Welcome back to the Lost In the Farmer’s Market Blog. At the current time we have a long-running series that covers useful, edible and medicinal ‘weeds’ that you can commonly find in the southeastern states of the United States. While our survey area is just within Cumberland County North Carolina it’ is possible you can find some of these forage plants in other places. This series was begun to give folks a detailed look into the resources they might not have known were right there in their lawn. Given that the world situation is not that great and there are already shortages of critical grains and fertilizers forage foods may be the most useful answer on a local level. LITFM will keep this series going as long as we keep finding wild resources to photograph and write about. If you have any questions or comments about our articles please leave a comment either here or on our YouTube Channel (The link is at the end of the article). Thank you for reading, and remember just one thing, you can’t eat lawn grass.
The cultivated type of this plant is identical to it's wild form, as there clearly was no need to mess with perfection.
Common Name: Creasy Greens
Other Common Names: Upland Cress, Land Cress, Early Wintercress, Scurvy Cress, American Cress, Bank Cress, Black Wood Cress, Belle Isle Cress, Bermuda Cress, Early Yellow Rocket.
Botanical Family: Brassicaceae (The Cabbage Family)
Botanical Latin Name: Barbarea verna
Season to Harvest: Creasy Greens can be harvested from the seedling stage as microgreens in autumn through to late spring.
Habitat: Creasy Greens can be found in fields, wet meadows, ditches, on the roadside, it is very common and very wide spread. This is of course assuming it is found naturally and is not found where someone once introduced it and it prospered in its given location.
Parts to Harvest: The entire plant is edible and quite nutritious. Mainly you want to harvest some of the leaves so that you have something to come back to and harvest later.
Poisonous Lookalikes: No poisonous lookalikes are known.
Related Edible Species: Wintercress (Barbarea vulgaris)
Description: While this plant is actually native to Southern Europe it is a biennial in that you can sow its seeds in late summer and have the plants persist until the real heat of late spring in the next year begins. Creasy greens are a moderately compact plant with spoon shaped leaves that have little lobed tabs along the side. They are rosette forming so they are kind of dense and bunchy but harvesting with a pair of scissors is the best way to get some greens without killing your plant. In late spring or early summer when temperatures stay above 65 degrees at peak heat these plants may try to flower, you can snip this off to try and force another leaf harvest or let it grow to get more seed and feed the pollinators. The flowers look a bit like all other Cabbage family flowers and may be white or yellow.
How to Harvest: On larger plants that are full of leaves you can use a pair of scissors to give them a ‘haircut’ and then fertilize with nitrogen based fertilizer to ensure that they bounce back. Other than this you can harvest individual large leaves at your leisure as the leaves never become woody or fibrous.
Recipe: Aside from adding the washed leaves to salads to add some delightful flavor and a vitamin dense green to your forage salad, I like to cook these greens with pasta. Normally to do this I will start a broth, add the chopped greens and then add the pasta and serve it as a sort of pasta based soup. You can use these greens steamed or added at the last phase of cooking in with a meat to increase nutritional value.
With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog. In addition to being able to process card payments we now take CashApp payments so your payment options for my product have tripled. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic fruit, herbs, flowers and perennials, come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.
For those of you wondering what plants are going to be at the market this weekend here is the list.
Fresh Produce:
Peppers, Lemon Drop
Peppers, Fayetteville Inferno
Peppers, Sweet Heat & Purple Bell
Garlic Bulbs
Garden Stuff: ($3.00)
Broccoli - Destiny
Brussel Sprouts - Redarling
Cabbage – Early Jersey Wakefield
Cauliflower – Snow Crown
Cauliflower – Flame Star
Cauliflower – Veronica
Celery - Tango
Cilantro – Vietnamese
Collards – Green Glaze
Cuban Oregano – Cervesa & Lime
Hoan Ngoc
Mizuna Mustard – Miz America
Mustard – Japanese Red Giant
Pak Choi – Rose’
Sage – Pineapple
Coming Soon:
Soup Kits (October)
How to stay in Contact with Us!
Our group’s online presence has migrated to Nextdoor.com. All you need to keep up with all our activities is to have a Nextdoor account and to look for the ‘Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville’ group and ask to join! You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join us! Feel free to ask all your garden questions of our knowledgeable membership and post your cool garden pictures.
Also please take a gander at the Youtube version of this blog:
The Videos: LITFM Garden Shorts
>Newest videos (1): - A Big Hoax, Citronella Geranium
Meetings still going on! We now meet at LeClairs General Store on the First and Third Thursday of every month. Our next meeting is on October 6th between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. We are in the back room so come on in and join us for a fun garden chat.
Btw the song reference in this post is Rocket 2 U by The Jets, go check that one out.
