What surprise new food plants have you found growing in your polycultures?

This morning I was up on top of the living roof of my art studio brushing snow off my solar panels and I happened to notice familiar looking seed heads sticking up out of the snow.  Garlic chives!!  Looking more closely I found a few patches of them up on the roof.  I don't remember actually planting them there, though it is possible I once scattered seeds and forgot about them.  It's also possible some bird or critter transported seeds from the garlic chive clump I've got growing in one of the garden beds up to the roof to start some new clumps.  Either way it was a wonderful little surprise for my day.  Since they are perennial I will have to remember them next spring as another area I can harvest these from throughout the growing season!

Do you have any stories to share of foods you've discovered growing among your polycultures that you either didn't plant or don't recall planting?

I have mentioned it on other permies forums: Evening primrose. It is a heavy seeder biennial with leaves the first year that are very good in salads during the winter and spring then the flowers during the summer.  These originated from a wild flower mix my mother bought 50 years ago. When my mother and later my sister died I inherited this farm. Through out the farm there were persistent patches of potatoes from kitchen scraps being fed to chickens, ducks and pigs.

I do have Evening Primrose scattered around my property too.  I will admit I haven't tried eating the leaves.  I've harvested some of the flowers from time to time.  I need to pay more attention and look for the those first year low growing rosettes of leaves to try!  I sadly don't tend to notice them until the second year when the grow up tall.  Speaking of which, this year I had a monster one growing right by the door to my art studio, the biggest I've ever seen.  I wonder if the seeds are edible?  Either way I should probably look tomorrow to see if it's too late to harvest any of those seeds from that huge evening primrose plant that I could then scatter about more deliberately.  

Evening primrose according to Green Deanne. The seeds are edible.

I like the leaves in a salad too. Here, it acts like an annual. I have found that the rosette leaves that hug the ground are the ones that are gritty, no matter how well washed. Once they are held upright the leaves are fine. As the stalk grows, the leaves do get tougher, but I like the taste enough to keep on using them, cutting narrower slices as the season progresses. I haven't used them after the upper flower stems form though. The peeled main stalk is good, steamed for a bit.

I have yet to catch them for digging at the right stage for experimentation with the roots.

Awesome!  Thanks Hans and Joylynn!  The info from both of you has the effect of me finding another surprise new food growing on my homestead.  I knew about it, knew it was edible, but didn't really know all the ways it was edible and that it's much more than just a few flowers to garnish a salad.  I'll have to try pealing the stalk on some next year too!

Found claytonia growing in my garden this past summer. The seeds must have finally come alive from my forest-soil mixture. A nice find, and it fills in the empty spots. Plus the ducks love it!

This morning I found a pleasant surprise in the chicken run under the coop. I do cultivate winecaps in other areas of the community garden but these would have come in on the woodchips and came up in the least hospitable conditions. I have left them for the chickens.

Sweet finds Simon and Megan!  I've been trying to get claytonia started deliberately at my place.  Your winecaps Megan remind me that a couple times in different areas where I've had wood chips I've found morels coming up.  Sadly it's only ever been the one time in each area.  I keep hoping they will establish and give me my own regular crop.

Observation about finding surprise mushrooms.  The mycelium may be there all the time but the fruit, the mushroom appears often as a surprise at seemingly unpredictable times and places.

The fruiting of the mycelium actually is quite predictable if you understand its method and purpose.
Notice in the picture above the mushroom came up at the edge of the cement paver. It could be that the paver was used to hold a water dispenser.  This would set up the conditions for he mycelium to fruit.
The mycelium needs a good amount of water in order to produce the mushroom. The purpose of the fruiting is to produce spores to carry on the mycelium beyond a barrier such as the soil being to dry or inhospitable to continued extension of its filaments.
Notice the commercial mushroom production encloses mycelium in a plastic bag with moist food source. When the food source is largely consumed they poke a hole in the bag. Now the mycelium has an avenue to search for new food but outside the bag is a hostile environment so it puts out mushrooms through the hole.
Inoculated logs are soaked then put in a shady place to dry which promotes fruiting.

To prepare the sandy soil in the orchard for planting the next year I flattened corrugated paper boxes and and spread them out between the trees. On the hill above the garden was a grove of maple trees so I gathered the fall leaves and covered the cardboard. The next spring after a dry spell Morel mushrooms cam up in a definite pattern along the edge of each  piece of cardboard.  Previously I commented on a permie post where he had carefully prepared a bed for morel inoculation and none appeared in his carefully prepared bed but came up in the lawn just outside of the wood border around the bed.

I’ve had a pretty free for all ‘Chuck it In and see what comes up’ style of growing veggies In the past, due to a combination of having loads of old seed packets lying around, not wanting to buy many inputs since we’re moving soon (we’re still here) and a solid case of ‘gardening whilst looking after toddler’. So we (Toddler and I) would clear a small patch of grass, chuck some seeds around (this part is good with a toddler), and ‘see what came up’. Usually some combo of kale/ mitzuna/ silverbeet/ broccoli/ rocket /bok Choi / amaranth / other greens. All the free stuff the Diggers Club send out.

