Oregon and PNW crops, what they look like, how to prepare.

[Howard1955]

There's Camas, and then there's Death Camas.

https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/downloads/wp988k59w

 

[OldBroad44]

Okay. Getting back to standard food crops you can find in fields and gardens, here are some crops that you can find in fields and gardens IN WINTER that can be eaten in winter.

One crop used as winter a cover crop in many fields and gardens is Austrian field peas. It has edible tips which can provide good greens all winter. For the Austrian field peas pinch off the top four to six inches of the tips with leaves, however long a section that has a stal that is sptender rather than stringy. These can be eaten raw chopped into salads or can be dropped into soups or stews during the last two or three minutes of cooking, or can be used in stir fries. When cooked they taste similar to canned green peas.

One of the over wintering greens crops most gardeners and market gardeners in the maritime NW grow is kale. It is planted about late July and makes full size plants that are prime after the cold hits. They actively grow and produce good greens through winter and bolt, that is produce flower heads, in spring. The loose broccoli like heads of the bolting plants are edible too. Many cabbage varieties over winter. Tatsoi over winters. Swiss chard over winters. So there are plenty of greens in winter.
Continuing. It posted prematurely.

Now for root crops. First, Oregon produces sugar beet seed commercially. So there will be huge fields of huge sugar beets over wintering so as to bolt and produce seed the next year. Gardeners may also be over wintering table beets, carrots, parsnips, multiplier onions. And they plant hard necked garlic in fall so the growing green garlic plants are available all winter.

Finally, the potatoes are harvested before the first freeze. But nobody ever gets all of them. Those deeper than about three inches will usually still be good, and can be dug if you are hungry enough. Even if the ground has been tilled and something else planted.

 

[baker3gun]

Good stuff here, thanks!

Things I need to try: cooked dandelion leaves, kimchee with the leaves and roots, and ducks for weed control.

 

[CamoDeafie]

Theres quite a few food/drink crops not mentioned yet.
Corn
Hazelnuts
Blueberry
Apple
Pear
Grape (lots of wineyards around)
Hops
Barley
Onions, both white and red
Cherry



I do believe there may be abandoned orchards somewhere but that isnt common at all.

My parents have the following;
Cherry
Blueberry
Plum

And my mom grows lily of the valley which is the toxic lookalike to ramps/wild leek.
They also have a bunch of rose bushes of varying cultivars, rocky mtn maple, Japanese maple, lots of gladiolas and Easter lilies

 

[OldBroad44]

Good stuff here, thanks!

Things I need to try: cooked dandelion leaves, kimchee with the leaves and roots, and ducks for weed control.

What weeds are you hoping to control with ducks? What kind of ducks do you have?

Its usually geese that are used for weed control. And that works only in special cases. Geese strongly prefer grass to broad leaf plants. So geese can be used to control grassy weeds in strawberry fields, before there are any berries that is. Even that works only if your weeds are nearly all grasses. Before herbicides geese were sometimes used to weed cotton. However, ducks eat just about every plant with delight, broad leaves or grassy. They even eat stuff like growing garlic plants (greens and bulbs), tomato tops, grass, nearly all greens including hot mustard except for Green Wave, etc. hard to see how to use them as weeders. Unless you consider their eating the water fern azolla when ducks, azolla, and rice are grown together as weeding. That works because the ducks love the fern and don't like the coarse rice seedling transplants.

Ducks are good for pest control in gardens because when released into a new area they eat all the insects, worms, slugs, and snails first. After those are all gone they start on the salad, meaning both the weeds and garden plants. So you keep an eye on the ducks and when they start on the salad course you herd them out of the garden and close the gate. There are limitations as the duck a will trample any delicate small plants. And ducks have projectile poop that gets on anything below about a foot off the ground. And they love tomatoes. And turns out ducks of breeds such as Khaki Campbell's and Anconas jump surprisingly high. High enough to eat all the leaves off the grape vines up to about three feet high.

 

[TTSX]

One of my favorite, most underpicked fruit tree is the fig that many people have in their yards. They dry well and store for months.

When you have problems, take a lesson from an old Clint Eastwood movie, "The Beguiled." Wild mushrooms are a great source of protein. You'll want to use these to thin the herd when the time comes, best served with steak or in a soup.
Amanita Phalloides, a.k.a. Death Cap Mushrooms.

