2 Blocks: 17 Edibles

One of the kids asked me if I'd go on a walk with them last week. Being a great dad, I said yes... but before I left, I had a thought: why not bring a camera and take photos of the many wild edibles within a couple blocks of my house? Granted, I live in a rural neighborhood. However, even in suburbia there are often plenty of chances to snag something tasty while strolling - particularly in Florida.

And now, for your enjoyment, is a photo tour of the great bounty to be found in the "wild."

First up - some shepherd's needle:

Sauteed, boiled, or steamed... these are a good green. They're also everywhere in Florida. If you can ID them, you won't starve.

The next plant we came across was a majestic hickory tree:

We got buckets of nuts from that tree the year before last and the kids spent weeks hitting them with hammers and bricks and eating the tasty kernels. Though they're really a pain, labor-wise, the nutmeats taste as good or better than pecans.

Beneath the canopy of the hickory, there are plenty of these:

What's that thing, you say? It's a beautyberry! They're blooming right now and it'll be a few months before the berries are ready... but it's good to ID where they are now so you can hunt 'em up later.

Now... this guy is more of a condiment than an edible, but I'm including him anyway:

Recognize that? It's a bay tree. One of the multiple varieties that grow here in Florida. Laurel wilt disease has wiped out quite a few, but there are still many healthy ones scattered through the woods around my house. I hope they're disease-resistant enough to continue.

Anyone know what this next plant is?

If you guessed "wild lettuce," you guessed right. Though they're not nearly as sweet as their cultivated relatives, they're still edible. And I'll bet they're a lot healthier than any lettuce you'd buy in the store. Now... speaking of things you'd buy in the store... this next plant is easy to identify:

Aww yeah... wild grapes. There are plenty of blooms this year so I'm hoping for a bumper crop of tart muscadines so we can make jam again. Last year's turned out great. They're not very good right off the vine - but for processing? Awesome.

And speaking of awesome... this next wild plant produces one of the tastiest things you'll ever come across in the Florida woods:

Recognize that? It's a passion vine, which is where we get passion flowers:

Which is where we get passion fruit... provided these guys don't eat all the plant first:

That scary-looking thing is a Zebra Longwing Gulf Fritillary caterpillar. Most ornamental gardeners plant passion vines in their butterfly gardens just to get these spiny orange and black monsters to show up - along with the spiny white and orange Zebra Longwing caterpillars. Not me... I want fruit! And, speaking of fruit... recognize this tree?

I wouldn't be able to pin down the species unless I saw it up close. Maybe this will help you?

See the little green fruits? Wild persimmons! We ate a bunch of persimmons off this and a couple of other trees last fall... and I planted the seeds right afterwards. A few weeks ago I was rewarded with about a dozen sprouts... but that's something I can share in another post.

This next guy is a nasty plant to run into unawares:

A member of the Euphorbiaceae family, also known as the "spurge family," that there is a Cnidoscolus stimulosus... the "tread-softly" plant, also known as the "spurge nettle." It packs a nasty sting... and an edible root... like its cousin the cassava. It's also related to the delicious chaya... though I've never discovered if tread-softly leaves are edible.

Next up, a gourmet edible that's everywhere right now:

That's a smilax shoot. Break off the top eight inches or so of new growth, steam or sautee in butter, and the taste is a dead ringer for its cousin... the asparagus. (NOTE: these are also called "greenbriars" or just "brambles." The vines are covered in vicious thorns, unlike the young shoots. Later in the year they can make the woods almost impassible. My daughter tells me they should be named "frownax" instead of "smilax," since they're always scratching you up!).

On the other side of the block, I found this:

Yep - it's a cabbage palm. They are everywhere here. The fruits are edible and sweet, though they have almost no flesh. Roasted, you might be able to grind the seeds... but otherwise, they're like buckshot. The heart is edible but that requires killing the tree. If I had plenty of land, I'd harvest them selectively and let the birds replant. They take a long time to get to any size.

