Britesea
Sustainability Master
Oh yes, there are tons. Some are mainly for medicinals, such as the roots of quackgrass (good for UTI's) others, like Stinging Nettle are superfoods that can keep you alive in the early spring while waiting for the more conventional crops to come in. The younger leaves of plantain, besides being so good for bee and wasp stings, are also quite a tasty green although the mature leaves have heavy fibrous veins that make it tough. Buckthorn is a variety of plantain that doesn't have the tough veins and makes a good salad- it's also called Minutina. I'm planning to grow some in my greenhouse this winter because it's very cold hardy. The seeds are also edible-- it's closely related to Psyllium and has the same nutritional benefits. Mache is also called corn salad, because it tended to grow between the stands of winter wheat. It's so hardy it won't even germinate in warm weather!
Don't forget Cattails- you can eat the tubers, the pollen, and the seed ears (try steaming and eating like corn on the cob!) Golly, the more I think, the more I can remember--- Also, you can eat parts of a lot of conventional crops that most people don't think about-- radish greens make a lovely cream soup reminiscent of watercress, carrot tops are perfectly edible- try the young shoots in salads. I just remembered Fiddlehead ferns, although we are too dry here for most ferns. The young shoots of pine trees have a citrusy flavor in tea and give you insane amounts of Vitamin C. Indians in this area used to collect the berries of manzanita to make a kind of cider. etcetera etcetera etcetera (voice of Yul Brynner)
okay, I'll get off the soapbox now
Don't forget Cattails- you can eat the tubers, the pollen, and the seed ears (try steaming and eating like corn on the cob!) Golly, the more I think, the more I can remember--- Also, you can eat parts of a lot of conventional crops that most people don't think about-- radish greens make a lovely cream soup reminiscent of watercress, carrot tops are perfectly edible- try the young shoots in salads. I just remembered Fiddlehead ferns, although we are too dry here for most ferns. The young shoots of pine trees have a citrusy flavor in tea and give you insane amounts of Vitamin C. Indians in this area used to collect the berries of manzanita to make a kind of cider. etcetera etcetera etcetera (voice of Yul Brynner)
okay, I'll get off the soapbox now
