Thursday, April 2, 2020

This morning we made blueberry muffins with the sourdough starter.  I've been better about the daily feeding of the yeasties since I started cooking with them.  The muffins were really dense and needed a lot longer to cook without the baking powder and baking soda I typically put in the recipe.  So, for quick breads, just like I did the biscuits, I'll keep my baking soda to help rise the dough.

We saw 2 monarchs flying by today.  It's late for monarchs.  It must be the winter males that don't migrate to the breeding grounds in the coast ranges, Central Valley and the Sierras.  Before I was Farmer Ladybug, I was one of the scientists that tracked and tagged monarch butterflies. Monarchs are protected. It is illegal to catch, touch or even disturb monarchs without a permit. Did you know that our monarchs are called western Monarch butterflies and are only from the land west of the Rockies?  Many people don't know that the monarchs that migrate to Mexico in the winter are not our monarchs.  Those monarchs are from the Eastern US. population.  So there are two monarch populations, separated by the tall Rocky mountains that can't be flown over by monarchs.  The western Monarch butterfly wintering grounds are right here and extend in a very limited range in coastal California to our north and south.  So, we are smack dab in the middle.  Monarchs depend on shelter in their wintering grounds for survival of the entire species.  The wintering monarch is the longest lived, living up to 6 months!  They arrive in September and leave in March.  The population peaks at Thanksgiving and every year there is an annual Thanksgiving count to count all the monarchs in the western population. It is usually only the female that flies to the summer grounds to lay eggs on milkweed and other host plants. Milkweed is not important on the winter grounds because there are no caterpillars here, but trees are, like Monterey cypress, Monterey pine and eucalyptus and also a variety of good nectar plants.  Why do you think monarchs use our school garden? The males die here after breeding. There will be 4-5 generations before they return again.  That means that it is the great-great-grandchildren that return in winter.  How do they find their way?

I mowed the front yard and put all the cuttings in the chicken yard.  It looks so green, soft and beautiful, covering all the dirt.  The chickens had fun spreading it around.  This will help with the flies I hope. Mysteriously, I also mowed a chicken egg.  It was on the opposite side of the house of the chicken yard.  It looked like Sara's egg.  We sometimes let her run around the yard away from the other chickens while we play. We never noticed that she laid an egg.

The bunnies were out and digging again today.  They dug up a blue, plastic Easter egg from deep underground.  Mosquito said they were Easter bunnies.

My marigolds still haven't germinated.  I looked again at the package and it says they were from 2014!  It's important to check the packaging date before you plant. Some seeds can last a long, long, long time and still grow.  Seeds are amazing little packages, dormant and waiting but still very much alive.  Wild seeds sometimes can can wait years until conditions are perfect.  Some must have fire, or frost, or some other environmental condition to break their dormancy. I was interested, so I looked it up and found out that:

• The oldest mature seed that has grown into a viable plant was a Judean date palm seed about 2,000 years old, recovered from excavations at Herod the Great's palace on Masada in Israel. It had been preserved in a cool, dry place, not by freezing. It was germinated in 2005.  Before discovery, this tree was extinct!*
• The oldest seed that has grown into a viable plant was Silene stenophylla (narrow-leafed campion), an Arctic flower native to Siberia. Radiocarbon dating has confirmed an age of 31,800 ±300 years for the seeds. In 2007, more than 600,000 frozen mature and immature seeds were found buried in 70 squirrel hibernation burrows 125 feet below the permafrost near the banks of the Kolyma River. Believed to have been buried by Arctic ground squirrels, which had damaged the mature seeds to prevent germination in the burrow; however, three of the immature seeds contained viable embryos. Scientists extracted the embryos and successfully germinated plants in vitro which grew, flowered and created viable seeds of their own.ᐩ

Many cultivated plants, like marigolds, do not have special protections in place or requirements to break dormancy.  This is because they've been cared for by humans for so long, and humans have selected those seeds that are easy to germinate, while throwing out the others. Humans also provide perfect conditions for their plants, like water, sunlight, soil, and help their plant outcompete others by weeding around it. So over time, seeds of cultivated plants have lost the ability to survive without humans. You can tell by looking at a seed how long it may last: thin-coated lightweight seeds like marigolds can last 1-3 years while harder-coated beans and corn may last 5-10 years.  I once had mustard green seeds from my grandfather that germinated after 10 years. My marigold seeds came from my own seed collection.  There may be still a few hardy seeds in that pack of several hundred that will germinate, so I will plant all of them. Your seeds were donated this year from Botanical Interests Seed Company.  They are at most 1-year old. To be sure, though, see if you can find the packaging date.

Garden math: Farmer Ladybug's  marigold pack says they were packed in 2014.  How old are Farmer Ladybug's marigold seeds?

Berry Muffins

from Lean, Luscious and Meatless, vol 3 by Bobbie Hinman and Millie Snyder
Although this is my basic muffin recipe, I often modify it by types of flour, types of berry, sugar (usually none), extract type and even replacing the curdled milk with yogurt or water, whatever I have on hand.  I have even made it without the egg if I don't have one.

1- 1/2 cup flour (you can mix whole grain and white)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup milk
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup sugar (optional)
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp lemon extract
1 cup berries

1. Preheat oven to 400°F
2. Oil muffin tins
3. Mix flour, baking powder and baking soda.
4. Put mil in another small bowl and add lemon juice and let stand for 1 minute.
5. Add remaining ingredients, except berries, and curdled milk to flour and mix well.
6. Fold in berries
7. Divide into muffin tins and bake for 15 minutes.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

*Newsweek and Archaeology magazine
+National Geographic