It’s time to order seeds!! and when we’ve ordered ‘em, we won’t have to think about food weeds anymore…until spring.

We’ve looked @ mustards, tatsoi, wineberries, black walnuts, arugula, shallots, tomatillos, and maybe a few other promiscuous adorables, so lo and behold the procrastinator’s lastgasp list of nominees for the Medallia d’Oro de Dandelion for best food weed:

BUT before you see it,

let’s recall that food weeds demand minimum, almost non-existent, gardening skills except that

1) you must allow the food weed to grow to seed, and drop seed, in a safe, sunny and fertile location, and
2) learn to identify what its babies look like when they pop up all by themselves, and
3) then wait for rainy days to transplant these “volunteers” in patterns you can keep weeded (from the real weeds you can’t eat).

Rouge D’hiver lettuce: winter red, a succulent 1st & last of season romaine. how romantische!
Forellenschluss lettuce: another robust romaine, this time “the Jackson Pollack of lettuce”
Red Sails: a lovely lettuce, “lightly crunchy lobes with a good melting texture.” spreads like a plague of delectable goodness

Tomatoes—buy open-pollinated varieties and let a few ripen, drop & rot into the soil. They’ll be back!

Egyptian walking onion: see for yourself! Don’t buy them—ask around, you’ll find some.

egyptian onions

Jerusalem Artichokes: plant the ones you buy at the Co-op!

Sunflowers: get the Mammoth (trees w/frisbee-size heads) and let a few drop seed. Eat as much as you want and give the rest to the chickens.

Buckwheat: while on the subject of free chicken feed, buckwheat grows fast, improves soil, if sowed tight will block & kill other plants, offers the best honeybee nectar, looks cool (chinese fan type leaves), and drops seed that can be milled for flour.

Alfalfa: chicken and honeybee feed, soil improver, tea tonic, leaves have more protein than Wheaties, edible flowers, perennial.

Hops: yes, for beer and stuffing sleep-inducing pillows, but also for spring shoots cooked like asparagus, prolific perennial, beautiful vine for adorning entrance ways. A sign of civilization.

Asparagus: once going, productive for years. If not for yourself, plant it for others.

Dill and Cilantro.

Burdock: Japanese love them; my favorite oshinko is burdock. Great for the liver. For us, a culinary frontier. And a weed that produces burs you are already familiar with.

Peppermint, Sage & Thyme: don’t buy it! Ask friends for it—and let it take over part of your property. Excellent medicinal nectar for honeybees.

Borage: a woman’s weed that blooms earliest, then all summer, then last. Excellent honeybee nectar. Interesting edible flowers.

borage

Elderberry: grow on the edge of wetlands for edible flowers and berries. Keep your eye out for prolific, good-tasting natives; they grow wild around here.

Mulberries: raspberry trees. Go for trees that produce the darkest tartest fruits, and are cold hardy. (It’s not so easy to find a good-eating mulberry; I got mine from Miller Nurseries, but they are not presently selling the good kind.)

Hazelnuts: you can find these occasionally in the woods, as they are native, but buy some, plant them, and watch them take over.

Hmm…I know I’ve forgotten some food weeds, but I post them as they remind me who they are. In the meantime, help me by offering a few of the food weeds you’ve come to know and admire—

and decide which food weed deserves the legendary Medallia d’Oro de Dandelion.

But—if you have room to grow them—that’s a good thing, b/c they’re beautiful, offer the best furniture wood, and produce oil & protein -rich nuts. You can de-worm your dog by playing ball w/them.

I haven’t met anyone who can teach me how to use black walnuts culinarily, which means (at least in my little world): we’re looking at a food frontier here. Does anybody know how?

A wonderful, now deceased, Westhampton gentleman by the name of Freeman picked the nuts from beneath the black walnut near where I live, and told me he loved them. He filled up 2 drywall buckets with obvious & unforced joy. That got me thinking; I should ask him how to use them. But before I could, he was gone.

How many foods that grow like weeds aren’t eaten because we don’t know how to use them?

William Cullen Bryant loved this Black Walnut tree

I came upon this engraving, and this old NYTs article, that express William Cullen Bryant’s love for a big old black walnut tree. I think of Freeman:

Coming next: Sylvester Judd’s Black Walnut tree

Is it global warming, or is it possible I’m becoming a decent gardener? Or is it the seeds—these plants like growing in winter?

(old banana peel—how's that for neo-realism?)

