Spotlight - The Redbud Tree

The Redbud Tree is one of my favorites.  We have four of them in our front yard and they fill the space with beauty every spring.  They seem to be everywhere in this part of the state and thrive with very little attention.  With the tree being so plentiful, I had to wonder if there were any particular uses for it other than the most obvious – it being so lovely and pleasing to the eye. 

In the course of my research I found out that you can eat the flowers in the springtime and the new, soft green seedpods in the fall.  Wow.  It is a member of the legume family and shares many things in common with the pea.  The flowers, which have been described as having a sweet and slightly nutty flavor, can be eaten by themselves, mixed in with salads or other foods, or even made into jelly or relish.  In the fall when the seedpods are young and tender, they can be eaten raw or cooked like peas.   Like many legumes, the seedpods contain nutrients such as protein, iron and some complex carbohydrates.

 The picture above shows some young seedpods on one of the Redbud trees in our yard.  They look very similar to peas.

Since Redbud trees are usually under twenty feet tall, they makes a good under canopy tree in the forest.   That is not only true for the forests in parks, but also the food forest you might want to start at home.  Whether you’re just looking for an easy to grow tree to add some dimension to your yard, you’re trying to start a food forest and need some canopy trees, or you just want to something aesthetically pleasing, relatively long lived, and easy to care for that will come in handy if things every get really tough, you might consider the Redbud tree.

Nutritious and Delicious Mulberries

The mulberry trees are full of fruit and it is ripening fast.  It will be a race to see who gets the most off of the trees – the kids or the birds.  The birds usually win, but the kids don’t do too badly.   We have four trees in our yard that we planted from seedlings shortly after moving to our current home.  In the nine years since, the trees have flourished, and have been yielding fruit for the past few years.  They are hardy here in NE Texas, like rocky soil, and are drought tolerant (although they do appreciate a drink when it’s as hot and dry as it was last summer).  What’s not to like?

Our trees, being relatively young, aren’t all that big yet, but they can get up to fifty feet tall.  A word of warning – they can be messy!  The fruit drops off and if squashed on a walkway, can easily stain it.  Our trees are planted away from any sidewalks and this will not be a problem for us.  Another thing to consider if you live in a city and the tree will be close to the house, driveway or walkways is that birds love these berries.  A lot of birds usually leads to a lot of droppings.  On the upside though, they will grow well where other trees will not, can be used as a windbreak, are easy to propagate, and the fruit is healthy and delicious.

Here is what one page had to say about the nutritional benefits, along with the link:

Mulberries are actually a good source of raw food protein, a rarity in the fruit kingdom.  They are also a good source of magnesium, potassium, riboflavin, iron, calcium, vitamin C, and fiber. One of the mulberry's greatest health assets is it's high concentration of resveratrol, an antioxidant currently being studied for its effects on heart health. An ancient fruit of Asia, the mulberry is touted in medicinal folklore as a remedy for ringworm, insomnia, arthritis, and tapeworm.

http://vegetarian.about.com/od/glossary/a/What-Are-Mulberries.htm

I sent the kids out today with a container and told them to get to work.  They came in with about two cups of berries and the stained fingers and cheeks that led me to believe they’d eaten another cup or so while they picked.  The earliest of the berries are just ripening now, and in next week or two there should be plenty more.  It is easiest to just put a tarp on the ground and check it every day.  The ripe berries tend to fall off of the tree.  If you check it often enough, you can beat the birds to the sweetest berries!  I made a batch of mulberry muffins this evening to reward the kids for their hard work.  

I think the fact that they complained that I didn't make enough is a sign that they liked them!

Trees are a longer term investment than a traditional garden, but they'll reward you for years to come.  

It is, it is wild asparagus!

Back in December, I posted a couple of pictures comparing what I thought was wild asparagus already ferned out to the asparagus I had planted the previous spring in a raised bed.  It looked pretty similar, but I'm certainly not an expert.  Well, I watched and waited all winter, and when I saw the asparagus in the bed sprouting last week, I went over to check out the spot marked for the wild stuff.  Here is what I found.

Isn't it lovely!  The kids and I are going to keep a close watch on the area.  If we see any more come up, we're going to harvest it.

My husband also recently found a nice batch of wild onions growing on our place.  It's fun to find unexpected gifts from the land.  We're going to be keeping an eye out to see what other treasures we can find.

Until next time, happy gardening!

The Edible Acorn

Did you know that people have been eating acorns for thousands of years?   Koreans and North American Indians in particular still value these nuts as a food source.  As a child, I had been led to believe that people couldn’t eat acorns - they were only good for animals.  Well, my search for perennial food sources has led me to the truth.   They’re very bitter and potentially toxic when eaten raw, but when cooked can be very tasty and nutritious.

The bitter taste comes from tannis.  Yes, this is the same stuff used in some leather making.  The good news is that the tannic acid can be removed without too much difficulty and with it goes the bitterness.  After shelling the nuts, you can smash them up into a meal, wrap it in cheesecloth or some other material and run it under water until the water runs clear.   (A few people have said that placing them in a running stream is a good method for this, but I don’t have one of those, so the faucet would have to do).  At that point, wring it out and allow the meal to dry.  The resulting meal can be used much like corn meal to bake with.  If you prefer to eat the nuts whole, place the shelled nuts in some water and boil them for fifteen minutes.  You’ll notice the water turning brown.  That’s the tannic acid coming out.  Toss the water, add fresh and boil them again for fifteen minutes.  Repeat this process for up to three hours.  You’ll know you’re done when the water boils clear.  When you’ll all done with the boiling process, it’s time to dry them out.  Put them on a baking sheet and bake them at 175 – 200 degrees for about an hour.  That’s it – they’re ready to eat!

Here is an excerpt I found about the sweetest tasting acorns in Texas:

The Texas oaks reported to have the sweetest taste include Emory oak (Q. emoryi), which is so mild it can be used without processing, white oak (Q. alba), plateau live oak (Q. fusiformis), bur oak (Q. macrocarpa), and chinkapin oak (Q. mulenbergii). The acorns of each of these oaks (mostly white oaks) mature in one year, which may account for their lower tannic acid content. Red oak acorns (like Texas Red Oak) take two years to mature.

To give proper credit (and to point you to a very nice article on the subject), here is the link I got that information from:

http://www.sanaturalareas.org/acorns.html

So there you have it.  Experiment a little and enjoy!