Another interesting edible we found was this beautiful plant:

Those are coral bean blooms (it's also known as the "Cherokee bean.") The beans it produces are bright red and poisonous - DON'T EAT THEM! However, according to Green Deane, the blooms are good if prepared correctly. You can find details here. I don't eat them, personally, but I do plant seeds and start plants around the base of my fruit trees to add nitrogen to the soil. Yep, they're a nitrogen-fixer.

Here and there along the sides of the road, we came across quite a few of these unlikely salad sources:

It looks like a mulberry... but that's actually a basswood tree. The leaves are excellent food for livestock and people. I just recommend eating the really young leaves when they first appear, otherwise the texture is rather coarse. Your goats won't care, though, so give them the big tough ones.

Speaking of trees, here's another tree with edible parts:

That's the "winged sumac," a non-poisonous sumac that has clusters of red berries that are filled with vitamin C and make a good drink in late summer. I keep meaning to make some for a barbecue... and speaking of barbecues, look at this delicious edible:

 

That's Canis lupus familiaris, also known as a "dog." Dogs are made up of meat and can be served any way you'd serve goat, venison or cat. Unlike cats, though, they're unlikely to scratch you when you put them in the pot. And, along the lines of getting scratched, here's a classic edible - the blackberry:

 

Can you believe how much food we've seen thus far in one short walk? There are plenty of things that aren't ready to eat yet, like the blackberries, but I'm keeping my eye on them for later. One plant I really don't want to miss harvesting this year is this medicinal and edible standby:

 

Elderberries! There are a couple of dense wild stands just around the corner and they're in full bloom right now.

The blooms can be made into tea... and the fully ripe berries are edible... but the rest of the plant is totally toxic. So don't go eating elderberry-leaf salads, okay?

And on that note... my walk is over. Are you amazed by how many edibles we came across? I was. 16 edible plants in two blocks. Before things get tough... make sure you know how to forage. (And keep your dog locked up.)

Corn patch update

I took this picture a couple of weeks ago... and they're almost twice that size now. This is the little patch of corn I first wrote about here. The variety is doing quite well thus far, though the leaves have been chewed up by grasshoppers. It seems to be quite tolerant of low water levels. I'm it'll make plenty of seed corn for next year... I need to get my stock up.

Thanks to the USDA seed bank for these guys - I'm researching varieties for Florida and they were kind enough to help me out by sending 100 kernels of this Indian variety I selected from their massive database.

Hugelstump?

Check this out:

I shot that picture the day before Rachel made coleslaw from this lovely head of cabbage. It was growing in a few handfuls of dirt stuffed into the middle of a rotten chunk of oak trunk I picked up by the side of the road. I barely had to water it - and the cabbage (which is a small variety) clocked in at a respectable 3lbs. It's like a tiny hugelkultur pot, eh?

Nice worm bin composting setup

This is cool:



I'm keeping my worms in an old dishwasher right now. It's lying on its back and what was the front door is now the lid. My friend Jeff came over the other day and we drilled a few holes in the bottom, raised it up on bricks and put an old bin underneath to catch the "worm tea." (I'd been meaning to do that for months... I've had worms in that thing forever and kept forgetting to add drainage.)

The fellow in the video claims worm tea made his garden grow like mad.  My guess is that the beneficial bacteria it provides are probably just as important as its nutrient content. Just a hunch. Vermicomposting isn't the simplest way to get compost, but it's bascially impossible to beat the quality of the final result.

Natural Awakenings Article: Three Amazingly Easy Fruit Trees (for Florida)

I've written about these three trees before, but they really shine in N/C Florida. It was time to share them with my Natural Awakenings readers:

Open publication - Free publishing - More alternative

(Click the following links to read more about loquats, mulberries and persimmons.)

Passiflora lutea?

Perhaps some of my taxonomically astute readers can ID this species:

Is this Passiflora lutea? I found it in an empty lot while on a walk and took some photos. I had no idea what it was, but some Google searching makes me think it may indeed be the "yellow passionflower."

