Ok, so some of you think if you have to boil it twice and fry it its not edible...Well, china has blowfish that will kill you if you dont cook it right. But its an expensive dish where you can find it. Elderberries are poisonous if consumed in large amounts without cooking them. But there are all kinds of elderberry recipes and concoctions. Including their use to color port wine. There are lots of plants we eat that are poisonous if eaten raw. Its all in knowing how to cook it to enjoy the gift of nature it offers.
Us Southerners have our poke weed we eat. But what about Northerners and thier rhubarb. It too is posionous, but folks eat it all the time.
The berries of poke weed are also medicinal. They can be taken to cure boils and goiters. You start by taking one berry the first day, then 2 the second day, then 3 the 3rd day, then 2 the next day and 1 on the last day. They help to reduce the swelling and make the boil fester and come to a head faster. There is no way to make the berries non poisonous. But taken in small quantities, they are helpfull to the body.
The greens themselves are very tasty treat in the spring and should be added to your list of edible wild plants should you ever be in a situation where you have to hunt for something to eat. Our economy could go to crap any time. Its almost there now. The Roman empire only thrived for 500 years. We arent far behind.
Everybody should learn everything they can about living off the land and what can be eaten and what cant. What would you do if there was no food in the grocery stores? If there really was a major food shortage?..Would you starve or would you boil up a pot of poke weed? Would that cute little squirrel be so cute if you had not eaten in 3 days?...things to think about...

Yeah farmhound! What you said.

Is there life after poke weed?

dang I forgot all about that thread!

hahahahah
gotta go peek!

I have neither the time nor the inclination to address every point in your long-winded & not-very-well researched reasons why everyone should run out & start eating Pokeweed. Go ahead & hunker down in your bunker & eat pots of it if you want. I'm certainly not coming to dinner. However, if I were you, I'd think twice before advising everyone else to start eating it - especially the berries.

I will however add that first of all, rhubarb grows pretty much everywhere, so calling it a vegetable of "northerners" doesn't make any sense. Secondly, ONLY the STEMS of rhubarb are eaten. The leaves are poisonous & are NOT consumed - by "northerners" or "southerners".

By the way, did you at least take the time to read the posts on the other current Pokeweed thread as to how distressing, painful (& worse) consuming any parts of this plant except the first-emerging shoots can be? Or did you just skip that because it simply doesn't fit in with your personal beliefs?

Breezy,

please type sweeter.


As to rhubarb, I never saw it grow down south...didn't think it liked the heat. I googled it, says it *can* grow down to zone 8...but prefers it cool.

But I must say I never saw a single plant of it when I lived in Texas. Must not be popular down south, even if it is growable.

I wanted to mention ...

the local nature center here has a "last Friday, Wild Edible Feasts" The last friday of our three good growing months, you get to go to a pot luck featuring locally harvested edibles. Sounds like fun...haven't ever gone to one though.

As to poisonous things people eat...whatabout bull nettle. A great spring tonic etc etc...but talk about ouch!

I have trouble growing rhubarb here and I am only I don't know 90 miles south of Culpeper. They ran an article in the Richmond paper once about how difficult it was to grow here. I didn't feel so bad after I read that. I am in zone 7b really. If you would do your research you would find that Rhubarb needs 500 hours of winter chill on average. That is why it does not grow in the south. Virginia is a boarder line state for growing Rhubarb. Most of Virginia, but not all, can grow rhubarb.

Ellen

Gee Ellen, I don't know why you're having so much trouble growing Rhubarb.

Regardless of what the "experts" say, my friend down in Roanoke doesn't have any problems, nor do his relatives who live even farther south.

And I've known folks even farther south than VA who have grown it. Go figure.

But regardless - that wasn't my initial point. My point was that the OP was comparing eating Pokeweed to eating Rhubarb, & in my opinion the comparison was faulty.

