|
|
Post by steev on Jul 11, 2012 19:32:33 GMT -5
Pyracantha is a fair stealth crop. If one doesn't want to make jelly with the berries, they draw many birds.
|
|
|
|
Post by circumspice on Jul 12, 2012 4:55:59 GMT -5
Is there a commercial source for yacon in the U.S.? When I search it on the internet I find lots of articles about it but haven't found where to buy it yet. I purchased my yacon from Dr. Alan Kapular at Peace Seeds. Everything that I have purchased from him has been outstanding quality and excellent (near perfect) germination. And he is such a pleasure. There have been several threads on yacon in HG. I am growing it for the first time this year in the Oklahoma heat. So far, it is doing fantastic with a lot of water. It took the 108F weather. It is a long season crop so I would assume that you would want to plant it next year. My best patch of yacon is a raised bed that my daughter and I dug out and installed hardware cloth to keep out the gophers and replaced the soil with approximately equal parts of sand, compost and soil. These plants get the most TLC and water and are responding the best. I certainly would not think of them as a stealth crop in our climate. David Ok, spill your guts about growing yacon, everybody! I've read several articles about it on the internet & it sounds fairly straightforward. One thing that confused me was in one article, they referred to both tubers & crowns. One sentence stated "snap the tubers from the crowns & replant the crowns immediately or store in damp peat in a cool, dark place over the winter". Yacon produces tubers from the crowns? Can the tubers be propagated like potatoes? I am tentatively assuming that because I keep hearing about getting the tubers from the grocery store... |
|
|
|
Post by steev on Jul 12, 2012 10:41:01 GMT -5
Think of dahlias; the crowns sprout, tubers don't.
|
|
|
|
Post by circumspice on Jul 13, 2012 1:01:29 GMT -5
Think of dahlias; the crowns sprout, tubers don't. So If I went to a health food store & bought yacon tubers, I can't propagate them from the tubers, right? I know virtually nothing about dahlias, so thinking about dahlias doesn't shed any light on the subject for me. I'm pretty much a fairly experienced nooby. I have gardened extensively, but my experience includes only common, proven, southern garden fruits & veggies. (The varieties that my dad favored when he gardened.) |
|
|
|
Post by steev on Jul 13, 2012 1:07:49 GMT -5
Right. The tubers will rot, having no growth buds.
|
|
|
|
Post by mountaindweller on Jul 13, 2012 2:08:24 GMT -5
I once had yacon but did someething wrong with the replantig. I found them very good eating.
|
|
|
|
Post by synergy on Jul 13, 2012 12:10:37 GMT -5
I have found that most people are so unfamilliar with food gardening that I can grow common things in mixed ornamental beds and no one notices . I don't grow things in straight lines or large patches and they are mixed with medicinals and other trees, bushes and other ornamental plants that just creat a nice garden look. In the shelterbelt I planted by the road I have rhodos and hydrangea, and holly and cedars but I also have purple japanese plum and purple hazelnut bushes and people have no idea these are bearing nuts and plums, they just think they are there as an aesthetic contrast in foliage colour. I guess people don't expect to see potato foliage mixed with snapdragons and they dismiss it all as ornamental.
|
|
|
|
Post by ferdzy on Jul 13, 2012 18:48:43 GMT -5
Yeah, Synergy; I was thinking about this thread and the thought occurred to me that you are probably better off planting potatoes in the flower bed than flowers in the potato bed, so to speak, if you want to keep your food invisible to pilfering hordes. Although I will just add that I don't think anyone has mentioned daylilies yet. The dried buds are an essential ingredient in authentic Hot & Sour Soup. But the whole plant is edible, pretty much. honest-food.net/2010/06/29/dining-on-daylilies/ |
|
|
|
Post by wildseed57 on Jul 14, 2012 21:15:56 GMT -5
One Green World has a lot of various trees/shrubs that could work for you there is also some fruiting vines that most people wouldn't reconise, if you happen to like hot peppers some of the wild chiltepins can grow into small trees and can self seed or if the weather dosen't get down to freezing some will over winter. If you happen to make your own wine there are apples and pears that don't tast good but can be mashed and made into hard cider. I like the Idea of stealth gardening, the way things are going having a few tree/shrubs and vines makes since. I think that if you had a large enough area you could even plant legumes that would grow on their own, that wouldn't attract attion.
