Tag Archives: unusual edibles

Baker Creek Seeds is My Crack Dealer – Epi-3008

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Hi, my name is Jack and I am a seed addict.  I have tried to get this monkey off my back for decades now.  Every year about Christmas time when the mid shifts to getting ready for spring I say something like this to myself, “This year I am just going to grow the 10 or so things that do really well with very little work for us that we use a lot of.  Just like my grand paw used to do”. About that time the dealers “pull me back in” and one of the worst offenders of the bunch … Continue reading →

Episode-2711- 24 Bullet Proof Plants for the Back Yard Hunter Gatherer

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I wanted a proactive and fun show today and shows about useful plants are always subscriber favorites.  Last night on Episode 5 of Unloose the Goose we discussed the food system and it has a lot of this churning in my brain. When I was a kid my Grandfather taught me to tend our garden.  In many ways is was a lot like a small row farm.  Strait rows and a row for each thing.  A row of broccoli, a row of beans, a row of cucumbers, 8 rows of corn, etc. When I moved to Texas I started out … Continue reading →

Huauzontle – The Most Useful Plant You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

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Huauzontle is often referred to as lambsquarters and that is a generic name for a family of plants that huauzontle is part of. The scientific name for huauzontle is Chenopodium nuttalliae while the common variety of lambsquarters known to most people in the US is Chenopodium album. Think of them as cousins, rather than sisters. Huauzontle grows lower and more spreading, it puts on a great deal more seed and does so earlier. Native peoples of Mexico where this plant originated used the dried seed as a grain, one reason it is also commonly called “hairy amaranth” the the seed … Continue reading →

Episode-2669- 12 Really Cool Plants Inspired by Joseph Simcox

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Joseph Simcox was awesome on yesterday’s show and after talking to him I looked up more of his stuff.  I found this amazing 3 part garden tour on YouTube and listened to all of it and selected 12 plants inspired by it for today’s show. This stuff is right up my alley and I know it is for many of you.  While you have heard me talk about some of these before many of them are brand new to TSP for sure.  Finding a new plant that provides food, fiber, medicine, etc. is like finding a new gem.  In many … Continue reading →

Episode-2563- Thirty New Plants from Baker Creek to Grow in 2020

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Well the dang Baker Creek catalog showed up and I got sucked in.  As I paged though it thinking about all the new grow space I will have in the coming season I started dog-earing pages.  As I did so I thought hell, why not a show on some cool stuff to grow from the Rare Seeds catalog this year? Some of this stuff is hard to find anywhere but Baker Creek, some you can find at many other places.  Remember we need lots of small seed companies in business to keep the diversity so even though I am focusing … Continue reading →

Pickerel Rush an Edible and Beautiful Plant for Your Water Garden

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Big thanks to Nick Burtner at School of Permaculture (https://schoolofpermaculture.com) for posting about this plant being edible on Facebook. Been growing it for years and never knew it was that type of resource.  The seeds are pretty good raw, I would say adding them to salads would be a good use, I am going to try toasting them gently to crisp them up a bit and bring out more flavor, when I do I will report back to you guys on the results. Also here is a video by Green Dean on using this plant for edible purposes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKy6Ivh0HaE

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Episode-1120- Designing Small Scale Forest Gardens

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At the presentation I just did at the Self Reliance Expo there were two main things people had major questions about when it comes to food forestry.  The first was “what trees and plants work in Texas” and that really is what will work in most of the US.  The second is how does this all apply to a small back yard or smaller piece of land. Now the new video Geoff Lawton just released shows what can be done, including with trees in small backyards.  This videos leads off with a back yard that is only 640SF.  Of course … Continue reading →

Episode-945- Weeds that aren’t Weeds and Other Unusal Edibles

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Recently I posted a photo on facebook included here in the show notes.  The photo is of a plant called huauzontle (pronounced wah-zont-lay), a relative of lambsquarters.  While only one person guessing the plant species got it right what actually surprised me was they crescendo of the use of the word “weed”. Sometimes I sit and wonder if tomatoes and peppers and lettuce just grew in large swaths on their own would we call them weed too?  For example this so called weed huauzontle has actually been cultivated for centuries and is currently “en vogue” with many Mexican gardeners in … Continue reading →