Breezy, I am just going on my experience and my works in herbs and herbal medicines and my not so rich raising I was brought up in.. There were times in my life, the poke weed was the only greens we had to eat. My family was not the wealthiest in the neighborhood. But we survived. Dad and I killed squirrels, deer and even racoons and possoms to eat. We always had a trout line in the lake or set hooks on the creek to try to catch a few fish to eat. We lived mostly off the land. We survived on what we could find and what little we made selling our crops off the 30 acres dad farmed every year with that damn mule. But we survived. And I am not ashamed. My wife and I now have good jobs and make more money than my parents made in their entire life. We never ran to the doctor every time we sneezed or coughed or got a scratch. We used home remedies that worked pretty darn well. And they werent made of labratory created chemicals that show up on the commercials every day...or on the list of medicines that cause stroke, heart failure, kidney failure and many other problems you read about some discontinued medications causing long after the damage has been done.
If you dont want to eat poke weed, then dont. I dont like to eat pizza. Looks like somebody threw up on some dough and baked it. But I dont come down on people that do like it.
And I have researched poke weed and rhubarb. I have more herbal books than the vatican has Bibles. I know whats edible and what isnt. I have followed the Native Americans guides to herbal treatment and many other sources of information on plants and thier uses..
Now if you still want to get into a tacky war about plants and such, we can. But I prefer to keep things on a friendly level and get along with everybody here.

Hey - all the more power to you Farmhound. Sit around & down pots of mature Pokeweed greens if you want. I know that I don't have to eat it & don't plan to.

Your background has absolutely nothing at all to do with my point, & it's odd that you'd even bring it up if you thought Pokeweed was so darn yummy. I'm very well aware that it was & still is a popular spring green in rural parts. But I also know that many folks thank their lucky stars that these days they don't HAVE to eat it.

My point was, is, & always will be that no one has any business telling someone on a BB - especially just from a photo - that it's okay to consume some wild plant that's officially known to have poisonous properties, regardless of how mild or severe those poisonous properties may be. It's completely irresponsible & could end up very very badly.

If you're so "up" on herbs & herbalism (& I have quite the large herbal library myself), than I assume you obviously know how utterly important it is to know someone's medical history & what other meds (commercial &/or herbal) that person may be taking before prescribing something. Even something as apparently harmless as some homemade "spring tonic".

Far too many people are far too eager to take chances with someone elses welfare.

Far too many people are far too eager to take chances with someone elses welfare.
I agree 100%..Doctors and pharmaceautical companies get paid big money to do just that.
And I did not "prescribe" anything.
My point is, that people should learn what is edible and how to use many of the natural plants they have growing on or around their property. There could very easily be another depression like the 20s and 30s.
Arab countries are steadily buying up American companies and LARGE corporations daily. Everytime a company goes up for sale, its bought by a Middle eastern country or by China or Japan. Foreign countries are taking over America. Once they own and control all of our textiles, fuel, materials, and food supply, our freedom is over. We will be at their mercy. A sure fire way for them to take over. And the government sets back and lets it happen. We cant own property in any other country, yet we sell ours to all the counries that offer a bid.
A time can come when our food supplies are actually cut off. As well as our medical supplies. If a sprig of this or a few leaves of that in a little water will help bring down a childs fever when no tylenol or ibuprofen is available, that would be a good thing to know.
If we do loose our food supply and you have poke weed growing along with some lambsquarter in the backyard, you have the ability to live one more day. Provided you listen to my directions on cooking it properly or just blew me off as some modern day witch doctor stuck in the early 1900s.
And it would not have to be Arabic control. How many people almost died in New Orleans of starvation before aid came. I am sure if they could have boated or walked or swam to the outskirts of the city, there would have been all kinds of wild food growing in the edges of the byous where they werent flooded. Hackberries, even acorns in small amounts can keep you alive.
When the power grid goes down, the grocery stores are helpless, cause cash registers are all electronic now. We are at the mercy of electronic computer controlled machines. You cant even buy gasoline to go somewhere that has power. And in situations like that, looters take over and rob everything worth taking for survival. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes sunamies, all are natural disasters that can bring a society down in a few minutes. Not to mention terrorist attacks on our soil. We have already seen they are capable of doing it. What would you do?...How would you continue to feed your family, your small children, your elderly if everything was destroyed?
Dont say you Arent Gonna Eat It...that idea could change overnight..And you could eat it with a big dish of CROW...You just never know these days what could happen. So prepare for the worst and be ready if it does happen.
I have a grist mill, and know how to prepare acorns to remove the tannins then they can be ground for bread. I have wood stored to cook with, as well as coleman and alcohol stoves. Kerosene heaters and a storage of kerosene in case the power goes out in the dead of winter for several days. When driving around I spot where certain types of plants are growing and make a mental note of it in the event I should need them.
Ok, I am on a tear here and I apolagize.But everyone really needs to at least consider my way of thinking and preparing for hard times, its not an impossible thing anymore in this day and time.

