Theres plenty of Rumex for a joke

 Welcome back to an entirely new year of LITFM! We took a long hiatus to get our YouTube channel's second season completed and now this blog is back in action. So to get things rolling and at the request of some folks who visit the Farmer's market, I am posting a new series covering forage foods. Given the current geopolitical situation some of this information may come in handy in the not-to-distant future.

 

 

Here is a specimen of Yellow Dock Growing inside a vigorous Oregano patch. The woody stems you see are last year's flower stalks which can be foraged as a kindling or as light sticks for use around the garden.

 

This is a very healthy and perhaps five year old specimen of Yellow dock. The lobed leaves below it are some sort of Dandelion. Note how soft the leaves look, this is what you'd prefer to harvest.

 

Photo Added 4-14-2022 - I pulled a cluster of Yellow dock up and got the entire root which is pretty rare. You can see the thick taproot these perennials form which is why they can be quite difficult to kill via manual methods.

 

Common Name: Yellow Dock

 

Other Common Names:  Dock, Curled Dock, Sour Dock.

 

Botanical Family: Polygonaceae (The Knotweed/Smartweed/Buckwheat Family)

 

Botanical Latin Name: Rumex crispus

 

Season to Harvest: You can harvest the leaves of this perennial plant year-round.

 

Habitat: Yellow dock can be found in the wild in disturbed sites, fields, roadsides and vacant lots. It will appear at random in yards and  in outdoor planters because mature plants produce hundreds of seeds that can travel on water, wind and the fur of animals. Yellow dock is a hardy perennial that can be found all over the USA, it is not a native plant.

 

Parts to Harvest: The part of this plant you want are young leaves before they get too crinkly and rough to the touch, they may have a slight tinge of red or yellow but tender foliage is your objective.

 

Poisonous Look-alikes: There are no poisonous look-alikes.

 

Related Edible Species: The most well-known three cultivated relatives are Sorrel* (Rumex acetosella) and it’s cousin Vietnamese Coriander* (Persicaria odorata) both of which can be found in the wild and are sold in garden centers. Bloody Dock* (Rumex sanguineus) which is exible and is known for its intensely deep red leaf veins in contrast to its bright green leaves is largely only found in cultivation. However this plant is a mutation of a naturally occurring plant so Bloody dock in the wild will look a lot less like its cultivated form. Similar edible wild relatives include Wild Dock (R. crispus ssp. crispus) which is found almost exclusively on waste sites and in farm fields, Coastal Dock (R. crispus ssp. littoreus) which is found in coastal sites and Riparian Dock (R. crispus ssp. uliginosus) which is found on tidal estuarine mud as well as on some riverbanks. Other species that are closely related include Bitter Dock (R. obtusifolius), Marsh Dock (R. paulustris), Golden Dock (R. maritimus) and Tropical Dock (R. obovatus). I have to note here that most if not all of these plants are so closely related that they can freely interbreed which means if you are planning a crop of traditional sorrel, you may want to clear any related species to avoid unwanted genetic traits getting into your crops.

 

Description: Typically Yellow dock is semi-rosette forming until it blooms. The oval leaves can be up to nine inches long and a significant portion of that length is comprised by the long leaf petioles. Yellow dock has a powerful taproot that only gets bigger with age and can go down several feet. A key identifying feature for Yellow dock is that the taproot is almost always a bright yellow color and will fork and branch regularly making pulling these herbs out pretty difficult. The flower stalks which appear in summer can reach as high as three to five feet depending on the age of the specimen. Fortunately Yellow dock is a preferred host for at least one species of moth, the Dark Sword-Grass whose larva are called black Cut Worms. The worms are an agricultural pest however, these moths are a preferred food for Catbirds.

 

How to Harvest: Ideally you want to pick younger softer leaves in early spring or late winter and you will want to harvest the seeds as well. Carefully managed you can ‘force’ a Yellow Dock to keep producing new leaves for most of the year providing a decent supply of greens. The one thing to note is that the leaves do contain oxalic acid which is the same stuff that makes Swiss Chard bitter when raw. See the recipe section for more information on how to neutralize this compound.

