Neighborhood foraging and “crop” maintenance.

[BPSabelhaus]

Do you make anything with them? I gather they’re a bit bland eaten raw.

They very heavily in flavor and color. If the soil is poor the flavor is poor (like all berries)

But there can be heated arguments over thimbleberry or salmonberry lol Thimbleberry are so much better, but it's a fleeting treat. They do not hold together well so it's pick and eat. Or jam, great jam

Salmonberry though has a lot of history. There's a reason I call her sister It's a staple food item. It's preserved in bars with other berries, dried and used later. Even given as gifts fresh or dried wrapped in a thimbleberry leaf (also many uses) But salmonberry is as culturally important as salmon, cedar, Camas, rice lily etc... Unlike thimbleberry you can eat the tender fresh growth without taking that plants entire years growth because it produces large canes. Think of 3 ft long asparagus vs a couple green beans.
It's one of those cultural flavors that identifies you as home wherever you may be.

 

[Fishfur]

They very heavily in flavor and color. If the soil is poor the flavor is poor (like all berries)

But there can be heated arguments over thimbleberry or salmonberry lol Thimbleberry are so much better, but it's a fleeting treat. They do not hold together well so it's pick and eat. Or jam, great jam

Salmonberry though has a lot of history. There's a reason I call her sister It's a staple food item. It's preserved in bars with other berries, dried and used later. Even given as gifts fresh or dried wrapped in a thimbleberry leaf (also many uses) But salmonberry is as culturally important as salmon, cedar, Camas, rice lily etc...
It's one of those cultural flavors that identifies you as home wherever you may be.

Makes perfect sense. When I was in high school the shortcut took me past what was left of what was once a plant nursery and a few vacant fields. There were thimbleberry thickets along the edges of the road by the nursery & all the edges of the fields and I would eat as many as I could easily get at on the walk to and from school, for as long as there were any I could reach without getting too beaten up by the thorns. Quite tasty for the most part.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Thimbleberry don't have thorns

The leaves are so soft they were used for sanitary purposes too

Salmonberry have spines on the second year growth. First year too, but that's when it's a tender shoot. After those canes establish and start their own fresh growth is when those spines turn into a fine paper sheath. You can walk through a salmonberry thicket simply by grabbing first or old growth canes and simply moving the canopy a bit.

Even made a tool yesterday for harvesting tall canes and hazel nuts out of reach.

New hazel walking stick with hook painted in red ochre for fun. I sanded it down with a piece of iron rich sandstone that I heat cycled until it was a dark red (from orange) after sanding I applied olive oil (any natural oil works) rubbed it in well (hands look like a cave painting lol) and let it dry overnight. Works great. Made it yesterday and hopefully actually use it for harvesting soon.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Took a black cap raspberry cutting today, divided into 6 sections for 8 plants to replant in the future. Also grabbed a honeysuckle cutting

 

[Fishfur]

Thimbleberry don't have thorns

That’s what the groundskeeper at the local church told me they were when I was a kid and I’ve never had any reason to question it ‘til now.

Live & learn, right?

 

[BPSabelhaus]

That’s what the groundskeeper at the local church told me they were when I was a kid and I’ve never had any reason to question it ‘til now.

Live & learn, right?

The problem with common names is that they change place to place. A black raspberry out here is very different than a black raspberry out east. IIRC a thimbleberry out east is a type of raspberry that's a bit purple maybe? It's been awhile.

We have three "blackberries" out here. Himalayan, cut leaf and the native trailing blackberry. The two invasive ones are huge with huge spines and are useful for pie, or jam. Maybe lol

The trailing blackberry has small somewhat soft thorns that are more like Velcro. They grow in long trails so you can just (carefully) pull the vine to you and pick / eat as you go. It's hard not to keep eating lol

 

[BPSabelhaus]

View attachment 903104

Yesterday's forage for a future project. Douglas fir pitch. Now to find some rabbit or deer poop so I can heat it all together with some punky wood in an air tight container.
I mean, where else am I gonna get a good glue?

When botany meets alchemy lol

Success! lol Hmmm there's a reason alchemist's write stuff down when Shamans go off memory.
What did I do wrong? Probably everything lol
Very basic failure analysis: Way too much heat.


Should have taken a before picture. That was pure white before I heat treated it.

 

[RayClem]

View attachment 903953

Success! lol Hmmm there's a reason alchemist's write stuff down when Shamans go off memory.
What did I do wrong? Probably everything lol
Very basic failure analysis: Way too much heat.
View attachment 903955

Should have taken a before picture. That was pure white before I heat treated it.

