Protein and calcium are the two main nutrients in acorns. I don't know if the calcium leaches out, but the protein would not.

I have a long and strong interest in wild foods and foraging. It is fun to experiment and also to have some idea of what it might take to survive, if need be.

There is no way to know, leeneia, but I suspect that acorns, abundant as they are in many parts of the temperate climate world, were an important contribution to the winter stores our hunter-gatherer ancestors stored in the back of the cave.

I'd agree that most of the acorns that fall in my yard do not germinate, but within another month, acorns will lie so thick on the ground here as to look almost like mulch, and I suspect the same could be true at Bobert's. The first mowing in spring is to cut off the leaves on the seedlings that are shading out the newly greening grass, and it is a couple of months worth of hard weekend work to stay on top of pulling seedlings out of the garden beds before they have sufficient tap root to be hard to remove. While I haven't made it to Bobert and P-Vine's new digs yet, I have a good idea of the scale on which they garden, and walking around on a wet spring day is not sufficient to control the seedlings.

More on the gardening thread.