Wildharvesting natural materials

[jaykush]

start with 1:20 tea:water for foliars.

 

[CascadeFarmer]

Lambsquarters

Latin name: Chenopodium album
Common names, Lambsquarters, Lamb's Quarter, Goosefoot, Pigweed
Location: Likes broken/disturbed ground. A nuisance plant in farming for many crops. Does OK in drier conditions.
Availability: Can be very prolific. Will grow in large patches.
Harvest recommendations: Can be fairly aggressively harvested. Cut back like a hedge and will grow back. Can obtain multiple harvests under the right conditions. Let some plants go to seed. Starts going to seed about now.
Sustainability: Very sustainable and vigorous. Usually grows between 1-4'.
Growing season: Later Spring through Fall. Probably starts earlier lower in elevation and warmer. I'm at 4,000'.
Opinion: Fairly strong flavored compared to something like chickweed but still delicious. Not spicy, not tangy and just yummy green flavor. Seems highly nutritious as difficult for me to eat a lot of it like Candy Flower, Miner's Lettuce and Chickweed. Lower water content. Stems definitely tough and the leaves themselves are very firm. Probably a great general nutritive plant for growing, composting, etc.

Quick story - Bruce Tainio's CD from Acres that talks about sap testing and weeds. Farmer normally grew lentils. Used a spray to control weed growth. Too rainy one year and could not use spray around the time he needed to for planting lentils. Lambsquarters, and another weed I can't remember, took over. He still harvested but highly 'contaminated' with weed seeds. Tainio said lets test the harvest. Mixed seed meal was much more nutritious. Test fed to pigs which got bigger. Farmer stopped planting lentils, stopped spraying, stopped any inputs and started farming weed seeds. Profit margins went way up and the time he spent on his fields went way down.

Close up...still early in the season and this year a lot of stuff is about a month behind.

Grows in patches. You can see the very dry conditions here. In good soil, nutes and adequate water it gets BIG.

Pic off the net of flowering Lambsquarters...flower clusters are just starting to form on some plants locally.

 

[CascadeFarmer]

It's on our "National Environmental Alert List" as a "Weed of National Significance"

Yes considered an invasive species around here by some.

will the seeds not spread anyway on the wind, even in pots? or do they reproduce from the roots only?

Don't know about the seed thing and think mainly by rooting. When you harvest it it just snaps off at the base with roots intact. A local told me if you chop a plant up into pieces, lay on the ground, cover with some dirt and water or put covered in an area that's very moist, the little pieces will grow new plants. That's why I said before if you use in composting only when hot composting to ensure no regrowth. As I also said...once it starts growing somewhere forget about getting rid of it. Snake Grass roots can be found 3+ feet underground...spreads easily.

 

[gaiusmarius]

start with 1:20 tea:water for foliars.

thanks man, i'll do a test spray on 1 plant tonight. so that's 50 ml of horsetail tea with 1 lt of water? should i ph the solution?

 

[3rdEye]

Thanks for the lambsquarters flowering picture Cascade. There is a bunch around here, but now i can finally identify it when flowering. Everything seems to love the seeds as well. Birds and mice love it big time. I didn't know what it was and i noticed the wildlife just flocking to it. Now i know. thank you

gaius from what i gather you don't need to worry about pH balancing any of the FPE's. Nice harvest and pretty cat as well.

 

[jaykush]

they dont call lambs quarters fat hen for no reason.

and a DAMN tasty weed at that. lambs quarters pesto mmmmmmm

no need to PH!!!!

 

[h.h.]

Self fermented agave...

http://www.icmag.com/ic/album.php?albumid=10738&pictureid=710820

 

[self]

Thanks for the lambsquarters post! I've been munching on patches of this that volunteered in my grow trench, its delicious, and has an awesome crisp succulent texture.
happy hunting!
~elf

 

[gaiusmarius]

so my nettle FPE is nearly ready, so my next step after 2weeks of fermenting i strain the rotting nettles off and maybe add a table spoon of molasses to my 1.5 lt of nettle fpe? or is the molasses only for use when making lacto bacillus with rice wash water etc? seems to me it would be a good addition, question is should it be added when diluting the tea for use or added to the concentrated tea?

have sprayed my horsetail tea on all my vegging plants. at 50ml per lt of water i get ec 0.3 while the tap water alone is 0.1 so the silica hardly showing up on the ec meter. will be fun to see how the plants like it.

horsetail tea is smelling nice, while the nettle fpe stinks to high heaven when i take the lid off once a day.

