Hair of the Dog Fennel...no thanks!

 

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.

 

This is what Dog Fennel looks like early on.

Oh Myy! A Dog Fennel Frond gets a little frisky. Note the white fuzz on the stems.

In the field this is what Dog Fennel looks like. It is not hard to see how it might be mistaken for actual Fennel.

 

 

Common Name: Dog Fennel

 

Other Common Names: Summer Cedar

 

Botanical Family: Asteraceae (The Aster Family)

 

Botanical Latin Name: Eupatorium capillifolium

 

Season to Harvest: Sparingly harvest young foliage only whenever you need to use it.

 

Habitat: Dog Fennel is a tall growing perennial that will is commonly found on roadsides, areas that have recently had a fire or where the soil has seen significant disturbance. This is a native plant that can easily be found across the eastern coast states and into the Midwestern states.

 

Parts to Harvest: Sparingly harvest the foliage.

 

Poisonous Lookalikes: None.

 

Related Edible Species: None.

 

Description: Dog Fennel is a tall perennial that is best identified by it’s densely hairy stems that come from a woody crown. Its leaves are very finely lobed and resemble Dill, Fennel and a few other members of the Carrot Family. Individual stalks of Dog Fennel can reach heights of up to seven feet high.

 

How to Harvest: Picking a small amount of the delicate leaves can be done by hand.

 

Recipe: There is no recipe for this weed because it is known to harbor a compound called pyrrolizidine which is an alkaloid that with long term or heavy use causes veno-occulusive disease. Basically the compound clogs up the small veins in the liver causing fluid retention and eventually liver failure. Very small amounts can be used as a seasoning in a vinaigrette for a salad, and as a spice in mashed potatoes to add flavor but this should only be done in small amounts.

 

 

 

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:

Pepper, Lemon Drop

Figs, Assortment (Magnolia,)

 

Garden Stuff: ($3.00)

Cilantro – Vietnamese

Cuban Oregano – Cervesa & Lime

Fennel – Black

Hoan Ngoc

Sage – Pineapple

Sage – Common

 

 

Coming Soon:

Thai Mint (Next Week)

 

 

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.

 

Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville

 

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

The Videos: Look Here

>Newest videos (2): Sticky Germander, Wax Begonias.

 

Our meetings are still going on! We now meet at LeClair’s General Store on the First and Third Thursday of every month. Our next meeting is on September 1^st between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. We are in the back room so come on in and join us for a fun garden chat.

 

 

This Cuds for you

 

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.

 

 

 

This picutre was taken in early spring, some Shiny Cudweed popped up around the dead stem of what was one of last year's pepper plants in a three gallon pot.

If exposed to fertilizer Shiny Cudweeds can get surprisingly large and forget they are supposed to be a neat little basal rosette. I suspect intentionally cultivating them probably makes them even more tender.

 

Common Name: Shiny Cudweed

 

Other Common Names: Gray Everlasting

 

Botanical Family: Asteraceae (The Aster Family)

 

Botanical Latin Name: Gamochaeta coarctata (Formerly Gnaphalium spicatum)

 

Season to Harvest: Spring through Autumn.

 

Habitat: Shiny cudweed is found in open areas with sandy soils as well as sites with disturbed soil. However if you are a gardener you may find that it has gotten into your outdoor potted plants.

 

Parts to Harvest: The leaves.

 

Poisonous Lookalikes: None

 

Related Edible Species: Purple Cudweed (G. purpureum)

 

Description: Shiny Cudweed is a erect annual or biennial plant with a very obvious rosette of leaves that have a shiny bright green upper surface and a finely hairy underside that is white in color. The leaves are roughly ovate in shape and are quite broad.  All leaves are of roughly the same size overall. Flower stalks have whiteish stems with small bright green leaves on them while the flower heads can be brown or purple in color.

 

How to Harvest: Pick leaves as needed.

 

Recipe: This plant is either a straight forage green, which means you can pick the leaves wash them and eat as needed since it has a mild flavor and crunchy leaves that have easily digestible fiber. Alternately you can add it to a forage salad as a primary foundational leaf green to balance out other more strongly flavored greens.

 

 

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 8:00 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:

Pepper, Lemon Drop

Pepper, Fayetteville Inferno

Pepper, Sweet Heat

Figs, Assortment (White Ishcia, Magnolia,)

 

Garden Stuff: ($3.00)

Cilantro – Vietnamese

Cuban Oregano – Cervesa & Lime

Fennel – Black

Hoan Ngoc

Sage – Pineapple

Sage – Common

 

Angelonia – Serenita Raspberry

Cuphea – Siracha Rose

Milkweed – Orange blooming

 

 

Coming Soon:

Thai Mint

 

 

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.