Hoo boy! Bitter repartee here....

I agree with you farmhound, although I'll I'll be dipped if I can find enough wild food up in NY to survive on-all that grows here is goldenrod, dandelions and poison ivy, with few exeptions... my county is all swamp, so all that really good pickin's up here would be cattails and duck potatoes. Maybe some fruit...

Same here about wood stocked...


....but more on topic,
I merely meant in my posts that allenwrench nearly ate raw matured pokeweed, which would have poisoned him- indeed, that works a lot like eating japanese fugu blowfish...

...whole, raw, and poisonous, between two slices of bread and mayonnaise.

I'm sure pokeweed is edible and I'm sure it's tasty, but I stand behind my points that novices who don't have botanical libraries like we do are playing a dangerous game going grazing or 'shrooming.

As an afterthought, I do not mean any offense to allenwrench or lisaann, but boy, that was close...

Farmhound - I'm just going to add one more thought here before I just suggest you & I "agree to disagree".

I think you're completely confusing "organic gardening", which this website (& magazine) is about with "homesteading" - a completely different subject.

If you want to expound on the virtues of having a bunker, gallons of fuel, knowledge of herbal medicine, knowing which weeds to eat, etc., etc. because of your fear of terrorist attacks & natural disasters, I think you need to find another BB to post on.

Being prepared for ultimate life-as-we-know-it disasters & organic gardening are, frankly, two separate entities. Yes, they do intersect at some points, but not the way you feel they do.

yes I know its a website and a magazine. I was a subscriber to the magazine for over 10 years. I have been a member of this forum since 2002. I have over 1000 posts on my record. The 700 something is not correct, something has changed my actual number of posts. Most which are helpfull advice to questions and problems that many have had here over the years. Not a bunch of critical condescending remarks to people about what they say on the threads. I have shared as much of my knowledge here as I possibly can to help people better themselves in organic gardening and preservation of foods as well as many other topics. Yet you want to come in here with less than a month of longevity here and start telling me I need to find another forum????? WTF??? Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself...You arent the first one that has come in here and started trouble with forum members because you are too inmature to behave in an adult fashion and keep your rude remarks to yourself and learn to get along the the old timers here.
Express your opinions and leave it to the others to accept them or reject them. Thats what this place is about. What a boring world it would be if everybody thought, lived, and acted the same way. The purpose of this forum is to gather different thoughts, ideas, opinions and experience of everyone and decide for yourself which you want to go with.
If you dont like my ideas, then read it and go on. But you dont have to self elect yourself as a moderator and tell me I need to find somewhere else to post my thoughts and opinions.
We are all a pretty friendly and fun loving bunch here that get along with each other. As for as I am concerned, You are the outcast at this point.

Once again, you're not reading my post for comprehension & are happier just going off half-cocked. So be it. I'll just agree to disagree.