Plants that are Money in bank, food in the ground(container)

Good chance they might. They were very accommodating to me one year when things got whacky & I had to change my order several times.

Black walnuts, you can get nuts after ten years, after sixty years of nuts & shade you can get $1000. to $100,000.00
for the first eight feet of trunk, if you followed a few simple rules.

Joe Grand wrote:Black walnuts, you can get nuts after ten years, after sixty years of nuts & shade you can get $1000. to $100,000.00
for the first eight feet of trunk, if you followed a few simple rules.

Dunno if I'd compare getting calories out of black walnuts to getting cash out of an ATM...

I have a couple of black walnut trees, but getting the meat out of these nuts is challenging to say the least.
I have often thought the easiest way to profit from  black walnut trees is to sell the seedlings.

Joe Grand wrote:Black walnuts, you can get nuts after ten years, after sixty years of nuts & shade you can get $1000. to $100,000.00 for the first eight feet of trunk, if you followed a few simple rules.

Black walnut lumber is indeed extremely valuable and folks, here in Wisconsin, have stolen black walnut logs because they are so valuable. Considering that past the planting and a bit of watering in the first year you only have to wait to get a nice chunk of change, I'd say that is an excellent return on the investment. Certainly my bank is not giving me anywhere near that much on a nut, even after 60 years! Now, I only wish they were easier to crack! I cannot grow black walnuts here as it gets too cold, so I'm looking at *butternut*.
Here is how they measure up in categories that matter to me:
* Both are allelopathic, unfortunately, but if you need the shade you may not care about the juglone. Here the butternut is not as bad as the black walnut as will accept more plantings in its shade.
* Both types need to be planted in full sun.
* For easier to crack, the butternut wins. [Using a vice is best for more complete nutmeats.]
* For the value of the timber, the black walnut wins.
* For longevity, the black walnut wins. But because it grows slower, you will have to wait longer to collect on your investment.
* For hardiness, the butternut wins [zones 3-7] as it grows way in the north of Wisconsin. Black walnuts don't make it in my zone 4b, although I have seen a couple of planted specimens, but in zones 5-9, they perform well.
* How about the value of the *shells*, after you have taken out the meat? It is an excellent soft grit abrasive media used for blast cleaning and tumbling. The shell is used by the oil industry as lost circulation material and as a filter media cleaning produced water. Most recently, Black Walnut shells have been discovered as a great natural medium for athletic turf fields. There were less articles referenced for butternut shells being used, so the win goes to the black walnut on that point.
*How quickly do they  bear? For the butternut, 7-10 years,  for the black walnut, 12- 15. (Since the date coming into production varies widely with the sources, I took the Arbor Day foundation's numbers for both to try to compare "apples to apples", so to speak).
* Both are alternate bearers [some years a lot, other years not many at all]. Could that be altered by feeding the tree more, maybe? I don't know .
* What about that darn husk? before you get at the nuts, you have to remove the darn husk.
* Both trees can be taped for sap to be boiled down and make syrup. Both were used to color clothing. For far out products, black walnut husks can easily give you a tincture, which is anti-parasitic, and useful not just to dye something [everything!] very dark brown/black but a black walnut husk tincture is also anti-fungal and anti-bacterial and a land based source of iodine!  :https://practicalselfreliance.com/black-walnut-tincture/  That's pretty cool, IMHO.
Just for fun, check how the Iroquois used butternut for food and medicine: https://aihd.ku.edu/foods/Butternut.html
* Resistance to diseases: most of the butternuts have died due to butternut canker, which is a fungus. There is no cure, just good sanitation [removing affected limbs] and try to grow from nuts of sound trees in the hope that they have inherited some resistance.
* The black walnut also suffers from cankers and may die: The "thousand cankers disease". for this one too, good sanitation is the only relief, but that only delays the progression of the disease. https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/terrestrial/pathogens-and-diseases/thousand-cankers-black-walnut-disease#:~:text=Thousand%20cankers%20disease%20(TCD)%20is,beetle%20WTB)%2C%20Pityophthorus%20juglandis.

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:

Joe Grand wrote:Black walnuts, you can get nuts after ten years, after sixty years of nuts & shade you can get $1000. to $100,000.00 for the first eight feet of trunk, if you followed a few simple rules.

Black walnut lumber is indeed extremely valuable and folks, here in Wisconsin, have stolen black walnut logs because they are so valuable. Considering that past the planting and a bit of watering in the first year you only have to wait to get a nice chunk of change, I'd say that is an excellent return on the investment.

