Judielaine Bush

I had my first harvest (26 oz)  of Dunstan Chestnuts on Sunday morning. (This Monday evening we've picked up an additional 2 lbs 6 oz) Excited, i promptly soaked in boiling water for a couple hours, scored, roasted, and began peeling the nuts. I'd say about half peeled beautifully, half less so (and yes, probably should have done a smaller batch). Since i hadn't cured the nuts, they are more starchy than sweet. Seemed good to try in soup. This morning i pondered, do i really need to get the skin (pellicle) off if i am going to puree them? It's just more fiber.  Warnings of bitter tannins abound, but if i can have a use for nuts that didn't peel easily, that seems very valuable.

Well, a cup of nuts with lots of skin, some completely covered with skin, plus 1 cup half and half, 2 cups water, a teaspoon of better than bullion, a dab of preserved lemon,  sauteed celery, carrots, dried mushrooms,   young onions, bay leaf, sage, and rosemary tastes divine. I haven't pureed it yet but was eating chunks of nuts with skin and -- yum.  Seems an excellent way to use imperfectly shelled nuts.

I did that years ago when i was growing on a rooftop in Philly. Definitely doable.

"Looking like a candlestick" sounds like early scapes, which are lovely roasted, pickled.

I want my walking onions to Stop Walking and try picking early scapes and eating them as a defense mechanism. More scapes happen. Not sure if that's the mature colony i have or a general capability.

Good luck!

I'm in Piedmont North Carolina and have two happy stories of strawberries

Directly to the east of my rabbit & deer fenced  garden plot is a wall of trees between 50 and 90', mixed pines and deciduous. I think the south trees stop shading around early February.  The shade from the east affects the eastmost 3-4 foot of my beds (entertaining to watch corn or okra height decline so rapidly at a certain point.

My blackberry plot has a wall of trees at 90' to the west, many pines, some deciduous. It's closer to the south treeline,so i think the shade from the south stops being significant in March sometime.

In mid October 2022 i planted half a flat of Camarosa short-day strawberry on a ten foot row in the garden plot and along the northmost (thus less shaded) ten foot or so of the blackberries. I mulched with ground up leaves from a tulip poplar. The blackberries grow in with our pets, so those strawberry plants are strictly for ground cover.  I mulched with straw.

Lovely production even on the shady end of the garden in spring 2023. The garden got out of hand in the fall and was overrun with stilt grass.  Plenty of runners sent out. I've done nothing.  This spring the stilt grass is sprouting thickly under the canopy of berries -- and maybe discourages pests by hiding the berries which are ripening just fine? Don't know:  we had over-dry weather for the first four or five harvests so that would discourage slugs. Know cotton rats are in the garden and possibly turtles. (SOmething has made an interesting trail that cuts through the strawberries.) The first harvest after a weekend of rain seems fine just fine.

The groundcover strawberries under the blackberries is doing great. It's thick and seems to be suppressing many weeds. Very pleased.

Jay Angler wrote:
2. I have read that some of the "fancy" lilies, are crosses with things which aren't as edible to humans, so I've only eaten the common orange daylily Hemerocallis fulva without "improvement" - I suggest you research the selections and see if you can find out about the edibility of them..

I've read the same. There are a couple species used as edibles in Japan and China  http://www.hemerocallis-species.com/HS/Articles/Hem_Evolution_d.htm has good species listing:

*  H. altissima (Stout, 1942) got its name due to its tall scapes which can be up to 2m tall. The buds are also sometimes used as vegetables after being dried (but more often this is done with H. citrina buds).
* H. citrina (Baroni, 1897) is the most odorous Hemerocallis species. Probably due to this trait, its buds are collected shortly before opening in the late afternoon, dried and sold as vegetables, which are then added to meat and/or other vegetables.  

There is also a listing of the ten H fulva varieties and selections that are based on historic collection, not hybridizing. Kwanso is well established historically (introduced to the west from Japan in 1712), and Rosalind was a selection from the wild in China sent to the US in the early 1900s. I'd be comfortable considering all these to be H fulva, especially noting
H. fulva 'Europa' is likely what many of us have as wild ditch lilies.

