stone
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Post by stone on May 4, 2020 12:29:55 GMT -5
What's in y'alls stealth gardens?
What's a stealth garden, you ask?
Good question...
Some people fear that in this post modernist period, apocalypse is just around the corner... What if they drop the bomb? What if a virus escapes from the aerosol labs? What about famine [due to climate change]?
After hunger gets to be a constant, and the food banks run out, people are likely to get tired of starving in their apartments, and being well armed Americans, form gangs and roam the countryside, looking for anything remotely edible.
And... Then is when we will positively need more than a book on wild foraging!
Some people are encouraging self seeding of their garden produce... Like the everglades tomatoes that come up everywhere as temps warm up... And those maxixe cucumbers that the wild creatures planted in my garden a few years ago that perform amazingly well....
And the well known chenopodium and amaranth that most people encourage...
So... The above plants often escape into the wild areas, like into the pasture and wild area behind the garage... Where they are usually going to be overlooked by those starving rovers...
The problem with attempting to get by on what we can forage? Anyone that has tried it... Knows there is very little out there!
So... Why not identify plants worth eating and plant them?
And importantly... Let's experiment with recipes... Knowing that something is supposedly edible... Is a far cry from making a practice of preparing it and consuming it....
A lot of supposedly edible wild plants... Are not worth eating.
Anyone else care to post about their stealth garden?
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stone
Pro Member
Posts: 170
Zone:: 8
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Joined: December 2011
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Post by stone on May 4, 2020 13:01:19 GMT -5
How many of you are eating the dreaded "rattlesnake weed"? Those tubers dug after flowering are positively yummy! Left raw, excellent crunch... like a cross between a carrot and a bean sprout... Florida stachys is probably already in your yard if you live in the Gulf coast region. Dig them now!
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stone
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Posts: 170
Zone:: 8
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Post by stone on May 4, 2020 13:11:39 GMT -5
This annual stinging nettle (Urtica chamaedryoides), showed up in my garden as a result of the horse poop that I use as fertilizer. When I was pulling it bare-handed... it was as bad as the cnidoscolus stimulosa... puts a hurtin on ya... Lots of websites discuss eating stinging nettle... and when I cooked up a big pot last winter... it produced the most flavorful broth that I think I've ever consumed! Sadly, I didn't care to eat the greens...
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Post by Hensaplenty on May 4, 2020 13:37:23 GMT -5
Good info! We should definitely be aware of the wild edibles around us.
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Post by brownrexx on May 4, 2020 14:42:48 GMT -5
In my area it is considered to be a Spring tonic to eat dandelion leaves either cooked or in a salad with a hot bacon dressing. I love this dressing but I put it on spinach salads. I could eat the dandelion leaves if I had to but spinach or lettuce tastes so much better to me.
Another thing that is edible in my yard is chickweed and I have a ton of it. I tried it once and it was OK but salad greens are so much better. Again, I would eat chickweed if I had to.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 4, 2020 16:55:15 GMT -5
I have dandelions seasonally. I've tasted dandelions...definitely a survival food and nothing I want to eat unless I'm desperate.
As far as plants I purposely planted that are stealth edibles, I guess daylilies (flowers, flower buds, young stalks and root tubers) and roses (petals and hips) are the main ones. But I don't have either of these in a useful quantity.
If I were going to deliberately plant a stealth edible for future use/foraging, callaloo or other amaranths and roselle (Hibiscus sabadiffra, a.k.a. red sorrel, Jamaica sorrel, and Florida cranberry) would be my top choices. They grow fast and HUGE in my climate. Amaranth leaves and seeds are edible, and roselle calyces and leaves are edible. I could get a lot of leaves per SF of ground space because they are both tall plants. And the plants will regrow leaves fast, so they can be harvested multiple times before frost.
Another stealth edible in Florida is the Pindo palm. Most people don't know that its fruit is edible. It's tart, though - in the old days, Florida settlers made jam/jelly with it. I don't have a Pindo, but it's commonly used in landscaping around here.
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Post by carolyn on May 4, 2020 17:11:09 GMT -5
I appreciate this. I was hoping people would really be more interested now as far more people are being forced to recognize just how unstable our food infrastructure really is. what do we have available and you made a very good observation... what is worth eating, too.