 

[jaykush]

just strain if you made more than you can use at once, and store the rest without the solids.

after that you just dilute and apply.

no need to waste money on molasses. keep that for some ACT.

 

[gaiusmarius]

man that stuff stinks like human shit, i think i might have left it too long, there seems to be no recognizable smell of nettles anymore.

i did a test spray on 1 pheno of each of my vegging plants, even diluted 20 to 1 the spray still smells quite unpleasant, but with a slight rotting vegetation smell in the background. so i did the spraying outside on my balcony, once they are dry i'll bring them back in lol. btw the ec of the diluted spray mix was only 0.3 more then my tap water. so not very strong, or the ingredients don't show up on my ec meter. anyway will be interesting to see how they react.

 

[jaykush]

lol you made it right, it does smell like shit.

but your plants will love it.

 

[heady blunts]

yea the concentrated nettle fermentation smells like liquid pig shit from a very sick pig.

i dilute it until it mellows out to a nice horse manure smell before foliar. lol.

 

[mad librettist]

re: lamb's quarters- it doesn't self thin too well. Cocannouer recommends thinning it out so you get one dominant plant.

 

[TACOE]

That's good info. Another plant to watch out for when collecting is Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea). I've seen instances where companies bought bulk herbs for use in manufacturing that was contaminated with Foxglove and 1 customer almost died. Pretty sure the digitalis in it pulls potassium out of the heart or something like that.

One thing I've been eying recently to harvest for composting are full grown ferns...lots around here. I've eaten fiddleheads so did a bit more research...


There's the potassium thing again

was reading a section on weeds in an og lawn care manual... noticed that ALOT of the weeds listed indicate HIGH potassium while indicaticating low values of other nutrients.

just an observation.


edit:
also
lambsquarters >>>>>>> spinach for eats by a long shot IMO. Much more delicate flavor. Steam.. splash of red wine vinegar... eat.
extremely dominant weed at the farm i work at. I consider them lucky.

 

[CascadeFarmer]

was reading a section on weeds in an og lawn care manual... noticed that ALOT of the weeds listed indicate HIGH potassium while indicaticating low values of other nutrients.

just an observation.

Honestly never really looked at nutritional profiles for wild herbs/weeds. Only testing I've done is for sap on Chickweed and posted those results. I do know the K thing is pretty much across the board though especially the N:K ratio with K being much higher. I dunno about the 'low value of other nutrients' thing though as comfrey is high is calcium and phosphorous from what I understand. Weeds/herbs seem to be adept at extracting minerals form the soil.

I just built my 4th tumbler run for the season and would expect the compost I'm creating is much better than anything based on kitchen type scraps.

 

[big_daddy]

You can type in the element/mineral/compound you're looking for in this data base and come up with the plants that contain the specified element.

They're listed in order from highest ppm's to lowest. You can also use it to search chemicals and their uses FWIW.

HTH

b_d

 

[DARC MIND]

I dunno about the 'low value of other nutrients' thing though as comfrey is high is calcium and phosphorous from what I understand.

dont think its P comfrey is known for
accumulates more N then phosphorus if im not mistakn

potassium(k) seems were it shines the most
comfrey the wonder plant

lettuce and lambQ appear to play a more important role in P cycling

 

[jaykush]

yea comfrey = potassium for your plant

 

[ManitoidsGhost]

Thanks again for this thread, almost fell off the first page, and should be sticky-ed.

You the man jay!

If i was going to start cultivating for fertiliser, what would be added to:

Comfrey, nettle, dandelion, lavender, dock, lambsquarter?

more that i couldnt live without if i was cultivating and using for fertiliser?

Manitoid