Last year a garden helper, Daniil, helped me to harvest the wapato or duck potatoes (Sagittaria latifolia) which originate from the Mississippi River in Wisconsin. I grow them in a large bucket every year. There was ice on the water when Daniil harvested the tubers with his hands. This year my helper Aleksandra Domańska from Sweden / Poland was up to the task of trying to harvest them in the traditional way with her feet and bravely stepped into the muddy bucket, sinking quickly to the bottom in the only slightly warmer water than last year! She then used her hands to harvest a good crop of tubers. See the bottom of this post for links to other wapato posts. These tubers are one of the tastiest root crops! This was an experience that none of us are likely to forget, not the least Aleksa! It was also filmed by another visitor Cathrine Kramer from the Center for Genomic Gastronomy who is making a film of 4 seasons in my garden (see us all in the last picture!)
Picture by Cathrine Kramer
Muddy wapato harvest
Muddy wapato harvest
Cold muddy feet
Wapato harvest
Meg, Aleksa, Catrhine and yours truly!
LINKS: Daniil and the duck potatoes https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=31597 Freezing Wapato and Chinese Arrowhead harvest: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=30703 Sam Thayer and Mississippi wapato: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=30714
We like to give our helpers /wwoofers an experience to remember.
Daniil Titov is with us for two weeks and in between the sleet showers we harvested the wapato/duck potato (Sagittaria latifolia), originally from the Mississippi River :)
When I attended the Midwest Wild Harvest Festival in Wisconsin in September 2019, I was lucky to be able to attend Sam Thayer’s Wetland Plant Hike along the Mississippi during which the highlight was the demonstration of wapato harvest. Look out for the video I took that day in a post in the next few days. Earlier this week found me harvesting my own wapato, grown in large tubs in the garden….an altogether more invigorating experience, the gardener’s equivalent to winter fjord bathing, as the water temperature was only about 1C (and the following day the water was frozen); I had planned to try locating the tubers by feet the next day, but (fortunately) the thick ice made that difficult (OK, I’m a wimp as I could have broken through the ice with a pick axe ;)) I’m growing both North American wapato (Sagittaria latifolia; picture) and Chinese arrowhead tubers (Sagittaria trifolia) which were originally shop bought.
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
