You are a home gardener passionate about nourishing yourself and your family with wholesome, organic, fresh, and ultimately local vegetables and fruits. It is empowering to know exactly where your food comes from. And gardening is perfect exercise, but can be a lot of work. What if you could grow food plants that all but took care of themselves? Or simply harvest—with caution, of course—from the wild?
The following plants are all easy to cultivate within their home ranges and, once established, may not require any attention outside of harvest. There are many virtues of raising locally native plants: decreased use of water, fertilizers, and pesticides; promoting regional identity; and providing for wildlife. Those, however, aren’t my main motives for sharing these untamed delicacies. These often-overlooked foods are, quite frankly, delicious, and in some cases they offer superior nutrition. “In vitamins, minerals, and protein, wild foods can match and even surpass the nutritional content of our common foods,” writes Delena Tull in her book Edible and Useful Plants of Texas and the Southwest.
The following plants are indigenous to large areas of the United States. Many nonnative and even invasive plants also provide good eats, but in the interest of space, I’m limiting the list to natives.
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Eastern Persimmon Photo: Rob Cardillo |
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Evening primroses Photo: Saxon Holt |
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Yellow wood-sorrel Photo: Rob Cardillo |
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Wild Onions Photo: (cc) Frank Mayfield/Flickr |
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Pequin chile pepper (Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum) Chile pequin (or bird pepper), precursor to most familiar peppers including jalapeños, is perennial where winters are mild. It has small but potent fruits that spice up a pot of spaghetti sauce or beans. Crush them and add to scrambled eggs or salad dressings. They are great pickled or dried for use anytime.
Photo: (cc) Stingray Phil/Flickr |
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