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J blue

FREE SEEDS 1/ 🧵

Eastern North America, zones 9-6

for easy native edible pest resistant plants whose crop is not sensitive to freak seasonal weather.

Asimina triloba
Boehmeria cylindrica
Diospyros virginiana
Physalis grisea

Please read whole thread and all the AltText.

4 large Asimina triloba “pawpaw” fruits hanging in a cluster off a tree. The background is a forest landscape. I have the most seeds of this plant and it is the most pest resistant. It has a natural pesticide in its leaves, bark, roots, seeds and trace amounts in the skin of the fruit. It is the only plant that the zebra swallowtail caterpillars feed so if you do see a caterpillar, leave it alone bc destruction of these trees has decimated this butterfly’s population. The skin peels away easily like paper and you can eat it like a burrito. Or you can just cut it in half and spoon out the fruit. The seeds are very large and woody and slide away easily from the fruit.
Little yellow berries of Physalis grisea, sliced in half in a blue bowl with vibrant green sissoo leaves. There is a pale white dressing on the salad. When physalis berries’ husks turn papery or fall off the stem, the berries might still be a little green. They will ripen to bright yellow on the counter. Leave the husks on until ready to eat.
Boehmeria cylindrica leaves. The leaves are lanceolate with serrated edges. It is a leafy green that tastes spinach-y. This grows in shade or mostly shade. The plant is host to many beautiful butterflies but produces enough leaves to share.
Sorry for this underwhelming pic. The background is blue sky and the pic shows high-up branches of the American persimmon with hundreds of fruit still hanging on its branches. This is the tree I collect fruit from and this pic was taken in late October last year after the leaves had mostly fallen for the season. Frost does not hurt persimmon harvest. Some people say the fruit is better after a frost but our frosts are very late (December).
Sep 08, 2023, 05:55 PM·Public·IceCubesApp
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J blue

2/ Asimina triloba, pawpaw tree

Smooth, custardy fruit that tastes like banana with vanilla. Expect fruit 5-7 years after germination. Not self-fertile, need two trees. Very easy to hand-pollinate. Note: Don’t eat skin or seeds. Skin easily peels away and fruit doesn’t cling to seed. You can eat it like a burrito or cut it in half and spoon out the insides.

See more info in AltText.

Four large pawpaws, hanging off a tree in a cluster. Fruits ripen first week through mid September. They are ripest when they fall and should be soft. You can set up at net to catch the fruit for easier harvest. The fruit will ripen on a counter at room temperature. Use the fruit soon after ripening because it does not store well. Seeds will arrive in damp spaghnum moss, and will be partially cold-stratified. Put the plastic bag back in the fridge and plant in springtime in a large pot and protected from squirrels with a sturdy cage. Germination depends on warm soil and can take 6-8 weeks. Plant seedling trees in ground when they are a year old. Hand pollinate: take one flower from one tree and make it kiss with all the flowers of the opposite tree and do the same with the opposite tree. The natural pollinator is flies and the flowers smell faintly of carrion. Pawpaw farmers hang roadkill and dead fish to their trees. I do not recommend this for a home garden!!
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J blue

3/ Boehmeria cylindrica, false nettle

Easy to grow, grows in shade and part-shade. Tastes a little like spinach and can be used similarly. (In salad, best as mixed green bc leaves are fuzzy.)

See more info in AltText.

Green leaves of the false nettle plant. Leaves are lanceolate with serrated edges. Seeds can be tricky to germinate. Sow seeds in pots in Fall outdoors in shade under a sturdy cage, protected from squirrels. Plants should come up in the spring. Don’t plant the seeds too close together if planting in the same pot. The seeds don’t do well cold-stratifying in the fridge and have a tendency to rot so the natural outdoors is best. You can use the leaves the same way you would spinach. The leaves are slightly fuzzy so in a salad, it is better as a mixed green.
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J blue

4/ Diospyros virginiana, American persimmon tree

(Sorry for underwhelming pics.)

Fruit is only ripe when it falls to the ground and is very soft. You can set up a net to catch them. Firm or picked off a tree, they are very astringent. Ripe, they taste like dates and honey. Expect to fruit between 4-9 years after germination. Mostly dioecious but can easily be trunk-fused.

See more info in AltText.