I think I may need to save one for my yard.

Fertilizing Organically on the Cheap

In my latest post for Mother Earth News, I take a look at how you can fertilize on the cheap... and provide a horrifyingly stinky recipe that will make your plants grow like mad.

Anyone have some favorite fertilizers for their garden they'd like to share?

@The Prepper Project: Feeding Chickens Without Buying Feed

Here's my latest post for The Prepper Project... you chicken-lovers should enjoy it:

"There are plenty of theories and grand ideas on feeding chickens self-sufficiently, but many of them are unwieldy… require a significant amount of land… are unrealistic… or, in one notable innovation involving buckets of maggot-riddled carrion… disgusting.

I can’t say that this post is going to have all the answers on feeding your chickens without buying in feed – but I do hope it helps you get further in your quest to nourish your flock without trucking in bags of factory pellets..." (READ THE REST)

Coleslaw from the garden

Rachel sent me this pic of her coleslaw fixings from the other night. Cabbage, onion leaves and carrots from the garden. We basically grew everything but the mayonnaise... and man was it good.

Keep 'em pollinated!

Spotted in a pasture: a little wild bee sipping on a cactus flower:

A great post from Keoni Galt on biotech

This post is great. Go read it.

Ladybugs

People have asked why I don't do anything about the aphids on my grapes. "Why not spray them?" is the usual question.

The answer is easy. Aphids breed faster than ladybugs and rapidly hit plague proportions... but... the ladybugs will usually catch up if you don't spray. After a week or two, you'll start seeing ladybugs and their larvae everywhere... and a week or two after that... the aphid issues have cleared up.

What most folks do is this: they see the aphids, they reach for poison, they kill the aphids (and the ladybugs that are just emerging)... and the beneficial predators never get a chance to balance things out the natural way. This leads to more problems with aphids in the future, since the population is now under your control, rather than nature's.

I don't even spray aphids with garlic water anymore. If they're really bad, I spray them off with a blast from the hose. Otherwise, I just wait on the ladybugs to do it for me.

Survival gardening for the complete n00b

A few days ago, on this post, mrlespaulman stated his discouragement with his garden thus far:

"While having a farm in my backyard that sustains my family is my main goal, I'm starting to learn that its quite a lot harder than I thought it would be. Between the bugs and my lack of planning, I don't know how in the world I could end up getting enough of a harvest to put up a decent amount--not to mention having enough left over to eat right then. It always seems I end up with more hot peppers than I know what to do with, leafy greens full of holes, split radishes, tiny onions, rotting squash, and only about 15 green beans at a time...lol. Any pointers on the planning aspect of survival gardening for a complete and total n00b? Thanks!"

There are few things more discouraging than jumping into an exciting new venture... and then being beaten back. The problem is usually not the bugs... the soil... or even making mistakes; it's usually a problem of scale.

I don't know if this is the case for mrlespaulman, but I do know that in times past I had grand and glorious garden plans that I put into execution... only to be run over by cutworms, poor growth, lousy  yields, drought, etc. etc. etc.

Creating solid and productive gardens usually doesn't happen right away. Practice makes perfect. Starting on a grand scale and hoping to put away piles of produce at the end of the year WILL make you discouraged.

I usually tell folks to start by growing their own salads, herbs or both. If you can keep a few pots of salad greens going... and a bit of basil for the tomato sauce - you're officially gardening.

From that point, I'd move on to a 4' x 4' bed... or a 4' x 8'. If you try to build a ton at once, you get burned out. You scrimp on soil amendments. You're stretching compost and you're not managing anything well. If you can manage a 4' x 4' patch really well, you'll probably get more out of that than you would with a badly managed 4' x 40' patch.

A garden this size is easy to build, easy to manage, and encouraging as heck.

Put serious, loving care into a small space, watching it daily, fertilizing with good stuff like kelp meal and compost, and you'll start to build confidence and the skills you need to manage a much larger space.

