Have a pond? Plants for a pond.

opabinia51 · Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:29 pm

Here are a couple of plants that you can plant in a pond that you can also eat.

Cattails
Peal the outside off and eat the tender inside. Tastes like cucumber. I
am told that you can also eat the roots. (I'll have to try that)

Yellow Pond Lily and Lotus Lily
This has got to be the coolest thing ever; once the pods have matured,
you extract the seeds and parch them in a frying pan with a bit of oil.
They will swell and pop open slightly(sort of akin to popcorn). The cracked seeds can be eaten as is or pounded into a flour and used to thicken soups.

Both of these guys grow natively in Canada and I would suspect the Northern United States

FairyDust · Tue Mar 21, 2006 2:42 pm

thats pretty cool!

We just bought a 100 gallon plastic pond last night. going to start digging the hole tomorrow. I've wanted a pond since I was 12yrs old, so I can't wait to put it in and put in plants later this spring!

Grey · Tue Mar 21, 2006 3:34 pm

Don't cringe...
Horsetail. Just be VERY SURE to keep it confined in a POT. The stuff is invasive otherwise! Some people like the stuff tho... I think we have a thread involving horsetail around here somewhere - and someone stated they thought it could survive a nuclear bombing.

I also put it here in case someone was considering it... it's fine, so long as you understand the stuff.

opabinia51 · Tue Mar 21, 2006 5:37 pm

Yes, horsetails grow on a rhizome so, if just a little bit is in the ground.... there goes the neighbourhood. Incidentally, horsetail is also edible. Though, you probably don't want to be ingesting to many silicates though, so, I would recommend to eat it in moderation.

You see, the backyard can be a veritable feast. I look forward to the later spring when all the dandelions, camas and so on are up in the local meadows. Oh, the best salads on the planet! And they are 100% free! And this year, I am finally going to make that dandelion root tea.

garden_mom · Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:18 pm

This reminds me of the children's book written in the 50's, My Side of the Mountain, where the boy runs away to live off of the land? All the way through they're talking about the wild plants you can eat. I bought a book on weeds, and it tells you which ones are edible.