Just remember that the alchemists did not turn lead into gold on their first try. However, had they had access to particle accelerators, they could have done it, but at very high energy cost.

Likewise, Edison had hundreds of failures before coming up with a functional incandescent light bulb. Thus, do not let an initial failure deter you.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Never does. This was unplanned, last minute just to have a general idea. Learned a lot just messing around

 

[Fishfur]

Never does. This was unplanned, last minute just to have a general idea. Learned a lot just messing around

Failure can be a great teacher but it is still frustrating when it happens.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

When I'm actually trying to get something done, failure is devastating. But doing science? Failure is enlightening and enjoyable. Failure analysis is the best part of science as you get to break things to learn how they broke

To me, there are few things as beautiful as a conchoidal (real word Siri, stop underlining words you don't know as wrong. That's a frustrating failure there lol) fracture. Just wavy broken glass. So cool.

 

[Fishfur]

When I'm actually trying to get something done, failure is devastating. But doing science? Failure is enlightening and enjoyable. Failure analysis is the best part of science as you get to break things to learn how they broke

To me, there are few things as beautiful as a conchoidal (real word Siri, stop underlining words you don't know as wrong. That's a frustrating failure there lol) fracture. Just wavy broken glass. So cool.

I have always liked the look of those fractures too but didn’t know they had a name - of course I should have known they had a name, given the human need to name all things.

Nice evocative name too .

 

[BPSabelhaus]

I have always liked the look of those fractures too but didn’t know they had a name - of course I should have known they had a name, given the human need to name all things.

Nice evocative name too .

I know it from a lot of study and failed attempts to knap stone lol We don't really have good lithic sources here, so it was traded with peoples from the Mt St Helens area. So I started making wood tools instead lol

 

[Fishfur]

I know it from a lot of study and failed attempts to knap stone lol We don't really have good lithic sources here, so it was traded with peoples from the Mt St Helens area. So I started making wood tools instead lol

I haven’t tried stone knapping as such but I produced an assortment of astonishingly sharp edges while using brute force (a hammer) to knock some stones that were too big down to a useful size.

Turned out they were a type of flint. One tends to think of stone tools as being terribly primitive but the edges on the stone chips and the rock they came from were unbelievabably sharp. Sliced myself more than once before I started making them dull on purpose.

Of course you can’t sharpen them so they don’t last long in use but they are very effective.

I once dug up a lovely stone native Canadian artifact in my Great Aunt Minnie’s garden, in Galt (now Cambridge) Ontario. I think it must have been a spearhead - too big to be an arrowhead.

Absolutely gorgeous fluted edges. Intact at the time though it broke in half years later. I still have it somewhere.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

You can sharpen them Just knock another microflake off until sharp again. In ancient homes there's usually a corner room where there are chips. Don't want sharp little pieces of glass all over the house / kitchen so tools were touched up in homes, possibly finished off. While the sourcing and spalling (breaking down into a portable and hand workable chunks) is done at the source site.

 

[Fishfur]

You can sharpen them Just knock another microflake off until sharp again. In ancient homes there's usually a corner room where there are chips. Don't want sharp little pieces of glass all over the house / kitchen so tools were touched up in homes, possibly finished off. While the sourcing and spalling (breaking down into a portable and hand workable chunks) is done at the source site.

Really? Live & learn - I didn’t know they could be retouched. Not that I was trying to make tools - the sharp edges were just an interesting phenomenon as I think I was reading Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series at the time.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

I used to study the stone tools a lot. But to be honest, a wooden spoon or a ladle made of reeds and sealed with pitch is just so much cooler lol Like you said, anyone can break a rock and get an edge. Making a fine knife is very cool, but it's still just breaking rocks with more purpose.

Weave me a ladle from reeds that doesn't leak. Or make me a berry basket. That requires thought, time, care and planning with the season and plants for the right time to harvest and store materials.

Sure with stone tools there is heat treating, planning the tool out of the stone etc... But that still comes from just breaking rocks lol Weaving requires math and geometry, especially when you get into artist impressions in the weave to create culture. People are working together and communicating while they weave. It literally creates culture in an early settlement.

Studying pre-history really makes one laugh at this patriarchy stuff. Women literally created our modern society, yet we blame Eve for stealing knowledge from a higher civilization and forget about skymother who (IMO) was gifted to humanity by a greater civilization and brought their knowledge of plants, medicine and culture to lesser civilizations

The story is a hole opened in the sky world (early civilization hill top village with a walled or moated surrounding) and as the skymother left she grabbed seeds and plants from the sky world to bring on her journey. IMO she didn't grab anything but rather brought many priestesses with plants and knowledge from other clans such as otter, beaver and muskrat.