Enough came up for our needs, but lots didn’t, and I inadvertently ended up creating a kind of seed bank in the soil. Now whenever I clear the spent plants from a bed to put in something new, the bed also comes alive with a thick carpet of all those plants listed above. It’s like a bonus salad bonanza! It’s so prolific that I found myself mulching the corn and tomatoes with salad yesterday, caus they were getting swamped. This ‘salad blanket’ has well out competed the weeds (mostly oxalis and chick weed) and I don’t think I ever need to plant salad On purpose again....

Note: Even though it’s got brassicas in it I’m calling it ‘salad’ caus they’ve got to be picked small, they come up so dense.

I've sometimes had the experience that when I expressed a wish for a certain plant, it would suddenly appear in my garden! It happened with comfrey and purslane and winter purslane last year. I also get potatoes growing all over the place because of crop rotation and forgotten potatoes! I got surprise broccoli and serifon as well, because I let them go to seed the year before, but they weren't technically new, of course. But still, fun to see what sprouts up everywhere!

I'm not sure it's a bonus or not, but I have tons of gourds and pumpkin come up on my hugelkultur, and in my rose garden.  The chickens sure enjoy them.  I have nasturtium that was planted in my veggie garden 3 years ago,  still reseeding itself.  Borage comes up in raised veggie beds I didn't plant it in.  Mint and spearmint grow in my garden paths.  I don't mind volunteer flowers and veggie.  Matter of fact I love to find something that required no effort on my part.

Caitlin, I did a similar thing last year with a new hugelkultur bed I'd made.  To seed it I went through all my seed packets and pulled out the ones so dated they were likely no good, something I should have done years ago.  I had a decent bucket of seeds at the end of that which I scattered freely over the bed.  The rest of the year I had all the arugula I could eat!!  That seems to be the seed that did best, though I've also been harvesting mustard and bok choy.  I let all the arugula go to seed too so I'm hoping this next year will repeat the bounty, maybe with some extra additions.  I believe I did what Jen did too by planting a bunch of squash seeds from squash I ate this fall there.  Sadly I don't fully remember if I did that or not.  I meant to.  Hmm...  I'll just have to make it a habit to scatter my squash guts in various places around the homestead to see what happens.  As a side note that chick weed you count as a "weed" is edible, good in salads too.  The oxalis probably is too.  At least I know I eat many varieties of it.

Sanna, I've had the same experiences wishing for a plant and then finding shortly there after growing around me.  I'm never sure if my intentions are helping to manifest it or if my increased focus on the plant is just heightening my awareness to what was always around me.  I suspect it's some of both, either way it's a pretty cool thing when it happens!

In Fall of 2019 I had late carrots come up. I just left them in the raised bed to see how they would overwinter. They may have died topside, however, they came on strong in the spring. Again, I just let them grow. I eventually wound up with three of the plants more than 8 ft from root to top. A friend just could not believe this and wanted me to take pictures so I spaced 8 ft 2 X 4's with the three plants laid on each side and in the middle. He wanted the pictures to show his son.

We purchased our tangled, overgrown, off-grid acres in the inland Northwest three years ago, and I am still making surprise edible discoveries, all of which invite themselves into my garden. Nettle, claytonia, raspberry, plantain, burdock, mint, and more. I tend to encourage these wild interlopers, against the wisdom of my elder gardeners, who tell me it will all take over. They are undoubtedly right, and I am prepared to rue the day. But this is a garden (and gardener!) in its first years, and I can't shake the joy I get from watching the riotous free-for-all come to life. I figure if I have to, I will build a new garden somewhere for orderly crops all in a row. As if that were possible!

This year, I had morels amongst my rhubarb! I scatter the stem butts and soaking water randomly about when I come home from fungi hunts triumphant, and they prospered there in that spot! What a happy day! This winter has been mild, and I've taken to spending a part of each day 'tunneling' into new places on the property. It is all so grown up and thick that in summer there are parts that are impenetrable without major machinery. We rented an excavator to clear an acre of ground for our little cabin and shop, but the rest of the twenty acres we've left wild, and are trying to open it up slowly by hand. I take hedge clippers and hand saw and channel my inner water buffalo. It is not an activity for anyone prone to claustrophobia! In the last week I have discovered ten black elderberry trees I didn't know about before. They are hemmed in on all sides by walls of alder and hawthorne, snowberry and osier, but I am painstakingly making a bit of space for them, and hope they will thrive.

Awesome Rio!  It sounds like you've got lots of "treasure hunts" to enjoy as you explore and continue to learn about your property.  I have a sense of what you mean about needing to tunnel into areas during the winter.  Even on my tiny 1.5 acre homestead there are wild overgrown zones that become a bit daunting to get to in the summer when the foliage is all out.  I was able to harvest some elderberries this past year from an elderberry tree I'd only discovered the year before.  May you find many more wonders as your explorations continue!

The first year we started our urban garden on straight city clay fill, we amended it with a truckload of horse manure.  I got quite a few surprise California poppy patches and a couple of mulberry trees!  And evening primrose has been a constantly moving surprise.  

I’ve had wild nettle appear in my fruit orchard. It made me smile because I’ve read that nettle is an indicator species of fertile soil. I live in a Sandhill habitat and have hauled in hundreds of loads of wood chip mulch to build topsoil, so seeing nettles arrive to my orchard makes me very happy.  🌱

Sweet find Christy, both for the nettles themselves which can be quite tasty, and for the validation they provide for all your work building topsoil!