I have never heard of rattlesnake weed. We must not have it here.
we have Ramps as about our first spring "vegetable" but as my DH is very sensitive and his stomach is intolerant to anything in the onion family and I am afraid to ask him to try them.
Asparagus is next. this grows wild all over the place and if you know where it is and are willing to forage it... it is a great next crop.
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stone
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Post by stone on May 5, 2020 7:06:17 GMT -5
Another thing that is edible in my yard is chickweed and I have a ton of it. I tried it once and it was OK but salad greens are so much better. Again, I would eat chickweed if I had to. Chickweed is one of those supposedly edible wild plants that.... Ima feed to the chickens... not food in my book. I got inspired to make a forage salad... talinum paniculatum leaves, smilax tips, lactucca (wild lettuce tips), wood violet leaves,chenopodium giganteum tips, florida stachys tubers, and to give it a bit of oomph, I added a few leaves of garden sage. I added some salad dressing after taking the pic... but nobody wants to see that.... I shoulda put the salad on a plate where y'all could see the ingredients better.... incidentally, it was yummy... I appreciate this. I was hoping people would really be more interested now as far more people are being forced to recognize just how unstable our food infrastructure really is. what do we have available and you made a very good observation... what is worth eating, too. I have never heard of rattlesnake weed. We must not have it here. yeah... I said gulf states.... It might be worth planting, though... I don't know if it's winter hardy... something that is so persistent [here] not growing [there] seems absurd...
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Post by brownrexx on May 5, 2020 7:25:06 GMT -5
That's a pretty salad. Supposedly chickweed tastes best when eaten very young but I am willing to save it for my chickens. They love it when it has seeds on it.
I think that the wild strawberries that grow around here are edible but I have never researched it. I just pull them as weeds. I have eaten wild blueberries though and they were yummy although small.
One of my friends hunts wild mushrooms but I have never been comfortable with that. It takes a lot of experience to recognize the subtle difference between edible and poisonous ones.
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stone
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Post by stone on May 5, 2020 7:37:15 GMT -5
Thanks! I coulda added some violet flowers as well as the leaves... but... I like those left out in the garden... I dislike the texture of chickweed... it's like eating sand. In PA, y'all should have lots of morel mushrooms! Those don't look like anything else... I used to have psilocybin cubensis that would come up in my garden when conditions were right... I used to dehydrate them in a home made solar dehydrator. re blueberries... I had them at my last house... now... deerberries! gardens-in-the-sand.blogspot.com/2019/07/deerberries.html
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Post by bestofour on May 5, 2020 8:56:32 GMT -5
My sister in West Virginia has a neighbor who is a mushroom hunter. He's always bringing her the strangest looking mushrooms and telling her how to use them. She had a gross looking thing the other day and was making tea.
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Post by brownrexx on May 5, 2020 8:59:24 GMT -5
I dislike the texture of chickweed... it's like eating sand. I don't remember the texture but I do remember that it tasted like eating grass and I didn't like the little stems because it felt like eating strings. Yuk. I would love to try morels but have never had the opportunity and apparently they are very hard to find.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 5, 2020 11:53:31 GMT -5
More about foraging, rather than "stealth gardening":
There are edible mushrooms here, too (not morels) but I don't know my mushrooms so I won't touch any wild ones. Eating wild mushrooms without knowing what you're doing is a good way to kill yourself.
Easier for a novice like me to identify are the wild blackberries; some grow along the canal near my house. They are tart/bitter, but edible. I used to munch on wild blackberries when I was exploring my neighborhood as a kid. They are only around for a few weeks a year, though. I wouldn't plant them on purpose, though - they make a LOT of thorny vines for very little fruit, and they are very hard to eradicate or even control. (I know, because they keep spreading by root stolons under the back fence into my yard, plus birds eat them and drop seeds in my yard.) Wild blueberries are tastier, but harder to find and also have a very short season.
Sometimes can find a mulberry tree or a sand pear growing on an abandoned lot or at the edge of the woods. They are not commonly planted around here any more, but every old homestead and farm used to have them because they fruited reliably without care. From just one tree you can harvest a LOT of fruit. Sometimes you can find pecan trees on abandoned lots/old farms as well, but the squirrels will usually beat you to most of the nuts. Loquats are another fruiting tree you can find around here whose fruit usually falls uneaten, even in people's yards. I see loquats go to waste all over my neighborhood, but I bet if people start going hungry they will start harvesting them. The nice thing about loquats is that loquats ripen in March, long before any other tree fruit.
