Hey, plant lovers and plant killers. I'm Jonathan.

And I'm Jeanette.

We're two old high school friends, current geriatric millennials.

This is Plant Sluts, the podcast where plants meet pop culture, sex, gossip, and.

All the dirt in between.

Coming to you from a backyard in.

Salem, Oregon, and a rooftop in Montreal.

Quebec, where Plant Sluts.

We're Plant Sluts.

Oh, my God. Hey, Sluts. Welcome back to season two of Plant Sluts.

We have a lot in store for you this season. It's been a really, really fun journey that we've had over the last year. We have received hundreds of thousands of emails, and we've been invited to attend the podcasting circuit. But we want to let you know that we're dedicating ourselves to this podcast, to keeping on track with all of our interesting episodes. Yeah, we're doing it for you. The thousands of people that listen to our podcast every episode, the tens of.

Thousands of listeners we have.

So it's winter. Jeanette, what are your updates for the garden?

Yeah, not a ton going on as we record this. It's January in Salem. We've had about one freeze, and right now I. The only thing I have going on is some neglected Brussels sprouts. I didn't want to go through the muck and the mud to check on them very often, and when I did go check on them, they were covered in gray aphids, but they're still, like, growing. So I just, like, hosed it off and, you know, I'll keep checking. I don't know if they get in the Brussels sprouts, though.

I don't know if it sounds unreal to hear you say that you're going to spray something with water because it's so cold here. And, like, I can't imagine, like. Like a hose. Like, there's no. The hoses are all emptied. Like, you can't. You can't spray anything.

We have, like, caps on most of our hoses except one.

Yeah, I don't know how many, like, freezing periods we've gone through here, but I want to say that I am now a crypto bro. Oh. I have the greenhouse. Like, everything else is dead. I'm not going to talk about that. It's just all under, like, a big device I have in my greenhouse, a mining. A bit mining heater. So it basically mines bitcoin and heats the greenhouse at the same time. It's. It's not really, like, warm enough, really. That much can grow, you know, and the. When there's, like, really Big cold spells. Like, it's minus 20 Celsius outside. It keeps it to just below zero, but otherwise it's just kind of like keeping things alive. It's a test, but I'm making, like, money, I guess, at the same time, even though I'm paying money to have it run.

That's so strange. So is it a computer or is it a different kind of device?

A bit miner has like. Like a computer, I guess. It has chips. It has like a. Like a. Boards, you know, with, like, chips on it.

Oh, yeah, A motherboard, cpu.

I'm like, I'm a crypto bro, but actually I'm more of a grow bro than I am a crypto bro. I don't really know what I'm talking about. So all I know is it's a miner. It took me a really long time to figure out how to set it up, but I had finally set it up, and it basically creates bitcoin. And the excess heat is. What's he heating? The greenhouse. That's my winter update.

Oh, that's really cool. So instead of, like, just running a heater, which would use energy, you're using that energy to also mine bitcoin, which will. Could it magically make you rich like the lottery, or.

No, no, no. It's covering about 70% of the bill, so it's. It's like I'm paying 30% of what I would normally pay for the electricity.

I see.

Unless bitcoin kind of, like, magically rises in value, then it's just kind of like a bit of cash back.

I see. So it's. It's like, efficient way to run a greenhouse heater.

Yeah. More efficient. Exactly.

Yeah. Welcome to our new segment. Try weed.

Weed.

Oh, my God. I was inspired by a Christmas gift from my grandmother called Eat the A Foraging Guide to Identify and Harvest some Wild Foods. I realized we always talk about things that are edible. We'll say, oh, the leaves on that are edible, or, oh, you can eat those flowers or you can eat the shoots. But do we ever actually eat them? I know I don't. I have yet to pick a dandelion from my lawn and chomp on it. So I wanted to.

Yeah.

Actually get us. Or at least me trying it. And I'm sure there's people that do eat the weeds all the time. I'm not one of them.

I've eaten the weeds a couple times, and I've been pleasantly surprised and disgustingly disappointed.

And that's how I'm hoping this segment will go.

So what do you have for us, Jeanette, what is the weed that you've picked?

It is winter, but I am not under a sheet of ice. I do have some mallow growing still, and it's not the best time to pick it because it's winter, so you're not getting like fresh, tender, young leaves. But I still wanted to try something. Typically with mallow, people eat the whole plant, the roots, the stems, the flowers, and then they make these little fruits. It's kind of like people say it's like a cheese wheel.

