Before the Native Americans and early settler hadpotatoes(from South America by agency of Europe ) , they had groundnuts . And I do n’t mean peanuts . Groundnuts ( Apios americana ) are Tuber of a leguminous plant . They have more protein than potatoes and an amino acid visibility similar to beans , meaning that eaten with grain , vegetarians can enjoy a complete solidifying of edible proteins .
Native Americans chose village situation partly to take advantage of raw populations of groundnut . Foragers can still notice peanut grow unwarranted in the eastern one-half of the nation . I am a forager , but I have a confession : I ’m too slothful to hunt and dig for them even though they arise right under the grease surface . rather , I ordered some improve variety fromOikos Tree Nursery , locate in Kalamazoo , Mich. , and I arise them in my garden in a very expectant nursery pot .
Groundnuts are not for a belittled garden . The rhizomes go around underground , and the vine climb over everything like a miniaturekudzu . I grow mine in 25 - gallon , ignominious , plastic nursery lot . I fill the pots with garden ground and organic subject , plant two or three tubers , bestow an inch of mulch , and then ignore them all summer . Groundnuts can take sun or shade and wet or teetotal conditions , though they ’ll produce more with steady wet and full sun . As legumes , they can soak up their own nitrogen from the aura , so I do n’t give them any fertilizer . Helena Jacoba / Flickr
After the first hard Robert Frost has killed back the foliage , I rationalise it away . Then I dump out the jackpot onto a tarpaulin , and the treasure hunt start . From my 25 - gallon pot , I can usually get 2 to 4 pounds of smooth chocolate-brown tubers , the size of small wimp eggs . They ’re very well-situated to harvest by hand in just a very few minutes . I then shovel the soil back into the smoke , re - plant a duet of tubers , top off the pot with an inch of constituent mulch , and leave the earthnut alone till the next winter , unless a severe drouth nudge me to irrigate them .
groundnut can be peeled , dried and crunch into a tasty flour . I like to roast them in the oven unpeeled and serve them with a lot of butter . ( Do n’t eat them raw — they’re toxic if not prepare . ) Forager Leda Meredith , in her bookNortheast Foraging(2014 ) , writes that wild bean are her favorite ancestor vegetable . She describes the taste sensation as a cross between chestnuts and potato . I jibe , and I know them , too . In fact , I may just set them in a couple more pots next season .
Helena Jacoba/Flickr
