Heda Ledus

Tyler Ludens wrote:People often discuss perennial food plants here on permies, but to be honest I've had a hard time introducing them into my family's diet.  The only perennials we grow which we eat regularly are herbs and various onion relatives.  But these can hardly be considered to make up much of our diet.

Can those of you who eat perennials regularly please sharewhat you eat, are they nutrition crops (vitamins and minerals, like salad) or staples (carbohydrates, calorie crops).

Thank you!

Please note I am talking about plants, not animals.

I highly recommend reading the recipes of "vrat" foods. In Hinduism certain holidays and even holy days of the week observant Hindus do away with grains and legumes, oilseed derivatives, meat, alliums and instead work with tubers, fruits, nuts, pseudo-grains (and sometimes millets), dairy and veg.

Of course you don't have to be strict, incorporate meat and alliums but it's great ways to reimagine how perennial foods can be incorporated into whole dishes and be satisfying as well as wholesome.

When I lived on the islands my staples that I grew were banana, passion fruit, huge avocados, coconut and sugarcane. I hitch hicked a lot and so even though I was also eating loads of calories by the end I was really skinny and desperately craving milk.

Now though I am helping my friend with plants for silvopasture with dairy small stock + an orchard.

Ultimately I enjoy and feel best with large quantities of dairy so its a fit.

Mostly very sour plain Kefir, soft cheeses like chevre, cream/plain milk when cooking and halloumi aka dairy tofu when cooking.Temperate fruits are unappealing except pomegranate that when boiled down into molasses is very calorically rich and cooked into savory applications same with dates when cooked down into molasses.

I cook mostly small cream and milk based very spiced curries and wots, eaten with large bowls of kefirs and small serving of injera or couscous. Looking for a low input winter ephemeral like a cool but not cold hardy fonio or teff that'll grow like "wild" oats through the winter with surface scratching or fire followed by free sowing.

Tyler Ludens wrote:I don't really see earthquakes as a climate change scenario.

Well although you might not see earthquakes as a climate change scenario I know Bill McGuire of the University College London's Hazard Research Center does which is why I stated earthquakes in the first place but also because I live in earthquake country.

Tyler Ludens wrote:What plausible climate change catastrophe will leave food in supermarkets yet cause people to kill each other for it? Food is getting more expensive, and I expect it will just keep getting more and more expensive and scarce, causing more people to try to grow their own, as they did during the Depression and the world wars.

Food will literally still be in supermarkets and store, not being purchased but just around after say am earthquake which cannot really be predicted.

There's some plausible for you.

Question: why are people planting the pads without shade or a nurse plant? They'll grow without but they benefit greatly with moister soils and dappled light in very dry and hot climates until they get three-fivr pads high

Peter Heffernan wrote:Beware!
Prickly Pear rendered 58 MILLION ACRES UTTERLY UNUSABLE in Australia in the early 19th century, because birds so quickly spread seads everywhere!
Be very careful not to make the solution into THE PROBLEM!

I mean it's not unusable, your Australians just weren't/aren't using it because it involves a complete shift in how to manage non-natives & cattle.

Someone mentioned burning the pads to feed to animals. That is correct in many places from Arizona to Hawaii but my favorite example of this isn't too far away from OZ across the Indian Ocean on the southwestern corner of Madagascar where Opuntia scrambled across the euphorbia drylands.

Rather than destroy the dry lands the Sakalava realized the use of it and expanded their cattle raising in the area, created living fences for defense against the French and relied on the fruits for water.

Of course it ends with the French unable to stop them in their symbiotic relationship with points and so they brought a pest to destroy opuntia, causing massive famine and militarial defeat buuuut at least there is an agro-pastoral/"silvo"-pastoral example of Opuntia in a foreign land that "takes over" and it benefiting herders.

Ben Falk likely uses an older Japanese variety from Hokkaido from the USDA, that being said I wouldn't use him as a great example since he doesn't seem to be growing rice all that well past his first try from what I gathered from people. Would like to see some outside party taking in harvest yields.

The Japanese couple in Vermont that started the whole New England rice movement are exceptional sources of information, they host the Northeast USA Rice Conference another source that seems to get ignored as well is the Bhutanese refugee community who grew rice in Vermont who've been growing 1K+ lbs in a year as of '13. Not many updates from them but I'd argue they've made some of the highest yields so far that north.

There is a Russian upland rice that was grown in Illinois, you can find it almost anywhere with rice seed for sale though.

Quite frankly I feel the talk around people not eating what they can't identify only typifies the initial post-___ situation. As we've seen throughout the history of famine is the complete and utter usage of nearly any plant, seed and root available.

Sure people will get sick from eating horse chestnut without processing or die from eating other plants but word spreads fast in such scenarios, people learn and quickly people find ways to get the caloric needs met.

I'm not a fan of the golden horde convo, (I find it to be a talk for survivalist minded circle-jerking to put it bluntly) but what I can say is even in the midst of catastrophe a significant amount of people will die waiting to be saved and the rest would be too unprepared to survive outdoors/will also likely be killing each other for the lowest hanging (read: easiest identifiable) fruits in supermarkets, kitchens and basements first. That'll take months, then people will begin to eat anything green or looks like starch is in it.

Honestly I'd rather just teach people to grow food or identify food in the community, we have orchards productive and abandoned throughout the area.

Neowerdermannia vorwerkii is a well known staple of the arid Andean Altiplano region, a clumping cacti the after skinning and boiling is eaten like a potato.

The oscillating temperature of your garden is a benefit because it requires those fluctuations to germinate well.

Kaniwa and Maca too even though I only say that because I read the Lost Crop series like a thousand times

If you pm me I can send you to an American source for neowerdermannia.

Now mind you guys do realize the size being talked about; at first I thought they meant pebbles and at most golf ball size; turns out fist size at the smallest is what's being talked about 8-o

Ludens talked about this often in his Texas garden; I surprised he didn't pop in yet.

Its use I feel is best for low organic soils in the semi-arid and arid regions of the world.

The Anasazi lived by this method with Agave species for sometime.

In general a slow, high producing low input plant seems best; Agave, Enset, & Cordyline.

Another poster already mentioned the downsides to this; in the right conditions and maintance however its use could be very useful.