Learn about fennel pollen farming with rocket engineer turned regenerative farmer Larry Kandarian. Larry has decades of experience farming a wide range of grains, beans and herbs. He has a special interest in ancient grains and one of his main cash crops in fennel pollen.
Fennel is a perennial herb from the Umbelliferae family, known to have antibacterial, antiviral properties, great for gastrointestinal issues and detoxing. The pollen is high in B vitamins and trace minerals . All parts of the plant are medicinal but the pollen is typically used for its flavour. A small amount packs a lot of flavour but will have little medicinal value due to the small amount used. It’s used to finish pork and chicken dishes and some Italians use it on margarita pizza. In this video, I used it to flavour chocolate mousse and it also makes a great panne cotta.
It is a resilient plant, grows like a weed in California and requires very little water. Larry used sheep to weed and fertilize his fennel crop. No herbicides or pesticides needed.
Larry shared his process on instagram: @thekandarians and I hope to bring you more Larry wisdom throughout the year.
The California sun and get California gold. And so we're aiming for 1,000 pounds of this. We sell
it by the ounce. So that's 16,000 ounces. Quite a bit of stuff. This is actually a weed and it's
not an noxious weed. It is in some of the Channel Islands where they're trying to get rid of it
various ways. But here it's just a weed. It's Finiculum vulgare. And the one from Italy is
called Finiculum vulgare subspecies Azoricum because the Italians in their way of doing things
stole it from the Portuguese when they came over there on their ships many, many, many years ago.
And so that goes back to Portugal. But that's the one with the bulb. We don't grow that one. We just
grow the one with the root. And it's indigenous to our area. So this is grown like a prairie.
Sometimes it takes three years to get a full stand that's overcome all the weeds in the prairie. But
it's a really wonderful way to grow it. And then some of the prairie plants are feeding through
the roots as they fill up every night with the moisture from the air and from the irrigation.
And then they're giving back to the roots of all these plants. So then we put our sheep in here.
Sheep don't like fennel for some reason. I don't know why. I guess I have finicky sheep. But they
actually act like weeder geese and they'll weed the fennel. So we don't have any issues hoeing
it. We just plant it and get the hell out of the way and let it grow and get fertilized by the
sheep. And if they eat one or two, they'll just eat the top off a little bit. And then it comes
back with a vengeance because it has roots. Our plantings have been in for years and years and
years, 10 years probably. So fennel pollen, Candarian Organic Farms. This is the byproduct
of the fennel pollen flowers. Once Alfonso smashes them and then screens them, all this stays on top
of the screen and the powdery stuff goes through. And then we use this as a mulch in our hoop house
over there where we have turmeric growing. And it's to add a layer to keep more moisture in
there because we want to be tropical and monsoonal. And so that assists. And we also
have purslane growing there that helps with the monsoonal part to make it really... there's a
fleshy plant that gives off water through the stomates in the afternoon and it gets to 130 in
there. So that's what it looks like. These have been sitting here a while. You see brown on top.
Some of these are browner. This was yesterday and the day before, very, very green.
So all this will go in there and be used as a mulch.