The skymother left us her heart, the strawberry plant. The three leaves represent her and her children sapling and flint who died after birth leaving the skymother heartbroken. Upon her death a plant sprang from her chest bearing a heart shaped fruit flowing with her sweet blood to remind humanity of love and compassion.

That sounds like a nice place to live

 

[Fishfur]

I used to study the stone tools a lot. But to be honest, a wooden spoon or a ladle made of reeds and sealed with pitch is just so much cooler lol Like you said, anyone can break a rock and get an edge. Making a fine knife is very cool, but it's still just breaking rocks with more purpose.

Weave me a ladle from reeds that doesn't leak. Or make me a berry basket. That requires thought, time, care and planning with the season and plants for the right time to harvest and store materials.

Sure with stone tools there is heat treating, planning the tool out of the stone etc... But that still comes from just breaking rocks lol Weaving requires math and geometry, especially when you get into artist impressions in the weave to create culture. People are working together and communicating while they weave. It literally creates culture in an early settlement.

Studying pre-history really makes one laugh at this patriarchy stuff. Women literally created our modern society, yet we blame Eve for stealing knowledge from a higher civilization and forget about skymother who (IMO) was gifted to humanity by a greater civilization and brought their knowledge of plants, medicine and culture to lesser civilizations

The story is a hole opened in the sky world (early civilization hill top village with a walled or moated surrounding) and as the skymother left she grabbed seeds and plants from the sky world to bring on her journey. IMO she didn't grab anything but rather brought many priestesses with plants and knowledge from other clans such as otter, beaver and muskrat.

The skymother left us her heart, the strawberry plant. The three leaves represent her and her children sapling and flint who died after birth leaving the skymother heartbroken. Upon her death a plant sprang from her chest bearing a heart shaped fruit flowing with her sweet blood to remind humanity of love and compassion.

That sounds like a nice place to live

It is a nice origin story - nicer than many. And yes, without us females this world would have become a very different place.

 

[RayClem]

When I'm actually trying to get something done, failure is devastating. But doing science? Failure is enlightening and enjoyable. Failure analysis is the best part of science as you get to break things to learn how they broke

To me, there are few things as beautiful as a conchoidal (real word Siri, stop underlining words you don't know as wrong. That's a frustrating failure there lol) fracture. Just wavy broken glass. So cool.

I have a robust vocabulary, but you taught me a new word today. Good job!

 

[BPSabelhaus]

It is a nice origin story - nicer than many. And yes, without us females this world would have become a very different place.

Maybe Eve shouldn't have stolen the knowledge of making iron

What is Adams final gift from God? A flaming sword. You get a flaming sword by quenching iron in oil lol There is so much written history that is locked in stories.

 

[Fishfur]

Maybe Eve shouldn't have stolen the knowledge of making iron

What is Adams final gift from God? A flaming sword. You get a flaming sword by quenching iron in oil lol There is so much written history that is locked in stories.

It is quite interesting that every culture I am aware of has its stories about how everything started, how humans and animals came to be, how the world works, etc.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

It is quite interesting that every culture I am aware of has its stories about how everything started, how humans and animals came to be, how the world works, etc.

I have had a long aversion to spoken word history for a long time. Not sure why, probably because I questioned my own oral history. Hopefully genetic testing will help tell me what I am with my autism (multiple genes cause various comorbidities like selective mutism) and who I am from oral history. Was my Grandmother's grandmother actually a Blackfoot princess who married a Spanish sea captain? We'll find out lol I know my maternal grandfathers family crest and tartan is on a castle in Scotland. So yeah, I kinda started piecing things together there. Scots coming over often intermarry with Blackfoot creating the Metis. Oral history can jumble together over time. Could have been his ancestry or hers just retold by my mother who doesn't really care about studying such things.

 

[Fishfur]

I have had a long aversion to spoken word history for a long time. Not sure why, probably because I questioned my own oral history. Hopefully genetic testing will help tell me what I am with my autism (multiple genes cause various comorbidities like selective mutism) and who I am from oral history. Was my Grandmother's grandmother actually a Blackfoot princess who married a Spanish sea captain? We'll find out lol I know my maternal grandfathers family crest and tartan is on a castle in Scotland. So yeah, I kinda started piecing things together there. Scots coming over often intermarry with Blackfoot creating the Metis. Oral history can jumble together over time. Could have been his ancestry or hers just retold by my mother who doesn't really care about studying such things.