 

Recipe:  Let’s start off why you should neutralize the Oxalic Acid. Oxalic Acid is an organic compound that plants have as a deterrent for grazing animals. It’s there to make them taste bad and to cause enough gastrointestinal distress that the animal eats anything else. It is also able to repel most insects except a certain moth I mentioned who is totally like ‘That’s my kink’. Before you think this organic acid compound is so horrible that you swear off foraging dock, this stuff has been used to kill the mites that are decimating honey bee populations successfully so it has some real use. Yellow dock should not be eaten raw, you need to neutralize the acid first so you don’t suffer hours of GI tract misery. Much like with Swiss chard you need to cook the leaves, young ones need about ten minutes of boiling in a modest amount of water. By modest I mean something like a 1:1 ratio, one cup of chopped greens packed into a measuring cup for 1 cup of water. Older greens can also be eaten if cooked however they may take twice as long to cook and 2 or 3 changes of water to get the Oxalic acid out of your greens. Once properly cooked they are no different than Beet (old dock leaves) or Swiss Chard greens (young dock leaves) in texture or flavor. I would recommend cooking them with other forage greens of the season to dilute the amount of Yellow Dock you are eating as an additional protection against the residual Oxalic Acid that may be left in the cooked greens. You can serve this as a side to anything else, eggs, wild game or given its flavor as a sort of seasoning. Remember how I mentioned harvesting the seeds? Well, with a bit of effort the seeds can be hulled, winnowed, ground and sifted into palatable flour that you can use to extend your existing flour supply. It’s not ideal but given the sheer number of seeds each plant produces and the fact that they aren’t individually tiny, this may just save you from malnutrition some day.

 

 

*Do not fret I will cover all three of these edible forage plants in greater detail later on.

 

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.

 

Produce:

Garlic Bulb, $1.00

Soup Kit – Parsnip, $6.00

Soup Kit – Turnip, $6.00

Seasoning Packet, $2.00

 

Houseplants:

Assorted Succulents, Plastic Pot ($5.00)

Assorted Succulents, Round Resin Pot - $5.00

Assorted Succulents, Square Resin Pot - $5.00

Assorted Succulents, Hexagon Resin Pot - $10.00

Assorted Succulents, Lattice Resin Pot - $14.00

Assorted Succulents, Clay Pot ($9.00)

 

Garden Stuff: ($3.00)

Elephant Garlic

Softneck Garlic

Lettuce – Parris Island Romaine

Lettuce – Cherokee Red

Lettuce – Five Star Lettuce Mix

Beets – Bull’s Blood

Mustard – Red Giant

Kale – Beira

Kale – Dinosaur

Kale – Redbor

Kale – Ragged Jack

 

 

Coming Soon:

Abutilon ‘ Orange Hot Lava’

Okinawa Spinach

 

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.

 

https://nextdoor.com/g/ybvdm226x/?is=nav_bar

 

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

 

The Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/curacaovexxor/videos

>Newest videos (5): Chinese Money Plant, Red African Milk Bush, Pencil Cactus, Desert Rose, ‘Prehistoric’ Devils Backbone.

 

 

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 7^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.

 

Aww come on spring...take your meds!

Welcome back to another episode of Lost in the Farmer’s Market. As you may have noticed the weather has been oddly cold the last few days due to a cold front that of course arrived and created that super torrential thunderstorm plus downpour the other day. For note this week’s precipitation was an average of 2.45”. Ironically about 1.45” of that fell in the thunderstorm specifically so we’re darn well watered.  After such rain events things tend to green up and so for today's blog post, I decided to rove about the garden and take snapshots of everything in bloom right after the storm.

Just in time for easter!

That’s right here is a picture snapped just yesterday. For the longest time I was sure I had a single wild rabbit that visited the property, but as you can see, there's this little one in the picture and above him one in the grass trying to hide behind some foliage.  I realized moments after that I literally had a flotilla of rabbits. Moments later rabbit number three came out of the bushes beside the driveway. That’s three confirmed rabbits and a probable one or two more. What blows my mind about this is that they do not damage any of the crops, they just seem to like the fact I don’t pull weeds so they instead just eat them. More so this group comes through between five and six pm every day and take the same route. They go up the driveway, across the yard, into the shady rock garden for a bit then under the fence into the neighbor’s yard. In the process they drive the neighbor’s dog crazy but most of all they never damage anything. So I’ve got a batch of well-behaved wild rabbits that seem not to mind me milling about. There is also the rabbit I often see at night around ten to eleven pm that hides a little less. You saw that rabbit hanging out in the reinforced mound bed during the snow storm when I stumbled upon him and he let me snap his picture. The question is, is the night rabbit of the same group or do I have several groups of rabbits passing through? Regardless of the answer, still very cool I am about one endangered species from being a wild life refuge.

Bunias orientalis – Warty Cabbage / Turkish Rocket

Last year I sold Turkish rocket at the market and this is what a second year plant looks like in spring.  As you can see its leaves are rather uniquely shaped and the plant is much larger than the first year despite black magic application. It did go dormant in the winter briefly during that super cold period but it as has also created its own mounded earth. More study of this perennial leaf green is underway to determine how productive it could be now that it‘s established.