Maybe 3 “yeses” have allowed this vivacious pile to grace my cutting board, + one other thing: I love sharing the freedom of free food, & the story of making our neighborhoods edible.

weeds are free food—if you can eat 'em!

Let’s take the Johnny Appleseed concept to its logical conclusion, like these folks do.

Imagine living in a permaculture, arugula growing like daisies, coming back every year in the same place. All you have to do is get the right seeds, grow ‘em, let a few plants flower (bees love ‘em), grow to seed, die and voila!! You have released a food weed into your microbiome. If you keep its uroboros spinning, you’ll never have to buy arugula again.

Arugula is tough. You’ll be harvesting it from early spring into winter, perhaps nine months of the year without any plastic sheets or hoses or etc.

May arugula run rife in your life!

Still yummy when used in stir-fry, soup or stew!

Even after a month of frosts, these mustards provide fresh, wholesome nourishment—with an exciting wasabi bite:

Stir-fry, soup or stew!

Imagine next year, harvesting—right now—the tatsoi and mustard you plant at the end of the summer.

I’d love to know how these food plants withstand the frosts…and still taste better than the stuff from the market.

Wineberries are sweeter, sourer and juicier than raspberries.

So why don’t you ever see them for sale? Ans: they’re more delicate than raspberries—their skins so easily break. They’re unmarketable.

wineberries = edible rubies

You can’t buy wineberry plants, either. And if you ever see one for sale, don’t buy it!

Wineberry is an “invasive plant“—the weediest of weeds:

Never buy them! Just find where they’re growing (away from any roads or signs of pollution) and dig up a few. Treat them to good soil and sun, and in a year you’ll have your own invasive species problem! All you’ll have to do is prune them back. Make presents of new sprouts, and use the lawnmower to take care of the rest.

When you’re walking this winter, you should be able to find some wineberries. They look like raspberry bushes but their branches are whitened and their prickers tiny. Look for ‘em! When the ground thaws next spring go and dig some up.

If you get lucky, you’ll get a harvest next year. But if you aren’t, just head back to the colony you found and pick a few quarts. Use them immediately or freeze them. Wineberry sorbet is sublime. Wineberry ice cream sauce. Wineberry infused vodka. Wineberry tart. Wineberry recipes.

Nothing better though than wineberry picked and eaten right at the source. Look at those clusters!!!!!

wineberry is a fine berry

As the main ingredient of salsa verde, the tomatillo is prized south of the border by chefs who regard it as a kind of tomato and serve it raw or cooked. (They’re members of nightshade family; tomatillo means little tomato.)

The trick to growing tomatillos as food weeds is finding a part of your garden (or yard) where you can let them self-seed & grow wild. They get huge: not tall, but wide. Wherever their branches touch the ground, they send out roots; so a single plant can have ten different root systems. This means you get a very strong and rangy plant that “walks” and dominates its neighbors. For this reason, it is best to isolate them.

To get them to self-seed, simply let the dropped fruits decay into the soil. Plant them once, and they’ll plant themselves thereafter.

They freeze well; whenever you pick them (wait until they’re big, just as they start to turn from green to yellow), freeze whatever you don’t immediately use. You can keep dropping more into your freezer bags, instead of doing one big summer’s end harvest.

They require very little maintenance if they’re grown in the right spot; & unlike tomatoes they are resistant to blight. Bonus: chickens like them, and you can feed them the damaged or ugly fruits—or you can grow them as weeds right next to your coop, and let them take of harvesting.

Organic tomatillos sell for about $5 a pound in season, and with 5 plants you’ll end up with 20 lbs of frozen fruits—even though you picked the fresh fruits off the plants whenever you wanted to.

Imagine making salsa verde next summer with your own tomatillos, tomatoes, onions, jalapenos and cilantro. All you’ll need is a little salt and lime juice—and some friends who like margaritas!!

Last word: amongst all the food weeds, tomatillos get an A+ for easiness, productivity and taste. Grow some!!

Here is a recipe from Deb Taft, who runs Mobius Fields in the Bedford area of Westchester County, NY:

1.5 pounds tomatillos, wrappers removed, sticky stuff washed off
5 fresh serrano chiles
5 garlic cloves, unpeeled
.5 cups cilantro
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 tsp salt

Preheat broiler. Broil chiles, garlic and tomatillos 2 inches from heat, turning once, until tomatillos are softened and slightly charred, about 7 minutes.
Peel garlic, pull stems off chiles. Puree everything in a blender/food processor.