Thanks for the roadside advice; i'll go look for the other thread -- it was an impluse to add to my main question -- while i'm asking how many plants lemme ask if i can fill out that number with some form the ditch. So, nope. Won't do that.

Does anyone grow daylilies as a significant food source? If so, how many plants do you grow per person and what is your production like?

I'd like to get a sense of how many plants are needed to get a few meals of buds a week in season, and then what the harvest of roots could be.

I've bought H fulva selections 'Kwanzo' (a double known in the west since 1721) and 'Rosalind' (known in the west since 1930 and the type for H fulva var rosea).  'Kwanzo,' which is a triploid double, will produce plumper buds, i presume.  I gave in to 'Rosalind' a a weakness for variety in color. Then there are feral ones at the ditch by the road. I haven't transplanted any of the ditch ones although i've harvested a few buds here and there, aware there is some likelihood of lead contamination. The road was probably not heavily traveled during the era of leaded gasoline, so i ponder how concerning transferring plants from the location would be (because i do want to eventually eat the tubers).

Reactivating this thread....

I pickle the scapes (flowering stalk)  just as they are starting to uncurl. The curliques look lovely as a pickled garnish on a dish and taste pretty good. I also pickle smaller slices - relish sized - of the scapes to use like relish.

This was the first year i've gotten serious about thinning. Using the whole onion after the spring growth gets going but before the scapes show up has worked out well -- the white part of the onions has been not terribly sharp or unpleasant. I'd been cautions because  maybe it was a summer plant i picked and tried to use the white part and it was terribly sharp. Might have been a different onion, though. I've had the white parts roasted/air fried as a veg with similarly cooked asparagus. Lovely.

Regrets to Allen Ayers for hijacking their post.

After cooking up the scant pound of beans i harvested from my mother plant last year, i froze them in small serving sizes. I'd gotten anxious about the bitterness:  did  that meant the beans were high in phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) and i'd somehow not neutralized it all? Yesterday lunch i ate my first serving and, yup, still bitter. But no distress.

The plant, now in its 4th year i think, takes over a corner of the garden plot. I am almost OK with it because it also an area with sunchokes that i am not crazy about -- but it's a sunny corner, and i'm shade limited.  I've another spot where a descendant is thriving in a sunnier place, and it out performs Matt's wild cherry tomatoes. I'm pretty sure i'll be digging up those plants this winter. I'll see if the progenitor plant can manage at the edge of the woods by the road, and replace it with it's descendant in the garden, until i determine whether its seeds are not particularly bitter.

If someone has good tasting Phaseolus polystachios i'd be delighted to have seed. It's lovely to have a perennial bean that is so vigorous, but less so when eating is a chore.

I'm happy to share seed of this parent plant grown from Prairie Moon stock.

Sooo, hmm.

Curious about anyone else's experience with cooking Phaseolus polystachios. I just cooked the first significant harvest i had from the beans last fall. I’d soaked for over 24 hours, changing the water frequently and found it took hours simmering for the beans to soften. And they have a bitter edge. Wondering if people change the water while cooking, although, it seems the bitter is the “skin” of the bean, not the thickened “gravy” around the beans.

I'll note i drink my coffee black and like Fernet Branca so when i say something's bitter, i'm still going to eat it, but i'm not sure others will.

https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Phaseolus+polystachios is not enthusiastic about the edibility.

I wonder -- do i have a bitter plant? Is there a better way to cook them? (Slow cooker, will be used next time, clearly -- i thought they were so small and relatively fresh that they would cook quickly.)

I'm probably going to take these and try them a number of different ways. Probably will up the salt, add more sweetness, and perhaps sour cream or something fatty to balance the bitter note.

've some dehydrated butternut squash, and ponder a soup.  And i've some dehydrated tomatoes from last year.  Figs for sweetness? (I'd already added carrots and molasses.)

Hi, the pollinators i've seen on my established plants are all very small. Longer write up at https://permies.com/t/179300/Phaseolus-polystachios-thicket-bean-wild#1863013

Eh, this was meant to be a reply with a quote. Fiddlesticks.