we use elderberry to eat and also dry some for medicine. They seem to help immune function for cold & flu stuff. Makes good wine too, but you have to have a lot of them. They are weeds here. come up in the fence rows everywhere. And will cover a river bottom in a few years…
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Elderberry is a major part of our etnological history. It is sayd a eldertree is the hearth of family health. Its a Slavic superfood. It has so many uses.
We dry the flowers for tea.
Make all sorts of drinks. Berry and flower/lemon syrup to mix with water for drinking, and a popular drink called šabesa, a sort of a low alcohol elder flower infusion chanpange. Wine from the berrys.
We dip the flowers in pancake batter and fry.
We make marmelade, jelly, dry the berrys for tea…
But caution! The berrys are not edible raw!
As for wild leaks, Pepe, you can plant them on your garden. I know some people with admireable patches of it on their gardens.
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KhistianL, you said berries-superfoods.
My wife the decade’s-long now hospice/home-health nurse has over the years ran into repeatedly deparate folks who step past our very expensive, formal Pharma-Medical and try A-N-Y alternative approach to get some relief and possible a few more birthdays in.
One of the easy approaches was to always eat 1/2 cup of any type of fruit-berries daily. This is now being accepted main-stream here.
Factors in those berries that can be gotton nowhere else.
I’ve/we’ve been having our daily fresh berries for almost 100 days now. Strawberries → raspberries → blueberries → now black berries. We and many others in the family collect up and freeze berries for year-a-round use. M-a-y-b-e not as effective as fresh. Hard to prove factoring out placebo effects. But wonderful, colorful garnishes, flavor enhancers treats non-the-less.
I slather my breads with at least two teaspoon of local raw honey daily too.
Another “other factors” super food.
Regards
tree-farmer Steve unruh
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This mentality has exploded over here. But with a twist.
Everything that has Goji berry or Asai bery or Quinoya or what ever added, sells, and it sells double the price. If it eaven says BIO, then its worth its weight in gold. But, its a marketing thing. Sell expensive “exotic” fruits becouse when people hear Goji or Asay or any exotic name they think of 200 years old chinese kung-fu monks and their magical potions.
Brother in law grabed this marketing trend by the horns. He (we) planted a 700 plant worth plantation of Goji and he expects full furtility in 3 years, with a yearly yeld at about 4000kg. A kg costs about 10$.
What l like to say is yes, exotic fruits and berrys are ok, but there are local superfoods that have the same or eaven better nutritional values!
Take sour cabbage (sauerkraut) for instance. It has more vitamins thain most fruits, particulary vitamin C. It was main vegetable eaten here untill 50 years ago. My wifes grandparents had a yearly suply of about at least a tone of it for a family of 6. Then there are elderberrys, all the “usual” berrys and fruits that l bet are just as nutritious as the foreigin hokus-pokus.
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Cabbage has double or triple the vitamin C of oranges, and potatoes are a much better source of potassium than bananas. It just shows how brainwashed and victimized by corporate mareting we are that almost nobody knows this.
Quinoa, I think is a different matter. The nutritional profile is very good, practically all the amino acids. A bit hard to culture on a larger scale, as it doesn’t compete well with weeds, a slow starter, and a very close relative to lamb’s quarters.
Barley is of similar nutritional quality, and far easier to grow. I have 2 hulless barley varieties growing, they look quite promising.
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Good exchange guys.
Yep. You plant/culture a craft-fancy-grower to be able to high-value sell to get the Caesars, to pay the Caesar in your life.
Practical. Eat the better, common, underappreciated…
I’ve been proud of my 1st year rutabaga’s. My 1st year parsnips only 30% germinated and to tall leaf growing now. Ha! No thinning needed there. We will see.
As expected my two way to potatoes grow has yielded poorly. Even with areas isolation. Natural sourced anti-blight treatments. We’d starve if dependent on our own grown potatoes. Just would have to copper-sulphate? sulfite? constant under leaf dose. ( I have now been selecting out and saving all of the pass-trough pre-1983 US mostly-all-copper pennies now. Maybe . . . a real need . . . someday.)
All our vine-bush berries now pretty much gone.
Now our Candice and purple juicing grapes coming on.
Right on the heels: my childhood favorite - Italian plumb/prunes.
tree-farmer Steve unruh
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Here’s a couple pics of the leek seed development yesterday morning. Bowling balls in cups. These seeds have been thru winds and rain and are just not ready to fall. Interesting watching this cycle. I thought for sure this morning that the seeds would all be disbursed. I’ll start an every day check, maybe 2 a day. I want to see this happen.
