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
I love when my gardening activities attract wildlife and contributes to the biodiversity of this wonderful place! I’m once again growing wapato (Sagittaria latifolia) in addition to Chinese arrowhead (probably Sagittaria trifolia) in large containers (sorry for the plastic!). I can see these containers from my sitting place in the garden behind the Amelanchier hedge and in the heat wave and drought we’ve been experiencing with record high May temperatures (over 30C not far from here), I’ve seen several bird species drinking. Today, I found a batman hoverfly (dødningehodeblomsterflue; Myathropa florea) in one of the buckets:
This week’s perennial veg stir-fry with soba (buckwheat noodles), Japanese style contained the following (roughly left to right in the picture): Nettles / stornesle (Urtica dioica) Burdock / storborre roots (Arctium lappa); stored in the cellar Wapato tubers (Sagittaria latifolia); stored in the cellar in water Ramsons / ramsløk (Allium ursinum) Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde (Hablitzia tamnoides) Giant bellflower / storklokke (Campanula latifolia) Himalayan water creeper (Houttuynia cordata) – reddish shoots Sand leek / bendelløk (Allium scorodoprasum) Garlic / hvitløk (Allium sativum)
Last night’s simple winter omelette with ingredients I had on hand: Wapato tubers (Sagittaria latifolia) Potato “Blue Congo” Swiss chard (mangold) Shallots “Finland” (an old Finnish / Norwegian variety of sjalott) Barberry (vill berberis) fruits – see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=27761 Tomatoes / tomat (some of the last fruits) Salt, pepper and chili
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 :)
We occasionally eat wild fish and bacalhau is a favourite made from Norwegian dried cod that can be found in supermarkets here. More or less anything goes in bacalhau (bacalao) and although most people make it in the same way – layers of potato, fish, tomato and onions, often with chili – the Portuguese have hundreds of ways of preparing baccalao (dried cod). Being self-sufficient, detailed recipes aren¨’t useful and we use whatever is available at the moment. Winter is the time for stored bulbs, corms, tubers, rhizomes, and taproots. See below the picture for yesterday’s baccalao ingredients with 14 home grown below surface storage organs plus some greens (I’m pretty sure nobody else had this version of the dish…ever!): Oca (Oxalis tuberosa): yellow and red varieties Garlic / hvitløk (Allium sativum) Wapato (Sagittaria latifolia) Potato / potet (Solanum tuberosum) – 2 varieties Jerusalem artichokes / jordskokk (Helianthus tuberosus) Parsnip / pastinakk (Pastinaca sativa) Scorzonera / scorsonerrot (Scorzonera hispanica) Common onion / kepaløk (Allium cepa) Cacomitl (Tigridia pavonia) Yacon (Polymnia sonchifolia) Burdock / storborre (Arctium lappa) Madeira vine (Anredera cordifolia) Parsnip / pastinakk (Pastinaca sativa) shoots – had started shooting in the cellar Leaf beets / bladbete (Beta vulgaris var. flavescens) – 3 varieties Allium nutans (forced in the living room) plus (not home grown) organic tomatoes, olive oil and olives (I forgot the dandelion…will add tonight: we make enough that it lasts for several days….and the taste improves!)
As I mentioned in my post about harvesting wapato in my garden a couple of days ago, I attended the Midwest Wild Harvest Festival in Wisconsin in September 2019 to do the keynote and a couple of talks and was lucky enough to be able to attend Sam Thayer’s Wetland Plant Hike along the Mississippi during which the highlight was the demonstration of wapato harvest. There had been record flooding that spring on the Mississipi and water levels were still high which meant that the places where Sam normally harvested were too deep. However, he did find a small patch to demonstrate harvesting techniques. As Sam mentions, this is how Canada geese do it! Did I mention that I rate Sam’s 3 books above all other books on wild edibles! His book The Forager’s Harvest has 16 pages on wapato! See the videos and pictures below:
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