Success planting caper seeds: plant for a super arid climate

Capers thrive without water. They are famous for growing in some of the most arid and hostile environments, around the Mediterranean, in the Arabian peninsula, and in the Himalayas.

I've been collecting wild capers here for the past several years, but they are rather few and far between, so I want to plant some. I've had some success at germinating the seeds.

This climate is extremely arid, with a cold winter and medium-hot summer, and rarely enough precipitation to soak the ground. Very few plants grow unless they are irrigated or growing next to a stream or river. But capers (Capparis spinosa) are one of the few. You'll see a vast barren sandy hillside, and then bursting out from under a boulder will be a sprawling 6 foot wide bright-dark green plant with fragrant pretty flowers. I collect the flower buds and "berries," salt and ferment them to make capers in the Italian or Greek method. The roots appear to go down all the way to Missoula from here, and when road building cuts a hillside you might see ten feet of woody taproot and it hasn't ended.

I did a little googling about how to grow them, and they supposedly sprout soon if fresh, or if dried have to be stratified. I guess in this cold winter climate, they just like to be stratified, because I plant them fresh, water the pots (plastic bags), and keep some in the greenhouse and some outside, and they only ever sprout the next spring, or even the following spring (after two winters). I expose them to temperatures maybe 10˚below freezing by keeping their containers outside until December or January, and then bring them into our solar greenhouse to escape the coldest part of winter. In the greenhouse they sprout in March; outside they sprout in May.

I have only planted three outside, but I did it too late in summer after the sun had become roasting hot, so only one survived. But now I've got four more of last year's seedlings in pots and more than a dozen new seedlings just starting now.

How to collect and use capers

In my experience from 2006 to 2013 in Ladakh at 11,000 feet, the season was something like this, though individual plants are on dramatically different schedules, varying by up to a month in their dates:
• May for collecting tender shoots as a green vegetable.
• Late May through June for buds (the capers used in Italian food).
• June to early July for caper-berries (a snack somewhat like olives but seedless, or can be used as a vegetable).
• Sometime in July all the caper-berries — even the small ones — start to ripen, the seeds harden and eventually the flesh inside turns bright pink. Stop collecting them well before this. You want them when the inside looks like a young zucchini or courgette, smooth and white with no visible seeds.
• Even in mid-July, some plants still have buds. However, there seem to be more insects on the plants, so stop at this point.
• September for collecting and planting seeds.
• Winter for taking a walk to cut or stomp back the dead white canes.

Collecting caper buds and berries
Roll a bud off the stem between your fingertips to collect it without the stem. If a bud does not come easily off the stem, it probably has insect damage, so throw it away.
The caper-berries stems are firmly attached so cut them off with a knife back at home. Caper-berries sold in the West have stems on, but for home consumption, this just wastes space in the jar.
The caper bush has tiny thorns. Long sleeves help. If you’re planning ahead in winter, take a walk to cut or stomp out the dry thorny canes.
If you collect all the buds off a plant, it cannot produce fruits until it has produced more buds to become flowers. If you want only buds, keep picking them every week or so, to keep the plant producing them.

Fermenting capers
Materials:
• Caper buds and/or caper-berries
• Salt
• A glass, ceramic or plastic container (Metal would rust)
I found several different methods on the internet, but all say that the flavor of capers develops when they are fermented in salt, salt-brine, or plain water. After fermentation, the processing for storage and sale can be drying, or in salt, salt-brine, or vinegar-water.

During fermentation, you will notice a strong sharp smell. This is developed by lactobacillus bacteria acting on the bitter flavonoids, and making the distinctive piquant caper flavour. Lactic acid is created and other bacteria disappear.

I am happy with the salt method that I learned from wild food mentors Cata and Blanca:
Pick over the capers in good light to remove stems and buggy ones. Larger berries can be cut in half for later drying, or kept whole for attractive packing in vinegar.

Mix them with a coating of salt, not a huge amount, just a light coating, mixed so that it coats them all lightly. Store them in a glass or plastic container with a loose cover in a warm place such as a high shelf in a comfortable room.

The salt will start to draw moisture out of the capers almost immediately. Within 24 hours, brine (salt water) will cover the bottom quarter of the capers. Shake them once or twice a day to cover them with brine. If you want to reduce shrinkage, add water to just cover them.