Cheese, yeah, I've heard of that.

But since it's winter, it's not making it right now, so I didn't get to try that. So I'm just going to eat the leaves and just looking up how to eat them and like, is it safe to eat them and all that information. I found out a little bit about mallow. It was once considered an aphrodisiac, so it's very slutty. But it's also really rich in vitamin A, B and C and it has calcium, magnesium, potassium. And the tender young leaves apparently have one of the highest amounts of vitamin A of any vegetable.

Oh, nice.

The other thing I should mention, a lot of cultures eat mallow leaves and it's just part of their cuisine. I think you said you had them in Italy.

Yeah, I ate at a restaurant that kind of focused on kind of old timey recipes. And like, I saw mallow was on the, the menu, so I ordered it and actually I thought it was really nice. It was like deep fried. It was like crispy, almost like how you would find like crispy spinach.

Okay.

But like mallow. Yeah, it was really good.

Yeah. I don't want to act like I'm inventing eating this since I've read like so many recipes from different cultures that already have been eating it. It's used like, as a thickener and that's where like marshmallow comes from because I think the roots have some gooeyness.

Oh.

But now we use like gelatin or.

Other thickeners and it grows like every. Almost everywhere. Right. Like, it's. It's a pretty common weed. I think. I see it.

Yeah.

I actually think it looks pretty because it has like those purple flowers and the palmate kind of leaves. Or more like an oval leaf with little lobes.

Yeah. The shape of the leaf is almost like a geranium.

Try it.

Try it.

Try and put it in your mouth.

I know. I sauteed it with some oil and garlic and I put a little tiny Bit of soy sauce. I'm going to try the thing that grew in my yard. M. All right. I think I. I think I researched it pretty well. I tried to find if there were any lookalikes that would have killed me, and it seems fine.

That's smart.

So. Yeah. All right, I'm gonna try it.

All right, try it.

Yeah, it's good. Yeah, it just tastes like spinach.

Yeah, it has. It sounds like there's a little bit of a crunch in it. Like, it still kind of, like, keeps its. It's not. Because, you know, like, sometimes when you cook spinach, it kind of, like.

Yeah.

Disintegrates in a way where it gets, like, really, like, soft. It's. It doesn't get like that. It' still has that little bit of bite to it.

Yeah. And I. I tried not to cook it too long, but it definitely didn't just shrink up like spinach. So maybe more like a cooked kale.

Okay.

Yeah.

She's going for more, guys. She's going for more. I mean, that's a good sign.

It could be that I'm just an amazing chef, but I think it's good.

Awesome. Okay. That's a success.

Now, I wonder if in the spring. Well, I'll definitely try the little cheese wheel fruit in the spring, but I wonder if I will, you know, ever pick the leaves to eat again.

Yeah, well, I know now that I'm going to go and pick more leaves when I see them, because if you like it, I'm definitely going to like it.

So it's time to grab a mug, pick some herbs, and spill the tea. We're back. And, Jonathan, do you have any tea for us?

I do. I have something from the fall. As many of you know, I have a community garden plot, and it's not far from my house. It's in my. It's like. It's in my neighborhood. And I discovered that my community garden plot neighbor is actually the city councilor for the neighborhood. So the story is, like. It's. It's funny because I actually had gotten involved in the election campaign about five years ago when she was running against this startup party that I was working with. I would often be at, like, the debates, working with the rival candidate on their speaking points, platform issues, and things like that. And so I had seen her as, like, the enemy, basically, because she. Well, she was part of the party that was very popular. So needless to say that, you know, like, she won her seat and. And the political party that I helped to start up didn't win anything. It was a big learning experience. I mean, it was actually pretty emotionally crushing at the time. But anyways, this, without getting into that, it was only during the last election campaign actually, which was just a few months ago, that she was running again as the incumbent, that it kind of clicked in my head. I saw her posters up all around the neighborhood and I was like, oh, that. Wait. Oh my God. Yeah, I just like, it never clicked with me just to say that, you know, if she was my garden neighbor during that election campaign, I maybe would have sprinkled a bit of ground up foxglove seeds over her tomatoes. And then, you know, I wouldn't be having this podcast. I would be doing maybe, I don't know, interviews about my city policies.

