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Today’s challenge is a simple one but one you can learn from. (Some of you already have this covered and with so much detail that I learned a lot from your posts on Day 15.)
Today I want you to learn about your native beneficial plants. The great thing about native plants is that they’ll grow without any real input from you. An example of this would be wild blackberries in California. Most things die in the summer in California but wild blackberry bushes thrive to the point they’re practically an invasive plant. This tells me that you could cultivate some wild blackberries on your land without much difficulty at all, but perhaps in a way that you’d actually be able to get to all the berries instead of in an impenetrable bramble where you can only get to the outer layer.
Some ways to learn about your local plants that could be edible or medicinal:
- Go to the biggest greenhouse/garden store in the area and browse. (Although it’s fall, and spring might be a better time to learn this stuff at a greenhouse.)
- Look online for your local plants. Focus on state college websites for this information.
- Check out some regional foraging books from your local library or get some from Amazon. Be sure to get books that are regional rather than general.
Then think about how you might be able to incorporate some of these in your landscape next year if you have a property where you can plant. This is the easiest form of permaculture because you’re just planting what will grow naturally. Then you’ll have a source of food or natural medicine right on your property with very little effort.
If you are in an apartment, this is still a useful exercise because you can take the information and use it for foraging in parks and public lands.
What grows in your area?
What useful plants grow in your area?
Tell me about what grows easily in your vicinity. (Always be careful not to give too much personal information online.)
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I am an expert in this feild, my property includes 11 types of oak, 9 types of nut trees, 14 types of fruit, 8 types of berries, tea, sugarcane, 7 root starches and innumerable greens. I also garden as much landrace as possible and the power line access to my property is covered in wild rose, blackberry, bristly locust, prickly pear and yucca for multi-purpose obstacles.
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Blackberries.
Apple trees.
I planted 4 chestnut trees, but only 2 survived. They are about 2.5ft tall now.
I planted pear trees, plumb trees, and hazel nut trees. Lost on plumb tree, and only one of the hazel nut tress is doing well.
Not sure on the pear trees. -
a walk around the neighborhood revealed
Mango
banana
coconut ( i have one, but not mature )
papaya
hibiscus
lemon
avocadowhat can grow
blackberries, and muscadine grapes ( thats what the web says, but I have yet to see them anywhere including the garden centers)
key lime
Kumquats
oranges ( though I recall this wasnt recommended because of diseases )If I stay in the state, I’ll pick up a few of David the Goods books as he is an expert on Florida gardening
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We have 2 wild blackberry patches on our property. Yes, they are invasive. We try to kill them every year, but they just keep getting bigger. We also have too much cactus growing around in various patches. Hubby has started trying to kill it off this year. (This is only our 3rd year living here.) We are trying to get the land reconditioned. We have cows, and too much of the land is inedible to them. So, slowly but surely we are working on it. We also have too many pine trees. This area is a large timber area, but mostly pine trees. We have a few oaks and maples, some elm trees. The area, at least ours, is also very rocky. Not so good for gardening.
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We have wild blackberries. I have been fighting the birds and rabbits to harvest them. I will do some more research today. My extension is a great resource. They may know more plants that I can incorporate.
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Our area doesn’t have a lot of the above that is mentioned. They keep cutting down the trees and selling off the farm land and more buildings coming. However, in my neighborhood alone, we do have oak trees, pine and maple trees. No fruit trees to be found around here. I am going to be planting a couple of peach trees to start off with in a corner of my yard. From there I am going to try an apple tree but not sure of the type yet. I have books on forging that I am still trying to learn about. We have a couple of parks that I am going to go to.. I want to see what I can find that I am trying to learn from the books.
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Great challenge for me today! I had bought Rosemary Gladstar’s book, MEDICINAL HERBS: A Beginner’s Guide but had set it aside for later. Later is now. Particularly because I want to grow garlic and it needs to go into the ground now.
More importantly, the challenge sent me on a Google search and I found an article on the survival gardener specifically for foraging in Tennessee (where I live) and best of all he referenced http://southernforager.blogspot.com/
This lady blogs all about things relevant to my neck of the woods. One blog on foraging provides a long list of everything that grows wild in the area close to me, tells what it’s for, and provides pictures for identification purposes. Most things are just about gone here, but nuts are still on the ground if you know where to look. I’m definitely going to focus on this topic come next year using winter months to study up on…
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We don’t have too much in the neighborhood as EVERYBODY gets rid of the “good” weeds, like purslane, plantain. However I have a small patch of purslane growing and my two apple trees. Down the road from us is two undeveloped areas with wild raspberries, blueberries,plantain. Haven’t explored those areas much plus we have cattails growing around the two ponds near us.
