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This is dumb. Most plants resist cultivation. Bragging about being able to afford them does not make you Superior.
Also yields are important
I mean, I think that goes back to the whole “industrial farming” point. If it can’t be farmed, it won’t be commercially available. But there are plenty of plants that you could scavenge, if you knew what to look for.
One of my personal favorite niche plants is osha root. It’s one of the best cures for a sore throat. It tastes a little bit like dirty root beer, and it’ll numb your entire throat when you chew on it. Native Americans kept some around for medicine. You can even grind it up and smear it on shallow scrapes to numb the area. You can find it in teas like Throat Coat, which is a sort of secret weapon for performers and public speakers whenever they have a sore throat.
But it can’t be commercially farmed, because it exclusively grows in the Rocky Mountains where a specific type of fungus helps it thrive. It isn’t commercially viable to market to the masses like throat lozenges, (even though it is just as effective in reducing sore throats) because it has to be scavenged.
there are plenty of plants that you could scavenge
But what happens when “you” becomes a million people? A hundred million people? A billion people? Where I live, we can’t even have a nice field of flowers because a hundred Instagram models will trample and ruin it before spring is over. Scavenging and foraging literally cannot feed the 7 billion human mouths on this planet.
If it can’t be farmed there cannot be enough for everyone, but it will be exclusive to a select few. How they are selected is irrelevant.
My point wasn’t that commercial farming is bad. With 8 billion people on the planet, it’s a necessity. My point was simply that scavenging to supplant your needs should be more encouraged, and the knowledge should be passed down.
Most people live in large cities where this is not feasible for everyone at once. Also transportation is expensive.
If you have a garden (I recommend far from the street to avoid pollution), some wild plants will grow in it. It’s good to know which ones you can eat and to be able to distinguish them from poisonnous ones. This way, weeding can become a sort of harvest.
Resist cultivation or have some other undesirable properties. Often low yield, short harvest, low yield, difficult picking or transporting.
A favorite example of mine: oak’s acorns are sometimes edible. Roughly one in ten oaks produce edible acorns. They are indistinguishable from inedible ones unless you try them out - but inedible ones are fairly poisonous. The gene for edible acorns is recessive and it takes at least a decade before you know if a newly planted oak produces edible acorns or not, with a 10% probability of the former. It is just practically impossible to select for this criterion. Thus, we don’t eat acorns.
Often low yield, short harvest, low yield, difficult picking or transporting.
And let’s not forget, low yield.
For Polish speakers theres this book by prof. Łuczaj: https://lukaszluczaj.pl/dzikie-rosliny-jadalne-polski-pelny-tekst/ - every plant that grows in our region and can be eaten. In some more edgy cases backed by his own experimentation on himself.
Does he also document the fuckable plants? I’m asking for a friend
Oh boy are you in for a surprise…
There’s his “Sex in the great (grand?) forrest”. Its about best plants to fuck on (or under). Mostly. As side notes it does point out some local plants in particularly interesting shapes, or some one might rub themself against… This guy is commited. And also an actual true professor on an actual university.
Wow, you did not disappoint.
Just happened to have it… because of reasons.
Dewberries are so fucking delicious. I used to go pick them and make dewberry pie as a kid. God I miss that, they don’t grow where I live rn 😔
I harvest stinging nettle to use as a spinach replacement
I’m going to try to make maple syrup from big leaf maples this year too!
If you can’t kill it or fuck it then eat it. It’s that easy.
Why can’t I have 1 thing where all 3 are possible?
You can if you’re a spider
Paw paws grow naturally in the area I live and are a delicious fruit. Due to cultivation and transport issues you will never find them in stores.
which is why we need to normalize street markets like most tropical countries have, sure you can’t buy it at the store but you can buy it from a dude who went into the forest with a big basket a few hours ago.
I love seeing the explosion of interest in pawpaws over the last decade. They’re very good, a bit of a cross between mango and a banana. I’ve actually seen them at a local fsrmers market this season, I was pretty surprised.
My dad has a tree in his garden, and a friend has made pawpaw moonshine!
PSA: serviceberry is a very very very common decorative hedge, the berries are extremely tasty.
It absolutely baffles me how no one is growing them commercially to sell in grocery stores, they’re clearly grown commercially to some degree for use in juices and stuff, but i guess selling to individuals is just a step too far? It’s not like they’re even remotely difficult to grow or harvest…“ CaPiTaLiSm bReEdS InNoVaTiOn “
I had native persimmons for the first time today! In Virginia.
It isn’t all industrial agriculture. There is also the enclosure of the commons meaning that foraging is illegal in a lot of places.
and even if you have the right to roam, and commons exist, we fucking refuse to plant edible things in them!
i straight up do not think we should plant things that don’t produce food unless there’s a really good reason to plant something else, sure maples look nice but plum trees also look nice and THEY PRODUCE PLUMS
I recently found out you can eat nettles (the ones that sting you), and they actually taste nice.
lots of iron in them
Good source of potassium as well. Although you’d need to eat 1.25 kilo to reach 100% recommended daily intake.
is that 1.25kg raw or cooked down? because raw isn’t actually that much, it’d cook down to like 2 micrograms following the law of leafy greens
You only need to plant sorrel in your garden once. It’s the ultimate volunteer crop. Quite winter-hardy too, and perennial, plus it tastes like lemon. Halfway between an herb and a green.
there are some other problems too. I would love to scavenge or grow things here, but the town I live in is basically built on a gigantic industrial waste dump, so eating anything out of the ground here is a bad idea.
That’s what the government says. But I know the truth - I know it’s the queers! They are in it with the aliens to build landing strips for GAY MARTIANS! I swear to god!
I like you Stewart, you’re not like the other people. Here in the trailer park.
There’s so much hogweed all over the UK that’s just sitting there, uneaten. Not the giant stuff, that’s not a fun time. But the regular stuff has good flavour
Also tons of wild garlic when the seasons in
To clarify, when knowone says “that’s not a fun time” they don’t mean “oh it tastes bad”. They mean it’s really not a fun time, avoid going anywhere near giant hogweed!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum
NSFL (if you’re squeemish):
Some local plants might be edible and even delicious, but they are either way to costly to grow or harvest, or they are nigh impossible to preserve. Or they simply are edible, but not sustaining, like sucking nectar from stinging nettle blossoms.
Some are acquired tastes like e.g. turnip tops. You could probably harvest tons of them, but there is no real market for it.
Or take edible flowers, you basically can’t preserve them, and all you can do is put them on a dish for decoration.
Pearl Onions are a borderline case, for example. Between harvest and sitting in the pickling juice they only have a few hours (3-6, IIRC), or they are a case for the compost heap.
