What foodstuffs have you gotten and consumed from your own garden, windowbox, back yard, fields, forests, or neighborhood wilderness?

Cafe Society
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1

The Mrs and I were talking idly today about foodstuffs we’ve eaten/gathered/produced/found on our own property over the decades. We’ve had small vegetable/herb gardens off and on, though they’ve not been terribly successful as the local deer are as thick as pea soup and as bold as thieves. But we also have 30 acres of woods with a stream, and 25 acres of cropland we rent out along with access to a Great Lake.

And after some discussion we realized we’ve consumed a lot of varied items from our own land over the years, from things cultivated, spontaneously found, and hunted/fished. And then the ones that were available that we declined to consume.

The cultivated items that we raised and harvested on our land:
Rhubarb, blueberries, chives, corn
carrots, basil, parsley, cilantro
rosemary, honey, maple syrup, walnuts

The found items from the woods and fields:
Ramps, Apples, pears, Grapes
Wild strawberries and raspberries
morels, chives, Asparagus
cat tail roots, fiddlehead ferns, chokecherries, cherries

The Hunted items from land and shoreland:
Deer, wild turkey, pheasant from our woods and fields
Salmon, trout, smelt, perch and whitefish, caught from casting/netting from our lakeshore.

The stuff we could have had but said ‘nope’ to:
crayfish
snapping turtle
snake
rabbit

What wild foodstuffs have you consumed that you got from your own garden, yard, or neighborhood?

2

It would be cool to have a kitchen garden, but I never have. The only thing I can think of that fits your description was picking wild strawberries in the fields outside our summer cottage. They were much smaller than the commercial ones, but with a more concentrated delicious flavour!

3

My mom is the grand champion of urban foraging, and I’ve shared in her bounty. In the deliberately cultivated on our own land category, we’ve got everything on your list but the honey and maple syrup, plus tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, pumpkin, several other squashes, spinach, lettuce, chard, beets, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, green beans, potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, peas, raspberries, blackberries, mulberries, hazelnuts, peaches, and chicken eggs. And I’m probably forgetting some.

From others’ gardens (but still in the neighborhood), apples, crabapples, pears, plums, cherries, figs, serviceberries.

Growing wild, blackberries, raspberries, mulberries, (in addition to the cultivated ones), currants, elderberries, dandelion, purslane, chickweed, garlic mustard, ramps. Morels don’t grow around here, but we have gotten them at an aunt’s house a few hundred miles away.

We’re in a city, so hunting or fishing locally would be problematic (though I’ve had plenty of game meat and fish that came from relatives’ land).

4

I’ve eaten wild strawberries. Other than that, I don’t dare eat anything foraged or what I can’t recognize/identify.

5

We have a reasonably productive garden. Lots of tomatoes, squash, herbs and peppers. A few blueberries and blackberries. Very little success in eggplant, asparagus and other vegetables.

Some years rabbits seem to eat almost everything. Some years they eat very little. No idea why.

6

I’ve eaten thimbleberries from the wilds of Michigan’s upper peninsula. Not that they were my particular wilds. I was on vacation.

7

The property I grew up on had a lot of produce – still does, although my brother, who owns it now, has taken out many of the trees.

We had:

Multiple varieties each of apples, cherries, pears, and peaches.
Both wild and domestic blackberries
Multiple varieties of grapes
Plums
Figs

My mom often grew tomatoes, although to my knowledge she didn’t do anything with them other than eat them raw. I hate tomatoes so never partook.

We did grow corn for summer dinners.

My parents raised chickens for several years so we would occasionally have fresh chicken for dinner. None of us hunted so wild game was never a thing on our table – to this day, and I’m 43, I don’t think I’ve ever had venison.

Since meeting my wife and moving in together 25 years ago we’ve only had fruit trees at one place, this one. Now those trees have been cut down so we’re starting with new ones next year. Apples and cherries hopefully.

My mom liked to can produce and would find locals to sell her strawberries, peaches, and pears that she would turn into preserves. She never used our own stuff, likely because she didn’t want to go harvest it first.

8

“Wineberries” from along the C&O canal towpath and the occasional pawpaw in the MD side of Great Falls. I really want to go (group/learn) mushroom foraging.

