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What’s the most unexpectedly useful thing growing on your property right now?

Jim Garlits

gardener

Posts: 723

Location: Wabash, Indiana, Zone 6a

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This spring at Willow Acre I’ve started noticing something interesting: some of the most valuable and fascinating things on the property are not necessarily the things I intentionally planted.

Brittlestem (inkcap) mushrooms erupted from last year’s wood chips after rain. The comfrey is feeding bees and building biomass faster than I expected. Even the “weeds” are beginning to tell me things about soil, moisture, and succession.

Permaculture changes the way you look at land. You stop asking:

“How do I control this?”

and start asking:

“What is this place trying to become?”

So I’m curious:

What’s the most unexpectedly useful, beautiful, edible, medicinal, ecological, or otherwise surprising thing growing on your property right now?

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Anne Miller

steward

Posts: 19139

Location: USDA Zone 8a

4829

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The most unexpected thing was three cockle-bur plants. Mr Google says it is used in medicine though I will pass.

Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner

William Bronson

gardener

Posts: 5714

Location: Cincinnati, Ohio,Price Hill 45205

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Last year I actually used bindweed to bind plants to vertical supports.

This year I hope to finally use mulberry branches for the hoops in a low tunnel.

The tendrils on my grape vine are my favorite garden snack, very lemony.

My wife has been feeding the bunnies wild lettuce, they really like it!

Eating Bindweed
Eating Buckwheat Greens
Paul explains why I spend time here,better than I could myself.

Joao Winckler

pollinator

Posts: 270

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Comfrey is the one that keeps surprising me. I planted it as a chop-and-drop and now it's basically running the whole fertility side of things. The bees are on it constantly too, which I didn't expect at all.

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Stephen B. Thomas

pollinator

Posts: 1542

Location: Wheaton Labs, Montana, USA

3063

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Stinging nettle, stinging nettle, stinging nettle...!

I love the tea. I love teaching people how to pluck it and eat it right off the plant. It won't be eaten by deer. And despite its fantastic taste and flavor, it also happens to be quite nutritious.

"We carry a new world here, in our hearts..." --Buenaventura Durruti
"Don't wish it were easier. Instead, wish you were better." --Jim Rohn

Nynke Muller

pollinator

Posts: 96

Location: Haarlem, The Netherlands

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Birds drop a lot of stuff. I let most of it grow. After identification, I know its value for me and it's ecological value. When it is not in the way, I let it grow. Otherwise I replant, or just chop and drop.

The most surprising useful plants are bay leaf, which starts to pop up everywhere. They are supposed not to grow well in my climate, but I have more bay leaf than I can ever use. I want to dig them up, to give away, but they grow very close to the trunks of my fruittrees. So I chop and give away.

The most ecological surprise is Enchanted Nightshade (Circaea Lutetiana). All kind of folklore goes with this plant. The Dutch name translates as "witch herb". After identification, I read that people used to see it as a warning that one went too deep into the woods. I must be doing something right, when it grows under my grapes and blackberries right next to my paved path on my urban alotment (just to be sure, I take care not to step on it, because I might be lost forever).

"If you've never failed, you have not tried enough new things"

Rio Rose

pollinator

Posts: 77

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I second stinging nettle! It abounds on my property and along the local creeks, and so I have never actually cultivated it due to how prolific - and prickly - it is. I rely on it heavily for nutrition in the winter, and harvest many pounds to blanch and freeze. I tend to remove it from my garden areas, since it does so well on its own. But this year, life conspired to change that.

My wild nettle patches have been hit by some sort of pest and are greatly stressed - I was devastated to find the majority of plants yellowed and stunted. Meanwhile my feral property patches have thinned markedly due to beaver intrusion in the creek bottom and a resulting change to the overall moisture level.

For the first time in many years, there does not seem to be enough nettle, and desperation began to creep in as I imagined a winter without that gorgeous green to lean on.

But wait - there is a small patch in the garden near the house, in an unwieldy spot. It has been existing and continuing to establish a bit more as each year I give it a stay of execution, my fondness for the plant itself leading me to plant other, easier spots first. “Next year my dear”, I whisper, “you’ll have to go.”

Well this year, that nettle patch is the healthiest one I’ve seen in this county, and it is ten steps outside my door. The close proximity means I can visit this patch every couple of days as a cut and come again crop. My time is not spent traveling to forage spots, and my gas tank remains full. And my freezer is slowly filling….unexpected, delightful, and a reminder that the things you allow, encourage and even cultivate in your world don’t have to be the things that make sense to everyone else.

Timothy Norton

Steward of piddlers

Posts: 7894

Location: Upstate New York, Zone 5b, 43 inch Avg. Rainfall

4525

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Dandelions.

