BS: Gardening: What's Edible?

Subject: BS: Gardening: What쳌fs Edible?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 08:46 AM

For years I쳌fve grown tomatoes, peppers, runner beans, broad beans, cucumbers, courgettes, potatatos, sugar peas & other stuff in my small garden.

Some쳌fve the garden plants are starting to crop around now.

While harvesting the first broad beans, shelling 쳌eem for cooking, it crossed my mind that there쳌fs a lot of wastage going on with the pods.

I tried cooking the pods too, to eat & they쳌fre pretty good & tasty if only the most tender ones are used.

I쳌fm now wondering if other parts of crop plants can be eaten safely.

I쳌fm aware that potato stems, leaves etc are poisonous, as are rhubarb leaves, but I don쳌ft know about the leaves, stems, roots etc of the other crops listed above.

I쳌fve checked out Wikipedia & some other sites for info, but so far only come up with that the roots of runner beans can be eaten.

Anyone know more?

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What쳌fs Edible?
From: Sooz
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 09:13 AM

Broad beans are indeed excellent "mange tout". The bits of the plants we don't fancy eating go across the road to the free range chickens!
You can eat courgette flowers, but it is a devil of a job getting rid of the little black beetles. Also chive flowers. I don't think I'd try eating anything but the fruits of the tomatoes and peppers.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What쳌fs Edible?
From: gnomad
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 09:29 AM

Beetroot- and radish tops are fine for salads (as are young dandelion leaves, though you probably don't cultivate them)

Nasturtium leaves as salad are not much to my taste but may be to yours. You can pickle nasturtium seeds as a substitute for capers, I've had those (fair to poor) but am not fond of capers anyway so my opinion is probably best ignored, I don't have a recipe.

Peapods are a decent vegetable steamed or sauteed in a little butter, but they need to be well picked over, and not too mature.

Courgette flowers can be battered or stuffed, the Italians seem fond of them.

Careful does it with the bean family, some are only safe if well cooked.

Apple pips are ambrosia to some, but contain a cyanide precursor which means your body will make a little cyanide when digesting them. Consumed in moderation the body will deal with this small quantity without noticeable effects.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What쳌fs Edible?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 09:57 AM

Yes, I've used Nasturtium leaves & flowers both raw & also in stir fries - nice 'n spicy!

Any other suggestions, can bean, pea leaves be eaten for example?

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What쳌fs Edible?
From: MMario
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 10:30 AM

Bean (the haricot/new world varieties) and pea leaves can be eaten, but you are probably best to use only the very young leaves; they get tough fast. the srouting tips of both can be used in salads, and the young tendrils of pea vines are also used in salad or a cooked veggie.

The flowers of any of the cucumber/squash/melon/watermelon family are edible; they are sometimes stuffed or battered and fried.

Carrot tops, turnip/swedes/rutabega; leaves can all be used - again, go for the tender shoots.

Just about any part of broccoli/cauliflower can be eaten - but stems will probably be best peeled; older leaves get tough.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What쳌fs Edible?
From: bobad
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 10:42 AM

If you grow garlic, the scapes or flower stalks that shoot up in the center of hard neck or rocambole varieties, are generally snapped off to direct more resources to the bulbs. These are good to eat, they can be used in stir frys, soups or whizzed up in a food processor and added to butter or margarine for making garlic bread.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What쳌fs Edible?
From: MMario
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 11:19 AM

sprouting wheat, barley, or rye are also candidates for salads.

The very young stalks of maize and sorghum can be eaten - up to about 6 inches - then they are just too tough.

Sunflower buds are edible but I found them to be very bitter. peelng the entire green caseing off and boiling in multiple changes of water helps.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Micca
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 12:09 PM

There was a famous Job ad in the "New Scientist" here in the UK some years ago for an "Edible Oil Technologist" but I am not sure how you would grow one, The leaves of Tomato and potato probably contain Atropine as they are both Nightshade family, Rhubarb leaves contain Oxalic acid which is toxic.
Sorrel is quite nice, when availabe, in salads adding a slightly acid tang and a salad of nasturtium leaves (be stingy and use very few so as not to overpower the other ingridients) young spinach,rocket and watercress in the right mix is Very Nice with a simple walnut oil ,Lime juice and a small amount of wine vinegar dressing

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 01:32 PM

I live in the southern US and we grow blackeye and crowder peas. We don't intentionally pick immature pods, but a few invariably wind up in the bucket anyway. We just cut them up into inch-long pieces and toss 'em in the pot. As long as the pods haven't already turned fibrous they cook up fine and add visual interest.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Janie
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 06:26 PM

Don't forget that many of the "weeds" commonly pulled out of gardens are also edible, and best early before they get tough and fiberous.   Chickweed, purslane, violet, woods sorrel, shepherd's purse, lamb's quarters, winter cress, young pokeweed shoots, to name a few.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 06:30 PM

Nettles, I believe.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 06:56 PM

Here's a recipe for "nettle ale" I haven't tried it, but it looks straightforward enough. I think you could probably substitute nettles for hops in a standard beer recipe and get an interesting brew.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Janie
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 07:30 PM

Eyup. Though where I live in the southeast USA they are rarely found in gardens, but in shady, moist woods.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Janie
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 07:42 PM

What species of nettles are common in the UK?