This makes me sad... We had a beautiful black walnut tree at our old house- tall straight trunk up to over the roof where it branched out and provided lots of shade to the house in the summer. After we moved (we lived across the country but still owned the house), there was a tornado and the top was damaged. I tried to get our friend who cleaned up the damage for us to not chop up the trunk. I told him it was worth $ and he could have it. But he just carted everything to the curb for the county to pick up and shred. Such a waste!

I was over at the yarden today, futzing about and making plans.
I took a half barrel of soil and planted it with sunchokes, then parked on top of some weeds(grass).
A second half barrel was moved next to the box elder.
It will host climbing yams.

I am considering OCA, Chinese Bugleweed, chufa, and some improved variety of Jerusalem artichokes, something less lumpy.
All of these should be able to survive in containers, ignored until needed.

Some of the tubers suggested simple wont overwinter here, but they are still good for other people.
Cassava is really perfect but it needs many months of warmth and is killed by cold.


The hackberry sounds good, but not as something I would plant, necessarily.
Even the dwarf varieties get pretty tall...
The juniper berries seem perfect, largely ignored yet right at hand.
Turns out there is a nearby yard that is covered in stones with prickly pear cactus growing up around it!
My plant is looking pretty bad, it was in a pretty damp pot, but its drying out now.
Maybe I'll give it a nice half barrel of sand rocks and gravel and see how it does in that.

I will be turning the southern fence line of my yarden into a  tiny "woodland" to forage from.
The hackberry might work there.
It doesn't get a huge amount of sun, but I think it will be enough.
We tried corn there, with no luck, but winter squash did pretty well, but there are plenty of other spots for them.
It's basically a lasagna bed, 2 years old, 20 plus feet long by 4 feet wide.
So far I've only transplanted black locust trees there.
The idea is to use them as a source of leaf/seed litter.
I brought bags of the stuff home to the chooks, and was worried it wouldn't break down.
Turns out, worms love the stuff, and I'm getting rich black compost.
Even if they grow higher than the fence, they wont add shade, since there is two story house already there.
I plan on pollarding them anyway, to keep my neighbor from reacting  with poison.
If I stick to species with adventitious roots, I can keep adding bagged leaves and other material without hurting them.
I will try putting "extra" berry bushes there, letting them propagate and see what they produce.
If the neighbor doesn't get froggy, and the bed gets deep enough, I'll introduce more food crops.

Two of my sweet potatoes have slips all over them.
I'm not sure where to plant them, plus its probably too soon still-we had snow last week.
I have some 5 gallon sub-irrigated buckets, fitted with 5 gallon bucket cloches.
If I fill them up as they grow, it should keep them watered,  and safe from late frosts.
Come to think of it, sweet potatoes might actually benefit from the much vaunted potato tower in the way Irish potatoes do not.

Yams maybe many places, they really spread their wings!

Maybe try getting comfrey roots out to spread comfrey plants.  The mother plant has two babies a few feet away.

Got to battle birds eating the oil sunflower seed, so changing sunflower so I can get seeds.

Blueberries, mushrooms & any nut shrubs are a money maker, more so if the supply chain fall apart.

Nut shrubs- I don't want to fight squirrels for my food, but I would like my own hazel nuts or better yet acorns.
Dwarf Chinquapin Oaks are a tree crush of mine...


looking into the sweet potatoes, I was googling around  to find something on getting better results by "hilling" the vines.
Not till I came back to check  Permies did I find this.
Dr. RedHawk not only buries the vines , he also cuts them off from the mother plant, creating a new independent plant and better yields.
The neat thing is, you don't have to harvest the sweet potatoes, you can just let it winterkill, thus adding nutrients to the soil!

Trish Doherty wrote:
I see groundnuts listed a lot. Does anyone have a good source for them? They're not the same as peanuts, right?

You could buy them from Greg Mosser. And yes, they are different than Peanuts.

Mike Haasl wrote:Multiplier or potato onions seem like they fit the bill.

I agree with this.  They also keep well in storage.  Today I checked all my onion and shallot food/planting stock to remove any bad ones, as I do every six-eight weeks or so during the winter storage period.  I still have a crate of around ten pounds of my potato onion/shallot crossed mix that I have been growing out from true seed that were harvested in August of 2020.  I removed around two pints of bad ones but the rest are in very good condition, this after 20 months in storage.  The good ones remaining are still perfectly edible and the long storage has changed their flavor profile as compare to my 2021 stock.

I have been selecting for long storage characteristics which is why I still have and maintain this old stock.  I will plant a bunch of them in a week or two along with my fresher stock (which allows for potential back-crossing), and then keep the remaining inventory hopefully to fall planting.  I have kept viable potato onion planting stock as long as 32 months, my stock is descended from those and new additions all crossed up together.

