Non-traditional crops for food security (human consumption focus)

Not sure, but Baker Creek sells a few varieties if you want to try them out and report back. :slight_smile:

Eric Toensmeier was trying to get to the bottom of that some years back. You might reach out to him or his cohort, Jonathan Bates. They’re both really nice guys. Eric is very generous in my experience.

If I recall correctly, he was saying that there are some selections for edible leaves from Puerto Rico, Cuba, or Hispaniola. @Luisport , are you aware of mulberry leaves being used as greens? I imagine he learned of this from neighbors. Im not sure if he’s still in Holyoke, MA or not, but it’s heavily Dominican and Puerto Rican. He was growing out one of them, I think he called it ‘Tigre’ or something pertaining to a large cat. It had very unusual lacey finely lobed leaves, that are apparently quite good.

Ive dabbled some with eating mulberry leaves. Id say you really want the young tender leaves- when they still have that transparent light green color. Its very similar with american basswood leaves, which are excellent salad greens. get em young and tender and mow em down, no cooking necessary

Yes Eric was on the podcast I keep bringing up :sweat_smile:

I believe it was his talk on the NAFEX conference where I learned about M. alba actually being many different species.

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what podcast episode are you referring to?

I believe this is the one but it may have been another.

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Semi-related but it seems like there is quite a bit of variety in dandelions (at least in BC) when looking very closely. I highly doubt this matters when it comes to eating dandelions but is kinda interesting: Dandelion diversity overlooked in British Columbia | Canadian Science Publishing

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Yeah, looks more and more like I leaned too hard into the “apomixis so they’re all the same” logic.

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