The verdict is in. I should have picked these 2 or 3 days ago, but the prolific bean Jade still has an excellent snap and flavor. If you like green beans and haven’t tried these, you’re missing a treat.
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Pepe once your beans have gotten that large and wood do leave them to dry on the vine for seed or dryed beans. I ask because I let some get away as well. I am new to saving seed but have been buying only organic and herloom seeds with the intention of saving my own. So far I have had good luck with good results on what I have tried. I am starting a volunteer garden on a year old hulgelkulter bed. With some of my seeds this fall in hopes they will sprout when the time is right in the spring.
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Saving seeds will work ok if you only plant one type of each crop. If you plant several types like I do to insure that I get something that comes good then the seeds will be weird crosses sometimes good often not.
Typically you are best served by collecting the seeds spreading them out to dry and turn bagging them in a cool dark place like your basement or frig for the winter pulling them out in the spring. Most seeds will either be eaten by critters or rot outside over the winter.
Best of luck with your seed collecting and yes beans are one of the easy ones to collect just let the plants die with beans still on the plant once the shells dry like you would want with baked beans harvest your beans. If the plants die and rain is comming pull the plants and hang under cover upside down harvest at you convenience.
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I went on my wild leak patch and saw no seed buds. My guess is we have different plants in EU. They form a deep underground onion, that seems to be peranual.
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Thanks for the reply Dan. I did dry and set aside several varities of seeds. Since I have dill ,Lettice , spinach all volunteer this year I decided to give them their own space. I am hoping to create some volunteer gardens. I don’t till anything anymore unless it is a new space. I just let the chickens in after I am done in the fall and they do the rest. The only thing I remove is tomato waist. They shred and stir in what ever is left or added.
I know what you mean about the cross germination
I do have some squash that look like nothing I have seen come up in a compost pile. I have also planted store bought squash seeds and gotten some surprises. It’s all fun.
I have learned to make soil so next I hope to learn to grow food.
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Jim does your squash look like what I post back in the picture on post 200. These were yellow squash seeds from Lowe’s.
You should take the squash back to Lowes and ask their customer service people to explain why they don’t look like the photo on the seed package.
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No nothing like that. I have the zucchini paint job on a shorter fatter squash. I was pretty sure that I had planted organic watermelon seeds left over from last year in this spot. The watermelon last year were as good as I ever had. This year I swear
I planted the seed from the same package and got these. Looks like the one I picked from the compost. Last year I had butter cup I never panted
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A follow up pic of the harvest of my kiwi vines. We’ve learned to pick them a little under ripe and let them ripen in the house. They ripen quickly and you have to cover them to keep the birds from stripping the vines clean so early picking like this is easier. They are sweet and all these were gone in a week!
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We planted spaghetti squash last year, they looked like your melon, wonder what is going on
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My spaghetti squash have been fine except I wish I planted more.
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I hate to say I told you so…well, not really…haha 
glad you like them
half my garden (late summer) comes from the compost piles. Birds carry seeds around. plants left to themselves drop seeds in gardens. Most of the “weeds” in my gardens are stuff that was grown there on purpose in the past or cover crop survivors from seasons gone by. they cross with each other and make weird stuff. especially squash.
Also, I had an oddball pepper seed from a packet of fooled-you jalepeno this year. Turns out to be my new favorite pepper. I think seed sometimes gets mixed up at the seed company. I mean think about it, consider how easy it would be for a seed to end up in the wrong bin.
That particular squash looks like a variety I have grown. It looks a lot like a melon in shape but the inside is a squash with differing shades of yellow/orange and a stringy center seed mass sort of like a pumpkin but more edible and less slimy in my opinion. If it’s the same thing, it cooks like any winter squash. I have also had spaghetti squash with a similar pattern.
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Well, Billy, I posted an I love Jade beans comment 6 days ago. Last night I found a 1/2 pound of them still in the fridge and cooked them up. Man, they were still very crispy and tasty after that time in the fridge, what a bean. I never thought I’d say this, but move over Kentucky Wonder pole beans, there’s a new bean in town 
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Just an update from comment 235 on leek seeds. Despite the heavy rains and strong winds these leek seeds are still hanging on. I’m super curious when they’ll drop.
Oh, did I mention high winds. They knocked most of the walnuts off my 2 trees. I picked up 2 wheel barrows full today from one of the trees. Now for the fun of husking them.
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