Oh my gosh, that's. No, the most interesting part of that for me is the multi party systems you have there where you can start up a new party from the ground.

Right. I mean, we did actually do pretty well comparatively, but nothing good enough to win. To win a seat.

When do you go back to the community garden? Because we need more tea. And when does. When do things like kind of thaw out?

That's a good question. So May, we're looking at May is usually the time. I think May 1 is when it officially opens. The traditional, traditional, the usual, like planting time in Canada is like Victoria day weekend. And that's usually sometime towards the end of May.

Oh, wow.

Like, when do you usually plant things out?

Last year my friend told me about planting peas on St. Patrick's Day.

Okay. Wow.

They're really cold tolerant, so they're kind of like the first crop we do here. I guess it's supposed to bring you luck. I don't know if it does, but it definitely brings you peas. All right, if you have any garden tea, send us an [email protected]. So we hyped it up at the end of our last season.

Today I will finally talk about the elusive hascat berry. I mentioned it so often last season without really going in depth into it. So. Hascap honeyberry cameries fly. Honeysuckle. The Latin name is lanicera searulea. I don't know if I said that right, but that's fine.

I couldn't even say mallow, right?

Okay. So, Jeanette, have you. Have you ever heard or seen a hascat before I had started talking about it?

No, I haven't, hadn't and haven't. I just know you're mildly obsessed with it and it grows near you. Maybe. What does it look like you're right.

That I'm mildly obsessed with it. I actually have some growing in my community garden and on my roof. So it's a bush that can grow about 2 meters or so. It flowers early in the spring, actually quite early in the spring. And it forms clusters of fruit along the lateral stems. The leaves are oval and they have like a whiteness to it that makes it look a bit waxy. And the leaves grow opposite from each other along the branch. And the fruits, they're pretty unique. So they look a bit like an elongated blueberry. And you can see them in, you know, very variable sizes, from 2 to about let's say like 4 centimeters, depending on the variety. And it looks almost like it has a foreskin. So there's like a thick skin that covers smaller fruit that's inside of it. And the fruit inside is a really dark, deep purple.

Okay, so does it taste like foreskin? No. Just kidding. Does it taste like a blueberry?

I wish a foreskin tasted like a has cap. So it actually has a unique and fairly complex flavor. So the flavor is really what gets chefs and foodies excited about this. So it doesn't really taste like a blueberry entirely. It's been described as a complex grown up flavor. So a cross between blueberry, raspberry and blackcurrant with a tart, tangy finish. I find it has a bit of a bitterness, and I think that's where the black currant kind of comes into it is like, it can have like a very slight bitter taste at the end of it. And hascaps are a nutritional powerhouse, so they have antioxidants. In fact, they have more antioxidants than blueberries, which has for a long time been like the champion.

Yeah.

Of antioxidant berries, you know, and they have a lot of vitamin C, vitamin A, and of course, like a lot of berries, they have a lot of fiber. Because of its unique, rich flavor and the dark, deep crimson color. It's not just something that's good for jams around here. It. It's being used a lot by local chefs, even like brewers and distillers. So you see it in like, different sauces and dressings. Local craft beers and sours have used it. There's even artisanal gins and wines and ciders.

So it sounds really popular where you are. How did you first kind of hear about it?

It just kind of came out of nowhere, to be honest. And it's just exploded in popularity. I did some research to try and find out like, where the hell did this come from? Its popularity isn't an accident. It's actually a perfect combination of a plant that's suited for the tough climate and a fruit that is easily marketable to modern consumers. It is really tough as nails. So it's a Siberian plant that can handle winters. And there's also the Quebec farming industry that had a big hand in pushing up or propping up this like early season cash crop. It's been really heavily marketed by this program called Alimans du Quebec. Their job is to promote local products in Quebec. They've taken advantage of the fact that people are really passionate about eating local and they want know a provincially grown berry.

So why is the Quebec farming industry, like really obsessed with hascap?

Like I mentioned before, it's really tough as nails. So this is like one of its number one selling point to growers. It thrives in the northern climate and apparently can survive temperatures as low as -47 Celsius.

What's that in Fahrenheit? I always hear podcasts say both you.

You should come in with that. You're the American.

No, they do.

It must be -40 Fahrenheit or something like that.

It's. Yeah. -52.

It's cold, basically.

No, it sounds so awful that that temperature exists.

Thank you. Well, you guys think you're going to acquire Greenland soon, so you better get used to it.