My mom really got into some of the family genealogy in her latter years and managed to trace her mother’s family back to the middle of the 16th century in Yorkshire.

My Dad’s parents were Irish immigrants so on that side I am presumably Irish, though one never truly knows.

Mom’s morher married a man with an Irish surname and I guess I’ve always thought of myself as being mostly Irish but Grandma’s people from centuries past were not Irish so far as we can tell.

One lot of the family set sail from Glasgow to Jamaica and had a lot of babies there that didn’t live (all faithfully and beautifully recorded in their family bible which is still around) and then they came to Canada and it from them thst my Grandmother descended.

I’m something like a sixth cousin (greatly removed) to Garrison Keillor, if you’ve ever heard of the man? He has acquired some fame for his Minnesota Public Radio shows - A Prairie Home Companion & The Writer’s Almanac and some books he wrote. I wouldn’t mind meeting him.

Some of his better known quotes -

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.

A book is a gift you can open again and again.”

It is fascinating to find out who came before you. Without all those folks travelling and whatnot I would not be here.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Yellow iris, wild strawberry and a small oak collected today to propagate. Plus 8 more black cap raspberry starts I grabbed yesterday.
Planted some in the front yard, need to go back for some of the white and slightly different pink nootkas later. Either cutting starts after research or collecting hips and growing from seed. Probably both, need gloves and research. I am not a fan of cultivated roses so I never studied roses in general.

 

[Lakefish]

Yellow iris, wild strawberry and a small oak collected today to propagate. Plus 8 more black cap raspberry starts I grabbed yesterday.
Planted some in the front yard, need to go back for some of the white and slightly different pink nootkas later. Either cutting starts after research or collecting hips and growing from seed. Probably both, need gloves and research. I am not a fan of cultivated roses so I never studied roses in general.

View attachment 904658

That white rose looks like a rugosa to me, from the texture of the leaves. Are you sure it is purely wild? Around here, the Nootka roses come in the regular medium pink and less often a dark pink.
Are you growing Haida potatoes? I was happy to find some at a plant sale earlier this year, but I think they are going to be a failure for me because they haven't sprouted yet. Wondering what I did wrong. Lol.

ETA: I was just on a botanical forum, and someone there also posted pictures of a wild white rose. Funny! Maybe that's just a genetic variation that is not common to Vancouver Island.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

That white rose looks like a rugosa to me, from the texture of the leaves. Are you sure it is purely wild? Around here, the Nootka roses come in the regular medium pink and less often a dark pink.
Are you growing Haida potatoes? I was happy to find some at a plant sale earlier this year, but I think they are going to be a failure for me because they haven't sprouted yet. Wondering what I did wrong. Lol.

ETA: I was just on a botanical forum, and someone there also posted pictures of a wild white rose. Funny! Maybe that's just a genetic variation that is not common to Vancouver Island.

I have seen them "in the wild" where the govt has done reclamation work. This was at a kids fishing park. I assume it's a cultivar from mass production for the govt use. Potatoes are going great but I think my three sisters aren't coming for dinner lol Planted too early I think.

The potatoes are much hardier. I think planting under the first full moon after the last frost is still a bit early, but it's worked two seasons now. Getting ready to mound with thimbleberry after the berries get eaten

What forum? I should probably find a place like this for that lol Have not made it to the island yet. Definitely on the to do list. Love the drive into Vancouver (the North one lol) The mountain really is in the city there. I got three rushed loops of the crowded conservatory last time we were there. I forget what the celebration was, but apparently a huge thing city wide lol

 

[Lakefish]

I tried the three sisters at a different house years ago. It sort of worked...but I planted all three at the same time, so the beans far outpaced the corn and I had to put up strings for them. And it turned out that snake gourds are a bit  too vigorous for this purpose, they kind of swamped everything.
Maybe I just haven't waited long enough for my potatoes to sprout. In my head I thought I was really late planting them, but by your rule they should be fine. This is also the first year I should be able to harvest my skirret plants. Can't wait!
If you do get to the island, don't miss Strathcona Park. It's a plant lover's dream. Alpine plants, wildflower meadows, blueberries...so beautiful! Also the whiskeyjacks are tame enough to eat out of your hand.
The UBC Botanical Garden forum is where I go for major plant geekery. Lol. I do not participate in the taxonomy debates though. That's way over my level.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

I sprouted mine indoors / ones in storage from last year did what potatoes do and saved my butt lol I kept them in a box in the garage, but some scraps / assumed dead from last year that were in the ground actually sprouted too

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Went out looking for blue elderberry and ginger knowing full well it doesn't grow in the watershed lol Still came back with a lot of Oregon grape, some Vine maple seeds, and munched some salal and red huckleberries while walking

I know where a blue elder is close bye, but not sure I can access it right now due to a fatal accident nearby the other day Driver of a pick up ejected after leaving the road into trees. Not shocked, people (especially truck people) drive way too fast through that area. I hate driving through it tbh.

