Lost in the Farmers Market

Welcome to the LITFM weekly blog. This blog is a text-based complement to the LITFM YouTube channel and covers the forage food side of gardening. It is my goal to make gardening and forage food accessible for all while promoting good land stewardship and sustainable practices by providing honest and balanced information backed by verifiable scientific fact. Since this blog now focuses on wild plants or ‘weeds’ we will be taking an objective look at them and their uses. Thank you for reading.

Thursday, May 26, 2022

You're Gonna Be Sorrel!

Happy Memorial Day to all you intrepid gardeners out there, welcome back to another installment of the Forage Foods series on Lost In The Farmer’s Market. As you might already know the current Geo-Political situation coupled with inflation and supply shortages has prompted a series on foods you can forage for just in case things go sideways. Even if they don’t, forage foods may have added nutritional benefits and may also have medicinal benefits that can help you out.

In terms of nearly-invasive weeds at least all of Yellow Woodsorrel is completely edible.

They say that not all that glitters if gold...I say not all that has a clover leaf is a clover.

Common Name: Common Yellow Woodsorrel

Other Common Names: Lemon Clover, Upright Yellow-Sorrel, Common Yellow Oxalis

Botanical Family: Oxalidaceae (The X/X Family)

Botanical Latin Name: Oxalis stricta

Season to Harvest: Yellow Woodsorrel can be harvested in the mid to late spring and during summer where possible.

Habitat: Yellow Oxalis can be found in gardens and sites with disturbed soil or where topsoil has been dumped. In the test gardens I find these plants in large planters because the seed pods have a ‘exploding’ mechanism that flings seeds quite a distance. It has to be said that Yellow Wood Sorrel is not actually related to the actual Sorrel Family (Polygonaceae).

Parts to Harvest: All parts of the plant with exception to the root are edible so leaves, seed pods, flowers and stems are all viable.

Poisonous Lookalikes: Yellow Woodsorrel looks like a lot of members of the clover family due to its leaves, verify identification before consumption.

Related Edible Species: Creeping Woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata) and, Florida Yellow Woodsorrel (Oxalis florida).

Description: Yellow wood sorrel is a upright herbaceous perennial with hairy stems. The leaves are alternate and are divided into three partly folded, deeply cut heart shaped lobes resembling a clover. The flowers are a bright cheery yellow coloration and have five petals while seed pods resemble miniature okra pods and may be up to an inch long.

How to Harvest: Individual leaves, flowers and seed pods can simply be picked off the plant as needed.

Recipe: Given that all parts of a Yellow Woodsorrel are edible and bear a distinct tangy flavor thanks to the Oxalic acid content it should still only be eaten in small quantities. This is because Oxalic acid is an anti-nutrient that interferes with your body’s ability to absorb and use calcium. However the leaves and flowers of Yellow Woodsorrel can be added to salads, or eaten raw as a thirst quencher. The seed pods are edible raw and have a juicy-crisp flavor that some liken to true Green Sorrel or Rhubarb.

The leaves can be used to make a refreshing drink and here is how.

1. 1.Gather a handful of Yellow Woodsorrel leaves (about 1/4 cup)

2. 2. Steep the leaves in 4 cups of hot water for about ten minutes.

3. 3. Sweeten the concoction if needed and then chill.

4. The resulting beverage will help with hangovers, calm nausea and soothe an upset stomach, but it is also refreshing. Do not drink this too often or if you have kidney problems.

I do need to mention you can drink it as a warm herbal tea too so you do not need to cool it. Many sources liken the scent of the herbal tea version of this beverage as similar to green beans. There are also ways to extract the juices of this plant so they can be used in place of traditional vinegar. The one major survival benefit of this herb is that it contains a LOT of vitamin C which can prevent a host of health issues; the catch is that blocking of calcium absorption. As a final note for this post, an orange dye can be extracted from boiling the whole plant, so that gives us two confirmed dye plants Pokeweed for purple and Yellow Wood Sorrel for orange.

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.

Garden Stuff: ($3.00)

Tomato – Sungold

Tomato – Chocolate Cherry

Tomato – Glacier

Tomato – Mountain Pride

Tomato – Paul Robeson (Almost out!)