The point of breeding for a long storage trait is to be able to recover from one failed season without losing all my stock, but I also maintain two backup beds in the gardens that I harvest only every 3-4 years on a rotating schedule.  Potato onions handle my long, brutal winters just fine but I have had them freeze out a couple years if too many mid-winter freeze/thaw cycles.  I also grow out true seed and sow some of them every year as well, if I get any.  This year I will be sowing thousands of true seeds as part of my potato onion cross breeding efforts.  Using multiple, overlapping strategies for everything is the best insurance against loss, failure, hunger.  Having a deep knowledge of growing food plants in one's own climate and having the proper plan and backup plan for every food plant type a person grows is the real money in the bank.  Know what you are growing, know how much you should be growing, and back it all up.

Now that spring is here, I'm finding more and more grasses in my landscape that are forming tall seed heads. They probably come from the clean-up after I make bread using organic winter rye, wheat and spelt berries. When I clean out the grinder, there are a few seeds left that end up out in the compost. The compost sprouts over the winter during the cool season. Over the years the winter rye, wheat and spelt have grown from grass and matured into seed heads. They’re awfully pretty so I stick them in a pot outside, put them on seasonal wreaths, and tie them into decorative bundles. This spring, the cereal grasses have multiplied all over the yard. Along with native rice grass, the cereal grains have become almost prolific. A fellow gardener explained to me that small quantities of cereal grasses can be gathered into bundles then beaten in a pillowcase to dislodge the seed from the chaff. Empty the pillowcase in a basket or shallow box and flip the leavings up in the wind to let the chaff blow away and retain the seed. Grind the seed for flour or freeze it for future loaves.
I’m not sure what’s wheat and what’s rye but apparently all grasses are edible. So I’ve got mixed grass seed that I grind into flour for bread. The supply continues as long as I keep throwing some of the seeds back into the landscape for future small harvests.

Turns out there is a nearby yard that is covered in stones with prickly pear cactus growing up around it!
My plant is looking pretty bad, it was in a pretty damp pot, but its drying out now.
Maybe I'll give it a nice half barrel of sand rocks and gravel and see how it does in that.

Too much water will kill them rather fast. They barely need any at all. They love rocks & gravely sand without much actual soil. They're easy to propagate too. Cut off one pad (or even a partial pad sometimes works) & let the cut dry for a few days before replanting.

The "pears" make excellent jelly. You can also harvest some pads, burn the needles off with your favorite pyrotechnic device, & slice them into strips. Fry them up for nopalitas. That goes very well with enchiladas.

Mike Haasl wrote:
"Multiplier or potato onions seem like they fit the bill."

I have a small nest onion, that is great for green onions & bulbs, because it is small it is easy to pickle with other vegetables.
The onion grows for ten months here, garlic, Jerusalem artichoke, green /French artichoke, collards all can live for many years in temperate climate.

Got a few free elderberry plants (~two years, maybe production this year, for chickens raw, cooked for people.

Have one trademarked blueberry plant too.  Had a bunch of flowers this year, removed a lot of them.

Collecting a ton of weeds for composting.  Might get more garbage cans.

Saved a small barrel of Beauregard yams grew last year 4 tiny plants turned into monsters.  So maybe I'll plant them around the back yard, I'll have to watch out and not mow to much of their leaves.

Michael Moreken wrote:Got a few free elderberry plants (~two years, maybe production this year, for chickens raw, cooked for people.
Saved a small barrel of Beauregard yams grew last year 4 tiny plants turned into monsters.  So maybe I'll plant them around the back yard, I'll have to watch out and not mow to much of their leaves.

Have you started making slips of your Beauregard? You didn't indicate your growing zone, but here in Wisconsin I make my slips in March/ April.
For the elderberry plants, they are too good to give to chickens [although they'd be great at doing the cleaning.]
I made hardwood cuttings of my elderberries, thinking well, even if I have a couple that make it, that will be a success!. Well, I made 36 cuttings and all but 3 are making it.. Mainly for jellies [the color is out of this world] and for the  winter syrup.
This is my favorite recipe:
https://www.daringgourmet.com/homemade-elderberry-syrup-for-colds-coughs-and-flu/
To make it last longer, I add a generous amount of Vodka [Honey and Vodka are time extenders]. Since I start from fresh, I'm not sure how long it will make or last.
The liqueur is not too shabby either!
https://honest-food.net/elderberry-liqueur-recipe/#recipe

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:

Mike Barkley wrote:As far as I know they sell slips only. Here's their shipment dates.