View attachment 989427

Yeah, I'm just not gonna eat mushrooms. I find them as a food category inedible, largely due to their texture and a very specific smell. It's just..... off. Oh and eating the wrong one can kill you real bad. I think I'd rather just starve.

 

[The Heretic]

I do believe there may be abandoned orchards somewhere but that isnt common at all.

Not as uncommon as one may think - they are usually overgrown and neglected - apple trees that are abandoned and left over from orchards are common - I know of quite a few, I have one myself - you just need to keep your eyes open for them and know when they are ready to harvest (usually August and later). Walnut orchards that are abandoned are common because California took over that market decades ago - but you need to wait for the nuts to drop to the ground and then pick them up - do NOT pick from the tree. Ditto with filberts (hazelnuts) - when they drop from the tree then they will be ready for harvest. This usually happens about October, (later for Walnuts) sometimes earlier - depends on the weather.

 

[Member 34319]

Not as uncommon as one may think - they are usually overgrown and neglected - apple trees that are abandoned and left over from orchards are common - I know of quite a few, I have one myself - you just need to keep your eyes open for them and know when they are ready to harvest (usually August and later). Walnut orchards that are abandoned are common because California took over that market decades ago - but you need to wait for the nuts to drop to the ground and then pick them up - do NOT pick from the tree. Ditto with filberts (hazelnuts) - when they drop from the tree then they will be ready for harvest. This usually happens about October, (later for Walnuts) sometimes earlier - depends on the weather.

Exactly, orchards are already semi abandoned in some areas and properties. In an end of days event, I can only imagine the amount of food that will just be sitting in a field neglected. Depending on how fast and or prepared local groups or governments will be in an event, I don't think those crops will be attended to immediately. I know that lots of land owners up here farm their land through contracts, in other words they own the land and that's about it. Those land owners hire companies through contracts to plant, harvest and so forth everything they have on their property. Which means they likely won't care to attend to do anything within the massive fields of food on their property when the world ends. Given the semi liberal nature of the entire PNW, there are lots of "martini farmers" that give no thought to their crops other than it is required by the county to grow on their property to own it, next to their mansion.

 

[The Heretic]

Most of the filbert orchards and berry farms in my area (Scholls) are leased to a few growers/harvesters (e.g., Decker Farms, who were friends and neighbors with my family). The cane berry fields - like raspberries - generally get harvested with machines that are hard on the plants and the fields are plowed and replanted every 2-3 years. Hundreds of acres plus. If there were no fuel to power the machines then it would take manual labor (a lot of it) to harvest or the crop would just rot in the field (nuts would lay there for a while - but squirrels would take some of that).

Our farm was leased out to outfits (like the Deckers) because my parent's generation just got too old to be actively farming anymore and my generation had city jobs and we were not that interested in farming. Even my current property, I contracted with a logger to harvest the timber and we split the proceeds from the buyers (lumber mills) - the logger had the equipment and the experience/skills and even subcontracted some of the harvesting, certainly the hauling and replanting. Very common for smallish timber plots.

Some of the orchards here are people who are not or were not farmers, they just have some decent acreage that would otherwise lay fallow as they do not have the time or $ to farm it - not worth buying $$$$$$ worth of equipment to farm only 5-20 acres, and even with larger farms (my family's farm - nuts and berries - was about 200 acres) it can be an iffy proposition to farm it full time - it is a LOT of work. My dad farmed his 50 acre farm part time (weekends with the help of us kids) for 4-5 years and then leased it out until he sold it for 5X what he paid for it.

 

[Caveman Jim]

Oregon and Washington plant of the century… YMMV

 

[Member 34319]

Oregon and Washington plant of the century… YMMV

View attachment 990638

If there is caloric value to eating it, sure. There is definitely medicinal purposes! I'm SHTF world, it would makefor good pain relief where there isn't any meds to be found.

It is worthy of this thread, but I really know nothing about it as a farmed crop. I'd imagine it would be much better protected in aSHTF world than other crops too.

 

[Hueco]

I think I may have found some wild carrot of the Queen Anne's Lace variety...this one looks too small to be very promising. Can anyone confirm what this is?

 

[Cosmoline]

I think I may have found some wild carrot of the Queen Anne's Lace variety...this one looks too small to be very promising. Can anyone confirm what this is?

View attachment 991447

View attachment 991448

Bang on, here is how I can tell. In the first picture in the center of the flower is that tiny dark spot. That is key for properly identifying queen Anne's lace.

