Do you garden, have fruit trees, nut trees, berry bushes, or have a lot of edible foods on your property?

Do you make enough of an effort to eat them, sell them or use them in some way?

Hi Jill, Not a very big garden, but yes a small bushy area where we grow tomatoes and some coriander. That's it!

I have quite a few plants growing in this small plot of lawn at this studio i am temporarily living at in LA. Lemons, limes, dandelions, mint and rosemary all grow here.

Lori, who lives a little bit south, also has oranges and avocados, and my parents, in San Diego have five kinds of citrus plus a peach and plum tree.

CA is pretty easy for food from trees.

I have just planted orange, lime, lemon and fig trees as well as grapes and raspberries. The pineapple guava were planted a year ago. We already have an apple tree and I've planted one more.

Most of them are still very twig looking right now, but next year should be pretty exciting, I've never grown this much fruit before.

Tina, that is great on all your fruit! I never really considered a fig tree. Can it handle a few freezes?

I have been surprised at how even twig-like citrus trees have been able to put forth a few fruits. You might be surprised. The lime tree in the back here have a few dangly fruits growing and very few leaves and branches.

I want an apple tree! When I get home to AZ I plan to put in a prickly pear cactus, an apple tree, a crabapple tree, a pecan tree and a walnut tree.

Berry bushes are a great plan. What do you plan to do with your fruits, Tina?

I have 2 pear trees, several Japanese quince bushes, lots of red raspberry bushes and some wild-type black raspberries, some gooseberry bushes and strawberries.
The pear trees need a lot of spraying, so I usually just let them go and eat the few that aren't riddled with worms and black spots; the squirels and hornets enjoy them. The gooseberries have a funky taste that I'm not crazy about but I freeze them and usually mix them with cranberries to pad out cranberry sauce, but they also taste good when sauteed with beef, making a flavorful gravy. But most of all I LOVE the berries and eat raspberries 3X a day for that glorious few weeks that they are producing. I make red raspberry jam, strawberry jam and a red/black/strawberry jam mixture that I call Triple Berry Jam. This Fall I tried mixing quince sauce with frozen strawberries and it made the BEST jam, sweet and tart together and a beautiful light red color! I sell my jam at a little Saturday market in the summer, along with small watercolor paintings. The jam goes faster than the paintings!

We have dandelions, lamb's quarters, violets, wild grapes, mulberries and we grow some veggies.

Well I'm in CA, it rarely freezes. This year I did put bags over 3 of my trees to protect them from a weekend of frost.

What do I plan on doing with the fruit? I hadn't really thought. We are a family of 6, 3 of whom are teenage boys. I guess my plan is to reduce my grocery bill a little.

I came back to my AZ home and found a whole bunch of mustard weeds growing. I can certainly use those.

Dandelions make a good jelly or a cream soup.

Ray Bradbury wrote of Dandelion Wine...

Watermelon wine is good...got any watermelons growing out back?

Seriously, dandelions are edible. I have never tried any of the dandelion recipes, but I have heard they are good.

I've used dandelions in several ways - i made wine, used the leaves and flowers in salad, and tasted the roots. The hard part of getting to use the roots for food is that they are not that big, but really dirty. And hard to dig up.

Blueberries, Tayberries, Melon, Corgetts, a plum tree, potatoes, and strawberries.

Potatoes! I totally need to create a mound in some tires this summer. Been wanting to do that for some time.

What are tayberries?

Chickweed: I have seen people gathering chickweed before and always wondered why. Apparently, it is a very nutritious herb that can be used in salads or herbal remedies.

I just did some research and found this site that has good info on
Chickweed.

It is prolific and grows everywhere. Has anyone tried it?

Jill,

Can you tell me how to make potato mounds from tires??? I"m so interested in that!

When I set this up i will write it in more detail,and take photos, but, to wit:

Take one tire and fill with soil. Cut up a potato so that each section has an eye. Put them in the soil.

As the vines grow higher, add more tires and soil. The plant will get pretty large under the stacked mound. Each level should reward you with taters when you choose to dig the thing out come fall!

Phyllis I have not tried chickweed but now i plan to! Thank you for the information.

Great! Let us know how it tastes and how you prepared it.

I did enjoy putting young dandelion leaves in my sunbaked quesadilla. Recommended!

