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Post by castanea on May 22, 2012 20:27:06 GMT -5
I didn't know where to put this thread but I guess here is as good as any. Stealth crops have been discussed here intermittently but were most recently brought up by Joseph in the "Bunker mentality" thread. Below is Joseph's original post. I'm hoping we can compile a lengthy list of stealth crops.
"I plant stealth crops:
Things that few would think of as food: sunroots, parsnips, turnips, Swiss chard. Things that are growing out of place: Egyptian onions and asparagus along the ditch-bank. Apples, pears, and cherries in the forest. Fancy looking crops like carrots and flowering potatoes in the flower beds around the lawn. Things that store on-the-vine outside of the growing season: sunroots, walnuts, day-lilies, Egyptian onions. I still have edible walnuts laying on the lawn from last year's growing season. And then diversity, diversity, diversity so that crops are in all stages all season long so that even if every harvestable thing gets taken today, there will still be things that are not harvestable on any given day that I might get a chance at harvesting in a month. If my garden is not defended in one community, perhaps it will survive in a different community ten miles, or thirty miles, or 100 miles away. My seed genome is stashed in many communities, in many different ways: On the shelf, buried with a treasure map, buried at night by memory only, via the Internet, given to friends and associates. I encourage wild animals to take up residence in the yard or garden by providing food, water, and appropriate abodes. It might take a lot of starlings or lizards to make a meal, but it's a great boost to morale to put meat on the table."
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Post by castanea on May 22, 2012 20:55:27 GMT -5
From oxbowfarm: cattail and american lotus (Nelumbo lutea)
From circumspice: Bamboo Flax-Edible seeds, oil, fiber, pretty flowers...
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Post by oxbowfarm on May 22, 2012 21:03:21 GMT -5
Dahlias, Groundnut, Nutsedge
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Post by bonsaioutlaw on May 22, 2012 22:03:11 GMT -5
Most people don't have a clue what Potato, and Carrot leaves look like.
I try to let lots of the next few items go to seed each year on my farm. Never know when I might need them.
Dandelions, Poke Salad, Lambs Quarters and Wild Onions.
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Post by rowan on May 22, 2012 22:09:52 GMT -5
Oca, feijoa, Chinese artichoke, canna lily.
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Post by castanea on May 22, 2012 22:23:54 GMT -5
Apios species Peanuts Daylilies - Hemerocallis Sweet potatoes Biscuitroot - lomatium Sagittaria latifolia
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 22, 2012 23:31:38 GMT -5
Mushrooms Asparagus Strawberries Grapes Persimmon Anything that grows in light forest.
Let's face it, how many people out of 100 here in the US really know what they are looking at when they walk around? What is the ratio of city folk to country folk? I'm guessing maybe 1 country to 9 city? I don't think that many city bred people have enough interest to learn about where their food comes from. I know most of my family is clueless.
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Post by castanea on May 23, 2012 0:05:57 GMT -5
Mushrooms Asparagus Strawberries Grapes Persimmon Anything that grows in light forest. Let's face it, how many people out of 100 here in the US really know what they are looking at when they walk around? What is the ratio of city folk to country folk? I'm guessing maybe 1 country to 9 city? I don't think that many city bred people have enough interest to learn about where their food comes from. I know most of my family is clueless. I totally agree. I'm just trying to identify as many sneaky plants as I can. I've had people steal veggies from my garden and I know many others have been victims of theft too. No one is going to be stealing cattails.
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Post by MikeH on May 23, 2012 4:09:58 GMT -5
I'm betting that people will attempt to know what they need to know if they need to know it. Having said that, we're starting to re-populate our woods (40+ years ago they were pasture and/or tilled and are now heavily dogwood with some ash and wild apples) with species like sunchokes, fiddleheads, wild leeks, wild garlic, groundnuts, cinnamon vine, New Jersey Tea, wild black currant, American plum, crab apples. hazel, blackcaps, wild gooseberry, senna, honey locust, serviceberry, chokecherry, black cherry. And we're thinking about skirret, Turkish rocket, scorzonera, crosne, Egyptian onion, Welsh onion, sweet cicely, Japanese water celery, lovage, sorel, rhubarb. We have most of this material although only a bit of it so far has been re-located. We have a large wet area that abounds in cattails. And we've planted large quantities of day-lilies to retain a steep driveway hillside.
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Post by ottawagardener on May 23, 2012 5:59:07 GMT -5
By this definition, about half of my garden is stealthy. I like the idea of repopulating marginal woods.
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Post by templeton on May 23, 2012 7:53:59 GMT -5
Cattail = Typha sp yeah? Local indigenes managed Phragmites australis as a food crop. I've tried Typha - very fibrous, but haven't tried Phragmites yet. Staying with the aquatics, does Eleocharis dulcis grow in North America? Pretty cryptic. Tree saps would also be on the list, I reckon - birch and others can be tapped for syrup I believe. Unusual fruits like medlar would be treated with suspicion too. Then there are the poisonous crops that need treatment to produce good food - various cycads come to mind, but I'm sure there are others. And the plants that others are sure are poisonous, but aren't - eg black nightshade which everyone here thinks is 'deadly nightshade'. And the number of people who approach me every autumn gobsmacked that I'm harvesting trees in public parks and roadsides 'what, you can eat them? you sure they are olives?.... T
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Post by bunkie on May 23, 2012 8:38:22 GMT -5
this makes me think of Gorilla Gardening, something i love... www.guerrillagardening.org/... Things that are growing out of place: Egyptian onions and asparagus along the ditch-bank. Apples, pears, and cherries in the forest. .... this reminds me of tim's perennial wheat and rye that he planted in ditches and along roadsides. am practicing that here.
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Post by MikeH on May 23, 2012 8:56:46 GMT -5
By this definition, about half of my garden is stealthy. I like the idea of repopulating marginal woods. Yep although I'm a bit undecided about how "natural" to leave them seeing how we've destroyed so much of the natural order. I'm leaning to including anything perennial. Perennial vegetables seem to be one step removed from wild and hopefully can fend for themselves without any assistance. I'm particularly interested in calories and protein - better mileage when fuel is in short supply. BTW, the skirret roots from La Societe des Plantes have taken so it looks like you'll get your skirret roots this fall from a subdivision.
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Post by castanea on May 23, 2012 9:22:53 GMT -5
Psoralea esculenta - a pretty flower that has an edible root, known as breadroot or prairie turnip.
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 23, 2012 16:15:02 GMT -5
Gotcha Castanea! By the by, we need to add SERVICEBERRIES! (amalanchier) Our are coming ripe right now and I'm planning a pie!
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