Here at Mountain Gardens, temperatures are rising and the trees have leafed out, marking the end of ramp season.
In Western North Carolina, ramp season means driving past wilting ramps in open tailgates along the highway. The local market road sign proclaims RAMPS: they lie in a box, covered in dirt, leaves bruised and wilting, roots attached. Damaged leaves are of no consequence when you count on people discarding them. On our hikes, we meet men with mattocks and backpacks, rampers…
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Last month, Joe traveled to Switzerland to attend The Potential of Perennials for Food System Resilience Symposium, in Stans, where he and other keynote speakers discussed the need for a necessary agricultural paradigm shift in a world of climate disruption and scarce resources.
The symposium’s discussion centered around the role that perennials can play in a restorative agriculture. Perennials have the potential to support much-needed soil restoration, an increase in biodiversity (at present, only 12 plant species… account for 70% of nutrition (ProSpezieRara Germany 2014)), and water storage in the soil. But more than this, the symposium also promoted them as an exciting potential for carbon sequestration: like all plants, perennials pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and convert it to plant material and/or soil organic matter with the help of microorganisms–but the difference being that this carbon is kept in the soil (whereas with annuals, carbon eventually returns to the atmosphere with harvest and tilling).
Read MoreThe color green is returning to Mountain Gardens: naked branches on the trees are leafing out, bringing life to the mountainside and announcing the arrival of spring. Below, plants that have lain dormant underground for months are sending up new, tender growth. This is the time for sansai (Japanese for "mountain vegetables")— the tender buds and shoots of wild plants, some of which are only edible at this time of year before they grow tough and unpalatable.
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