I am going to have to try that. My mother often told us that they picked the young dandelion leaves for her mother to use in cooking. I have never tasted them, but now am anxious to.

Up here in Northern NY, the Dandilion greens are older now and bitter, but the dandilion buds are sweet and tender ( the small unopened ones are best, clean as you would a strawberry, remove stalk and leaves): Add to Pasta dishes, salads, stirfrys, Omelets, mix with cooked barley or rice as a great sidedish.
Dandilion buds ( unopened) may help prevent hayfever allergies in children, because the pollen inside each bud is only partially formed,thus, giving the human body immunities, almost like a vaccine.

Cindy, thanks for the ideas for dandelion uses.

Has anyone ever eaten Prickly Pear Cacuts ?

They are very popular in California and there are farms that have huge fields of them! The fruit of the cactus is apparently quite good. I have never tasted it myself, but would like to try it. It also has some medicinal uses.

I've cooked with them before but didn't do it right. TIP - don't just skin and boil the pads. Blech, unless you like slimy foods.

Next time I will make like chicken cutlets.

Cindy, i have not thought to eat the dandelion buds! GREAT idea, thank you.

We used to see this a lot on the rooftops of Mexico City tennaments. Sometimes the roofs would collapse under the weight of the soil!

I miss the wild mountain blackberries we used to gather every year up in the Pacific Northwest. We do not have wild blackberries in Nevada. No mushrooms either. Do you have either of these in your area?

Some friends, years ago, in Washington were out gathering wild mushrooms. One of the guys ate the wrong kind and thought he was a werewolf -- he got pretty wild. The other guys had to lock him in the trunk of the car to get him home safely, then his dad took him to the hospital ER. One has to really know what to look for when gathering mushrooms in the wild.

We use the wild grape leaves to wrap meat and rice. We steam them like Greek dolmas.

Connie, my brother and his wife use grape leaves like that. Usually they wrap the meat and rice in cabbage leaves, but once in awhile will gather wild grape leaves.

What about rose hips? I have heard that they make a wonderful tea. I love to gather them, but really do not know what to do with them.

Rose hips are wonderful. The best time to gather them is right after the first frost, and they are great for jellies, syrups and tea.
Dandelions- recently I posted a recipe for fried dandelions in my blog, then made printable recipe pages for them. They are a family favorite. If you're interested, you can see the printables here. Fried Dandelions printable recipe
Other than that, potatoes, rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, carrots and pumpkins. And something unknown in one of my pots, but it's coming up well so I'm watering and waiting to see if it's more darn trees or if it's something I planted last year coming back up.

Phyllis that sounds wonderful about the wild grape leaves.

People on the shore can use some forms of kelp like that as well.

Shala I totally want to try the fried dandelion heads! I eat them raw in salads but that sounds even yummier.

I bet the leaves and heads would be good in homemade salsa too.

LOL, people spend hundreds a year to get rid of dandelions and here i am wanting to buy seeds for them...

Re - rose hips. I like to use them in teas, but not as the entire tea. They are a little sour. I add them to combinations with wild mint usually.

Rosehips are FULL of vitamin C!

Jilly, not only vitamin C, but also dietary fiber. Dandelions rock the vitamin A.
If you live in someplace that gets cold enough, rose hips are sweeter after the first frost.

Hmm, not so cold here. We do get one or two decent frosts. is that enough?

Jilly, we also have wild strawberries. There are a bunch of them this year. We don't remember seeing them in the past, but they must have been there, since they don't spread that much in one year.

So - how do you make rose hip tea? Do the rose hips have to be prepared in any way first?

Today, I used wild grape leaves to make dolmas. They are grape leaves stuffed with seasoned meat and rice. After boiling them, I had some broth left. Rice and quinoa went into the leftover broth, along with some seasonings. The whole thing was yummy!

Dandelions are great. We make salads and wine out of them. They only last a short while though.

Right now we have wild raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries. We are growing tomatoes, zucchini, squash, eggplant, and hot peppers. For herbs we have a giant sage hedge, a large rosemary plant, three kinds of basil, five mint plants, big fluffy dill, four stevia plants, and some catnip and cat grass for Julie. Oh and a brussell sprout survived from last year so we may actually get to eat some this year.

Gardening is a great way to get tons of very cheap food!