 

Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville

 

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

The Videos: Look Here

>Newest videos (4): - Chervil, Mugwort, Artemisia, Wall Germander

 

Meetings still going on! We now meet at LeClair’s General Store on the First and Third Thursday of every month. Our next meeting is on August 18^th between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. We are in the back room so come on in and join us for a fun garden chat.

A Interlude/ Update

Welcome back to the Lost In the Farmer’s Market Blog.  I bet you are wondering why there have not been any posts in a few weeks. Well there was a frenzy of re-shoots for the Youtube channel. You see one of our viewers pointed out the sound quality on our videos was not so great and to be honest it wasn’t. They suggested using a Lavelier microphone to fix the issue but as I discovered our camera was not compatible with that. So short of buying a new camera that is, I had to figure out a solution and keep at least the video quality while doing it. The problem was resolved in a dumb sort of way, using my smartphone and an existing headphone based microphone, but that posed a new problem, stabilizing the image because I had no way to mount the phone on the tripod. That was fixed by buying a new attachment to make it work and then…the march of the re-shoots began. About twenty five videos were re-shoot at a breakneck pace around my work schedule and the needs of the test garden and all the agriculture stuff that’s part of my normal routine. Boy, you never realize how many bloopers there are until you cram a lot of filming in a short amount of time. For instance, there were about twenty three botched filmings before I got it right for the Zinnia video you can see at the link below.

 

Zinnias!

 

          I was trying so hard to channel the intense calm of David Attenborough and all of the forces of the universe were totally trying to wreck my efforts. Ruinations of the filing included the neighbor’s dogs going nuts, Mosquito attacks, trying to say hydrated (it was HOT that day) and some mow, blow and, go guys next door being really loud and hilariously vulgar. You see, I am dedicated to producing at least Fifty-two episodes per year. That’s one per week on average plus a bit of bonus content in the form of interludes and the occasional field video. We started late this year, and well we are now at episode 28, and we are at week 32 of the year so next week expect four episodes and we will be give or take caught up and back on track. Thankfully all of the next fourteen episodes were filmed in that mad rush to both keep up, fix the audio issue and get ahead of the curve so things are not so frantic.

 

          Don’t worry, I have some content for you before we get back to the talk of forage foods, here are pictures of from just after Garden Tour this year there is also a video too which is a first in test garden history.

 

The Zinnias were exploding with color this year, not bad for a native plant.

Here we are in the 'Fig Orchard' these are Brown Turkey, Black Mission and Celeste figs.

This is the Memorial Garden. It's not as nice as it used to be and that really comes down to picking the wrong flowers for the site.

Zinnias were exploding with blooms at the time of the event.

Next to the Zinnias are the Okra and Peppers.

 

 

 

There are two Red Burgundy and Baby Bubba Okra out here.

 

Here is a closeup of a Red Burgundy Okra Pod and it's bloom.

Fayetteville Inferno Peppers are no joke!

 

Hoan Ngoc plants are growing aggressively.

 

 

Here is the "Exotic" bed, and the very Hibiscus that used to drive my neighbor nuts.

A close up of the Hibiscus coccineus 'Texas Star' leaves that look oddly like a certain illegal plant.

 

Here's a look at a very vigorous Thai Mint plant

 

Here's the vegetable garden, the tomatoes are not doing so good for some reason this year.

 

In the middle of this bed between two very healthy Oregano plants is a Kadota Fig. The potted plant is an Agapanthus.

It's the Afghan fig and boy does it look good!

 

The Compass bed look pretty good I think, though the bird bath is occasionally commandeered by Caliente as her own extra large water dish.

This area was reclaimed this year. Normally I do not use weed block, but the soil below has intrusion by Tree of heaven and this is the only good way to put an end to that.

 

 

I did this short video panorama of the test gardens; it helps put all the pictures in perspective.

 

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:

Pepper, Lemon Drop

Pepper, Fayetteville Inferno

Pepper, Sweet Heat

Figs, Assortment (White Ischia, Magnolia Chicago Hardy, Celeste)

 

Garden Stuff: ($3.00)

Cilantro – Vietnamese

Cuban Oregano – Cervesa & Lime

Fennel – Black

Hoan Ngoc

Parsley - Curled

Sage – Pineapple

Sage – Common

 

Angelonia – Serenita Raspberry

Coleus – Kong Lime

Cuphea – Siracha Rose

Milkweed – Orange blooming

         

 

Coming Soon:

Thai Mint

Cold-Season Crops

 

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.

 

Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville

 

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

The Videos: Look Here

>Newest videos (8): Mexican Tarragon, Cucumber, Purselane, Moss Rose, Petunia, Scarlet Sage, Impatiens, Geraniums, Castor Bean Interlude.

 

Meetings still going on! We now meet at LeClair’s General Store on the First and Third Thursday of every month. Our next meeting is on August 18^th between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. We are in the back room so come on in and join us for a fun garden chat.