All right. What. What else do the.

You might be sent over there to like the labor colonies.

Oh, no. Oh, God.

So another key economic advantage is the fact that it's the first berry of this season, so it ripens in early to mid June and it's ready for harvest before other berries. So before strawberries, before raspberries and blueberries. It extends the season and extends the revenue. So that's huge for a berry farmer. So basically they can start their harvesting.

Yeah.

And they can start bringing in revenue and get their win workers in the fields earlier. And it also has helped to diversify their portfolio and just extend the season altogether. And it's also really low maintenance. You know, blueberries require a very specific acidic soil. Well, hascaps are very tolerant of a wide range of soil conditions and soil types. And there's also really like no pests yet that have affected this. This plant that's really good for organic and low pesticide farming.

I mean, that sounds great. As someone with a dead blueberry bush in their yard, those things are dramatic.

I'm gonna go a little bit deeper into this because I really like found it super interesting, and it's a question that I've been asking myself for many years. And so I really like the opportunity to kind of like look into it for this podcast.

That's why we made a podcast.

Exactly. Basically. So Russia was the first to see the potential of the haskat berry. So there's a place called the Vavilov. I have to say it like a Russian Vavilov Institute in Russia that began a breeding program in around the 50s to create different varieties of better flavor. And then Japan in the 1970s, where it was already a popular local fruit, began to cultivate it in a more formal way. And then in the 1990s and 2000s, which is the most important period for the has gap, at least in Canada, is that There is a Dr. Bob Bohrs from the University of Saskatchewan who started a breeding program. So the University of Saskatchewan fruit program began a massive breeding initiative. They collected hascap genetics from all these different places, from Russia, from Japan, and they began to cross breed different traits. And the Japanese varieties had the best flavor. The Russian varieties were obviously the hardiest. And there was another variety from Kuril, I'm not sure. I think that's in the Sea of Japan. Is that a thing? Is there a Sea of Japan?

That sounds like a thing.

Anyways, it's an island probably around Russia and Japan. And they had the biggest fruit.

It's near Hokkaido.

Right.

And it's. It's known for a long standing territorial dispute with Japan.

All right, well, they just came in and took advantage of that and stole their hascaps. Their gigantic hascaps. Yeah. And so the result was that they created these new cultivars. So there's a cultivar called Tundra Borealis, Indigo Gem. And they had a large size, fantastic flavor, and they had like the right shape, basically to be easily harvested by machines. And that's what made it a viable crop. So this breakthrough in Saskatchewan was one of the leading events that happened that then Quebec farmers were able to latch on to that.

So is it popular anywhere else besides Quebec?

You know, apparently it's. It is popular in Japan, where it's like, appreciated and like, for its supplemental and for its use in some pastries. Apparently in the United Kingdom, it's often marketed as honeyberry and it is available, but I think it's more of an emerging fruit. It's really in Quebec that you've seen the fastest and most successful commercial building of this product. Really one of the main actors that have been involved is Quebec. So Chemeris being the French word that was invented for this. This organization branded the berry, gave it a French sounding name so it sounded more local. And they've been basically marketing the, the fruit everywhere.

Wait, so it has two names?

Well, Camerose is the French name. Oh, and Hascap is actually like the Japanese or I think like maybe the local, the indigenous.

Like I knew name is Haskap.

Exactly.

The French name came from Quebec.

Yeah, it didn't exist before is what I what I found out.

So let's talk about sex, baby.

Sex baby.

What goes on this foreskin looking berry? What happens to pollinate, to reproduce this plant?

The first thing you should know is that the Hascap is really, really eager. She's tough, they're cold, hearty. Even the flowers can survive frosts of -7 degrees Celsius.

Oh wow.

Which is.

Oh, which is in Fahrenheit. Minus 7 Celsius, 44 degrees Fahrenheit.

Okay. And she's early. So because Hascat blooms very early in the spring, when there's still a chill in the air, she's really the first one at the party. She's like ready to go, dressed all nice, waiting for the perfect suitor. And she is perfect in a botanical sense in that her flower has both the male parts and the female parts. So both stamens which produces the pollen and the pistil which receives the pollen. She has everything in one convenient package. But she is self incompatible. She does not pleasure herself.

Oh, interesting. That's not usually what we've found when we see these plants with both sex.

