Plant from the wild

[Woods Dweller]

I got this idea from another post; Plant in the wild?
There are a lot of plants that can be eaten in the wild. Some of these can be transplanted on your property or in the woods close to your property. Here are a few thing I have done this with. Where I live there are not many blackberry bushes. Buy near my dad house there are a lot. I took the truck over there and dug a bunch up and moved them near my property and they spared as they grow.
I have wild onion’s growing around my place. The seed’s bloom at the top of a long stem, [5 seeds on each onion] I pull them off and fill up a small lunch bag full of the seeds. When I walk or drive in the woods I throw hand full of the seeds all around. They grow, just lying on the ground. Have been doing this for about 15 years and wild onions are ease to come by where I live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allium

I like having wild foods growing around where I live. I have step on wild mint. I find the patch I step on, dig a section up and transplant it someplace else. I grow fig trees at my home, I cut a small branch off. Stick it in water till I see roots coming out, I plant it in small bag with dirt. I go out in the woods and transplant them. Now I have wild Fig growing back in woods where I live. http://www.smallkitchengarden.net/you-can-grow-that/grow-a-f...
When I was in MT a few years ago a Native showed me wild potatoes. I brought a few back to Fl and tried to get them to grow in the wild. But they did not take.
Any of you guys do this?

 

[coloradoclyde]

Any of you guys do this?

Yep!
I've been planting and foraging in the wild since I was a kid.
Most people that walk though the woods couldn't tell a pine tree from an oak....But if you look really close, plants can show you where 18th and 19th century homesteads were....
Apples, Rhubarb, asparagus, plumbs, grapes, onions, flowers, trees, etc... are all indicators of possible early farms or homesteads dating back to the 18th or 19 centuries....

Today we call it "permaculture" but back in the 18th or 19th century it was just surviving....

I'm always looking for resilient non-invasive perennials to plant. Keep in mind that the common dandelion was imported in the 16th or 17th century as food...... Very few plants or animals the we eat were native to the U.S., almost everything has been imported.

 

[tenngun]

I had read a work many years ago called ' Germs, Guns Abd Steel' about why Europe expanded so much at the expense of other cultures. It started out with a discriptions of Pizzaro meeting the Inca. It asked why a Euopean was in the Andies, and not an Adian in Spain.
Anyway one of the things the author speculated about was plants and animals that were wild in the area and suitability to be domesticated. On of the interesting things was that with a few rare exceptions everything that was ever domesticated was domesticated over 3000 years ago.
The inability of a local culture to find plants and animals locally to be domesticated. Australia has no big seeded grasses for instance, or high protein root tuber that could serve to build civilization on.
Many plants have much higher nutritional value the domesticated plants, but for just some reason won't grow well. Buster farm in England, a experimental archeology site found many local plants that contributed greatly to the needs of the experimenters, but could not be coaxed to grow on the farm. We had wild asperigas growing along irrigation ditches in my home town, every year my dad tried to coax it it to growing at our house, and every spring it failed to come back.

 

[Nativearizonan]

In FL you have that rare climate that will grow almost anything. I could plant fruit trees until my face turned blue in the AZ desert and they would still be dead within two weeks of me setting them out.

As far as there not being useful or edible plants already existing, maybe you're not looking hard enough at what is already there. Here it is Agave, Prickly Pear Cactus, and Mesquite. All three are edible but they barely get touched by man these days because we have developed a preference for those European plants, not because there weren't any alternatives. Living off of native plants like these eliminates a lot of the health problems that are caused by our modern diet.

Back east you don't have the huge expanses of Chestnut trees that were there when the colonists first set foot. They were the most reliable and most notable species of a large permaculture system that was already there in Eastern North America woodlands. Hickory nuts were crushed and boiled and the oil skimmed off and stored for use. Acorns were leached and used as high protein flour. The cane brakes (giant reed) that covered the land at the time, before they were all plowed up or grazed to death, provided edible shoots. Cattail rushes were also found in huge areas and are a source of large amounts of energy giving carbohydrates.

People don't realize it because everything has changed, but even the southwest had very large tracts of these reeds and rushes where ever there was water. Grapes and walnuts were abundant along some of the creeks as well, but the desert plants provided well for a huge local population before introduced diseases wiped many of them out.

I do bring back plants that are useful to my yard from time to time, but to try and be Johnny Appleseed around here would be a frustrating endeavor. It seems better to leave the areas where things can grow to the native plants. My goal has been to understand them and their uses rather than trying to change the ecosystem, not that it hasn't already been changed drastically by man in many ways.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Are your tulips up yet?

Remember the Dutch tulip mania, in 1593 the Dutch imported tulips from Turkey, and by 1637 a single bulb was worth a mans yearly wages or more.....with some selling for millions in today's money.

 

[tenngun]

Funny the way some things do well. Most chocolate grows in Africa, best coffee grows in Jamaica and Colombia, best tobacco grows in the eastern meditrainian. And bunnies love Australia and hogs the American wilds.

 

[coloradoclyde]

One day while hunting deep in the woods I literally stumbled upon a tennis court sized patch of "wild" onions...A hundred yards farther and I came upon the remnants of an old building.

Numerous times I have found small apple orchards deep within the timber seemingly in the middle of nowhere....