They are edible, medicinal, and assist in improving the soil. I never plant them yet they tend to appear where they can do the most good. I mostly utilize them as biomass for compost and to help aerate soils that are compacted.

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William Bronson

gardener

Posts: 5714

Location: Cincinnati, Ohio,Price Hill 45205

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I've learned to welcome catalpa seedlings.
They grow like crazy, apparently able to survive being entirely denuded by the larva the aptly named of the catalpa sphinx moth (Ceratomia catalpae).
I've never seen these famous catalpa worms on any of the trees around here, but I've taken to stripping them their of leaves and green branches and using that mulch on nearby crops.

I've gone as far as to pot up very young catalpa seedling, with biomass production as an end goal.

Eating Bindweed
Eating Buckwheat Greens
Paul explains why I spend time here,better than I could myself.

Riona Abhainn

pollinator

Posts: 1568

Location: Milwaukie Oregon, USA zone 8b

192

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Right now nipplewort, we use it as a secondary green in our salads.

Celtic/fantasy/folk/shanty singing at Renaissance faires, fantasy festivals, and other events in OR and WA, USA.
RionaTheSinger on youtube.
Pop-up garden/vintage+ yard stand owner.

Phillip Gapp

Posts: 20

Location: MN, USA

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Clover! I only just stared appreciating that our lawn is not a typical suburban lawn; even the mowed area is a polyculture with clover as the main component. It attracts tons of bees and pollinators, fixes soil and is simply pleasant underfoot! We aren't using it yet except for compost, but learning about and observing it seems to be solid first steps!

Plus we're surrounded by prairie grasses and tall weeds. I'm planning to make myself a gardening hat, twine and then perhaps other things, and practice some chop and drop to prep areas for planting experiments.

Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. - Brandon Sanderson

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Oliver Huynh

pollinator

Posts: 70

Location: Belgium, alkaline clay along the Escaut river. Becoming USDA 8b.

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Wild sorrel and sycamore maples ; I use sorrel where comfrey is usually recommended as it does not grow here.
Both are very fast-growing and deep-rooted plants, they are my main source of mulch.
Sorrel is currently giving way to nettles as the soil improves, but coppiced sycamores stay strong.

Have a nice day,
Oliver

From under the mother plum tree.

Sam Potter

pollinator

Posts: 123

Location: Central Iowa, Zone 5b

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Lambsquarter! We use it as a food source for us, the chickens and the pigs. Its great for my iron deficiency so I dont need my supplements as often. It works as a chop and drop and a ground cover. We love our weeds around here and Iv been slowly learning what they want to grow so I dont have to spend as much time babying plants in the hot summers to eat from our own yard.

No point in crying if you havnt been trying

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Mac Johnson

Posts: 38

Location: Prairie Coteau South Dakota

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My trees support a large amount of Dryad's Saddle and Chicken of the Woods. I make the Dryad's saddle into a jerky and use chicken of the woods to replace some of the chicken in our diet. Makes great nuggets, alfredo, and grilled (mushroom) chicken with practice.

"I hate how my body shivers at the idea of glory. There’s something deep in man that hungers for this. But I think it weakness, not strength, to abandon decency for that strange darker spirit."

Lawren Richards

Posts: 31

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Lambsquarters! Without a doubt the easiest, best-tasting, and completely inadvertent plant in my garden. I'm racing to dry a bunch for winter before it bolts.

Lynne Cim

pollinator

Posts: 119

Location: Marbletown, NY

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Sweet Woodruff - Galium Odoratum maybe? I don't currently have it growing because I cannot find it. If I could find it and make a vanilla extract substitute with it I would find it to be invaluable for personal use + for resale. Can anyone help me with a known source - seed or plant to purchase? Every plant I've found for sale labeled as Galium Odoratum turns out to be just the non-scented bed straw. I know you have to completely let the plant dry out until the scent is discoverable. Been hunting around old estates for it, so far nothing dries to become fragrant.

Peasants slept on beds of straw, while Emperors slept on beds of hulls.
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Matthew Nistico

pollinator

Posts: 871

Location: Clemson, SC ("new" Zone 8a)

213

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Wild wood sorrel pops up dependably and always makes a nice addition to the green leaf salad.

But probably the most useful volunteer has been turkey tail mushroom. I had two rows of mushroom logs fail - I set them up, inoculated them with commercial cultivars, and two years later have seen zero sign of the intended mushrooms. Probably took too long before inoculating them, and did so during an unfavorably dry season. These were windfall trees, so I didn't have the choice in when this operation was occuring.

Since then, they have sprouted nothing but wild fungus. I was able to confidently ID the wild fungus as true turkey tail, however, which is medicinally valuable, and have harvested a decent quantity for myself and for resale.