After 1 to 3 days, a shockingly strong mustardy smell may knock you over when you open the lid. Drain the brine out and rinse the capers. Add some more salt. Again, leave it for a few days, shaking occasionally.

After they’ve fermented for a total of 4 to 8 days (depending on temperature), they may still have a trace of bitterness, but it disappears in when you dry them or pack in vinegar.

Drying fermented capers
Drying works well in Ladakh: low-tech and low-cost. After 4 to 8 days of fermentation in salt, spread the capers out in a single layer in a dryer, outside or in a well-ventilated Ladakhi “glass-room.” Rinse them if they are very salty, because the salt becomes more concentrated. In Ladakh, they dry in two or three days. Caper-berries take more time to dry than buds do, and will dry faster if you’ve cut them in half. Be sure not to let rain re-moisten them while they are drying. Some years my dried caper buds turn yellowish and don’t taste as good, and I haven’t figured out why: maybe I shouldn’t have rinsed out the salt?
Enjoy dried capers-buds as a condiment on top of any kind of food, soup or pasta, fry them with onions beforehand, or soak them.
Dried caper-berries can be boiled in with pasta or soup to soften them. They work as a dried vegetable in winter. If they are very salty, they can replace some of the salt in the dish.

Storing fermented capers in salt
Italians prefer to store fermented capers in salt. The salt has to be rinsed off before use, or used as a part of the salt of the recipe.
Some years I have had excellent results from salting the moist fermented capers again and simply keeping them in a closed jar. The excess salt seems to prevent further fermentation, and they keep an excellent caper flavour without vinegar. Some years mine turn yellowish and lose flavor; I don't know why.

Packing fermented capers in vinegar
I aimed for a product like the commercial bottled capers sold in the West, and this method work with buds and both small and large caper-berries.
We got best results by fermenting capers with salt as described above, and packing in vinegar. Since they lost volume, this made fewer jars than fermenting in brine, and were stronger flavored and efficient for home use. The buds look good, but the berries can get wrinkly.
Fermenting the capers in a salt brine doesn’t lose as much volume, so is better for berries in vinegar as it keeps them plump, not wrinkled.
I simply packed the capers in jars, poured in a mix of 50-50 water and white vinegar, closed the jars airtight and simmer the closed jars for 5 minutes.
They stay good for at least two years (that's the longest any sat around here).

Capers shoots as a vegetable
In Ladakh, the young shoots and leaves of the caper plant are used as a green vegetable in spring, and are richer and more delicious than other green leafy vegetables.
The season for this is May. When the plants start to mature, the shoots become tough.
Collect the ends of the stems, about 15 cm (6 inches), while they are still young and tender. Don’t separate leaves from stems: just grab the whole stem with leaves. Thick stems are good. New thorns soften and disappear under processing and cooking. Remove any leaves that have insect eggs (in Ladakh we find bright orange cabbage butterfly eggs on the underside of some leaves). Collect plenty, because like any leafy veg they will shrink under processing and cooking, and most people will like them and want more. We find that 1 kg of fresh shoots feeds about 8 to 10 people for breakfast, with chapattis.

Throw the shoots into a pot of boiling water, bring back up to the boil, and boil for about 5 minutes. A bitter smell fills the kitchen. Drain the water, and if a faster process is desired, add fresh water and boil again.

Now they need to be kept for at least 24 hours in water. The common method in Ladakh is to put them in a clean sack, tie the top, and keep under running water. If clean running water is not available, it works to just soak them, draining and adding fresh water once in a while if you get around to it. After 24 hours, taste to see if the bitterness is gone, and keep them in water for another day if necessary.

When the bitterness is gone, drain the water out, chop them up, including the stems, and fry in butter or oil like spinach, with onions and salt. This vegetable is typically eaten with chapattis but is also excellent any other way. Yum!

Caper shoots can be dried for winter use. Throw fresh shoots out to dry in the sun or food dryer. Cut the long stems into shorter lengths for faster drying. When fully dry, store in a dry dark place. To use, boil 5 minutes and then soak in water for one day, changing the water a couple of times, then drain and fry. They are just as good as the fresh vegetable.

