I looked up the latin names, and it doesn’t look like they’re related.
Wild ginger is asarum canadensis. Ginger is zingiber officinale.
“Consisting of eight closely related plant families, the Ginger order is well known for its economically important spice crops such as ginger, turmeric, cardamom, galanga and torch ginger, all from the Ginger family, Zingiberaceae, and for bananas which are from the Banana family, Musaceae.”
I know ginger and turmeric both flower–I wonder if they’re closely enough related to cross?
It might be a simple matter of the plant rejecting it’s own pollen.
Asarum canadense, wild ginger from Canada, contains carcinogenic chemicals.
During my book tours, I have observed a number of genotypes of turmeric. Plants with green fleshed, and purple fleshed rhizomes. There are more than 100 species in it’s genus, so seems like there would be plenty of room to come up with greatness.
My impossible crops would be citrus, and palms. (Although, I know of someone nearby that grows palms, and wraps them with heat tape during the winter).
I grow lots of watermelon, but they seem just out of their comfort zone. The skin of my ideal watermelon would turn yellow when it ripened, so that there would be no confusion about when a melon is ripe.
Joseph, have you tried Black Tail Mountain (bred by Glenn Drowns when he lived in Idaho) or Katanya watermelons? Both short season icebox sized melons. We pick melons when the tendril closest to the fruit curls and turns brown (we’ve found it’s a perfect “ripe” indicator).
Not all varieties do that. Especially when I started crossing established varieties that indicator no longer worked. As a guideline yes, but I rely more on the thump test and the color where the melon touches the ground.
I’m curious what you mean by ‘re-domesticating’. And it’s a bit presumptuous to say that Indigenous people aren’t still eating and stewarding these plants…because they are. Currently. Present tense. I am one of them. We are actually working against the clock to preserve land, return to the land, and revive our cultural practices, so I am a bit confused by what you mean here. Not many ethical Indigenous stewards agree that ‘domesticating’ plants is a good idea. Look what happened to corn (to use your example). Capitalism and colonialism fractured what we had.
I’m reading an interesting book, Rivers of Change, about domestication of staple crops in Eastern North America several thousand years before maize arrived from Mesoamerica. (“Domestication” in this sense means deliberate seed saving and planting, rather than just foraging wild stands.) A couple of those species, sunflower and pepo-type squashes, are still being grown today. Others, to the best of my knowledge, have reverted to being considered “weeds,” such as sumpweed, marsh elder, and lambsquarters, and they’ve lost whatever morphological changes (such as larger seeds) they had gained during the period they were domesticated. The hypothesis is that maize provided more nutrition for less work, and most of the other seed crops were gradually abandoned in favor of maize. I don’t think any of these are in danger of becoming commercial crops, and I wasn’t suggesting that they should be. I was just thinking of growing them in a garden, and if indigenous people are doing this today, that’s great to know.
Welcome to the group, Tiffany! I would be interested to know the kinds of plants you are eating. @MashaZ mentioned several, but I’m only familiar with lambsquarters, which I enjoy, especially as they come up on their own without my help. ‘Wildness’ does certainly have its advantages with respect to plant vigor and nutrient density.
No, I haven’t tried eating those small seeds. Were there varieties that had bigger seeds? Can they be made into a sort of flour? I’ve made baked goods with ground sunflower seeds. I’ve been thinking about trying some crops that wouldn’t require too much processing.
@KayEverts I have used blacktail mountain for my mix. It’s one of the better to north, not fastest, but worth adding. It might not be the most drought tolerant. Tendrils don’t seem to work for me, maybe it’s the climate. Haven’t seen any relation with ripeness. Some dry within couple weeks and others never dry even if fruit is little over ripe. Time is only relevant indicator for me except for variety that turns (more) yellow when ripe. So I make note when each has opened and count days.
That’s what I was trying to say about re-domesticating it. During the period (several thousand years) when it was domesticated, the seeds got considerably larger. After people switched to maize, the plant reverted to the wild type. I assume the seeds were ground into some kind of flour, but I don’t think anyone knows for sure, or not that I’ve seen.
Hmm. If you know of someone nearby who grows palms, and you want to grow palms, it seems to me that asking them for seeds would be a good way to start. They’d be somewhat adapted to your soil, even if they are expecting heat tape during the winter. Maybe you could put them in a favorable microclimate, and see if they can survive that way, without any additional care.
David the Good has a whole section in Push the Zone about palm trees. One of the things he recommends is planting them in a pit. They might also do a bit better underneath a large evergreen tree, which would trap a lot of warmth in on the coldest nights of winter.
Granted that growing plants in favorable microclimates isn’t the same as selecting for cold tolerance right off the bat, but it might be a good in-between step to get to the point where you have lots of seeds to plant in your normal conditions later.
Yes! Thanks for posting it. The book I’m reading is about 30 years old, but it covers the same species she’s talking about in this video. Great to know there’s still research going on (and the story has gotten more complicated).
Hardy quince, peaches, apricots, and persimmons (they’d need two more climate zones of hardiness, and they’re woody slow-growing perennials)
Hardy kiwi (I think I’m only one climate zone removed from the current hardy ones, there’s a ton of diversity in the wild still, they’re quicker generation time than quince and persimmons)
Large-fruited or straight-and-edible-rooted sweet ciciley. I love the anise crunch of the seeds but they’re kind of fibrous, I’ve never tried the roots.
Either seedless or very large (bite-into-it) hipped roses, that you can take bites off instead of little nibbles.
Snow-mold-resistant strawberries.
Vole-resistant carrots, beets, turnips.
Melons that grow here (I have hope!)
Okra that fruits in temps that average 10C at night without plastic coverage (I figure I’ll check in on @JesseI in several years and piggyback off that)