 

[Fishfur]

Thought you might find this interesting, if you don’t already know about it. Nice article about it in National Geographic.

A study (published in Cell) traced the origin of modern potatoes to a chance cross breeding which occurred some 8-9 million years back.

The parents of the ancient hybrid were a tomato and an Etuberosum, neither of which could create a tuber, but the hybrid group they created (called Petota) could grow tubers.

Etuberosums are a tiny group, only 3 species. They preferred it cold & wetter while tomatoes liked heat & dryness. How did these two even get together???

It hardly sounds promising for the creation of the tasty tubers we know today, but the tomato provided a gene that turned on tuberization and the etuberosum contributed one that controls tuber growth.

Petotas were created round about the time the Andes mountains were forming. The hybrids liked it cooler & drier than their tomato parent but not as cold or wet as the etuberosum parent.

They spread upward into the higher, cooler & drier areas - a nicely serendipitous mingling of events.

Fascinating.

 

[BPSabelhaus]

:lol: Funny you bring that up lol I was talking with a climatologist friend about the Ozettes the other day. Literally dropped about an hour later and showed up in my feed. I sent him the link with a "speak of the devil and the research will appear" title lol We had been talking about the potato "berries" I have forming this year, the environmental triggers etc... Last year I had a "weird" and unexpected new data. You would think rocky soil would limit tuber production, but it's the exact opposite. So this year I did a little experiment in breaking up rocky soil with potatoes. That gave me berries for seed and possibly crossbreeding from different varieties. But also gave me surface tubers I could easily collect. No clue what's lower, but last year it was way more than my mounded plots. Granted sizes, shapes etc... are way different it still gets the brain going on how to use that to produce both more and more consistent.

Playing with ancestral maize this year too. Some of these are probably pushing 12ft tall.
So many different colors all crossbreeding right now

 

[kansas]

:lol: Funny you bring that up lol I was talking with a climatologist friend about the Ozettes the other day. Literally dropped about an hour later and showed up in my feed. I sent him the link with a "speak of the devil and the research will appear" title lol We had been talking about the potato "berries" I have forming this year, the environmental triggers etc... Last year I had a "weird" and unexpected new data. You would think rocky soil would limit tuber production, but it's the exact opposite. So this year I did a little experiment in breaking up rocky soil with potatoes. That gave me berries for seed and possibly crossbreeding from different varieties. But also gave me surface tubers I could easily collect. No clue what's lower, but last year it was way more than my mounded plots. Granted sizes, shapes etc... are way different it still gets the brain going on how to use that to produce both more and more consistent.
View attachment 922342View attachment 922340
Playing with ancestral maize this year too. Some of these are probably pushing 12ft tall.View attachment 922341View attachment 922343View attachment 922339
So many different colors all crossbreeding right now

How big are the ears?

 

[BPSabelhaus]

How big are the ears?

Normal sized. Should mostly be color differences for the cobs, but the stalks etc can have other variations. Cobs can vary greatly as well. Stubby pine cone like, long and thin etc... But these cobs were all standard cultivated size. I had a few fall over that had small cobs on them. All three were white but one had kernels that had little points on the ends. None of the seeds had little points so it's a little curious to see, but could have been a cross from before I grabbed some decorative corn last year. Eyes saw all the different colors, brain immediately went into a matrix green screen of genetics coding lol

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Normal sized. Should mostly be color differences for the cobs, but the stalks etc can have other variations. Cobs can vary greatly as well. Stubby pine cone like, long and thin etc... But these cobs were all standard cultivated size. I had a few fall over that had small cobs on them. All three were white but one had kernels that had little points on the ends. None of the seeds had little points so it's a little curious to see, but could have been a cross from before I grabbed some decorative corn last year. Eyes saw all the different colors, brain immediately went into a matrix green screen of genetics coding lol

Liar. lol

All hail the giant ear lol

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Potato seeds and berries. Unknown variety, not my Ozettes unfortunately. But maybe hybrid of some sort.