In my region of the USA the most common are urtica chamaedryoides (commonly called heart leaf nettle here, and urtica dioica (stinging nettle). There are also two other plants that are not urticas, boehmeria cylindrica (false nettles), and laportea canadensis, (wood nettle.) Wood nettle is edible. False nettle is not.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: gnu
Date: 08 Jul 09 - 08:43 PM

150 beets in a 5 X 4' plot.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 04:45 AM

Janie - UK native stinging nettles are urtica dioica (Perennial) and the smaller, annual, urtica urens, which is a common weed in ploughed fields. The annual has considerbly fewer stings on its leaves and stem compared with the perennial.
We also have an assortment of Dead Nettles. Completely unrelated to the stingng ones, but with leaves that look almost identical. White dead nettle often grows in similar locations to the perenial, but the white flowers are a dead giveaway.
Quack
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 05:05 AM

Borage is lovely - bit spikey if not chopped fine. Salad & drinks.
Stinging nettles (the tops of spring growth only) are lovely sauted well.
Marigold petals, in salads and baking (for colour).
The ribs of chard can be cooked separately to the green, and treated like celery, with butter.
Woody Rosemary spears (stripped) can be used as BBQ scewers.
The leafy tops of celery can be treated like celery flavoured parsley.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 05:46 AM

Mr Happy - If you decide to have a go at eating the non cultivated plants in your garden or from elsewhere, there are some excellent books produced by photographer Roger Phillips to help identfy what to look for, plus some recipes and other information. One is called "Wild Food" and there are others on Mushrooms. They are "Coffee Table" format, so not the best for "field work", although I used to take the mushroom one out on collection forays because the photos gave better detail of real specimens than many of the more scientific field guides that had a habit of starting the identification key with the colour of spores - a process usually done overnight with a sheet of paper. No use if you want to eat your newly identified edible fungus fresh.

Point two - Wild food - although there are potentially hundreds of wild plants which you can sustain existence by eating, personal experience is that there are good reasons why we eat the crops we now use. Wild plants often have thin leaves compared with the cultivated plants which replaced them, so you get a better meal out of one cabbage. Often the flavour or texture of the wild plant is less pleasant than a farmed crop. In other cases the wild variety is smaller, or possibly a protected species. I have "pulled wild mountain thyme" and the leaves are smaller, hairier and tougher than the ones from the garden shop.
My personal classification of wild plants and mushroom include :-
Edible and Excellent!
Edible and Worthwhile - tastes good and found in sufficient quantity to be worth picking.
Edible but not worth the bother - You can eat it, but flavour indifferent, or difficult to find enought to use due to to size.
Edible, but don't touch with a bargepole. Usually tough or slimy texture, bitter or unmpleasant taste.

That said, all the TV chefs and posh sandwich shops want us to eat rocket (which they try to pronounce rock-ette), but as far as I am concerned, it is still the same weed in my "bargepole" category along with rose bay willow herb which tastes about as pleasant.

Back to your original posting about not wasting bits you grow. That is why they invented composting. The surplus inedible bits are not wasted, they are converted back into something which improves the soil and feeds the bits of plant worth eating.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 11:28 AM

Geoff,

Thanks for that



.........on a similar theme, there's numerous garden pests I'm compelled to wage war on such as the shelled & unshelled invertebrates.

I believe the Romans introduced some of these for eating.

Anyone know if they're still around in gardens?

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 09 Jul 09 - 04:43 PM

The Romans are responsible for ground elder (they ate it as veg) and garden snails (protein). *&%£")**!!!!
But also sweet chestnuts, so maybe we let them off.
Blame the Normans for rabbits.

Paws

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: GUEST,Geoff the Duck
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 05:12 AM

Is this thread just a pitch for a new TV programme?
"I'm in Mr Happy's Garden.....
Get me out of here!!!"

Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 08:32 AM

Just checked out snails on Wiki p.

England, southern areas on chalk.

It is not native to the British Isles. It was introduced to the British Isles by the Romans during the Roman period (AD 43-410); its common name in the UK is Roman snail.

In England only (not the rest of the UK) the Roman snail is a protected species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, making it illegal to kill, injure, collect or sell Roman snails.

So if we eat any, we go gaol?

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 13 Jul 09 - 06:39 AM

....tried some radish leaves with me Sunday dinner, horrible!

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 13 Jul 09 - 12:03 PM

I did warn you!
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 13 Jul 09 - 12:08 PM

Remember.
Grass is perfectly edible, but tastes MUCH better after a bio (low) technology conversion to protein - Cow, sheep, rabbit etc.
Likewise, something such as a goose will happily convert your Roman Snail quite legally into eggs you can eat...
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: bubblyrat
Date: 13 Jul 09 - 12:33 PM

I always thought that it was the Romans who introduced the Rabbit as a meat-source into Britain ,not the snail-eating Normans,who arrived here in escargot-ships ??Anyway,in and around Marlow recently,I have discovered enough in the way of cob-nuts,walnuts,beech-mast,sloes,wild thyme,blackberries,rowan berries and elderberries to keep me occupied all this Autumn !