Sex organs for some reason, and I'm not sure, I didn't really see why, but I mean, I think this probably explains a similar feature across some of the some other fruits in the kingdom.

In the fruit kingdom.

In the fruit kingdom, even though the flower has pollen, it cannot pollinate itself and it rejects its own pollen. So it's a built in mechanism to prevent inbreeding. It craves this genetic diversity and finds her own pollen. Boring. Okay, so because she doesn't play with.

Herself, she has self esteem issues. So she looks to hook up with a lot of other people to make up for that. Oh no, Haskab, you deserve better.

So because of that, farmers need to plant at least two different compatible varieties, which basically means they have to flower around the same time because there are some variations between the different varieties of when they flower. And in that way the entire Hascap orchard is like a massive pre arranged swinging party. So where everyone's, you know, partner swapping and nobody like a Key party. Nobody wants their own people to get pregnant. And who comes in to this party? It's the bumblebee, specifically the bumblebee, which I found quite interesting. So the bumblebee is perfectly adapted to fly in cold, wet conditions of early spring when these flowers emerge. This is critically before other pollinators emerge out of their nests.

Oh, I didn't know that the bumblebee starts early.

Bumblebees are really interesting because at the end of the summer, the entire colony dies off except for the newly mated queens. So this, that single fertilized queen finds a little hole in the ground under the leaf litter and hibernates all alone for the entire winter. And the biological clock is set to one thing, which is to wake up as early as possible in the spring to find a new nest and lay and raise her first batch of workers.

She's a true solo survivalist.

Exactly. And honeybees actually wake up a little bit later in the season. The reason why bumblebees can physically fly in the cold is because of. Of their shiver, which detaches the muscles, the wing muscles from its wings, and they vibrate a high speed. And this, what's called thermogenesis, generates body heat, can warm its flight muscles to a temperature that allows them to fly even when it's like, near freezing.

Oh, wow.

So, yeah, it's really interesting that there's this close relationship between haskat berries and, and bumblebees.

They seem like an important part of the ecosystem. Starting it up early now, you know.

When you see a bumblebee around that she's a survivor.

She's not going to give up.

She's going to places where no honeybee has been before. So, Jeanette, tell me a bit about the haskap and the kind of folklore that comes along with it.

Yeah. I tried to find the zodiac sign for hascap, but it is not in Scott Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs. I don't think haskap was a thing in the 70s in the US I did find some interesting folklore because hascap is such an ancient berry, and the indigenous people in islands near Hokkaido in Japan have used them for a long time in ceremonies. They think birds brought hascap to these northern Japanese islands around Hokkaido. And it was named by the Ainu people who are indigenous to Hokkaido. It comes from the Ainu word haska pupu, meaning little present at the end of a branch. And it's supposed to be a symbol of abundance and vitality.

Okay.

So for the indigenous people in that area, haskap was known as the berry of long life and good eyesight. Hascap is noted to have sometimes been used in ceremonial offerings like ayomante or the bear sending ceremony. It could have been presented alongside other sacred foods like sake and dumplings.

I imagine it also was an important food for bears because at that time, there's not really that much else around. Right. When they emerge from hibernation.

Yeah. So they're just waking up, and it probably would be a really important food for them. And then during summer and autumn gatherings, hascap was shared communally, kind of celebrating the land's bounty. And that's mostly what I found for any kind of, like, traditional uses of. It was around the islands of Hokkaido.

Awesome.

It was interesting looking into the Ainu people and learning about this indigenous ethnic group in northern Japan and actually parts of southeastern Russia. If you wanted to use hascap in a spell, you could take all that summer warmth, sunshine, and energy and put them in a jam to use during the cold winter months. I actually wish I had some right now. Jonathan, do you have any, like, seasonal reminders for us as we are still in winter, but kind of getting closer to spring?

Yeah, so I do. And in line with the idea of the bumblebee being an important pollinator early in the spring, what's important is not to rake on the very first warm day. So you have to wait until the weather has been consistently warm. So something like 10 degrees Celsius or above. That's 50 degrees Fahrenheit, I think, for at least a week. And it's really good if you see the fuzzy queens flying around, because that means it's that that gives you the green light that it's safe to start raking, because otherwise it could really destroy their nests. It could kill the queens, basically, which kills an entire potential colony.

You don't have to tell me not to do chores twice. Thanks for getting slutty with us.

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Bye, sluts.

Bye, sluts.