Thanks again, Mike. That might actually work in my zone [WI-6]. We can't really plant tomatoes either until after Memorial day.
Maybe I can write them a nice letter and add a lot of pretty please and maybe they would sell me the tubers in the Fall so I can make slips in the Spring. That would work.

Check out Sandhills Preservation Center...  they have a Northern Assortment I am thinking of ordering.  They understand we need early and I can get only 6 slips which is perfect for my garden or they have much larger quantities.   They start shipping after memorial day and so far nothing is listed as out of stock...

https://www.sandhillpreservation.com/sweet-potato

"Got a few free elderberry plants (~two years, maybe production this year, for chickens raw, cooked for people."

Me Too! I just got two rooted cutting, elderberry grow wild here, but I do not know where any are, so I bought two.

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:

Michael Moreken wrote:Got a few free elderberry plants (~two years, maybe production this year, for chickens raw, cooked for people.
Saved a small barrel of Beauregard yams grew last year 4 tiny plants turned into monsters.  So maybe I'll plant them around the back yard, I'll have to watch out and not mow to much of their leaves.

Have you started making slips of your Beauregard? You didn't indicate your growing zone, but here in Wisconsin I make my slips in March/ April.
For the elderberry plants, they are too good to give to chickens [although they'd be great at doing the cleaning.]
I made hardwood cuttings of my elderberries, thinking well, even if I have a couple that make it, that will be a success!. Well, I made 36 cuttings and all but 3 are making it.. Mainly for jellies [the color is out of this world] and for the  winter syrup.
This is my favorite recipe:
https://www.daringgourmet.com/homemade-elderberry-syrup-for-colds-coughs-and-flu/
To make it last longer, I add a generous amount of Vodka [Honey and Vodka are time extenders]. Since I start from fresh, I'm not sure how long it will make or last.
The liqueur is not too shabby either!
https://honest-food.net/elderberry-liqueur-recipe/#recipe

I originally got ~20 very delicate 12 white stems to plant, well only 4 survived, so prayed over them, we had a lot of them for consumption, and have pretty decent size ones to plant out in spring.  my zone 6b got colder moving over 800 miles south!  in TN.

Michael Moreken wrote:Yams maybe many places, they really spread their wings!

Maybe try getting comfrey roots out to spread comfrey plants.  The mother plant has two babies a few feet away.

Got to battle birds eating the oil sunflower seed, so changing sunflower so I can get seeds.

I went out yesterday to try and dig up comfrey roots, then saw a baby with two leaves so propagated that.

Amy Gardener wrote:Prickly pear cactus. Over the years I've divided plants and moved them for their stunning beauty: big yellow flowers, succulent texture, gorgeous red fruits. Now this nutrient rich food source surrounds my entire property. Prickly pear cactus is known as, "poor man's bread" since it is always available for sustenance. While there aren't many calories in prickly pear pads, a lovely meal can always be had by harvesting the quail, quail eggs, rabbits, and other wild life that munch on this important desert food source.

Here in Oaxaca I've heard it call--"campesino steak".  And there is also a kind of nopal (without strong spines) that is called "nopal de vaca" vaca being cows, because cows love it. So add livestock feed to your list.
AND ---there's a kind of paint, that uses prickly pear pads in the recipe and creates a gloss finish.

My dad's hobby was carpentry. I think any tree that produces luxury wood is money in the bank. The most expensive woods he ever bough were tropical, Ebony, Padauk, and Purple Heart, but black walnut or what ever grows where you live would be a good investment.

Melissa Ferrin wrote:My dad's hobby was carpentry. I think any tree that produces luxury wood is money in the bank. The most expensive woods he ever bough were tropical, Ebony, Padauk, and Purple Heart, but black walnut or what ever grows where you live would be a good investment.

That is indeed great advice, especially to any youngster just starting up: these trees take a long time to be "useable" and cropped for cash. I want to grow something too that will survive me: Nut trees, oaks. I will probably die before I get the first nut or the first acorn, but yes, we should plant also for beauty and for the future generations.
To "fill the larder", though, I'm looking at more immediate profits on the investment. [But then, I'm 73, so time is running short].

Dr. Redhawk once told me that the moringa tree could save the entire world from starvation if more people would grow it. Not sure how marketable it would be in places where it's not well known but what good is money if you're dead from starvation?

The details are fuzzy, very fuzzy, but somewhere I read about a king in Europe that required every citizen of his kingdom to plant X number of food trees every year. I think it was nuts & olives. Seems like a great idea!!!