The exact same process, fresh or dried, is used for perennial pepperweed (Lepidium latifolium, Ladakhi shangsho). This is much more abundant and easier to collect than caper shoots, so we eat a lot of it in springtime.

Rebecca I am impressed - what a thorough dissertation on the subject.

Last year winter I put about 50 caper seeds in the ground on my farm (northern Greece) and about 20 in clay seed balls with capers (see Masanobu Fukuoka San) - I will do the same again this year - if they are meant to grow they will grow almost by themselves.

Some plants and trees grow naturally on my land with almost no effort - I hope capers like to grow on my land.

I will read your post a few more times and post questions as they arise.

Thank You for this post.



Kostas

Thanks Kostas! I hope my post helps others who see capers growing around them and search the internet for "how to make capers" like I did. I mostly found "how to make caper sauce" and things like that.

In our insanely dry climate, I don't know if throwing caper seeds around would work unless there happened to be precipitation at the right time, which is not likely most years. So I want to get them started in containers (plastic bags) and then plant them out after one or two years into the desert. I'll water them deeply but rarely for a season or two, and hope that their roots will get down to what they need.

We collect buds from some large wild caper plants.

Our first caper shoots meal of 2014, on April 27. See those stems? They're thick but not fibrous, and they have succulent nice texture.

This looks good Rebecca !!!

Thank You for sharing.

Cooking the caper shoots or saving them for the winter is something I will try this summer. They are an early summer plant for us here – in that time of the year all the other wild edibles have died off or are not useable – the shoots will provide free food for that period.

To me this is what permaculture is all about – getting good tasty healthy food without any effort or use of resources such as water, organic matter or labor – just collect and enjoy.

What do the shoots taste like – was it an enjoyable meal?

Kostas

Rebecca - please, please consider submitting this to Permaculture News! http://permaculturenews.org/2010/08/18/get-paid-to-share-your-permaculture-passion-with-the-world/

Yes, it was a lovely meal! They taste great, mildly like capers, but not sour. And they have a nice texture, like buttery asparagus tips.

But don't wait too long to collect the shoots. They'll turn woody soon and the thorns will harden. When the shoots are only about 8 to 20 cm long and some of them still have that reddish color, that's when they're perfect.

My sister in law served them to 100 guests at a wedding yesterday and impressed everybody. Discussing them, she said that collecting the shoots makes regrowth so you can do it two or three times, and even later in the season you can collect just the soft tips, but only a small piece to avoid the woody stem.

They taste great !!!

We prepared them like we do most of the wild plants here in Greece – after boiling and removing the bitter taste, we added salt, olive oil and lemon. They taste great and are a good side dish.

As mentioned previously they grow at a time of the year when the other wild plants are beginning to go to seed or harden up - free food for a few more weeks.

Thank You
Kostas

It's that time of year again, to collect caper shoots as a vegetable. Actually it's a bit late but around here still possible. I finally took some pictures to complete what Kostas kindly called my dissertation. Directions for what to collect and how to soak the bitterness out are in the long posts above.

If there are capers growing around you, try it, you'll love it!

Ooh, collected caper shoots for vegetables and buds for pickling this week. Yay!

great info on this thread!

i just recently started growing capers...a long way to go but i have sprouts!!

Oh Leila, I'm so glad to see that you're growing capers too, but those seedlings look badly leggy. Get them into direct sun pronto!

Here are two photos I should have included in above posts:

Hello Rebecca and Leila,

Glad to hear about capers; I am still working on growing them.

Last year I tried to grow them from root cuttings, but failed - Knowing how hardy the plant is I did not water enough and they wilted away.

This year I am trying again, but I have them in pots close to the water source and I water them every couple of days.

When I cut the roots from the mother plants, for the 1st time I saw its root system closely - the main root is about 5cm thick, and I am sure they go very deep in the soil - that's how they survive!!!

I hope this year I have better luck - have you tried growing from root cuttings, any advice (watering and transplant times etc)?

Here are some photos.

I will also try growing them from fresh seeds this year - do you collect and plant the seeds as soon as the capers open up ? Just plant them in soil and water?