George W.
|
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Jul 14, 2012 22:33:54 GMT -5
One Green World has a lot of various trees/shrubs that could work for you there is also some fruiting vines that most people wouldn't reconise, if you happen to like hot peppers some of the wild chiltepins can grow into small trees and can self seed or if the weather dosen't get down to freezing some will over winter. If you happen to make your own wine there are apples and pears that don't tast good but can be mashed and made into hard cider. I like the Idea of stealth gardening, the way things are going having a few tree/shrubs and vines makes since. I think that if you had a large enough area you could even plant legumes that would grow on their own, that wouldn't attract attion. George W. Off the top of my head, I can think of LOTS of legumes you could add that no one would recogize as edible. Sweet Lupins (of any species) siberian pea shrub, hyacinth bean (if you keep yourself to the white version for those you consume as dried, you can eat any of them as green beans.Put both in, and people would simply assume you were planting for contrast) Grasspea (if you didn't eat it on a regualr basis). Come to think of ityou could probably hide regular peas if you are selective about varieties. Many of the older strains have two toned purple flowers; some of the asian snows have bright red ones. Mix those up with some actual sweet peas, and I doubt anyone would notice which were food and which were not. Ditto Scarlet Runner beans. And, speaking from personal experiance, my rice beans, by the time they are producing have usually long since snarled and tangled themselves to the point of a mass. I doubt they could pass for flower garden flowers, but, if sown in a "waste area" they would have little trouble passing for weeds (if you don't know what they are, when if flower they look a lot like gigantic birdsfoot trefoil.) |
|
|
|
Post by circumspice on Jul 24, 2012 3:18:15 GMT -5
I've been thinking about 'when', not 'if' TSHTF... I don't believe it will happen with a bang, rather I think it will creep up on us slowly. Most people probably won't see it coming, they'll believe that the economy is just in a downturn & that it will return to normal sooner or later. Because of that type of denial, they'll be caught unprepared. There will be lots of indignation & recriminations. They'll demand that the government "do something". Many of us have been spoon fed the dogma that our government will take care of us for so long, we've lost the initiative to look after our own welfare. So now we have huge concentrations of people living in small areas, with millions upon millions of acres of land that used to be small farms, now used only for Big Ag. Less than a century ago, the vast majority of people would have stated on the Census that their occupation was "Farmer". Now that majority has become nearly extinct. Who will feed the people who live in those ant hills we call cities? And what would be of any value that they could use to buy that food? The barter system only works if both parties have something the other wants or needs. It boggles the mind. I don't believe that any government can prevent the collapse of an economy. The Great Depression & the Dust Bowl days were just a sneak preview in my opinion. I hope I don't live long enough to see it happen.  |
|
|
|
Post by caledonian on Jul 24, 2012 17:42:29 GMT -5
Giant Solomon's Seal has edible rhizomes (okay) and shoots (which taste remarkably like asparagus). You have to remove the leaves from the shoots, due to their unpleasant taste. And like asparagus, the plant is a perennial - unlike it, it's common in the wild and is relatively often used in landscaping.
It's not suitable for a Texas climate, though.
|
|
|
|
Post by caledonian on Jul 24, 2012 18:07:00 GMT -5
Ever considered black nightshade (Solanum nigrum) as a stealth crop? Its shoots are a very popular cooked green throughout much of the world, and its berries taste like tiny, fruity tomatoes.
Samuel Thayer does a pretty complete job of deconstructing the poisoning fears surrounding the plant. It's no more dangerous than tomatoes are.
|
|
|
|
Post by steev on Jul 24, 2012 18:47:14 GMT -5
No more dangerous than tomatoes? Is that supposed to be reassuring? Have you any idea how many people are addicted to tomatoes? People will eat tomatoes that are tomatoes in appearance only; it's like smoking oregano, not a high in a car-load. Many can't live without the concentrated hard stuff: CATSUP!
|
|
|
|
Post by circumspice on Jul 24, 2012 18:57:26 GMT -5
No more dangerous than tomatoes? Is that supposed to be reassuring? Have you any idea how many people are addicted to tomatoes? People will eat tomatoes that are tomatoes in appearance only; it's like smoking oregano, not a high in a car-load. Many can't live without the concentrated hard stuff: CATSUP!  ;D |
|
;D