There is a deadly look alike, hemlock. They look incredibly similar to the untrained eye, but remember this silly moniker and you'll be safe: "the queen has hairy legs". If there is a sort of "fuzz" to the stalk (more pronounced when it's more mature) you're looking at lace. If it is smooth, it's hemlock. The two do not frequently grow together, and queen Anne's lace is an incredibly predominant plant here. Another easy tell is to pick and smell the leaves near the base. If it smells like carrot, you're safe. If it has a milky latex, it's hemlock. Hemlock is only deadly if consumed, so don't worry about touching it and handling it. Carrot will not ever have a milky latex, similar to how dandelion does.

They don't taste amazing, but fit well in stews. As with any wild edible, I recommend trying a little and minding the area it is found in. If it's in a park or public area frequently accessed, beware of herbicides.

 

[Hueco]

Bang on, here is how I can tell. In the first picture in the center of the flower is that tiny dark spot. That is key for properly identifying queen Anne's lace.

There is a deadly look alike, hemlock. They look incredibly similar to the untrained eye, but remember this silly moniker and you'll be safe: "the queen has hairy legs". If there is a sort of "fuzz" to the stalk (more pronounced when it's more mature) you're looking at lace. If it is smooth, it's hemlock. The two do not frequently grow together, and queen Anne's lace is an incredibly predominant plant here. Another easy tell is to pick and smell the leaves near the base. If it smells like carrot, you're safe. If it has a milky latex, it's hemlock. Hemlock is only deadly if consumed, so don't worry about touching it and handling it. Carrot will not ever have a milky latex, similar to dandelion.

They don't taste amazing, but fit well in stews. As with any wild edible, I recommend trying a little and minding the area it is found in. If it's in a park or public area frequently accessed, beware of herbicides.

Found it while walking along Rock Creek in Beaverton/Hillsboro. Also found some not quite ready to pick blackberries, and tons of Oregon grapes. I hear the grapes are super tart...will have to try them. Might make for good ice cream.

 

[Cosmoline]

Found it while walking along Rock Creek in Beaverton/Hillsboro. Also found some not quite ready to pick blackberries, and tons of Oregon grapes. I hear the grapes are super tart...will have to try them. Might make for good ice cream.

I bike through that area frequently and it's high season for wild carrot right now. Another really common one easy to identify is chickory. I see them everywhere and keep slacking on harvesting it. It's a bit of a process to make the roots useful, but it is incredibly profound out here. Lately when I go out on the common trails I see a lot of California poppies, wild carrot and wild garlic (which is dang tasty), and chamomile.

 

[fstdraw]

Second for corn, sweet corn that is! Not to be confused with field corn, which is for farm animals such as cows and the like, usually turned into silage.

We'd grow 100 to 150 acres (yearly) of sweet corn for the cannery's in the valley. We grew so much of it that it was about 20 years before I took another bite of corn on the cob. By the time you plow, plant, irrigate and pick the stuff...you lose your taste for it.

However, with H2O, the Willamette Valley grows second none in quality corn.

 

[Cosmoline]

Second for corn, sweet corn that is! Not to be confused with field corn, which is for farm animals such as cows and the like, usually turned into silage.

We'd grow 100 to 150 acres (yearly) of sweet corn for the cannery's in the valley. We grew so much of it that it was about 20 years before I took another bite of corn on the cob. By the time you plow, plant, irrigate and pick the stuff...you lose your taste for it.

However, with H2O, the Willamette Valley grows second none in quality corn.

-Nebraska has entered the chat-

 

[fstdraw]

Good point, Nebraska is BIG corn country.

 

[titsonritz]

Oregon and Washington plant of the century… YMMV

View attachment 990638

It was the world's plant of the millenniums until less than a century ago...

New Billion Dollar Crop Popular Mechanics

https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1938?amount=1000000000

 

[Mike7b]

I'm thinking a lot of city boys are going to go hungry. It's not that there's going to be a shortage of food, but how to preserve it so you don't go through feast an famine, imho. As Elwood Blues sang, they'll be eating a wish sandwich. Raised on a farm, worked on farms for part of my life, if we are talking about shtf, end of our coddled lives, hoo boy, there's going to be some major adjustments. It's to bad the woodpile report wasn't saved for posterity, ol'Remus had a lot of good stuff on there. He was definitely a ol'country boy. Maybe listen to Hank Williams Jr. country boy will survive, and maybe Steve Earle copper road. Just to get in the mood. Lol.