I also picked mint and dill for the dolmas. The water mint has escaped from the water, and it's growing around the pond. As with all mint, there's plenty of it.

I used it in tea with lemon this morning. It was great!

We are growing tomatoes and peppers. The Lamb's Quarters are growing themselves. I'll pick some for a big pot of greens...maybe Thursday.

Since I still have the spine surgery coming and hurt like crazy I limited gardening this year. Tomatoes; roma, pilgrims, and grape. Raspberries, oregano (froze basil last year) and catnip (goes with the territory I will miss all the fresh veggies.

Next year I'd better be back to normal, by gosh, it will almost be a whole new spine after the last surgery and the upcoming one.

I need to find out what kind of red peppers are on Domino's Pacific veggie pizza, love them. I am going to plant them next year.

We have had so much rain, having trouble with everything wilting. The plants need little water wings

I did finally get the rock garden planted. With the maple trees and flowers it really turned out pretty. I'll have to take a picture.

Tomatoes, lettuce, rocket, sunflowers, nasturtium, borage, evening primrose, mints, a bonsi basil tree, majoram, oregano, corriander, parsley, spinach, sorrel, marigolds, cornflowers, strawberries, thyme, radishes, carrots, potatoes, chives, dandelions, poppies, fennel and I have a Bramley apple tree!

Lots of the plants I use the flowers in salads, and the seeds in smoothies or cakes.

It's so hot here that nearly everything has wilted but I have mint for tea and hope that my hyacinth bean vine produces enough for me to try.

Oh Chives, yes we have a bunch in the side garden, I forget about them because we only rarely use them. They're more like a decoration.

We have one patio tomato (fairly large sized tomatoes) three grape ones, two salsa ones and I think two cherry sized ones. We tend to like the small salad ones the best.

We ate at a wonderful little bistro yesterday that had an herb garden along its north wall that looked wonderful. I noticed that they had put little bunches of chives and some other fragrant leaves in little vases of water on each of the tables. Maybe if we don't eat them we can still enjoy how they look and oh..those wonderful smells! FWIW, my friend who was with me does not share my sense of smell and thought that they stunk!

Has anyone ever processed and used acorns in recipes? The tannins from the acorns need to be leached out before the acorns can be used.

To leach out all the tannins (very bitter taste) , the acorns need to be shelled and the meats put in a stock pot. Cover with water and bring to boil. As soon as it starts boiling, drain the dark water off, refill with fresh water and repeat till all the tannin is leached out. It may take as much as five repeats of this process.

Then the acorn meats have to be dried. When dried, they can be ground into flour.

I found a good site for information on collecting and preparing the acorns: Acorn Collecting, Processing, Preparing, Recipes

I have never tried this but am very tempted to taste some breads with the nutty taste of acorns. It sounds wonderful.

Im growning broccoli, caulifower, beets, 3 ypes of beans, corn, carrots, radish, a radish fence of icicle radishes,- they keep the volls out of the garden. Borage, mint, spinach, endive, lettuce - 3 types, potatoes, 4 types of squash, eggplant, and tobacco.... We have lambs quarters grwoing everywhere wild and the more I pick it the more it grows. 8 packages in the freezer so far. Probably wont bother to plant spinach next year. White yarrow grows wild here.. but I am having fun planting a giant variety of red and lavendar yarrow amongst the sagebrush around the house. Its very showy and adds nice color to this dessert terrain.

In my garden I have tomatoes, eggplant, mint and aloe veras growing.

Hi, I have growing an Indian Food. I Love so much Indian Food.

Pine nuts, from pinyon pine trees, are also an edible and delicious source of food that grows wild.

Does anyone have pinyon pines growing near? Native Americans held these nutritious nuts in high value. The gathering of the pine nuts was a traditional and very productive time of the year.

Pine nuts are an excellent source of protein. They are usually roasted in the oven or can be roasted on the stove top in a cast iron skillet. They can be eaten raw, but roasting brings out the flavor to make them more tasty.

Picked the first tomatoes yesterday they were so good. I have been waiting for enough raspberries to make something, caught the little girl next door picking and eating as fast as she could. my first raspberries I knocked on the window and scared her a bit but that was all. Children will be children.

Yes you can't stop children from playing around in your garden. It's like their favorite hiding place.

