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

Cafe Society
21

For years, I’ve grown tomatoes and habanero peppers. I’ll do tomatoes again this year, but last year, I ended up with more habaneros than expected. I really don’t need any more, but they freeze well (I’ve got a couple of Tupperwares full of them in the freezer), and won’t go to waste, especially when I make homemade chili.

I’ve also got some cayennes from last year. I’ve been drying them for the last seven months, and plan to grind them up to make red pepper flakes. I think I can do that in my food processor, but I’m not sure. Anybody tried it?

This year, instead of habaneros, I’m thinking of peas. Apparently, there’s a variety that is ready by midsummer (in our climate), and I do love fresh garden peas.

Other than that, things have been mostly herbs: oregano, thyme, parsley, dill, basil. And when I had cats, I’d grow catnip for them.

22

As @Ulfreida mentioned above, the Santa Clara valley was once heaven on Earth for growing things, and our small backyard veg bed in Sunnyvale yielded enuf jarring Roma tomatoes to last a year. We also had cherries, and an ancient pippin apple tree in the front yard that gave us great pies and sauce.

More recently I forage the local creekside trails around our place in the Sacramento area for about two weeks each summer for wild blackberry to turn into jam, which has the texture of caviar and a superior flavor to anything store bought. Once in a while we get a box of peaches from someone’s yard tree and turn that into a nice jam, too. One time we got a bag of chestnuts. There are a lot of fig trees growing wild around here but I never seem to time it right.

Rosemary grows abundantly in our backyard so whenever we need a sprig it’s convenient. It’s the only thing we can reliably harvest from our yard after many failed attempts trying to grow things in the harsh climate and poor soil.

23

My best gardening success was Chinese red long beans, grown in a side planter in the front yard. Harvested them at about 18 inches. Cook up just like green beans but they stay dark purple.

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24

As a kid growing up on the farm, you name it. Even snapping turtle, which a poster up thread said no thanks to. We never had milk cows, though. We raised beef cattle.

25

Wow, I’ve not done not nearly as much as many of the expert growers and foragers here.

When I used to have a vegetable garden, I’d grow mostly tomatoes, peppers and basil.

We used to have an apple tree that produced hundreds of apples. I made a couple 5 gallon batches of hard cider from them. We still have a pear tree that produces small but tasty fruit, but we have to fight the squirrels for them.

We get morels of varying quantity from our yard right around now- sometimes none, sometimes a couple, sometimes hundreds. I’ve found 3 this season so far.

I’ve eaten probably gallons of blueberries camping in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

We get a lot of an invasive plant called garlic mustard that’s supposed to be good eatin’ but I haven’t tried cooking any up yet.

Done a little fishing. Nothing better than grilled fish you just caught an hour or two ago.

Venison- not hunted myself but given to me by family members.

Give ‘em a try! They’re delicious- they taste like little lobsters.

26

I accidentally grew cherry tomatoes one season. They were excellent. Plus, squishing the caterpillar beasties that came to eat the leaves was very satisfying.

27

In addition to commonly cultivated vegetable crops like beans, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, sweet and hot peppers and garlic which have been grown in my gardens, less commonly consumed vegetables and fruits have included:

Wild violets (young leaves are good in spring cooked like spinach)
Purslane (crunchy texture and mild citrus-like flavor, good in salads)
Wild onion (a pestiferous garden weed but edible; larger specimens have a sizable bulb)
Wild blackberries and mulberries grow in profusion on my current property in KY, supplemented by cultivated kinds
Serviceberries (fine for fresh eatng or to make pies and muffins)
Jujubes (harvested from small spiny trees, taste something like apples), anticipating first sizable crop this year along with Japanese plums that are bearing for the first time)
Honeyberries, yet to crop in sizable numbers
Gooseberries, ditto
Daylily buds
Malabar spinach, a tropical/subtropical variation on regular spinach, grows well in warm weather
Perennial onions including “walking” onion
and of course figs - fresh and dried fruit from my 75 or so trees, most of which are grown in tubs and hauled under cover in winter for cold storage above 15F.

