Oats

Last year I experimented with growing oats by planting a single 100 square foot bed of nude oats (avena nuda). I expected to get roughly 4 pounds of oats from that space. Unfortunately the grasshoppers more or less ate the entire crop. All I had left was enough for a single bowl of oatmeal. Needless to say I won't be tying up 100 square feet of my garden with oats again until this current plague of grasshoppers (it's now lasted two seasons) is at least a year or two behind us. I have to wonder if traditional oats would have withstood the little green monsters better? Nude oats are hulless, making it easier for us to get to the seed, but it also makes it easier for every other critter too.

But even though I had a miserable experience growing oats, I would highly recommend others give it a try. It's a great introduction to growing grains and very easy to grow. Plus, you not only get a crop of oats, but you're left with a big heap of oat straw which can be put to use in many ways. There are the obvious uses--as mulch and animal bedding--but oat straw is also a very useful medicinal herb. To harvest for medicinal purposes you should cut it when it's still in the green or "milk" stage. If I had known that last year, I would have cut part of my crop at that point. Then I would have gotten something useful out of the crop. When I do get around to growing oats again, I will set aside part of the crop to harvest as medicinal straw, and part to harvest for the grain.

I have to admit, I've never been that crazy about oats. I'm just starting to appreciate them, mainly because I've finally learned how to prepare them properly. Oats are very hard to digest unless they've been soaked in an acidic medium. They contain high levels of phytates which interfere with digestion and keep many of the nutrients bound up and unavailable. Whenever I ate oats that hadn't been soaked, they always sat like a lump in my stomach and I would feel miserable. At some point, I began soaking them overnight in water. The following morning they would cook up nicely and have a much better texture, but they still did not sit well with me. Because I hadn't added an acidic medium, I hadn't broken down any of the phytates.

So just recently I began adding either a little bit of yogurt or a little bit of yogurt whey to the oats when I soaked them. What a world of difference! The texture is fabulous, the flavor is amazing, and they don't sit like a rock in my stomach. I actually love oatmeal now.

I use Sally Fallon's recipe from Nourishing Traditions, except I use less yogurt or whey than she recommends. In the afternoon I put a cup of oats in a bowl and add a cup of warm water and either a half-tablespoon or a tablespoon of whey or yogurt. I cover it and let it sit on the counter until the next morning. Then in a pan on the stove I mix the oats with an additional cup of water and a half-teaspoon of salt. It cooks up in less than five minutes. I like to serve it with a pat of butter, some fruit, and a bit of brown sugar. Lately I've been adding cranberries. I put them in to cook with the oats, so they have time to burst and spread their tartness around. I haven't tried bananas yet, but the texture of the oatmeal is so similar to mashed bananas, it seems like it would be a perfect combination. And I suspect the texture is something little kids would love. So if you've got toddlers who hate oatmeal, try it this way and see if it makes a difference. I think it will.

Plague of Locusts, Hail, and Wind

Well, I wanted to take some pictures of my beautiful garden this week and post them here, but Mother Nature can be very cruel. Actually, it's not all that awful. The garden will survive. But flattened plants with minced leaves aren't particularly attractive, so I'm going to give it a few days to bounce back before I take some pictures.

The hailstorm produced maybe nickel-diameter hail--not too bad. I hadn't staked my tomatoes so it was bad enough news for them and I'm still not quite sure what I'm going to do about them. My plan originally was to install a horizontal trellis for the vining tomatoes, while just letting the Romas sprawl. But after the phone-line fiasco (see my post "Call Before You Dig...") I got a little nervous about digging anything, and I would have needed to bury the upright supports for the trellis about a foot in the ground--so I just never did it. I still need to call and have the phone company come and mark the lines. Meanwhile, I've got all the supplies for the trellis just sitting around. The beefsteaks and heirlooms have just gone nuts and it would be a challenge to install the trellis at this point. What am I to do?

Then there are the hordes of grasshoppers. I've never seen it so bad. When I first planted out my baby basils the grasshoppers tore through them in a day or two, turning the leaves into lacework. I planted some more basil seeds directly in the garden, assuming that the first crop was a total loss. But now the first crop has mostly recovered and the second crop has sprouted, so the end result of the grasshopper invasion might be more pesto than we can possibly deal with. Last year I just had six basil plants outside for pesto (two more plants indoors for general use). From those six plants with two harvests we got nearly enough pesto to last through the year. This year I planted out twenty-three basil plants and once I thin the new patch to its final spacing there'll be about ten more plants. They're all full of grasshopper holes, so maybe it'll take two munched plants to equal one whole plant, I don't know. Still, that's a heck of a lot of pesto (and think of the olive oil and pine nut bill!). The basil plants aren't the only things the grasshoppers are munching but they've definitely taken the brunt of it. I checked online for an organic control of grasshoppers and there is one, but you have to apply it while the grasshoppers are only 1/4 to 1/2 inch long, so it's already too late for that.

The only other solution would be floating row covers, but I'm not sure that's in the budget for this year. Maybe if I just got enough to cover the most vulnerable plants.

The good thing is that while Mother Nature might do a number on parts of the garden I think it would be difficult for everything to be wiped out. Even if there was baseball-sized hail, something would eventually pop its head back up--though I pray I never live to see that day.

Call Before You Dig...Your Garden. Seriously.

I learned that the hard way this weekend. Definitely call before you dig anything--not just footers and trenches and post holes--anything. If your little kid is going to be out in the dirt with his Tonka trucks, call and have them locate the buried lines first. I'm serious.

Here in Colorado, the Public Utility Commission only requires the phone company to bury their lines 6-12 inches. That's gardening depth, that's kids-playing-in-the-dirt depth, that's a depth people (like me) might not even consider real digging. But, take my word, any digging is digging. Planting a tiny sapling is digging. And rototilling is digging too--my next door neighbor cut through his phone line with a tiller.

So there's my public service announcement for today. Call before you dig.