Here’s a pickling recipe from Steven McGehee, an ornithologist and guide who lives in British Columbia, Canada:

I blend 1 cup full of tomatillos in a food processor with one small (1/4 cup) Shallot or any onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 1/2 a squeesed lime or lemon and 1 level to heaping TBS of sea salt.

I put this mix in a mason jar with enough water to cover the salsa.

I leave the jar on a shelf for 5 days, covered, and every once in a while i open the lid to let the gas from fermenting escape. Then I put jar in the fridge for at least a month; it keeps for up to 5 months.

Sometimes a little white mold appears on top, its harmless and can be scouped out.

Others add a culture starter such as way or probiotics. I let the sea air start the fermenting process.

The moment you see mustards coming up next spring, go and plant your bulbs in rich soil, in a full-sun location. They’ll sprout quickly, never be bothered by pests, and multiply! Each bulb creates several more, and all mature to become excellent food. Once they start multiplying, you can harvest: all summer long! Cut the greens and use them as scallions.

They withstand drought (but watering ‘em will make ‘em fat); and they can handle the monsoons we’ve had for the past 3 years.

Store your harvest in the coolest, wettest part of your basement or garage. In the spring, use whatever’s left to start the next crop.

OR! Strategically leave a few in ground instead of harvesting them. They’re perennials and grow like weeds!

With a little weeding and composting now & then, and an eye on the long body, you can start w/a pound of bulbs and never have to buy scallions again.

Life is beautiful!!

Since imagination is key to our survival (it allows us to step outside fixed ways of viewing things, and thereby prepares us to evolve beyond our present condition) let’s imagine taking Johnny Appleseed one step further.

Think of the wild raspberry bush, and how lucky you are to know it. Now think of your neighborhood as a place jamming with all sorts of free, fresh & nutritious food.

It’s possible to raise food plants that grow like weeds, so that if we are hungry we can go outside and forage greens, legumes, tubers & fruits. Just like we pick wild raspberries.

And, jumping ahead to next spring, let’s prepare ourselves to practice guerrilla gardening: the strewing of seeds, & planting of trees and vines, in neglected places, so they produce food weeds!

Our series begins with mustard, which provides fresh and cooked greens, succulent stems and buds for stir-fry, and seeds that can be ground into spicy paste.

I ordered 2 kinds of mustard from the Fedco catalog a few years ago, planted them with bated breath, and—make the long story short—they grow “wild” now thanks to their inordinate self-seeding.

Meet Red Giant Mustard:

feral red giant mustard

Red Giant Mustard having a party that they both created and crashed

Now, meet Green Wave Mustard:

feral Green Wave Mustard

yummy Green Wave Mustard shoot

A single mustard plant, be it green or red, will generate +- 2 dozen shoots, if you keep harvesting them on time; every time you break one off, another grows in its place.

What’s even better is that mustards are among the 1st and last food plants to produce. In fact, once you get the hang of “herding” them, you’ll have a constant supply from April to November. The biggest problem they pose is that, once they get going, you have to whack them down before they spread everywhere. Vigilance is the price of this free food.

& what’s even better x2 is that honeybees love the yellow blossoms, which bloom very early and very late in the season, providing a substantial food source for them.

Since spreading everywhere is what a weed does, and since mustard is really delicious in so many ways, I urge you to let them loose in a vacant place near you.

Here’s a link that gives you a start on the culinary uses of these food weeds.

Next up: tatsoi!

I ordered three tiny hazel nut (also called filbert) trees a few years ago from Fedco and this year they produced a couple of pounds of nuts. I give them them an A+, because they grow like weeds and the nuts are yummy and jammed w/protein and anti-carcinogens.

Look about how beautiful the “victorian pocketbooks” are that hold the nuts:

Books say to wait until the nuts are fully dried and drop to the ground, but we tried that last year and the squirrels ate (or ran off w/ & buried) every one!

(If you want to learn how to pickle, you’re invited to Return of Picklefest at the Westhampton Public Library, next Monday 8/1 from 7-8:30 pm. We’ll sample this season’s pickles, and I’ll show you how easy it is to preserve your vegetables w/lactose acidophilus.)

The best source (imho) of fermentation recipes is Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation. Here’s his website.

Our Northampton Kim Chi recipe is an extrapolation on his more traditional (and hot) Korean version. We like it with ginger up front—