Edible, medicinal, and native plants for the Pacific Northwest
We spent 13 years building an abundant fruit forest, annual veggie beds, perennial medicinal herbs, and a healthy mixed hardwood-coniferous forest and now we’ve sold our property to the next stewards so that we can begin a new homesteading project in Vermont closer to our best friends and their kids.
Don’t worry - we plan to keep this website up and running so that our customers can reference what we’ve written about our plants!
We’ll let you know once we re-start a farm in Vermont!
Wapato is a perennial plant that is native throughout North America. Historically, it was a staple food crop for people wherever it grew and continues to be a popular native food plant. Tubers grow in wet soil beneath the water surface. Flower stalks with white blooms and arrow shaped leaves reach above the surface.
Wapato grows in estuaries, ponds, shallow portions or rivers and lakes, ditches and wet seeps. We grow wapato in mini ponds (50 gallon barrels cut in half) and let the surface water almost dry up in summer. Plants go dormant in fall and are best harvested at that time. When grown in a tub, they are easy to harvest, divide, and replant. In a pond or wetland, the best way to harvest is by loosening tubers with your toes and letting them float to the surface to collect them. We like to boil them and then bake them after boiling. Sometimes we bake them with garlic, butter, and some water to keep them moist. So delicious! Read more
