I’m in Massachusetts, and my two pawpaws are doing well!
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Possumhaw is a great name, and it sounds like it is pretty as it goes through the seasons!
Black tupelo sounds quite interesting! Definitely goes up to my area of New England, but I don’t think I can plant a 100’ tree here. Too bad, sounds delicious.
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I keep meaning to plant some miner’s lettuce!
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I just planted some groundnut (apios Americana) in a new spot, hope it’ll survive - the last time it was too dry.
I had never heard of hog peanut! Thank you.
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I chuckled at your cultivation method
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i have 2 patches of groundnut growing well here in n. Maine. 1 is the Kennebec variety i got off Okio’s years ago. the other is a LSU developed variety i got off a member on here. the Kennebec is super productive. almost invasive with 0 care. i have to cut it back to control it. the other is only in its 2nd year but seems slower to spread. considering where it was developed, im surprised it survived at all.
Love these. But, use a container or be prepared for them to take over!
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They’re delicious. You can cook them all the ways you cook a potato, but very different taste and texture. They’re crisp and light and caramelized when you roast them. You can also shave them and eat raw over salads or other dishes. They’re just awesome. They also sprout and shoot up 100x faster than a potato and SPREAD. Be careful.
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I have wintergreen (gaultheria procumbens), snowberry (gaultheria hispidula), bayberry (myrica pensylvanica), sweetfern (comptonia peregrina), sweet gale (myrica gale), Labrador tea (rhododendron groenlandicum), and inkberry holly (ilex glabra). I think all, or at least most, of those are also native to Massachusetts.
The wintergreen and snowberry spread nicely and produce a few berries that are a fun snack. I also pick the leaves of both in the wild for tea, but it takes a few years and some space to get a large enough patch established for that. You can buy nursery plants of wintergreen with oversized berries, but I just propagated mine from a wild plant.
The sweet gale and Labrador tea are bog plants and I haven’t tried planting them in the ground, but I’ve got both in 1 and 5 gallon pots packed with sphagnum moss and they survived last summer and this winter that way. The flowers, leaves, and especially the early buds of both, as well as those of bayberry and sweetfern are very aromatic and I use them all as spices, mostly to flavour chocolates.
I really like tea made from the oxidized and dried leaves of inkberry holly, but only from wild plants because mine is still too small to harvest, but I’ve seen large plants sold as ornamental hedge plants, which would probably produce a lot of leaves in a short time. Once they get well established they can be fast growing.
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I am not sure how unusual these are but Oregon Stonecrop is apparently edible. I tried it and the texture was very interesting and lovely, however, the aftertaste that hits later is much much less lovely. I also grow Redwood Sorrel that is both edible and tasty according to my 4yo but I didn’t get to try it yet.
wintergreen/teaberry will not establish here, I think it’s too dry. I’ve tried several time
I have been looking for common/edible camas though- I want to get some going in around my prairie sage patch. I know they’re good, I’ve had them- haven’t trusted a source for them to plant out yet though. the poisonous one looks real similar
I’m not surprised—it grows all over the place here, but only where the roots have constant access to moisture and where the leaves are kept dry in the summer. Can you grow slender wintergreen there?
I’ve thought about growing death camas in the hope that the deer would eat it, but they’d probably survive anyway.
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access to moisture
that’s not a thing where I am. high desert! I have pawpaw and mushrooms in the shade where the roof water accumulates, that’s the only spot that stays with water access.
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