Blazing trails in disabled homesteading

Steph Walker

Posts: 13

Location: Salem, OR Zone 8b

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I REALLY like how my Yarrow is spreading over my small backyard and front yard! It is great for the bees/pollinators and keeping areas pretty and green with judgy neighbors. It's native here and is so easy to grow. I've also seen someone online use it as a lawn replacement which is my ultimate goal for certain dry areas of the yard.

Nina Wright

Posts: 19

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Rio Rose wrote:I second stinging nettle! It abounds on my property and along the local creeks, and so I have never actually cultivated it due to how prolific - and prickly - it is. I rely on it heavily for nutrition in the winter, and harvest many pounds to blanch and freeze.

When are you harvesting the nettles? I harvested some in the spring, but now they are seeding. But I want more! If I cut them down, will they regrow with more tender leaves so that I can continue to harvest them for my consumption?

FYI Korean Natural Farming says using nettles for FPJ (Fermented Plant Juice) is *the best* soil supplement or foliar spray.
I tried making some FPJ with the going-to-seed cuttings, but I think they were too dry to make it work. I figure I can still make a tea with them to support other vegetables, though.

Nicholas Gainer

Posts: 16

Location: North Central West Virginia

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Unexpectedly useful???

Years ago I planted a bunch of Miscanthus Chinensis... ornamental grass. It was left over from a landscape job and I tucked them into the field. After 10 years it is an amazing hedgerow that provides little fawns with a safe little hiding place during the day when momma is browsing nearby. Nothing is more pleasing than to watch the deer frolic while relaxing on the porch in the early mornings and late evenings.

I also discovered that I can cut the stuff and get a clean straw mulch to use throughout the garden. Massive quantities each and every year. One of the items on my "To Do" list is to split them and plant rows of it between the permaculture beds for easy access to a steady supply of mulching straw.

"abida abida abida"... "That's all Folks!" hahahaha!

Yeardly Arthur

pollinator

Posts: 88

Location: Half acre on a hill in Central Alabama, Zone 8a and 8b

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Naturalized lamb's quarters (Goosefoot, Chenopodium spp.) is going great guns wherever it has been planted this season, in spite of irregular rainfall. We've been eating a lot of it, and usually wait til July or August before trying to bring in a crop for storage. This year we will definitely get two, and maybe three or even four harvests.

LambsQuartersPVD.png

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Aaron Pate

Posts: 30

Location: Spartanburg, SC USA

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Yeardly Arthur wrote:Naturalized lamb's quarters (Goosefoot, Chenopodium spp.) ... We've been eating a lot of it, and usually wait til July or August before trying to bring in a crop for storage.

Whoa, Yeardly! I've had fresh leaves a few times in a salad, but it looks like you have incorporated lamb's quarters in your kitchen in a big way. I'm impressed with the auto-dehydrator.

Is dehydrating your main way of working with it? How do you use the dehydrated leaves?

Yeardly Arthur

pollinator

Posts: 88

Location: Half acre on a hill in Central Alabama, Zone 8a and 8b

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Aaron Pate wrote:

Yeardly Arthur wrote:Naturalized lamb's quarters (Goosefoot, Chenopodium spp.) ... We've been eating a lot of it, and usually wait til July or August before trying to bring in a crop for storage.

Whoa, Yeardly! I've had fresh leaves a few times in a salad, but it looks like you have incorporated lamb's quarters in your kitchen in a big way. I'm impressed with the auto-dehydrator.

Is dehydrating your main way of working with it? How do you use the dehydrated leaves?

We use them mostly as a spinach replacement. They cook down almost identically in flavor and texture, and spinach is hard to grow here due to rapid increase in spring temperatures. Lamb's quarters grow all season from frost to frost, and we don't even have to sow it - just relocate it to the garden beds when it crops up anywhere on the property. We use it in salads, on sandwiches, in pasta dishes, scrambled eggs and and soups (even chili - it just melts away into the broth). We mix it with other cooked greens, too - kale, chard, collards, mustard, dandelion, curly dock - whatever is growing elsewhere in the garden. Add garlic, green onions and a pepper or two, and they're hard to beat.

The dried leaves get powdered in the coffee grinder and put up for winter. We shake the bright green dust into soups, flatbread, tomato sauce - anything that can use a little depth and extra flavor.

I wish auto-correct would fix my car.

Anthony Powell

Posts: 191

Location: NW England

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A loquat tree, eaves-height and providing valuable shade for the house in the hot weather we're currently enduring. Maybe this coming winter it will flower - takes a hot summer - and if it times it right, get pollinated and fruit. Flowers are inconspicuous, but have an almond scent, ideal for Christmas!
Ideally, and this is old homesteading practice, one plants deciduous trees on the sunny side, to let light in in Winter. And evergreens on the north, to protect against polar winds

Mark Land

Posts: 14

Location: Bavarian Alps / Northern Alps / Europe - equal to zone 7a

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Stinging Nettles - for sure. They started suddenly a couple years back , I used to cut them in the beginning , thinking they are annoying when working the garden, not knowing their huge benefit. Now i am using them for salad, for tea, just as a snack, and mostly : as fertilizer and against mold on my zucchini, cucumbers, pickles, tomatoes and squash. One of the most versatile plants. Since then I am cultivating various nettle patches to use along the growing year. And in the fall when they dry out they become fantastic material to make baskets, cords etc.

