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Wild asparagus shoots at their prime. Note that they are unbranched, and resemble asparagus that would be sold in stores. Wild asparagus and garden asparagus are one and the same, differing only in the location where they grow.
EDIBLE PARTS & PREPARATION:
The unbranched spear is the only edible part. For maximum flavor, eat it the same day you collect it. On a camping trip, our Scouts discovered wild asparagus. We dropped the spears in rapidly boiling, salted water for three minutes and ate them immediately. They were bright green, crunchy, and absolutely delicious.
WHEN TO HARVEST:
Spring
SUSTAINABLE HARVESTING:
Leave several spears from a group of asparagus plants, to capture the energy of sunlight and keep the roots alive.
PRESERVING THE HARVEST:
Drop spears in boiling water for three minutes, then plunge into ice water. Drain and freeze. Use within 10 months.
Once the spear begins branching out like this, it becomes too fibrous to eat. It also becomes more and more TOXIC, so do not collect it if it resembles this photo.
Eventually the branches develop into a bush with fine needle-like leaves. Each asparagus stalk visible in this photo represents one bush. Bushes can be either male or female. Female bushes will have hard red berries with seeds inside. These berries are poisonous to people.
Autumn Olive
RANGE:
Introduced, invasive and widespread through Central and Eastern U.S., Washington, Oregon, Montana, and the province of Ontario
HABITAT:
Woodland edges, abandoned fields, roadbanks, pastures, orchards and recreational lands
POSITIVE ID:
• This is a multi-trunked woody shrub with occasional thorns.
• Leaves are simple, elliptic, smooth to wavy-edged; grayish-green on upper surface, silvery beneath. Each leaf has a short, silvery-gray petiole.
• Flowers are yellowish-white, 4-petaled and tubular.
• Fruit is silver speckled, red and juicy when ripe.
Notice how perfectly plump and round the drupes have become. That's a tip-off that they are probably ripe and ready to harvest. A taste test will soon tell. They should taste tart, and leave no lingering astringency in the mouth.
EDIBLE PARTS & PREPARATION:
The flesh of fully ripe autumn olive drupes is tart, but not astringent. The kitchen tool of choice for separating the pulp and juice from the seeds, skins and stemlets is a food strainer. Dehydrating the juicy pulp produces delightfully sour fruit leather. See page 108 for how to make Fabulous Fruit Leather. The juice is a thirst-quenching replacement for lemonade that will wow your taste buds. The fragrant flowers make a nice tea.
WHEN TO HARVEST:
September and October. Ripe drupes that become rose-colored and almost spherical seem promising, but must be taste-tested before picking. Ideally, they should be pleasantly sour with no astringent (mouth-drying) aftertaste. If one drupe tastes good, all the drupes on that particular bush will be worth picking. Otherwise, skip that bush and try another.
SUSTAINABLE HARVESTING:
As long as you avoid breaking a branch, gathering fruit does no harm to the bushes.
PRESERVING THE HARVEST:
Fruit leather can be stored for a year at room temperature in a lidded container kept in the dark.
When the wind blows, autumn olive bushes look silvery gray from a distance.
Black Raspberry
RANGE:
Coast to coast, with over 600 Rubus species; especially prolific in the Pacific Northwest. Besides tasty black raspberries, they include bushy blackberries, colorful raspberries, and the trailing, vine-like dewberries.
HABITAT:
At edges of woodland, fields and clearings, along paths, near logging roads, at the base of road cuts
POSITIVE ID:
• Black raspberry is a thorny bush with light green, round canes that arc towards the ground where the tips may root.
• New light green canes often have a whitish, waxy coating that can be rubbed off easily.
• Last year’s canes are reddish to purplish brown, lack the white, waxy bloom, and typically branch.
• The leaves are compound with 3–5 toothed leaflets per leaf. (The undersides of the leaflets are light green to almost silvery).
• The fruit is a compound drupe. When fully ripe, the black raspberry is purplish black to black and soft to the touch. When picked, it comes away cleanly from the receptacle on which it grew, leaving a thimble-like hollow. That helps distinguish it from blackberry, which retains its receptacle at the core.
EDIBLE PART & PREPARATION:
Devour handfuls of the raw, ripe berry, or use them to top ice cream, or make syrup by simmering a cup of them with sugar and a little water.
WHEN TO HARVEST:
Typically early summer, depending on location and elevation. After picking, give remaining, unripe berries 7–10 days more to ripen, then return to pick the bushes again.
Two nice fruit clusters of black raspberries ripe for the picking. Rose Barlow once told me that she had picked 32 gallons of wild black raspberries in a single year. She explained that she had found eight nice patches. By the time she finished picking the eighth one, enough berries had ripened to return to patch number one and repeat the process.
SUSTAINABLE HARVESTING:
As long as you don’t destroy the bushes, picking the fruit
