Getting Food From Water

[DoubleDogFarm]

Getting Food From Water by Gene Logsdon.


So I was thumbing through this book on Aquaculture, and came across cattails. Root rhizomes, young shoots, young stalks, and pollen are all edible. Fresh vegetable fall through winter.

The rhizomes are harvested, cut to 6" and dried. They are then ground into flour. Cattails will produce 30 tons of flour per acre dry weight. This is more than 10 times wheat production. This flour contain more protein than corn or rice and more fat and minerals than corn, rice or wheat.

Pollen is also collected to be used as flour. Takes about 30 male flowers to produce enough for pancakes.

Makes me want to grow cattails in my duck pond out flow stream. Probably help filter the water also.

Eric

[tedln]

Will absolutely help filter the water. Cat Tails are commonly used to not only filter the water, but also provide the structure for the aerobic bacteria to form colonies on and in for water remediation. A number of small communities use trench treatment as their primary sewage treatment process. It starts with settlement ponds where most solids drop out. Normally two or three linked ponds exist before the remaining water drops or flows into a simulated stream bed planted with a variety of aquatic and semi aquatic plants. The plant roots are in a gravel or sand bed allowing the water to slowly filter through the sand and roots and it exits as cleaned water.

My first experience with Cat Tail roots was in the Boy Scouts learning edible wild plants. We always cooked them as a vegetable. Native Americans did dry them and grind them into a flour. I wouldn't recommend collecting them from sewage treatment trenches though.

Ted

[Hispoptart]

That sounds like something way interesting. Let us know how it works out if you do it.

[DoubleDogFarm]

I wouldn't recommend collecting them from sewage treatment trenches though.

Ted,
I can understand that. Are we talking heavy metals and pharmaceutical? I thinking it wouldn't be a issue with a little duck poop water.

Eric

[applestar]

Have you read this?
https://www.fungi.com/mycotech/permaculture.html
Note in particular the King Stropharia section.

[tedln]

I wouldn't recommend collecting them from sewage treatment trenches though.

Ted,
I can understand that. Are we talking heavy metals and pharmaceutical? I thinking it wouldn't be a issue with a little duck poop water.

Eric

Yes on heavy metals. The plants tend to absorb them rather than filter them (lead, cadmium, selenium). Iron and copper to a lesser degree. Pharmaceuticals, probably not. Most of them require a chemical process to either neutralize them or change their molecular structure.

Since most water in sewage eventually finds its way back into our environment as potable water. We eventually absorb many of the pharmaceuticals in the water. Some scientists claim those pharmaceuticals in minute amounts are affecting us in dramatic ways like puberty for young girls at earlier ages. Probably a lot of other effects as well.

I've always wondered if a special requirement exists for disposal of the plants that absorb heavy metals. They simply retain the metals in their cellular structure. If the plants die and decompose, the toxic metals are released back into the environment in a concentrated form

Ted.

[garden5]

Wow, I'll never look at cat tails the same way again . Really, though; interesting stuff. I think I may have to borrow that book when you are done with it, DDF.