"The future is not a place we are going to , but one that we are creating"
John Sharr

Nancy Reading

steward and tree herder

Posts: 13633

Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year

7396

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Mark Land wrote:Stinging Nettles - for sure.

Welcome to permies Mark!
I can't think of many plants with more uses than nettles, even the sting is useful! here's one of paul's earlier threads on nettles. I made nettle leafu once - a good way of storing some of the nutrition in the leaves.

How Permies works: https://permies.com/wiki/34193/permies-works-links-threads
My projects on Skye: The tree field, Growing and landracing, perennial polycultures, "Don't dream it - be it! "

Rio Rose

pollinator

Posts: 77

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Nina Wright wrote:

Rio Rose wrote:I second stinging nettle! It abounds on my property and along the local creeks, and so I have never actually cultivated it due to how prolific - and prickly - it is. I rely on it heavily for nutrition in the winter, and harvest many pounds to blanch and freeze.

When are you harvesting the nettles? I harvested some in the spring, but now they are seeding. But I want more! If I cut them down, will they regrow with more tender leaves so that I can continue to harvest them for my consumption?

FYI Korean Natural Farming says using nettles for FPJ (Fermented Plant Juice) is *the best* soil supplement or foliar spray.
I tried making some FPJ with the going-to-seed cuttings, but I think they were too dry to make it work. I figure I can still make a tea with them to support other vegetables, though.

Hi Nina! The generally accepted advice about stinging nettle consumption is to avoid the leaves once it comes into flower. The reason usually cited is potential irritation to kidneys and urinary tract due to changes in the plant's chemical composition as it ages. From my observation the whole structure of the plant changes - as you say, the leaves become tougher, more bitter, and the shape of them more narrow, sharper. I do think that if you cut them down they'd try to start again - life so wants to live - but I am not certain that they would be as good as the previous cuts, and have no idea how the composition changes at that point.

In my own cut and come again dance with nettle, I start with the very first spring shoots and stop once it gains flower status. I do find that the subsequent cuts become less tender, and lend themselves increasingly to dried vs blanched applications as I go on. Really nothing compares to those first green shoots of spring.

With the older plants, there is still so much to do. From an edible and medicinal standpoint, the immature seeds are fabulous. And our garden plants love the leavings in various applications, as you and Mark both mentioned, plus the whole weaving/cordage aspect. I believe that nettle is so fierce in its defense because it is so useful to so many. It would have perished long ago had it not wreathed itself in poisonous spikes. Nature is so awesome!

Tammi Day

Posts: 10

Location: Michigan, USA zone 5-6

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Milkweed. The birds planted one two years ago, and it increased last year, so I picked and drowned all except two of the seedpods. The available patch (surrounded by road and concrete) is filled with about a hundred plants. The bees love it, the fiber is very nice and soft, and it makes fabulous mulch similar to cornstalks!

Isn't it great that food just falls up out of the ground?

Bethany Brown

Posts: 247

Location: Rural Pacific Northwest, Zone 8

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Have been away from permies for awhile. Bamboo! I was almost afraid to buy this property because of it. It does take a small amount of work to keep it from encroaching on our orchard, but it’s not too bad. Edible shoots in spring. Drops lots of leaves that can be used as mulch or an ingredient in animal bedding. We have used the poles as fence posts and they last several years, not a permanent post, but a free one. The poles can be used to make lots of other things that I haven’t yet experimented with.

Heide Elliott

Posts: 1

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We are in middle Ontario, and our church has a garden. Most of the crops are harvested, cleaned, and donated to the local food bank. We start in the spring with the early sprouts from our permanent herb garden.

Riona Abhainn

pollinator

Posts: 1568

Location: Milwaukie Oregon, USA zone 8b

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Right now, dandylions and mallow.

Its interesting how we're interpreting the phrase "unexpectedly useful" differently from each other, and I'm glad of it for variety of answers.

In my mind "unexpectedly useful" means stuff I didn't plant but it just shows up. But I can see how in someone else's mind it could mean things they planted but then found more uses for then they originally knew of when they planted it. And additionally someone still else could interpret it to mean the plant currently growing with the _most uses.

Celtic/fantasy/folk/shanty singing at Renaissance faires, fantasy festivals, and other events in OR and WA, USA.
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