I have some volunteer bamboo shoots (yum), horehound (medicinal) and foxglove (not for eating, but i wonder if i could make some kind of natural household poison from it or something).

I remember my father feeding me horehound when I was a kid, I remember the taste. I am sure it would poison anything I love bamboo shoots!

I have a bunch of two feet tall weeks (seriously) first year I haven't been able to get the drive weeded. I just tried salt and water. It is too far to any ground areas to leech nor did I put it on thick enough to run. Will let you know what happens. If it works, and if I find out for sure it won't hurt anything, but the weeds I am going to try it in the big sprayer and hope it doesn't eat the rubber, plastic, or metal parts.

I am going to start my new potato tire mound in a few days. I have the tire, the soil, some newspaper, and a bunch of soft little potatoes.

I do have to figure out where to put the mound. Since I bought this property i have been focused on building up the soil. But since i have all these tiny old potatoes right now, I think planting them would be a decent step.

Should the mound go in the most sun?

I am having trouble finding mint seeds in any of the garden stores around here. Weird! I'd love to spray them around the yard - they would love all this rain.

I ended up buying mint plants and setting them in various places around the yard. Both regular peppermint and chocolate mint.

Right now volunteer mustard greens are coming up everywhere and i am making use of them.

No food growing in my yard, but I just cleaned out some very interesting stuff growing on the cheese in my refrigerator. Such is my passion for "Science."

I've given up until I can build a fence. We have too many deer who consider my yard (and the neighborhood) their giant salad buffet. It takes all my efforts to keep them away from my flowers and bushes.

Violets and dandelions are coming on strong!

Glorious garden season again! We went by the community gardens and were shocked to see many people planting. Late March in South Dakota - this is really strange. I found something new this year Goji berries. Plus I plan on adding sugar peas and the usual tomatoes. My raspberries are now in their second year so I should be able to share with the neighbor child lol.

Time to unmulch the plants and flowers (I hope) and let them begin to grow.

Today I put some pretty viola flowers in my garden greens and had them with some fresh chicken eggs from a friend.

Greens seem to do great in cooler weather! Next winter I will put in a lot more of them. They are just flourishing. And the wild mustard is just delicious.

Also, the violas managed to overwinter wonderfully. I am going to have to put in much much more. Pretty AND edible!

The water mint is starting to leap out of the pond and run around the yard. We have wild strawberries. Our oregano is back, and so is the sage.

I planted potatoes yesterday.

Connie, Is water mint different than regular mint?

How did you plant the potatoes - in a mound?

This spring I have food stamps, which allows one to buy food bearing plants anywhere food stamps are accepted, so, for example, at Walmart.

So i just picked up an apple tree and a persimmons tree. I need to plant those this week. They are leafing out nicely.

I am thinking of getting these next:

Another tomato plant
some more lettuce
kale or collard greens
radishes
maybe bell peppers
maybe an artichoke


This is in addition to the stuff i already have that overwintered and the strawberries, chocolate mint and tomatoes I put in last week.

Sounds great, Jilly! You really have a nice plan going there.

Water mint has a lighter taste than peppermint. However, it grows equally well in dirt as it does in water!

I like to plant potatoes in a raised bed. I put the potato pieces on the scuffed up dirt. Then, I cover them with straw and leaves. The potatoes grow up into the mulch and I don't have to dig them. It takes about a foot of mulch. They actually produce more this way than they do planted in the heavy clay of Kansas.

It is tempting to try this with the potatoes. The potatoes are scarred up and have spoiled before they get home from the store. I have rarely planted potatoes in previous years because it was just as inexpensive to buy them. Not anymore, they attempt to pick them with machines, the blades scar them up, bacteria gets into the potato and then it rots the whole bag. Back to planting them the old fashion way, besides when thinning you get the treat of new potatoes!

diana, toss the taters in a mound of dirt and water it sometimes. That's all it takes. let us know how it goes!

This week, with my food stamps, I picked up a heirloom tomato plant, a boxwood basil, cilantro and a spagetti squash plant.

I have to think about where to put the basil. being in AZ, i have to put several of the herbs in the shade. the mint here only thrives in shade, even though the containers suggest full sun. I think the basil will also do better in the shade. Not sure about the others. I do expect that nothing will survive the summer, but that is still a few months off.