Kostas

Rebecca Norman wrote:Oh Leila, I'm so glad to see that you're growing capers too, but those seedlings look badly leggy. Get them into direct sun pronto!

yes they are quite! oops. well i think the soil i used settled down lower -more than usual, err something. then i didnt want to bury them, i read they need to be on the surface of the soil to sprout. the pots that i left outside to over winter havent sprouted yet, maybe not warm enough yet, in the shady areas i have the stuff i am starting...

got some more coming up in other pots, i planted over a hundred, so far 12 or more sprouts in several pots...and totally, i should get them outside, and think i will fill up the pots a bit with sand/rocks...now that they sprouted up good.

Hi Leila, I hope those caper seedlings are thriving now out in the sun!

Kostas, yes, I go and collect the seed pods at the time when a lot of them are burst open and showing the pink insides. Here, that's in September. I've planted seeds from dried up burst pods, from pods that are still green and closed, from pods that are infested with bugs, and even a piece of fox scat (faeces) that was next to a caper plant and was bright pink with black seeds in it. All of them germinated to some extent as long as I planted them in autumn and watered over the winter and spring. Yes, I planted them in plain soil dug from the same kind of area of desert where capers grow around here.

In my extremely arid climate, it turns out that watering them is necessary; I tried a lazier approach this past winter and didn't get any germination

I haven't tried root cuttings. I tried stem cuttings one time but had no success, maybe because of my dry climate (and no tech such as misting)

Rebecca
Really nice thread,  I know you posted it long ago and I just now found it.  I make 'fake capers' out of Nasturtium but not the same as real capers.

Thank you for posting the lovely pictures and recipes.
warm regard,
G

Hi Rebecca, such a great post! Thank you for the clear pictures and inspiration! I came here via a thread by Kostas and I'm so glad I did! I promptly ordered some seeds from the Internet and they arrived today! Yippee! Can't wait to start the germination process. I'll be starting in pots and transplanting out. I love your little rocks in your growing containers. Is that to hold heat? As a seasoned caper cultivator...do you have any tips for success? Thanks again, Shari

Thanks for the praise!

The little rocks are no big idea. Just kind of mulch to keep moisture in the soil so I don't have to water often, since that would seem a bit wrong for capers. I have these stones I collect, so that's a way to use them where I get to look at them.  

Rebecca Norman wrote: Just kind of mulch to keep moisture in the soil so I don't have to water as often

Ahhh, pretty mulch! Lovely idea :) My caper seeds arrived from Spain, I soaked them overnight and they are now in the fridge! Looking forward to getting them in the soil.

Collected my first caper shoots of the season a few days ago. Especially nice during lockdown!

Thank you for the update and gratulations !!!

Quick question. How long you soak them in water...how often you change the water...and for how long you boil them? Describe the whole cooking process.

Kostas

PS....I have not been able to grow them on my farm yet ...there are plenty growing wild around Thessaloniki

Hi Kostas!

As soon as I collect them, I boil them about 5 minutes. Then I drain out the water, rinse them, and soak them in as big a pot or bucket as I can manage. This batch I only soaked approx 24 hours, and I think I changed the soaking water 3 times. My housemate and I both don't mind slight bitter food (eg we like bitter gourd), and couldn't taste any bitterness in them after 24 hours of soaking, so we cooked them. But if I am cooking for somebody who can't stand any bitterness at all, I would have soaked them overnight again, and tried to change the water another 2 or 3 times.

Then I cooked them as you see in the picture above, with oil, onions, garlic, salt. In this case, I still have European style pickled caper buds from last year, so I chopped some of those fine and added them as part of the salt.

Thank you for the info Rebecca,

Do you ever combine them with other ingredients, such as eggs or beans ?

The photos look great !!!

Kostas

Konstantinos Karoubas wrote:Thank you for the info Rebecca,

Do you ever combine them with other ingredients, such as eggs or beans ?

The photos look great !!!

Kostas

I don't do that with caper shoots because they are so delicious just as they are. Kind of like asparagus, they are lovely just as they are, and trying to mix other things in just reduces the deliciousness.