9

The best way to learn is to join a club or take a field study class. Worst way is with a book.

10

Growing up, we grew everything that it is possible to grow in the Santa Clara Valley, which was once one of the premier places on the entire planet to grow fruits, nuts, and vegetables. My grandmother was a magnificent practical gardener with a couple acres of loquats, pomegranates, grapes, kiwis, boysenberries, tangerines … as well as all the peaches plums apricots apples, pears, apples, walnuts, almonds … and a huge vegetable garden. We also hunted for mushrooms, and even one year, up in the Sierras, pine nuts. I have had food gardens wherever I lived, but this year I joined my local CSA and gave up my overlarge vegetable garden. I’m only growing apples, raspberries, and strawberries and rhubarb right now. Usually I have dairy goats (milk, chevre, yogurt, cheddar) and chickens, though I don’t butcher them, just for eggs.

11

I’ve eaten wild dewberries, raspberries, blackberries, crab apples, mulberries and hawthornes.

12

Since I live in Hawa’i on three acres, the main limit on what we can produce is “how much time and effort do we want to spend gardening?” We had pork from a feral pig trapped on our property, just once. If there is ever another one, we’ll have more.

Things we’ve deliberately planted (or a past owner did) and harvested, that I can remember off the top of my head, include:

sweet potato leaves
Okinawan spinach
Regiment spinach
cherry tomatoes
papayas
bananas
rosemary
oregano
pandan
2 kinds of mint
lemon balm
5 or 6 kinds of basil
long beans
pineapple
lemon grass
bay leaf
curry leaf
Tahitian limes
Kaffir (makrut) limes
Meyer lemons
oranges
calimansi
ginger
turmeric
ram gau (a Vietnamese herb)
kabocha
eggplant
sweet and hot peppers
Surinam cherries

Except for the leafy greens, herbs, and rhizomes, we don’t have all of those items continuously, but we have a decent subset of them ready to harvest all the time. (Except for tomatoes, which gave us a couple of good crops and then decided they hated us and would always die, so I don’t try any more.)

We also have a bunch of fruit and spice trees planted in the last five years or so that haven’t yet produced anything; some of what we’ve planted, like cinnamon and nutmeg, will probably not produce in our lifetimes but hopefully will benefit some future owner. Other items, like breadfruit, tangerines, lychees, jaboticaba, tamarind, durian, jackfruit and who knows what else (I live with a compulsive tree-planter and can’t keep track of everything he’s put in) may indeed give us some food in the future.

We have also started lining up for the annual “low-chill” trees that are imported once a year at a local gardening center. These are trees that typically need a cool/cold season, like apples and pears, that have been specially bred to (maybe) produce in warmer climates. No luck so far - last year’s peach tree died. This year, a jujube is so far thriving, but who knows when or if it will produce fruit.

I’ve foraged wild bitter melon from our property in the past but it’s not worth it so I don’t any more. We could forage at least one weed that supposedly is edible and which has attractive purple flowers that make an edible garnish, but with all the nice greens we have, I don’t bother.

Lastly, we have shrimp or some sort of crayfish in our river, but I don’t bother with those. The locals do.

I do realize how effing lucky I am!

13

Meyer lemons, tangelos, and chicken eggs. There are a couple of orange trees back in the woods, with the bitterest fruit you ever tasted.

14

Hah, I just went to start making dinner and got some coconut milk out. From coconut palms on our property, of course. How could I forget that?

15

Jealous. I fantasize about moving to Hawaii and growing fruit. Coconut, breadfruit, pineapple, passion fruit, citrus… And cacao and coffee.

Can you grow brambles and strawberries?

And i didn’t even realize you could grow spices. I would totally plant cinnamon and nutmeg. Who cares that i won’t love long enough to harvest it. I bet the plants smell nice just being near them.

16

Always have a garden with tomatoes, onions, squash, okra, cucumbers, zukes, melons. Peas and corn in a bigger field. Son grows 2 kinds of potatos at his house.
And my greens. Kale, tender greens, turnip green, spinach. (My favorites)

No eggplant. Not our favorite. Never have gotten asparagus to grow here.

We’ll try anything once.

I have fruit and nut trees. They make loads more than me, with my entourage can eat. Son takes bushels of Apples and pears to the farmers market a couple of times. We give away lots.