Now - as for having more hot peppers than you know what to do with...rotting squash... tiny onions, etc. - that's Florida!

Some things are MADE to grow here. Peppers, for instance. They love the heat, they love the sand and they produce like crazy - sometimes for years.

Most squash don't like the humidity. Rot city. Onions don't like the heat and the weird rain cycles. Radishes are the same. Grow them really early in the spring or plant in the late fall. Otherwise: kaput!

Green beans usually do all right here, depending on variety. Northern pole beans often aren't happy - and some of the bush beans tend to become bug feed pretty fast. Snake beans are almost unkillable. Other varieties usually produce less. If you've got soil that hasn't grown beans or legumes previously, they may be suffering from the lack of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, in which case I'd feed them with diluted urine or compost tea to give them a boost.

BUT - there are crops that are really, really good for Florida. Look around your neighborhood. Who is growing what? Ask them how they're growing it. Look at local farms - ask them what they grow and how they grow it. Go to the local extension office and ask them what grows best in your area. Is your area warm enough for highly productive tropical plants? Is it mostly field crops? Are their orchards? Do lots of edibles grow in the wild? Ask around and read up.

Then... take that data with a grain of salt, and start experimenting. I guarantee you: there are plants that will produce bushels of food for you. Your goal is to identify what those species are. Head knowledge is fine: but actually experimentation is where you'll find glory.

In my area, I've learned (through observation of my plots and those of others) that these species generally do well:

Cassava
Sweet Potatoes
Mustard
Broccoli
Snake Beans
Seminole pumpkin
Loquats
Persimmons
Cayenne peppers
Florida Cranberry
Winged yam
Kale
Turnips
Mulberries
Blackberries
Collards

These crops generally do poorly or simply so-so (at least for me):

Beets
Onions
Large watermelons
Potatoes
Sweet peppers
Brussels Sprouts
Cucumbers

Jerusalem artichoke


Don't get discouraged. Keep reading, keep experimenting, learn to grow really good gardens in a small area - and learn to eat the weeds. You'll accumulate knowledge and skills rapidly if you don't give up... and in a few years, you'll be laughing at your past harvests.

Go forth and garden!

Bee log

Check it out:

That is a hollow log filled with bees, tied to my fence. Yes, the neighbors find me "eccentric," but I don't care. I'm saving bees, dang it.

There was a storm a couple of weeks ago that knocked over a tree at my Uncle's shop. This section was about 20' in the air. When it fell, thousands of bees started flying about and my Uncle called me and asked if I wanted to save them. So naturally, I called Allen the Beekeeper. We spent about a day sawing and cleaning up limbs, carefully removing sections to save as much of the interior comb as possible. (He's got some really cool pictures that need to be shared - if he sends them, I'll post them). Remarkably, even after a week of laying on the ground, the comb was intact and there were new eggs in the hive.

It took four guys to move this thing into position... in the dark. The cinderblocks beneath are pretty uneven... but it was hard to line things up late at night beneath a heavy log while covered with angry bees. The trunk segment easily weighs over 300lbs. There's comb in there from top to bottom.

The bees are already finding their way about my un-mowed yard.


Needless to say, I'm thrilled. The previous swarm we captured failed to live through winter... so it's try, try again.

At The Prepper Project - Fertilizers: Chemical vs. Organic in Three Rounds

Is organic better? Are we being silly by rejecting chemical fertilizers?

In my latest article for The Prepper Project, I dive into the details of chemical vs. organic fertilizer from a survival gardening angle.

"When you go shopping for something to feed your plants, you quickly realize there are a lot of choices. Most of these revolve around various combinations of NPK. 6-6-6, 10-10-10 and 13-13-13 are considered “balanced” because they contain equal ratios of these macronutrients. The numbers are percentages and the rest of the bag is usually comprised of filler material, unless it specifically states that it contains magnesium, copper or other micronutrients. Scatter 10-10-10 around your garden and the results are rapid and hard to argue with… until you start looking into the details... (read the rest)"