I love the "idea" of perennial vegetables...

Mark Reed wrote:I'm also a little dubious of eating just anything because someone says it's OK and I know there are a variety of daylily species. The ones I have most commonly seen as being eaten are the wild orange ones and they are the ones in abundance here. It's worth a shot to try digging some up to see if I can find any variations in root size, although it might just as likely be due to environmental conditions rather than genetic. Still I could bring more of that type back closer to home.

Just occurred to me that if I wanted to harvest cattails, at least the tops rather than roots in would be most convenient to utilize my kayak, eliminate all the fuss and muss and maybe catch a fish too. Wonder how "cattail on the cob" would be with a nice mess of pan fried bluegills.

Yeah. I have a certain willingness to eat things if I know the genus and am sure nothing in the genus is toxic. I don't have that kind of confidence with daylilies, so I'll leave that to people who are more adventurous than me and just stick with the ones I know are edible. Honestly, there might be more information in Chinese or from other parts of asia if people have the ability to search for and translate the available literature. This is part of the reason I wish it was easier to collaborate with people who speak other languages.

Canoes were definitely the preferred way to harvest things like wild rice. Just shake the stalks into the canoe. Definitely a good option for the parts of cattails that can be harvested above water.

I have a little pond, more of a glorified mud puddle in my estimation. It was built, I'm guessing a long time ago by who ever lived in the log homestead, now just a pile of chimney rocks at the edge of my yard. I speculate that there was more water in the ground back then as the pond collects little to no surface water, it is just a depression that at one time must have contained a spring. It often fills up pretty good in winter but most summers goes completely dry. I think I'll try to transplant cattails into it but I don't know if they can tolerate a wet/dry cycle. If not then they won't be on my actual list of foods as I want to establish food production that is entirely within easy walking distance of my house.

I already have the hostas and daylilies and can easily increase them so will do so. I've worked on the pecans and grapes for years so they are pretty well established and self maintaining.

A lot of the things I read about are certainly interesting and no reason not to explore but can't lose focus on the real goal and the necessity to drive miles somewhere to harvest isn't part of that goal.  

Mark Reed wrote:I think I'll try to transplant cattails into it but I don't know if they can tolerate a wet/dry cycle. If not then they won't be on my actual list of foods as I want to establish food production that is entirely within easy walking distance of my house.

Try it. I had a cattail by my lawn (from a neighbor's pond). It took me a while to figure out what it was. It got regular water, but it certainly wasn't wet!

I've seen cattails growing in a roadside ditch that appeared to get really dry in our seasonal drought. I never stopped to verify how dry it was to the touch, but at 25 mph, visually, it matched hard concrete clay. During the rainy seasons, there were a couple of inches of standing water.