High up branches of the American persimmon. I took the pic in late October when the leaves had mostly fallen. You can see hundreds of persimmon fruits still on the ground. Frost does not affect the harvest of fruits and some people say they it tastes better after a frost. Only fallen, very soft fruits are edible. They won’t ripen if you pick them and lay them on a counter unlike Asian persimmons. Unripe fruits are very astringent. Ripe fruits taste like dates and honey. There are many types of recipes out there for the fruit of this tree. Seeds will come in damp spaghnum. Put in fridge until May and then take seeds out, wash them off with water them in case there is any mold on the outside and then dampen and fold a clean paper towel, place the seeds on it, fold again overtop the seeds, seal in plastic bag and place over warm mat. Seeds will germinate within a week. Plant a inch or two next to each other in a large pot and place the pot in part-sun and protect from squirrels’ digging with a sturdy cage. See next pic for further instructions.
Pic shows trunk fusing on the tree Diospyros lotus. Stretchy plastic grafting tape is wound around the tree and tied together over the binding. You can see clearly that three seedlings have fused together at the middle. There are two more seedlings but they are sort of off the side so aren’t visible. After a year of growing, make sure the trunks are free from dirt and then bind them with grafting tape. The trunks will fuse together within a year or two and become one tree. Fusing several seedlings together ensures you have at least one female to one male. You can plant the fused tree in the ground a year after the trunks are fused. Protect from aggressive winds and squirrel damage using sturdy cage or trunk protectors. Occasionally some trees have perfect flowers. I don’t know how common this is.
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J blue

5/ Physalis grisea, native ground cherry

Annual. Sow in place or in starter pots in late spring. Stagger planting through summer for continuous berries. Germination depends on warm soil. Plant continues to grow and fruit until it collapses under its own weight. Berries are ripe when husks turn papery. They taste like banana when fully ripe with tomato aftertaste. When still a little green, like pineapple with tomato. Heated, just tomato.

See AltText for more details.

Cut up ripened physalis berries in a blue bowl with a light dressing with green sissoo leaves. This is a very versatile fruit and can grow in very poor soils and still produce. Birds and squirrels love it so you might need to cage the plant if you want to save most of them for yourself. The plant can get some stippling from leaf-hoppers but will still produce well. If grown in rich soil, the plant will become large and need structural support like a tomato cage. Seeds are easily saved using the tomato method. Fill a cup halfway with water, cut a berry in half, squeeze the berry under the water and the seeds fall out. Any seeds floating to the top are not viable. Viable seeds sink. Eat the rest of the berry, then gently pour out or reserve the juicy water, letting non-viable seeds flow out and keeping in the viable seeds. Then dump out seeds on paper towel or simple woven cloth to dry. Seeds do not need to be cold-stratified.
A pic of yellow jelly hearts on a white plate arranged artfully haphazard. They were made with just physalis juice, a pinch of sugar and agar agar. The juice from ripe berries is bright yellow and can make fancy broths, etc. I grow these and use them instead of tomatoes bc the long summer heat is too much to grow tomatoes. These physalis also don’t get hornworm or aphids like tomatoes do. Just some stippling from plant hoppers. When you heat the berries, they lose their sweetness and become very savory and taste exactly like tomatoes with a bright clean finish.
A pic of a basket holding an orange madhatter pepper, pink okra, four tiny creeping cucumbers and two native physalis papery husks. I also offer creeping cucumber seeds but those have other considerations. See previous post on Melothria pendula. The pic is to demonstrate the papery extent you can collect them. You can peel back the husk a bit to check the ripeness but don’t fully remove bc fruit may spoil if stem is damaged. Wait to remove the husk until you are ready to use. Plants can grow in part-shade, part-sun and mostly sun. Struggle a bit in full sun.
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J blue

6/ This project is self-funded but I will set up a kofi if I run out of puffy envelopes to help pay for more puffy envelopes and help with cost of shipping. (Currently have 21 left.) I will ship the seeds first week of November after the persimmon crop is ready.

Leftover seeds will be planted locally.

This project is to help with climate crisis food security, planting resilient native edible plants. Hopefully next Fall I’ll have more variety to share.

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J. Puma

@jblue I’ve seen a couple of pawpaw trees here in the PNW. The most successful ones were on a permaculture farm and the trick was to hang dead rats in the trees so the flies would pollinate the flowers!

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J blue

@mysteryharvest yeah, that’s what they do on commercial farms here. They just hang up roadkill or dead fish. Most home growers I know just hand-pollinate and you’re sure to get fruit then and also avoid unnecessary stink.

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Deep Mud

@jblue I ate these every year when I was a child. Yummy! We'd locate the trees with fruit and check them every day close to the fall frosts.

