Allenwrench, those are POKEBERRIES. The fruits themselves and the rest of the plant is toxic at this time of the year.

I know you're really interested in wild foods, so you might want to mark the spot in your mind for an early spring harvest, late April-early May, next year. The young shoots, when they're about 8 inches tall or less, can be boiled in a couple of changes of water (necessary to leach out toxic alkaloids), and then used just like asparagus. They taste like asparagus, more or less.

I just discovered pokeweed this past spring myself, and I was quite astonished at how good it tastes. I can't believe I've been pulling it out as a weed all of these years. I'm gathering all of the volunteers in my yard and putting them in their own bed for next year.

Poke is a BIG deal in the South -- a lot of towns in southern states hold Poke Festivals in the spring, and it is available commercially canned on a small scale. There are also whole pokeweed cookbooks, etc. It often goes by the old names of "Poke Sallet" or "Poke Salad" in the deep South, despite the fact it is used as a cooked vegetable, and NEVER should be eaten raw, since the alkaloids, which are toxic to the kidneys and liver, are destroyed by cooking.

Dennis
SE Michigan

Dennis:

I have been hearing these stories about eating pokeweed for the last 30 years, but somehow lack the enthusiasm to try it. The stuff grows around here like, well, like a weed.

I think I will stick to asparagus in the April/May timeframe. It really does taste like asparagus.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Thanks Don and Dennis for all the excellent help.

Tried poke this last summer when I found out about it. I cooked as you described. If it was indeed poke, my throat felt raspy and the greens were mushy, so I did not eat much of it. Maybe it was the wrong thing though?

Is this poke?

{{gwi:123336}}

I started to learn about gardening in Feb of '08. My main interest in the garden is for food production. I like plants and flowers, but don't have the time, energy, space and finances to do it all. So I concentrate on food.

I am growing food because:

Food quality in the store is low.

Food being sold is unhealthy and devoid of nutrition.
Food costs are getting out of sight.

Food is or will be scare in the future as we become post carbon society due to peak oil...as well as issues of peak water, overpopulation and global warming.

Same for foraging interests. I started to study up foraging in early summer.

It is very empowering to have such knowledge and be able to go out your door and find a meal out in mother nature.

{{gwi:83067}}

Allenwrench, if you really tried poke in the summer, you were lucky to escape with a scratchy throat. But as Denninmi said, try it in the early spring, when it comes up as an asparagus-like shoot, with the leaves clustered tightly to the shoot. Cook in two waters, and add butter or a little bacon drippings. Worth a second try. Tomatobob

Allenwrench, yes, those are pokeweed leaves.

And, I want to say again, for someone who only got into all of this last winter, you are really knowledgable already, and I really admire your efforts at this. Keep up the good work.

Don, I was pretty skeptical about the culinary qualities of pokeweed myself, but I decided to give it a try after following a lot of discussion on it on other forums, mainly from posters from the South. I was REALLY surprised at how good it was -- asparagus like in flavor, but more spinach-like in consistency. Since I like both of those vegetables a great deal, I really enjoyed it -- made a believer out of me, so much so that I'm making a patch of it so that I can control the harvest and fertilize the plants for a better yield. One thing I didn't do this past spring that I would like to do next spring is use it in a quiche.

Tomatobob -- YUM, sounds good to me.

If I may contribute a tidbit, I have tried milkweed shoots. I have a substantial patch which delights me with a lot of Monarchs in June. Two changes of water, only prime shoots, the whole shebang. They were mediocre at best. Given that I have plentiful bamboo (phyllostachys nuda), cattail, and ostrich fern shoots (and some day, asparagus), I abandoned it.

The other three spring shoots I eat are all pretty good, though. Bamboo is the best, but it is a bit of a pain to clean. Fiddleheads are second best and need only steaming, and cattail is third, needs some cleaning to extract the heart, but still quite pleasant. I planted ferns and bamboo in less productive parts of my yard (they take up quite a bit of space), while the cattails are truly wild.

Glib, I've enjoyed the shoots from my bamboos as well. I've not tried milkweed, I guess based on your review, I may not ever bother. I do enjoy fiddleheads, although I don't have any growing in my yard, since it's too dry for them to do well -- tried Ostrich ferns a few times, but they always bit the dust during droughts.

Cattails are pretty tasty, actually, kind of like cucumber. I always get a little nervous about them, though, because of water quality issues. I've picked them out of my backyard pond, but always rinse in some dilute bleach water before eating.

Dennis
SE Michigan

The ripe berries are not toxic, though the seeds are, if crushed.
I've cooked & eaten young poke, in early spring, and it's just too mushy for me to bother with. I prefer some greens with some texture, like collards.

Dennis, here is a thought: cattail shoots are cleaner than, say, the organic celery my wife buys at the store, since the cattail is hermetically sealed and the celery is not (and it shows, there is always some dirt in there. The shoots are always immaculate). Plus, where I pick them there is no livestock. This said, I pick them from a ditch that drains some soccer fields.