I envy Qadgop for having access to ramps, which I haven’t spotted growing in our woods but sampled when I lived in West Virginia.

I am fond of crawfish, but never harvested any of the burrowing kind when I lived in SE Texas where they were something of a lawn pest. It turns out they live in Kentucky too. I may have to import some giant Tasmanian crawfish which grow up to two and a half feet long.

28

The full lifetime list is too long for the page, but this year:
Cultivated on our land (including things not yet at point of harvest):
Rhubarb, watercress, tomatoes, aubergines(eggplant), courgettes(zucchini), bottle gourds, broad(fava) beans, runner beans, french beans, lettuce, radishes, swiss chard, kohl rabi, pak choi, leeks, spring onions, Florence fennel, potatoes, lovage, savory, chives, garlic chives, basil, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Saskatoon berries, tayberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, haskap berries, goji berries and japanese quince.

Growing wild on our land:
Stinging nettles, ground elder, chickweed, bittercress, elderberries, blackberries, raspberries, wild strawberries

Foraged:
Wild garlic in 4 different species (Ramsons, three cornered leek, rosy-flowered garlic and crow garlic), sorrel, hop shoots, hogweed, stinging nettles, sea beet, elderberries, sloes, bullaces/damsons, crab apples, blackberries. I’ll be looking for all kinds of wild mushrooms too, but not had great luck the past couple of years.

29

I am envious of the folks who have successful vegetable gardens. :slight_smile:

About ten years ago I set out to grow my own vegetables. I bought a tiller, tilled a 15’ X 20’ patch of soil, planted seeds, applied fertilizer, etc. etc. I even stringed together a bunch of soaker hoses and connected them to a timer.

We got a few nice vegetables. But it was a losing battle with the weeds and grass that were growing in the garden.

Other people I knew (that also had backyard gardens) didn’t seem to have the same problem. I mean, they had some weeds. But not to the extent that we had them.

I wasn’t sure why we had such a problem with them. But I do have a hypothesis: we live in a very rural area, and there are many acres of wild forest and wild prairies that directly surround our homestead. The seeds from the many acres of wild-growth are constantly being blown around, thousands of which settled on our garden. If this hypothesis is correct, I am thinking the only solution is a greenhouse.

30

Growing up, we had a plum tree, a pear tree, and a couple of apple trees in the back yard. Disease gradually took out all but the plum tree, which produced sweet tiny plums until it was toppled by Hurricane Fran. There were some grape vines near the house that I was told were wild, but they didn’t seem to produce edible fruit. I don’t know that honeysuckle counts as a foodstuff, but we had plenty of that too (you can sip the nectar from the base of the flower).

At my house now, I have two fig bushes (trees?) in the back yard - brown turkey and black mission. I wasn’t expecting either to do much when I planted them, but they’re massive now - I can almost pick fruit from my second story bedroom. They produce enough fruit each year that we can share with the neighbors and the birds and still have plenty for preserving and freezing. The soil here is terrible, so pretty much all of my gardening (excluding the two beds the builder carved out) is done out of containers. I’ve successfully produced lots of cucumbers this way, along with some very tiny carrots and potatoes. I tried growing squash, but none of the plants produced fruit; once I realized that, I harvested the blossoms instead.

31

Aw, I came in to add these to the list but you scooped me! :wink: I think I’m the first to add sumac buds and beech nuts, though.

However, people don’t seem to be counting as “foodstuffs” edible substances that are just the occasional taste instead of a harvest, such as honeysuckle nectar. So I guess that might rule out those examples (and dogwood fruits too) in my case.

32

Ooh, I had a little taste of nectar from white deadnettle flowers yesterday!

33

Big thumbs up to this. We haven’t grown it, but we get it from CSA. Purslane is delicious.

34

I picked some in a forest in Sweden. The flavour, as you note, was simply amazing.

My mother used to grow chives, so I had that a lot back when I lived with my parents.

And that’s about it, I guess.

35

We have a chive plant outside the back door that I grab a leaf from a few times a week. Eggs, potatoes, chicken, etc get a sprinkling of fresh cut chives.