One day while walking near my home I found raspberries growing wild about 500 yards from my house. They were the exact same variety as what I grow in my yard.

Fence lines use to abound with diverse plant and tree species, a treasure trove for wildlife, bees, etc..... Thanks to Roundup, they are disappearing fast.... :td:

When I was a kid foraging in the wild was akin to a trip to the grocer.....today it's like panning for gold, "lot's of work to find tiny specks."

 

[necchi]

Fence lines use to abound with diverse plant and tree species, a treasure trove for wildlife, bees, etc..... Thanks to Roundup, they are disappearing fast.... :td:

My favorite place for Asparagus got plowed under as the farmers took out a 50acre pasture land to increase crop land. One line was solid plumb trees and another fence line was loaded with Asparagus gone wild. It's all wide open flat now, :shake:

 

[Crewdawg445]

I just went out and harvested a bunch of wild garlic, dandelion geeens, roots and blossoms. Some of my favorite foods lay right in the backyard!

 

[coloradoclyde]

Fence lines use to abound with diverse plant and tree species, a treasure trove for wildlife, bees, etc..... Thanks to Roundup, they are disappearing fast.... :td:

My favorite place for Asparagus got plowed under as the farmers took out a 50acre pasture land to increase crop land. One line was solid plumb trees and another fence line was loaded with Asparagus gone wild. It's all wide open flat now, :shake:

Yep! makes you sick doesn't it...

 

[zimmerstutzen]

My father would bring home pounds of wild mushrooms and fungus from about memorial day to frost.

There are still a few chestnut trees around. Some hybrids have been planted in the wild. I have thickets of sand pears. Lots of blackberries and dewberries, even a patch of wild strawberries. We have mature hickories, some beechnuts, a few hazel nuts, and about 200 black walnut trees,

Just yesterday, I noticed the skunk cabbage shoots and fiddler ferns that my grand mother would eat. It was traditional to have a salad of dandelion greens with hot sour bacon dressing every april.

About 4th of july, the wine berries get ripe. We pick them by the gallon. I fenced off an area for goats and pulled them out after a storm washed the fence away. That area is now waste deep with a bramble of wine berries that grow wild. Last year we froze several gallons.

 

[Woods Dweller]

Many years back in south Fl [Homestead] I was out walking back in the woods and come across what must have been an old farm. There were mangos, Avocadoes, Oranges, starfruit, grapefruit, Sugar cane, and more trees all over the place. I use to go back to this place and bring home baskets of fruit. Then one day there was construction going at this place. I did not go back to this place for a few years, believing it was plowed over and homes built there. But to my pleasant surprise they had built the homes among all these trees just removing what they has to for the house.

 

[TNGhost]

I had read a work many years ago called ' Germs, Guns Abd Steel' about why Europe expanded so much at the expense of other cultures. It started out with a discriptions of Pizzaro meeting the Inca. It asked why a Euopean was in the Andies, and not an Adian in Spain.
Anyway one of the things the author speculated about was plants and animals that were wild in the area and suitability to be domesticated. On of the interesting things was that with a few rare exceptions everything that was ever domesticated was domesticated over 3000 years ago.
The inability of a local culture to find plants and animals locally to be domesticated. Australia has no big seeded grasses for instance, or high protein root tuber that could serve to build civilization on.
Many plants have much higher nutritional value the domesticated plants, but for just some reason won't grow well. Buster farm in England, a experimental archeology site found many local plants that contributed greatly to the needs of the experimenters, but could not be coaxed to grow on the farm. We had wild asperigas growing along irrigation ditches in my home town, every year my dad tried to coax it it to growing at our house, and every spring it failed to come back.

I recall reading Germs, Guns and Steel as well,in fact I have a copy around here somewhere. It was a leftist hit piece based on theory and speculation, much of it disproven since. You only have to look at maize to discredit that line of thought, and bison lend themselves quite handily to domestication.

The advantage the Europeans had was the age and sophistication of their civilization. The only seeds worth mentioning in relation to that book are those cultivated by leftist academia and sown in the furtherence of the middle class guilt syndrome.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Haven't seen wild strawberries since the 1980's....
What are "wine berries"?

 

[coloradoclyde]

I recall reading Germs, Guns and Steel as well,in fact I have a copy around here somewhere. It was a leftist hit piece based on theory and speculation, much of it disproven since. You only have to look at maize to discredit that line of thought, and bison lend themselves quite handily to domestication.

The advantage the Europeans had was the age and sophistication of their civilization. The only seeds worth mentioning in relation to that book are those cultivated by leftist academia and sown in the furtherence of the middle class guilt syndrome.

Your constant political rhetoric sure is saddening...
I can't imagine living a life so full of hate and fear, constantly envisioning "leftists", "Marxists" and "commies" everywhere......You have my sympathy...
Lions and tigers, and bears, oh my!:shake:

 

[TNGhost]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"leftists", "Marxists" and "commies"

 

[coloradoclyde]

The mind is everything. What you think you become.
~Buddha~

 

[TNGhost]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"leftists", "Marxists" and "commies"

Your thought. Your mind.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Did you not notice the quotation marks?... :hmm:

 

[TNGhost]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

leftists, Marxists and commies

Your thought. Your mind.

Fixed it for ya.