Tomato – Purple Cherokee

Tomato – Black Krim

Peppers – Carolina Reaper (limited item)

Peppers – Trinidad Scorpion (limited item)

Peppers – Ghost

Peppers – Cayenne

Peppers – Anaheim

Peppers – Bell

Okra – Red Burgundy

Okra – Jing Orange

Basil – Rutgers DMR Devotion

Sage – White (VERY limited Item, $9.00)

Marigolds – Strawberry Blonde

Amaranth – Early Splendor

Cock’s Comb – Scarlet

Castor Bean – Zanzibar

Roselle

Marshmallow

Wonderberry

Coming Soon:

More TBA!

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.

Go to our Nextdoor Page!

Also please take a gander at the Youtube version of this blog:

The Videos: Look Here

>Newest videos (1): White Sage

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 April 21st between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. We are in the back room so come on in and join us for a fun garden chat.

Thursday, May 19, 2022

Reet-Petite? it's Parsley-Piert!

Greetings and Salutations to all you intrepid gardeners out there, welcome back to another installment of the Forage Foods series on Lost In The Farmer’s Market. As you might already know the current Geo-Political situation coupled with inflation and supply shortages has prompted a series on foods you can forage for just in case things go sideways. Even if they don’t, forage foods may have added nutritional benefits and may also have medicinal benefits that can help you out.

This is what Parsley-piert looks like after it's gotten it's first few true leaves. The plant is compared for scale against the tip of a standard aluminum garden trowel.

This is a big cluster of Parsley-piert, now some might mistake it for German Knotweed but if you look carefully at the lobed leaves you can see it's the Piert. This plant was found in a kids park and has been scalped by a lawnmower a few times which is why it looks this way. It is also a cluster of plants not a single specimen and note the very sandy soil.

Common Name: Parsley-piert

Other Common Names: Field Parsley Piert, Parsley Breakstone, Parsley Piercestone, Field Lady’s Mantle.

Botanical Family: Rosaceae (The X/X Family)

Botanical Latin Name: Alchemilla arvensis (Formerly known as Aphanes arvensis)

Season to Harvest: Spring to early summer.

Habitat: This winter-annual is commonly found in lawns but is not very big and thus is often hard to spot. It seems to prefer sandy soils in the southeast that see modest amounts of foot traffic but not too much. It grows in full sun exposure and seems to be modestly drought-resistant.

Parts to Harvest: The leaf tips are what you are after, but given the plant’s average size it may be difficult to harvest enough of this plant to make a meal of it so it will have to be added withy other leaf greens.

Poisonous Lookalikes: None known or listed in references be careful.

Related Edible Species: None currently known.

Description: Parsley-piert is a freely branching low-growing winter annual with somewhat fuzzy lobed leaves that kind of resemble a mix of flat-leaved and curled parsley. The plant as a whole almost looks like something that’s been partially chewed by a grazing animal. Most specimens I’ve seen are on the small size with none individually being taller than two inches or wider than three inches however clusters of plants can seem like they are one bigger plant. This plant can be found ranging from Maryland into Georgia, and it’s fairly common in the Sandhills of North Carolina. The scientific name Aphanes comes from a Greek root word which means ‘Unseen’ or ‘Unnoticed’ which kind of fits these little plants.

How to Harvest: Stem tips with leaves can be harvested manually. I do suspect this plant would be more productive if actually cultivated.

Recipe: While there are no flat out recipes for Parsley-piert, as I noted earlier it can be used in forage salads, but the individual plants are a bit small to make up the bulk of a forage salad. A number of references indicate that Parsley-piert can be pickled which makes for a great option for making it a storage food. There is some suggestive information hat this plant can be used for clearing kidney stones, and it is suggested that it is a powerful diuretic and a soothing demulcent for the urinary tract.

A special note: The title of this page is a flat reference to Reet Petite by Jackie Wilson go give it a listen, I promise after you do you wont quite look at a certain newer song the same way ever again. But putting plagiarism in the music industry aside, yes Reet Petite is definitely this plants theme song.