Aside from that, I sometimes throw some sprouting potatoes in the ground behind the house to dig up in the fall but that’s about it. I’m not interested enough in backyard gardening to spend the time on the weeds and bugs and bed tending.

36

My house came with a grape vine, that I pulled up off the ground and gave a 6’ chain link fence to. It is prolific. Usually I save enough grapes from the birds to get 1-2 pies, or some jelly, or once I made grape fruit.

When I moved in I had 14 pear and apple trees. But you can’t harvest pears from a 40’ pear tree, you can only step on them when they fall. I’ve eaten pears from my yard but now the fruit trees are all long gone.

@CairoCarol I’d be interested in you posting about your chocolate making experience if you get around to it!

37

I currently grow various herbs in containers - mint, oregano, thyme, etc,- which we use to season meat. I also have a few cherry tomato plants.

In the past, I’ve also grow okra and eggplant.

I’ve never hunted anything. I have had fish that friends caught and gave to us.

I tried shea nut fruit, which is foraged, but I found the taste horrible.

38

We don’t have all that much space, but I’ve been expanding it.
All our lemons come from our tree. Our kids who’ve moved away are unhappy about having to pay for them. We have little but delicious oranges every other year.
For herbs, we have a rosemary bush which supplies us, plus chives, oregano, thyme, sage (lots of sage,) and parsley. Our neighbor has a bay tree which grows over the fence, which we are welcome to take from when we need bay leaves. It is really nice to be able to walk out the back and get fresh herbs needed for a recipe.
We have lots of onions, both for scallions and to dry. They lasted all last winter.
For vegetables we have snow peas (first ones coming,) string beans, various sorts of squash, eggplants, and lots of tomatoes, both from the store and volunteer cherry tomatoes which I’ve been moving to better places.
When we lived in NJ I did plant asparagus which was great when it came up. When we lived in southern Louisiana we planted okra and jalapenos. I’ve planted jalapenos here but they have never been very good and not worth it since the little I use can come from the store.

39

Not a lot. We planted cherry tomatoes each year in Portland, and the occasional squash plant. Also had a strip of strawberry plants and an Asian pear tree that was very difficult to keep free of pests. We also had a couple of herb boxes on the back deck. As for the neighborhood, there were blackberry brambles near the railroad tracks, but we never availed ourselves. We had nothing in Anchorage, as the weather was not conducive to home grown veggies. We did go foraging for wild blueberries every year, though, and there was a raspberry patch near where we lived.

Now we’re in an apartment, but there is a terrace where we can grow tomatoes in a pot, and we set up an herb garden for general use by residents and the kitchen. The wife’s niece grows tons of stuff every year and we get some of that bounty.

40

I have an allotment (the US equivalent may be a plot on a community garden). So: at home and on the allotment I have grown (I’ll bold the more interesting ones)

Several types of potato
Pumpkins
Squash (several types)
Courgette
Broad/fava beans
Runner beans
French beans
Mangetout (Hello!)
Peas
Chickpeas (you wouldn’t expect that tp work in SE England, but it did)
Onions
Spring onions/scallions
Bell peppers
Aubergines/eggplants (several varieties)
Chillies (various)
Courgette/zucchini
Cucumbers
Lettuce
(Tomatoes always fail)
Cabbage (waste of effort)
Broccoli
Spinach
Carrots
Beetroot
Onions (several types)
Turnip
Swede
Asparagus
Coriander/Cilantro
Okra (failed)
Sweet potatoes (failed)
Many different herbs
Nasturtiums

Also quite a variety of fruits at different times

Strawberries
Gooseberries
Blackcurrants
Redcurrants
Pinkcurrants
Grapes
Apples
Pears
Medlars

New this year
Kale
Raspberries
Blueberries

Foraged
Apples
Pears
Mulberries
Plums (several types)
Blackberries
Blueberries
Wild strawberries
Walnuts (in France)
Hazelnuts
Chestnuts
Cherries
Mushrooms

I imagine I’ve forgotten quite a lot.

j