But I do definitely do that with Lepidium latifolium, which is less tasty, but earlier and if you know a good spot, much MUCH more abundant and easier to collect a huge amount, and doesn't even have tiny thorns. The processing method is identical (boil and then soak). This year for Lepidium, we happened to make a new recipe and it came out great. After leaching out the bitterness for a day or two, we sauted onions and garlic, added the Lepidium, cooked it for a while, then added some pesto from a jar, grated cheese and a dollop of fresh cream, and then pureed it with a stick blender. On pasta it was delicious, a large volume of creamy green puree, and we added a different vegetable each time we ate it. Completely unconventional recipe, but it's a keeper and I think I'll do it every year.

Great !!!
Thank You

Hi Rebecca, I'm from South Africa... I got 40 caper seeds... and I'm going to try to get them going... we've got arid land around us.. and I'm holding thumbs that I'll be successful ... Jorrie Louw

Is it possible to share few caper seeds,the Ladakh veriety.

Badri Patnaik wrote:Is it possible to share few caper seeds,the Ladakh veriety.

Hi Badri, please PM me about where you are.
Ladakhi is super high dry desert, with a good cold winter, minimum -20C to -25C in January, and we have ice over ponds for 2 months every winter. But the climate is very dry. I think I've seen the local wild capers get powdery mildew or some kind of mold in summers that had rain. So although our local variety is very cold hardy, it might not like a humid summer climate.

Everything I read about capers suggests that they will die at a temperature of about -6 C, but if I am looking at the right place, the temperature in Ladahk regularly gets as low as -15 C. Is there a different variety there, or is the conventional wrong, or am I looking at the wrong place?

I’m in Central Texas and could grow capers if -15 C is how cold they can stand, but -6 C is a low temperature we reach most years.

(another possibility is I made a mistake in converting Fahrenheit to Centigrade)

Hi John!
The capers here in Ladakh are exactly the same species as the Mediterranean ones.

Either the conventional wisdom about its minimum winter temperature is wrong, or a cold-hardy variety has evolved and crept up to this altitude over the centuries.  I'm sure -6C winters won't be a problem, even according to the conventional wisdom, that I think says -8C. At my location in Ladakh we get -20 to -25C (-13F) minimums every night through January (for a rough idea, we have to bury pipes 3 feet underground to prevent freezing blockage, and we have a 6 to 8 week pond hockey season). The climate is dry both summer and winter and I don't see the capers growing where water collects on the surface except for rare precipitation events once or twice a year. Maybe where the climate is damper they are less cold tolerant, I don't know. A bit higher in Ladakh and the capers become much rarer, so I guess this variety only tolerates this winter minimum temperature.

Maybe in places with a warmer winter, the caper bushes don't die all the way to the ground. Here in Ladakh, the above ground parts dry up completely in winter and shoot up again in spring, exactly the same life cycle as asparagus (and perhaps that's why we get the thick vigorous yummy caper shoots in springtime, just like asparagus).

I suspect central Texas is dry enough to make them happy.

I don't know how they'll like the roasting heat that I suspect Texas gets, but they are commercially collected in some countries that I believe have very hot summers, like Greece, Spain, Yemen, Syria, and other places in and near the Arabian peninsula. I think it's worth a try for you in Texas!

Good luck!

Dear Rebecca

I live in Hyderabad, India. It has hot summers and is Arid. However, it rains heavily from July to September. So, I am wondering if the Ladakh variety Caper will grow here.

Kind regards

Badri

Hi Badri, I suspect that Hyderabad is much too hot for capers, and during monsoon, much too wet for them. But you can grow so many other great foods there!

The Desert of Tabernas in Almeria, Spain, has capers, growing out of rock walls along the dry river bed, large & green when everything else is dry & brown.

Just picked the first caper buds for this year - the recipe I use was originally for pickling nasturtium seeds.  Salt solution - 2 tblsp/1-1/2 cups water. Soak for 3 days, changing solution each day, covered.
Rinse, and place in jars;  fill to cover with apple cider vinegar and seal.  I also top with a film of olive oil to protect the metal lids from the vinegar.
The only seed that grew here was in the crack between the house and the paving!  I have managed to get a cutting to grow - cut a slit in the bottom of the stalk and insert a grain of rice.  Plant and nurture as any cutting.
The plants require very little water, but I do have to defend them from the caper white butterflies that appear from nowhere - one year the infestation of caterpillars got so bad (we were away for a couple of days) that they could be heard munching away on the leaves.  Not a complete disaster, as the leaves grew back after a short time.  Good as new