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rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@jblue

Hint.
don't climb a perismmon tree, it's treacherous!
The branches can break without warning and they are not very sturdy (I know because I have two trees, and often branches break just for the weight of a dozen of fruits).

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J blue

@GustavinoBevilacqua thanks for sharing. Never tried climbing one, good to know! ❤️

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J blue

@blackmagie just Physalis grisea? Let me know your mailing address by DM and how many seeds. ❤️

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Miss V

@jblue Yes please, I don't have room for trees and I don't like fuzzy leaves, lol. Sending you a DM shortly!

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J blue

@Trenton_Hoshiko this comes from a place of deep frustration and anxiety about what’s happening with the climate, and the chaos that will ensue, especially when it comes to food security. 😔

I’m hoping/planning to propagate enough for a few more species next year.

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Trenton Hoshiko | Filmmaker

@jblue I can see, especially from your tone in some of these posts, that those are major factors. I just want to encourage and let you know that I think it is wonderful and brings a smile to my face to see and to learn about these things from your posts. Thank you for sharing more about where it comes from for you. To know that you're finding a way to make a difference in a problem that you see is so special to me, you're trying where others dont/wont/cant.
Let me know if you setup the ko-fi :)

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RynUfe

@jblue i would love some ground cherry and paw paw seeds please!! I have a little farmstead in south Louisiana :D

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J blue

@Ryntastic awesome, send me your address by DM

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delve ✨

@jblue You should have people send self-addressed stamped envelopes (a.k.a. SASEs) to a P.O. box or something.

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J blue

@delve yeah, maybe next fall if mastodon gets bigger and the mailing list gets bigger

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John G Fitzgerald

@jblue Well done. I'd like to try some of these seeds in Europe, specifically Ireland where I've planted orchards, vines & fruit crops. Is that feasible?

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J blue

@j_g_fitzgerald this project aims for rewilding plants where they are native. Also, I don’t have a license to send seeds to the EU yet, maybe next spring. Pawpaws have been cultivated in Germany since the late 19th C so there a number of cultivars you can get grafted seedlings or seeds. Mine are wild plants. Cultivars are nearly seedless. You should be able to find a seedling tree for less than 15€ and lots of seeds for much less. Don’t buy a bareroot tree though. It won’t survive.❤️

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Jamin Bogi

@jblue Enjoying a pawpaw or two each day now. We planted four trees a few years back. They make a great custard mmmmmm

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N

@jblue I am interested. I'm in New York state and can pay for shipping to help keep your costs down. I got pawpaw seeds from amazon last year and tried to cold stratify them in my fridge, but they didn't germinate.

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J blue

@watcherr456 I’m not surprised, who knows how old they are? Mine will come in a plastic bag with damp spaghnum. Put it in the fridge until late spring. They can take up to 2 months to germinate. Warm soil triggers germination so a warm mat will help. I recommend 5 seeds if you want 2 trees but you’ll likely end up with 5 trees. I have nearly 100% success with Asimina seeds.

Let me know how many and your address by DM.

I won’t set up a Kofi until I use up all my puffy envelopes.

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Johanna's Garden

@jblue My husband follows you and told me about this, but I'm the garden planner. I just added you and would LOVE most of these, probably all of them, just need to get the ground prepped. We're in East North America, zone 6a, though that means we lose certain tree fruits some years, but not most. We don't get the coldest colds for that zone.

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J blue

@JohannasGarden could you let me know how many seeds of each, which ones and postal address by DM? Boehmeria and Diospyros won’t be available until late October so I won’t ship until then.

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delve ✨

@jblue Wait, Boehmeria cylindrica is edible???

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delve ✨

@jblue I know where a good population of this stuff is. I might just have to try eating/growing it now.

Also, thanks for the seed offer! But I'm not gonna take any. I have enough seeds as it is, and I prefer to grow locally collected plants to perpetuate local ecotypes and genetic diversity.

What you're doing is awesome though! 😄

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delve ✨

@jblue What parts are edible? The whole plant? Or just leaves?

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J blue

@delve I never tried eating the whole plant, just throw some leaves into salad. You could probably do more but I’m a bit busy these days

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delve ✨

@jblue Looks like I might have to do a little experimenting. Thanks for the tip! I hadn't seen anything about B. cylindrica being edible before.

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lisa c

@jblue I have nowhere to plant these but this was a super interesting thread! Thank you. Sharing in case others can use.

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Grassroots Joe

@jblue

Forwarding to a local farmers market/farm policy activist in my local Indivisible group in suburban Philadelphia.

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