In the winter and spring I sometimes see wild mustards growing along roadsides and the slopes leading down to drainage ditches.
Oh, and Spanish Needle (Bidens alba) is reportedly edible. Young shoots, tips, and leaves should be cooked (good as a pot herb) or eaten very sparingly raw. Flower petals are also edible. That stuff is everywhere here, nearly year round. I ought to try some and see how it tastes.
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stone
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Post by stone on May 6, 2020 8:41:06 GMT -5
chenopodium giganteum... Lambsquarter that's pretty enough for the flower garden! I pick the tips for salads, and later when cooking as greens. I used to know someone that told everyone that you should pull the entire plant, roots and all into the stew pot... eventually his patch gave out... no more lambsquarter.... Always a good idea to allow to set seed.... I collect the seeds and add to pancake batter... makes them crunchy! The chickens enjoy picking the seed off the plants... ...And.... The songbirds appreciate them... Incidentally... lambsquarter is in the same family as quinoa.... I found this neat rant on tumblr... the original post is gone, but some 48 thousand plus people seemed to like it enough to re-blog!
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stone
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Post by stone on May 6, 2020 9:05:22 GMT -5
Smilax.... organic barbed wire... In the deep south, walking across a clear-cut, you might come to a wall of this stuff... Back during my tree-planting days.... we'd come back with our clothes in tatters... At my house, I cut it down with a chainsaw... when it comes back.... it's good eatin. Plate full of smailax tips. Greene Dean sez that you can cook it... I didn't care for it cooked... I usually just nibble when I'm out and about... but... It was mighty good in the salad the day before yesterday... Ima have another. Some people think you can eat the tubers... It seems tempting... but... unless you like eating wood... they are not edible... in my experience.
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Post by brownrexx on May 6, 2020 9:24:10 GMT -5
We have lambs quarters here too but I have never seen those pretty purple tips. They sure make a pretty salad.
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Post by september on May 6, 2020 10:19:14 GMT -5
I snack on lambs quarter when I weed in the garden. I pull them out by the roots, but there is always more blowing in from elsewhere in the yard. They do taste like spinach, and I do add them to salads when they are young before they go to seed. I have not seen tips that dramatically purple either, though some of the leaves may have a slightly purple cast underneath. I wonder if it's a regional or southern variation?
The only other weed I eat is purslane, but you have to pick it in the early morning before it gets much direct sun in order to get the citrusy flavor, otherwise it changes chemically and later in the day just tastes like grass.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 6, 2020 11:08:47 GMT -5
I may be the only person in the continental US to say this, but I never see lambs quarter in my yard. Much less any with the pretty purple tips! I assume if it grows in GA it would grow here.
Would I be tempting fate to ask for some seeds for the pretty purple-tipped lambs quarter? I am always looking for warm weather spinach alternatives, since my spinach season is short.
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Post by carolyn on May 6, 2020 14:29:25 GMT -5
That lambs quarter is beautiful.
Purse pane is another garden weed to harvest and throw n a salad and it is high in selenium.
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stone
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Post by stone on May 7, 2020 7:31:19 GMT -5
There are edible mushrooms here, too (not morels) but I don't know my mushrooms so I won't touch any wild ones. If you plan to stick around for any length of time... it's worth learning the names of the mushrooms that show up in the same places year after year... they add some very good flavour to the recipe... and... let's not forget the vitamin d! these parasol mushrooms show up in my garden several times through the summer... and when I can get them away from the cats.... they make excellent cream of mushroom soup, served over a bed of rice... or... just added to the ramen... Edit: Found some more pictures!
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stone
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Post by stone on May 7, 2020 7:41:00 GMT -5
Would I be tempting fate to ask for some seeds for the pretty purple-tipped lambs quarter? I am always looking for warm weather spinach alternatives, since my spinach season is short. The seeds that I have saved are like 10 or 15 years old... you might need to wait for Autumn. I could also collect some talinium seeds... that tastes even better than the chenopodium! Otherwise... if you google chenopodium giganteum seeds, I see them offered by seed purveyors on occasion.
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stone
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Post by stone on May 8, 2020 7:36:16 GMT -5
re bidens... I haven't tried eating it yet... the voles keep me from getting much of it to grow in my garden, in spite of how many times I've attempted planting it...
but.... that and chamberbitter (Phyllanthus urinaria), are important kidney medicine... Ever hear someone talking about kidney stones?