We have a nut shaking party when pecans or walnuts are ready. People love to come and take a bucket home.
I have a butternut tree but its kinda shy. Very few nuts.
I have a buckeye tree. Just now big enough to make any amount of nuts. Not really edible. There is some thought that Native Americans may have ground them like they did acorns.

Pond full of catfish and bream.

Husband doesn’t hunt at the house or acreage. He leases hunting land for his deer camp.

The only really wild thing we’ve foraged is persimmons and Scuppernong or Muscadine grapes.
There’s a wild plum here but the fruit is not good. I made jelly with them
once that had a bitter aftertaste.

I have a toothache tree. It has little knots allover the outer bark. You can cut one off and suck on it til its soft enough to chew. Tastes like clove gum.
Native Americans said it cured toothache.

Yep. We avail ourselve of the growing season.
My garden is all planted
Eating greens and spring onion. The radishes will be ready to dig up soon.

I have elderly chickens. Was thinking about getting some new chicks this year. We’ll see.

17

Oh yeah … I forgot passion fruit (called lilikoi here). And avocado. We’ve had both of those, and continue to have the vines / trees but right now they aren’t producing.

And we have one silly little coffee tree, which is nice because the flowers smell wonderful. But we’ll never get enough beans to matter.

Cacao, on the other hand … our tree has about 20 pods ripening right now. So probably we’ll try making our own chocolate within a few months.

Brambles I don’t know about! There are places on island where you can grow strawberries, but we haven’t succeeded on our property. (We got two bug-bitten strawberries before our one plant gave up and died.) Some nearby neighbors have managed, just barely. We had lunch there one time and dessert was a chocolate mousse and one strawberry per person, because that exhausted their supply.

Mature cinnamon trees do smell nice if you go up and scratch the bark; ours is still too small for that. And our nutmegs are just seedlings. Mature nutmeg trees don’t smell like much, because you don’t get the scent til you grate it. The mace is very pretty, though (also not aromatic until ground.)

18

Cultivated (2025 so far):

Asparagus… enough that we got sick of eating it.
Turnip greens
Tokinashi turnips - at least a couple of meals worth, but I don’t think there are more out there.
Various herbs - parsley, thyme, sage, spearmint, rosemary, oregano, Mexican oregano, and something else I’m not remembering.
Too much broccoli rabe.

What’s coming:
Tomatoes
Green beans
Black-eyed peas
Shallots
Garlic
Squash (of some kind)

That’s not too bad for a 1/6 acre lot with a fenced in “plant prison” (our term for the fenced-in garden to keep the bunnies and dog out). We’ve also got a couple hundred square feet at our church garden, but that all goes to their food pantry- my wife harvested 70 some-odd lbs of lettuce last week, and we’ll have a bunch of shallots in a few weeks too. And tomatoes, turnips, squash, and other stuff. We’re trying to figure out what to grow; apparently the Afghan refugees who frequent the church’s food pantry asked for “more leaves”, but we don’t really know what sort of leafy greens they grow in Afghanistan, nor is Google much help. It’s a bit late for spinach too, but collards and turnip greens do pretty well around here in the summers, so I hope they like them.

There’s nothing wild around here, unless our dog catches a squirrel or something.

19

From my own land, that I can think of at the moment:

Apples, pears, figs, hickory nuts, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, bell peppers, squash, some sort of hot peppers, scuppernong grapes, mint, blackberries, watermelon, wild onions, prickly pear cactus fruit. Eaten “wild strawberries” that aren’t, and aren’t worth it. Tried maypop fruit (tasteless). The nectar from honeysuckles. I’ve raised pumpkins for jack-o’-lanterns but didn’t eat them because I don’t like them. Gathered and prepared polkberry but never tried it myself. I have a patch that produces chanterelle mushrooms but it also produces poison ivy so I haven’t risked it.

If I expand it to neighboring relatives I can add European grapes, cherries, mulberries, corn, peanuts, and persimmons. (And if I include nearby “u pick” farms I can add peaches, muscadine grapes, and real strawberries.)

Probably some that I’ve missed.

20

The Dope are a self sufficient lot.

And giving back. To others. The land, Mental health. Wildlife.

This is fine to think of :face_holding_back_tears: !!