My "food bank" is pignuts - Conpodium majus.
I can't normally be bothered to harvest them - they're quite small for the effort involved, however they are there under the soil growing away and multiplying year on year. They are almost in full flower at the moment and the tree field is white in places with their blossom.

I planted muraski sweet potatoes in my greenhouse several years ago as an experiment. The few left after harvest have continued to come back year after year. I’ll get my son to dig some up and report back on the palatable question. I just don’t know if they remain sweet and not stringy but they sure do produce a bunch of almost year round fodder for the bunnies. I grow a plot of clover and lots of nasturtiums in the greenhouse to feed the bunnies and provide one of my favorite salad greens as well as my go to medicine for infections. Nasturtium tincture wipes out lots of nasty bugs and doesn’t even taste bad.

Lexie Smith wrote:I planted muraski sweet potatoes in my greenhouse several years ago as an experiment. The few left after harvest have continued to come back year after year. I’ll get my son to dig some up and report back on the palatable question. I just don’t know if they remain sweet and not stringy but they sure do produce a bunch of almost year round fodder for the bunnies. I grow a plot of clover and lots of nasturtiums in the greenhouse to feed the bunnies and provide one of my favorite salad greens as well as my go to medicine for infections. Nasturtium tincture wipes out lots of nasty bugs and doesn’t even taste bad.

Lucky you: If they come back year after year, you are in a warmer zone. I'm in 4b and I wish I could grow it as a perennial. They taste so much better than potatoes and better than the so-called "sweet" potatoes, these orange stringy things we buy around thanksgiving! [I really don't care for those!]  No butter or sweetener needed!
They also last much longer, just on a shelf in my pantry, without any special care [they do have to be cured, folks say]. Some folks say that curing them is tricky but I have not done anything special besides gently brush the dirt off and check them over for nicks and cuts. [I don't care if they last past March because that is when I start my slips [awful early, but they begin to sprout on my shelf then]. This is what veryveganish.com says about them: "Murasaki sweet potatoes (aka Japanese sweet potatoes, Korean yams, red kūmara) taste mildly sweet, nutty, with notes of chestnut, brown sugar, molasses and caramel. Their texture is starchy, fluffy and moist when baked whole". and boy! are they right! not a string in them!
The hint of chestnut is what first drew me to them as I may not be able to grow chestnut trees here [but I'm trying and I have now 19 little ones to plant!]

I got all excited about growing sweet potatoes a few years back until I realized what is required to cure them. I live very simply so don't have a place I can keep hot and humid enough when they would be harvested. I am curious in reading about the Asian Sweet Potato now ... Does it also require curing ("hold them at 85 degrees F with 90 to 95 percent relative humidity (RH) for 4 to 7 days")?

Barbara Kochan wrote:I got all excited about growing sweet potatoes a few years back until I realized what is required to cure them. I live very simply so don't have a place I can keep hot and humid enough when they would be harvested. I am curious in reading about the Asian Sweet Potato now ... Does it also require curing ("hold them at 85 degrees F with 90 to 95 percent relative humidity (RH) for 4 to 7 days")?

I'm not sure if I have posted this video before but thanks to this method, there is no need to feel intimidated about curing sweet potatoes: It doesn't take much room or money  if you have a 1/2 gallon jar, a heating mat and a thermostat, along with a big see-through tote.
Totes are not very expensive, and you will reuse the heating mat/ thermostat in the spring to start some seeds anyway, so... Ready?
https://youtu.be/_hPl5MPgNwM
I'm a bit fuzzy on how to know when they have cured enough: Most folks say they must feel moist but firm. [Not helpful: When I pull them out of the ground, they are already moist but firm! and IMHO, they are sweet enough as is], but you may want to cure them properly anyway: they should last longer that way.
They are such a great tuber that they are well worth the extra effort, so go for it, folks! By the way, I'm in Central WI, zone 4b, so cold weather is no excuse. ;}

Thank you Cécile! Just what I am so happy to try. I wonder if/why the container needs to be clear ... I have everything I need save the clear container, I have a couple opaque ones. For others who want to see the how to on the container jump to 9:30 or so in the video.

Barbara Kochan wrote:Thank you Cécile! Just what I am so happy to try. I wonder if/why the container needs to be clear ... I have everything I need save the clear container, I have a couple opaque ones. For others who want to see the how to on the container jump to 9:30 or so in the video.

I'm not sure either, Barbara. Probably just so you can see if the humidity is there? [You can see little droplets of moisture forming, telling you it is humid enough?]
Otherwise he made it clear that it should cure "in a dark room or closet", so it cannot be because sun is needed to make it work.
I'm sure things have to be proportional too: a 2 qt container of water will humidify only so many sweet potatoes.