Loropetalum chinenese var. rubrum ‘Daruma’ - Fringe Bush

Fringe bushes in bloom are quite the sight. As far as landscaping shrubs the fringe bushes are tough, quick growing and drought tolerant. This specimen is in bloom now and came into my possession as a surplus item. I lacked a good plant for the spot it’s in (driveway) that could withstand the conditions and thus it was put there. Loropetalums in this climate are evergreens that may go partial deciduous in serious winters depending on siting.

A lone white tulip.

Someone at some point planted tulips along the driveway long ago. I honestly do not know who did it bit this little guy comes up yearly and generally is all foliage with no flower. The super-cold winter probably allowed this bulb to develop more along the lines of a more northern climate and thus we have this fine bloom. But hold on to your hats, the fireworks are about to begin!

Double petaled azaleas, hell I had no idea I had these on property.

Salmon-pink azaleas are where it's at.

wait...are the white ones being photobombed by the pink ones?!

Phlox subulata – Creeping Phlox

This last remaining garden phlox plant bravely blooms every spring and struggles through the August drought every year often going dormant before winter. I took pity on it last year and gave it a few hits of black magic and not only has it bloomed like crazy but it has also gotten a bit bigger. Perhaps this ought be a commercial?

Foeniculum vulgare ‘Purpureaum’ – Black Fennel

This stand of four second year Black fennel plants has become a hedgerow unto themselves. If you look at last year’s pictures of this plant they were tall, impressive but now here near this dense in the foliage department. Numerous side-shoots are what produced this effect and indeed they were evergreen most of the winter producing some impressive foliage against slow contrasts. I cannot state this often enough, Fennel plants are ironclad perennials that are entirely edible but also serve as fine ornamentals; they are a garden must have.

Rumex sanguineum – Bloody Dock/ Sorrel

This is an example of bloody dock that has established in a location. Granted it isn’t as big as it could be because the soil is very much lacking you can see the vibrancy of the leaf color and that the leaves are far larger than the ones I’m selling. Well sited sorrel can get impressively large and thus supply a whole lot of leaves for your culinary uses.

The spring’s bounty is always worth exploring, but then again so is the Fayetteville Farmer’s market. While the weather is not going to be all that good this week, I’ll still show up barring the rain coming down side ways at which I figure we will have other more pressing concerns. As you may know, the market is located on 325 Franklin street in the front parking lot of the Fayetteville Transportation Museum. The market runs from 9 am to 1 pm and you can expect to see some of the venders show up with lots of good food. But let’s move right along to the stuff coming to market this week.

Southward Skies: A northern guide to southern Gardening

This is the second edition of my book, which was published using data compiled from several years of test garden operations. It’s written to aid gardeners of all skill levels in successful garden methods that are targeted for the south east but had proven to be a valued resource for gardens across the eastern coast. It’s certainly a good gift for that gardener you know or for yourself if you’d like to have a reliable field guide. The book costs $25.00 and we do take checks for this item, you can even have it signed.

Black Magic Fertilizer

That’s right you’ve heard about it in trials all summer. This specially formulated liquid fertilizer was made and tested at the test gardens using natural ingredients and no chemicals. The result explosive growth, great harvests and of course no environmental side effects! We’re making batches of this stuff to order, at $6.00 per gallon of fertilizer. You can either order it at the market and pick it up the next week or have it delivered to your home in the Fayetteville area for a delivery charge of an additional $2.00.

Vegetables

2x Asparagus, Gallon pot ($6.00)

3x Bloody Dock, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Eggplant, Casper , 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Pepper, Sweet Banana , 3.5” pot ($3.00)

1x Pepper, Pimento, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Pepper, Habanero, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Tomato, Tlacolula, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Tomato, Brown Berry, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Tomato, Blue Berries, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Tomato, Amana Orange, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Tomato, Black Krim, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Tomato, Paul Robeson, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Tomato, Hillbilly Potato Leaf, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Tomato, Cherokee Purple, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Fruits

10x Strawberry- Ozark Beauty, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Herbs

4x Basil-Sweet, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Basil-Thai, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Borage, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Fennel-Black, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

1x Horehound, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Hyssop-White, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Lamb’s Ear, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

1x Lavender-Cotton-Green, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Marjoram, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Oregano, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Oregano, Bristol Cross, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

1x Rosemary, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Sage, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Tansy, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Coming Soon:

Potato, Red Norland

Mint

Bee Balm

The end of the plant list also wraps up this accidentally Easter themed episode of Lost in the farmer's Market. As note regarding the night time temperatures, if you have already planted you can always toss a spare towel over any plant you think might get frosted to protect it from springs apparent multiple personality disorder. At the least make sure all exposed plants are well watered  and thing should turn out fine. I might note that basil is incredibly dramatic about cold so just because it's gone a bit limp does not mean you wont have pesto later. Peppers are notorious drama queens about the cold too but they still need some protecting so with that said you know what to do. Hopefully I'll see some of you at the market and as always keep 'em growing!