not all wood will grow mushrooms

- Study your mushroom - what's it's natural habitat? What does it like to eat?

DON'T

- Inoculate dead wood. Only parasitic mushrooms thrive there and parasitics aren't very useful 

- Try to inoculate Black Walnut, Cedar, or Hickory - it won't work. These trees are naturally anti-fungal or produce essential oils that deter fungal growth.

- Contaminate your specimens before inoculation. 

This class was such a fun, hands on way to start getting interested in the world of mushrooms. Honestly, it was way over my head for what I am ready to do with mushrooms but being around experts in any field is always humbling and inspiring for future endeavors.