Local Wild Asparagus 2008

Some of you long time readers may remember last year in early June when I found a good locale for harvesting Wild Local Asparagus Yes, you read that right, WILD, asparagus. It exists, and I have found it. This is what you need to look for. (visit the link-to post for a few other pics.) As I walked the banks of the ditches, I look for the wispy hits to the location of the "Green Gold". When I come up to a clump of the ferns, I kneel and root around in the grasses and voila.
Wild Asparagus! Could it be easier? Yeah, actually it could I guess. You could just trot on over to the local mega-mart and shell out 5.00 for a little bunch of the stuff, or maybe you want to keep it local and have a U-pick it farm or CSA that you can pick it up from. But you know what, it's just not the same as seeking it out, hunting it and gathering it yourself. This is food, given to us freely from the land in the most pure manner.
The harvest was not gigantic mind you. The weather has been cold the last week or so off and on, and that has a big impact on asparagus, but I'll go back for more, and see what I can find. The point of this exercise to me is that as I said, it is food that is provided for us freely from the earth. It is wild, and it is free. I liken it to fishing or hunting and enjoy the gathering no less. The flavors are different too, slightly earthier; not quite broken by cultivation yet. Keep your eyes open and look around you for the food in your midst and you may be surprised. We're all surrounded by foods that our ancestors lived on for millenia, if we neglect them, they just be turned over and destoyed or worse yet, poisoned as weeds. What a shame.

P~

In Addendum... I found after posting this, that Red State Green had just posted something perfectly complimentary to this just yesterday. Check it out, and keep your eyes open.

Weed and Feed

Yes my garden is still organic; I didn't cave and break out with the ORTHO. I did do a little weeding tonight with my 10 and 12 yr old sons however, after learning a little about what I had growing wild in the garden.
I have to preface this by explaining that I was checking out a new blog yesterday, Red State Green where the author was talking about making soup for the local food challenge with chicken and purslane. I wasn't familiar with this ingredient so of course I googled it. Turns out that purslane is a very common vegetable plant that I just came in contact the other night while out in the garden, pulling it as a weed from my mulch path.
I'm a firm believer that we live in a wonderful world that is filled with opportunities to explore even in our own backyards, so of course I had to take this opportunity to try something new. (This isn't something new to our house as I have brought home wild asparagus and dandelion greens in the past. )My sons and I went out to the pumpkin patch, Which I may add has only one pumpkin in it, and weeded out a good bit of wild purslane. It's an odd plant, low growing and of very similar texture to a succulent. I washed it and tried a taste of the raw plant. It was very mild, slightly sweet and not bitter at all.
I decided to try the bulk of it as I might tend to have it with a meal in order to really get a feeling of how it might fit into a diet. I sauted it for a few minutes, maybe 5, with some butter and garlic and gave it a try. Very tasty. My 12 yr old C~ loved it. It was more substantial than a traditional greens dish like chard or spinich, but somewhat similar in taste.

I encourage you to take a second look at what's in your yard that maybe you didn't put there. It's been said that there are in the neighborhood of 50,000 edible plants known to man, but that the average person only eats around 30. As always, be safe and research anything that you're going to try to consume. I have found Wildman Steve Brills web site to be one of the best that I have seen with very good pictures and information.
Bon Appetit!

Last nights harvest

I realize that I am a little late with this, seeing as how it was yesterdays harvest, but I didn't have a chance to post yesterday; the harvest was a good one though.
In the picture you can see from front to back, jalapenos, anaheim chilies, yellow pear tomatoes, Zuchinni, black beauty bell peppers, large cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, green bell peppers, artichoke, cucumber, heirloom swiss chard, and green beans hiding in the back. I think that is all of them.

The big surprises this year were the green bell peppers, which I have grown every year, and which every year I have been very unhappy with. This year I am very very happy with them. The only difference that I can assume may have made the difference with them is that the drip system that I set up earlier for our vacation this spring does not water over the plant, but at it's base. In years previous I have found that my peppers get the white sunburns on the sun facing parts. I think this is due to the water pooling in the dips of the pepper and refracting the sun on them, thus burning them.

The other big surprise that I've had this year has been the artichokes. Last year we planted one just to see if it'd grow and it did, and toward the end of the year we got one tiny artichoke off of it; whoopee! This year I tried planting two plants and got them in the ground earlier in the season and these two are the 4th and 5th we've taken from them and there are a couple more on the plant. As we go along, they also seem to get bigger, and more tightly compacted more similar to the ones you might find at the grocery. My experiment for them this fall, will be to see if I can over winter the plants. In CA where I grew up, they are a perennial and get to be quite big if you let them, and will carry a lot of 'chokes per plant at one time. I am going to try a method that I saw italian families in New York use to over winter fig trees. I will pack the plant in straw, layers carefully mounding over the crown of the plant. Then wrap it in burlap and plastic to support it. It may not work, I don't really know, but that's the best part of gardening I think, trying out ideas, and passing them along. It'll be worth it if it does work though with early and plentiful artichokes.

My dissappointments this year have been the pumpkins again. I don't understand what the difficulty is with growing these d**n plants are, but I just don't seem programmed to do it. The only ones I have every gotten and the only ones that I have thus far this year are the wild volunteer plants that I can't get rid of. That's the other great thing about gardening, there's always next year to try again!
May your garden be green and your fruits sweet!
P~

Local Wild Asparagus

Well, In my effort to eat locally as much as possible I have found that our farmers markets don't open until July, and the local small produce seller has only stuff from CA primarily. (I have begun to believe that the idea of eating locally must have been conceived by a CA native. They seem to have everything there all the time. ) At any rate, I have been able to pull a few things from my own garden this week and have had a few good meals because of it. For instance, yesterday I enjoyed a delicious salad for lunch with buttercrunch lettuce, spinich and radishes from the garden. This afternoon I ate some steamed home grown chard with my tofu and rice (not from the garden obviously.) and supplemented it with some wild asparagus that I harvested not three minutes by bike from my house. Here is a couple of picture that I got of the plants.












They are just about grown out; I unfortunately found them a little to late in the season to get much from them this year but next spring Oh yeah!! They were tender and tasty and you can't get more local than wild now can you? I was inpired to go out and and pick up a couple of books from the library about wild foods of the Rocky Mountain region. If I can find any more good eats I'll keep you posted.

P~