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: MMario
Date: 13 Jul 09 - 12:36 PM

What's a cob-nut?

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 13 Jul 09 - 03:25 PM

Am I one of the few that like to eat raw garlic?

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: GUEST,Peace
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 05:53 AM

Frank, one evening I got inyo raw garlic with a buddy of mine. We ate about 25 cloves each. He insisted we eat 'em with feta cheese which cuts the 'sting' a bit. Twoo hours after falling asleep I was paged out on a MVC call. I swished some tooth paste in my mouth all the way to the hall--about 4-5 minutes. I was in the back of the rescue truck and someone said, "What the hell's that smell?" Honest, we got to withing two kilometers of the scene when we were turned back. Total round trip was 145 or so kms. The guys were tempted to don their SCBA.

BUT, yes, I too love raw garlic. Y'ain't alone out there.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 05:54 AM

Fresh dandelion greens. Oil, vinegar or lemon, dash of salt and Bob's yer uncle.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: gnomad
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 07:46 AM

Cobnuts (like filberts and barcelona nuts) are a variety of hazel nut.

Another occasional consumer of raw garlic here, I suspect we have a tendency towards solitude (grin)

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 08:28 AM

In Solzhenitsyn's 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' the prisoners are fed boiled grass - anyone tried it?

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Peace
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 07:02 PM

Can't be digested by people. I have chewed the chlorafill/chlorofil/klorofill green stuff out of it because that's s'posed to be good for a guy. But I've never eaten the grass itself--other than grasses grown to be eaten: wheat, oats, rye, etc. I suspect it could cause blockage in the colon. ??

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: bobad
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 07:10 PM

In principle, people can eat grass; it is non-toxic and edible. As a practical food source, however, your lawn leaves a lot to be desired.

There are two main problems with a grass diet. The first is that human stomachs have difficulty digesting raw leaves and grasses. Animals such as cows, on the other hand, have a specialized stomach with four chambers to aid in the digestion of grass (a process called rumination).

Aside from the digestion issues, a second problem with grass as a food source is the mastication. Your dentist would not be pleased; grass contains a lot of silica, an abrasive which quickly wears down teeth. Grazing animals have teeth that are adapted to continually grow, replacing the worn tooth surfaces quickly.

http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/070226_eat_grass.html

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 15 Jul 09 - 04:48 AM

Chlorophyll, Peace, although it being "good for you" is standard mumbo-jumbo "health food" marketing man/well meaning "don't understand science" rubbish. It has a biological function, which is, in green plants, to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and water. If eaten by an animal, it is just another foodstuff molecule.
If you were to eat grass, much of the non-water part of it would be the cell walls made from non-digestible cellulose fibre. It would keep you "regular" similarly to eating bran, which is pretty much the same sort of fibre.
There will be nutrients and things such as sugars and proteins which you can digest. I would expect fresh grass to contain a similar amount of these as an equivalent weight of other leaves, although possibly not as much as cultivated vegetables such as cabbage, kale or spinach. Essentially, you could use grass as part of your diet, but most of it would just pass straight through without providing any food value, but the same could be said for most leaf vegetables.
That said, why would you bother. Leave it to the experts - rabbits, cows, sheep. Eat the middleman.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Peace
Date: 15 Jul 09 - 04:50 AM

SHEEP?

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 15 Jul 09 - 04:55 AM

They eat a heck of a lot more grass than I do.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 15 Jul 09 - 05:08 AM

Or to keep it a bit more scientific - sheep and horses, unlike cows, do not have extra stomachs full of specialist bacteria which produce enzymes which break down cellulose into smaller digestible molecules. This means that in horses and sheep (and various other animals), fibre is not digested the way it is in cows. As a result it passes through, which explains the composition of horse manure, which is not that different from the original grass.
It also means that horses and sheep need to eat a very large quantity of grass for the small digestible percentage to add up to enough useable food to sustain them. Luckily sheep have all day to graze, so do quite well on grass. They also do quite nicely in a casserole...
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Jeri
Date: 15 Jul 09 - 08:11 AM

But you have to pluck them first.

Another problem with eating grass is what else might be on it. Pesticide, fertilizer (both processed and 'raw') and intestinal parasite eggs. Always wash your grass before you eat it. Don't wash it before you smoke it or it won't light.

I eat chives right out of the garden, and nasturtiums. I haven't gone for roses yet, but they're better for my eyes than for my stomach. I believe squash blossoms are edible, but they're also too pretty to eat, IMO.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 15 Jul 09 - 08:29 AM

Another problem with eating grass is what else might be on it.








Rabbit droppings, cow pats...










I'll get my goat...

Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening: What's Edible?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 16 Jul 09 - 09:11 AM

Sheep plucking?

Now that's novel!