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I pretty well have this covered as it is an ongoing project for me to constantly learn about plants and what to do with them. I will try planting elder and bayberry shrubs. Haven’t done that yet.
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Growing up on a farm in Midwest, I learned a lot of plant identification. Didn’t “eat the weeds” there cuz … LOL … it wasn’t done AND one had to watch for areas sprayed with herbicides. In my young adult years, I expanded the I.D. and how to use common ones…trying cattail roots, wild ginger/onion, Lamb’s Quarters, pine needles tea, etc. Learned from books or by asking the elderlies in different places.
We’ve lived in a lot of regions. Midwest, Tropics, high Rocky Mts. I’ve collected books on wild edibles and medicinals. DH is also interested in the medicinals. Some reference books I have:
Nat. Audubon Society Field Guide: Wildflowers – Western Region and Eastern Region. Edible Native Plants of the Rocky Mts by H.D. Harrington. Peterson Field Guide – Rocky Mt Wildflowers. Dept. of Game/Fish: Winter Guide to Rocky Mt Browse Plants (1956). The Way of Herbs by Michael Tierra.
Also have a few for the tropics regions…not currently useful.
I use those and a lot of websites for I.D. and ideas on use. [be CAUTIOUS of ideas for ingesting wildcrafted things] I have articles saved to my laptop on a dozen different tree species. I.D.ed our sticky pines and all the others.
Marjory Wildcraft at GrowNetwork has informative articles like: https://thegrownetwork.com/pine-trees-food-medicine/
Best on-line I.D. I’ve found for pine trees is this one. It is for trees of the southern Rocky Mts but some of these trees grow elsewhere too. Quote from author: “This guide will also serve for most of the trees of the northern New Mexico, eastern Utah, and the Black Hills, and much of Wyoming including Grand Teton and Yellowstone Nat. Parks. The forest populations in those regions differ some from Colorado of course, but there is much in common. ”
http://www.westernexplorers.us/ColoradoTrees.html
I want to print some of these that I downloaded. In case I can’t SEE my computer files some day. I can’t seem to memorize this stuff as well as younger years so references are mandatory now.
OldMtWoman …edited to add the 2nd link [hope it works]
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This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by
OldMt Woman.
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This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by
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here best healers are fungi but should be made to tincture for easy dosing
Wild stuff well the list is long but for a quick list is comfrey, thistle, opium lettuce, willow, pine,moss, pigwèed, milk weed, hibiscus, the apocathery is stocked each year, and I am not the most know edge able by far.
For me best things are rotting millet, blue green mould on citrus, fermenting rye,oats and barley hemp.Each has useful properties that can be extracted using chemistry those items can give you penicillin, alcohol, amoxicillian, tetracycline and cbd’s.
We have put in a special greenhouse this year if it works will give us a zone 1 in a zone 2-3 which means we can grow just about anything.
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growing wild here are apples, cherries, asparagus, garlic, blackberries, a wild plantains, dandelions, the deer, elk and moose survive all year round there are things I have yet to find that also grow around here, more education I need to get
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We have wild plums, elderberry, raspberries, blackberries, multiflora roses, plantain, mullein, asparagus, dandelion. Pretty blessed! And we can find these in the Winter as well, if we neglect to harvest in the Fall.
We’ve established a wonderful comfrey patch, and are working on a patch of St Johns Wort.
I think I will blow the dust off my foraging and wildcrafting books now.
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I have apple, pear, and peach trees here. Also wild plum, walnut, chestnut, and hazelnut trees are close by. There is a grape arbor, blackberries, gooseberries, and raspberries on the property. Plantain, poke, wild mustard, various types of thistle, cattails, clovers, dandelions are in the yard. It is getting late in the year but some is still here. Had a great class in college and still have the book for reference on foraging and wild flowers/herbs.
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kudzu,kufzu and more kudzu. Mulberries, cat tails, poke berries I learned what you can eat with those. Need to find some one in my area that knows what we can eat.
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We took a class on identifying wild edibles in our area at the local state park. I also have a few books.
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I have apples, blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries growing naturally on my property.
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