And... those wild blackberries.... Also important medicine... When poop runs like water... Montezuma's revenge, or an amoeba, shigellosis or, whatever...
some blackberry root as a stool thickener, and some mint to settle the stomache... make a tea... works very well in my experience...
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stone
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Posts: 170
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Post by stone on May 9, 2020 9:37:42 GMT -5
Apios (indian groundnut) I found them at my previous garden when I cleared the brushy return from the clear-cut... Done before I got there... Unfortunately, they didn't make the move... I was able to rescue a few seeds from a ditch in Macon, just before the property owner sprayed roundup on them... Here's an interesting article detailing the pre-columbian history of this great resource! www.nomadseed.com/2019/02/the-diggers-of-groundnuts/
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 9, 2020 10:59:40 GMT -5
That was a fascinating read, stone. Did you ever get any triploid plants? (I saw you asking about them in the comments.)
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stone
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Post by stone on May 10, 2020 6:58:42 GMT -5
Nope... Hadn't even read the new comments!
I did get sent some seed from someone at a different forum... supposed to be a result of Dr. Blackmons breeding program... some have come up... although... I lost some seedlings when the birds found them... gotta keep those seedlings covered!
RE the chenopodium... I brought them to this site... and... the deer killed the first several plantings... I have to grow them inside the garden fence... and in improved garden soil at that...
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stone
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Post by stone on May 10, 2020 7:10:38 GMT -5
Talinum paniculatum aka "Jewels of Opar". You may see these offered in the big box store as part of a container garden... people grow it for the tiny flowers and tiny fruit (jewels). The leaves look succulent, like purslane... and makes for a drought hardy plant. biting into the leaves is very similar to biting into a fresh picked lettuce leaf on a cool morning... nice and crisp, and tasting very similar... only... the talinum doesn't turn bitter... and is good eating through the hottest months... right up til the winter frosts burn the leaves back... Talinum is perennial in my garden, and... self sows freely. Ok, I googled hardiness... Apparently hardy to zone 7. Some seedlings that came up in the soil that I dug from last year's talinum bed...
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Post by carolyn on May 10, 2020 7:23:42 GMT -5
that is nice to know Stone. I avoid buying froo froo plants, but knowing this one has a purpose now I will find one to buy. I have always liked them but I reserve most of my "landscaping to either eat it or sell it... no foundation plantings that serve no purpose other than being pretty except the two Japanese maples for a bit of shade and one Alberta spruce that was planted years ago and is the lone survivor of being ignorant.
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reubent
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Post by reubent on May 10, 2020 13:21:38 GMT -5
A stealth garden. I would define it as planting a garden that doesn't look like a garden, and planting things in it that do not look like good food plants, just weeds. So anyone not highly educated in weeds would walk right past and not recognize all the food in hiding. Jerusalem artichokes would make one good plant for the garden. They look like wild sunflowers, few would suspect the tasty tubers underground. And they don't need to be harvested, since they store best left in the ground and looks like just an unkept plot of dried weed stems.
I shouldn't try making a list of all the wild edibles, it would be too long. But I will mention milkweed. There are many types but the most common one we have here in middle TN makes a very nice flavored pot of greens. Even the blossoms and young seed pods are good. When they mature they produce a lot of fluff. I heard they made parachute cloth from it in WWII. had all the school kids out collecting the ripe milkweed seedheads.
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Post by paquebot on May 10, 2020 22:50:48 GMT -5
Wasn't chute cloth, it was life preservers. It was a replacement for kapok. I was one of those school kids who went out and collected it!
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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stone
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Post by stone on May 11, 2020 8:03:49 GMT -5
A stealth garden. I would define it as planting a garden that doesn't look like a garden, and planting things in it that do not look like good food plants, just weeds. And... What's growing in yours? I'm posting the stuff that I actually eat... This isn't intended to be about weeds that are theoretically edible... I will mention milkweed. There are many types but the most common one we have here in middle TN makes a very nice flavored pot of greens. I went back and re-read your post... apparently you've eaten common milkweed? gotta tell ya... I've always grouped milkweed with pokeweed... yeah, people eat them... but, there's enough weeds that I can boil that I don't have to mess with poisonous plants.
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