Palo verde trees and honey mesquite trees – good tips! I don’t think I’ve seen those in my neighborhood, but I’ll keep an eye out.
When are the palo verde pods just right to harvest?
Yes, you’re right, yucca can be used for fiber! And the flowers and green seed pods can be eaten (they taste like bell peppers), and the roots can be used for soap. They are very useful plants. 
I go check every day when the palo verde pods form, as they swell, crack open a few and taste the beans. When they are formed and taste good, there is one more day before they become too woody. Ripening and good flavor depends on the weather.
Wow, only one day to harvest them all! Do you preserve any of them to eat after that one-day window?
Im not an expert, its a tree seed and they turn woody and bitter quickly. The edible yellow blossoms are kinda the same way. I refrigerate them and cook in boiling water. Its kinda like fish, I only like super fresh fish, after its frozen or sits too long in the refrigerator it gets an offensive flavor. There is a book. I haven’t received a copy as of yet that describes better how and when to harvest. My experience has been hit or miss. But when the timing is correct for harvest, the seeds are a tasty treat. The trees are easy enough to grow here in Arizona, but maybe not for cooler elevations. The tree is a part of the xeroscape food forest and every local will have its own type of trees and shrubs that can be a food production type species. I’ve lived in the desert for 3 decades and just recently tried these bean type seeds. Its a culinary journey to determine what grows and how to harvest and dine by making a meal thats practucal and has flavor. The harvest time makes the meal enjoyable or not…lol
We have had nearly two inches of rain this month, its practicly all the rainfall we get for the year. So we should see lots of desert plants this spring season thrive and actually produce seeds. The desert Lillies are popping up everywhere and has an edible bulb…if you care to dig two feet to collect it. .
I guess my taste buds need a re calibration to more moderately sweet foods. And its a challenge with tree products to eat as they appear once during the year. I wont give up I still enjoy trying new foods.
Honey Mesquite trees have beans too, but those are dry and cured…and can be stored. First into the freezer to kill the beetle larval bandits that will drill every seed inside the pod. But no worries, its the powder from the dried pod that is most tasty. A hammermill is used to make the “flour” by milling the pods. The seeds are left over too and can be soaked in water for a sweet drink. The powder is added to pancakes, breads , biscuits and cookies that also use regular flour with gluten. Mesquite flour has no gluten, is high in protein, and tastes similar to maple syrup. It also has a few days window to harvest as the pods are dry and should be collected before falling off the tree. If the pods drop to the ground they can harbor contamination. The powder freezes well and a good season can yeild 20 pounds of flour from a few trees.
The trees in my yard I planted and are on the way to the chicken coops, so I pass by daily and can check those beans.
We are on 5 acres and have been adding to the landscape food bearing trees and gogi berry shrubs and a few fig trees. Pomegranate are growing well but the winters are nearly too warm so we dont have the chill hours for fruits to ripen. The University farm and test plot just removed the 80 varieties of pom trees this past summer. I was allowed to harvest the pom fruits that I’m hoping are all cross polinated as a hybrid between each tree type. Hoping for viable seeds that sprout this April. Fingers crossed.
What an awesome megathread - - impossible not to be inspired!! We recently got a plum tree, a nectarine, and a peach tree on sale that seemed really vital. We realized today that the plum will need a partner. Having learned most of what I know about interspecific fertility from this forum and about intergeneric fertility from @ShaneS, I told my wife that we might get some fruit anyway from crosses with the peach and nectarine. And if Rosaceae is so broadly fertile, peach plum and nectarine aren’t even in different genera! I think some marketer was playing up this “rare interspecific cross”
I need to get back to this… if the message is “start with what you know is highly likely to grow well in your ecosystem”, there’s no better place to go than the the original inhabitants of your area. Last time I went looking for this infirmation I got discouraged by how much less I found than I had hoped to. I’m sure to go looking again
Hi,
National parks in your state typically have indigenous cook books available. Those have bibliographic references to read more about a topic in the book. Otherwise, find a university that has completed agricultural studies on the area in question as they too will have great references. Also, used book stores always have cookbooks, so I visit them in every state visited.
Where are you located?
Its all kinda like regenerative agricultural that builds soil again to an alive status, homesteading since each small farmer is growing local delicious foods, always organic, and permaculture to utilize what’s on each small farm. Each micro niche will develop from the persons farming activity. Landracing seed, chickens, ducks, rabbits or any other foods is the bonus to self sufficient living. Sharing is the gift for everyone. Eat well, eat healthy and the foods are delicious 
. A plethora if history to digest about developing foods from plants that grow and are tended too by individual indigenous agriculturlists. I have found that the discovery is connected to tuning into family recipes and food storage techniques. Tastes for the day, and flavors from a food supply also direct you in the journey to utilize age old recipes that feed us. Think about the difference in pickles and their crispness…its a recipe and a type of cucumber depending on the repertoire of the cook…to get the crisp pickle.
There are two varieties of prickly pear fruits that have few needles or glochids. I don’t know the variety except that the juice is more of a fuchsia color than red. But after juicing multiple years, the little needles really aren’t a big deal for me anymore, those little needles developed to keep birds and other animals from eating those fruits.
And, I slowly simmer the juice over low heat for no more than 15 or 20 minutes…as too much heat ruins the flavor. Then I freeze the juice. After tasting nearly 15 varieties, I have favorites, but I still like the prickly pear juice added to a sweeter fruit juice like peach, apple or lemon aid. Of course the lemon aide has been sweetened.
The large orange colored fruits, from the “Indian Fig” variety are also good flavored but yield orange colored juice. There was also a Portuguese family that had a prickly pear variety that yielded huge fruits that had red juice and good flavor… I don’t know the origin of their cactus. They were very kind to share fruits in years past, but now the entire cactus succumbed to a fungus and hasn’t fruited for the past few years.
Commercial cactus harvested for grocery stores seem to have the larger fruit. So there must be a breeder of cactus with available information to include in a decision making for flavor and what to grow.
Follow what Joseph shares in his book, seek what you like to eat that tastes good.
Hope that helps, I’LL close my encyclopedia. LOL.
Luther Burbank developed a truly spineless variety of prickly pear - not even any glochids (hair thorns). I know this for a fact because i grew and harvested it when i lived in Oakland, CA. Unfortunately i didn’t take it with me when i moved up north where it’s too cold for it to overwinter unprotected. I should have taken a little pad as a houseplant but you know how it chaotic it is when you’re moving.
Apparently under extreme heat and drought that spineless variety reverts to spines (glochids). If you want to read more about that, I talk about it here: Real-life Cold Temperate Cactus - by A. Potentilla
I have read that as well; however i never experienced spine reversion in the several years i grew it. Nor did the woman who i got it from, and she lives in Walnut Creek, CA where summers are very dry and temperatures can reach 110F.
There’s a story about Burbank: he received an order from the Mexican government for $10,000 worth of the improved spineless prickly pear. It’s said that he didn’t have enough inventory to fill the order, so he pulled the spines off regular prickly pear to make up the balance.
I’ve been told Luther Burbank’s spineless prickly pear has glochids, but if it’s both spineless and glochidless, that would be fantastic!
Do you have any way to get some of that variety again? An old neighbor who got a start from you that you could contact to send you a start now, or something? That sounds like a treasure.
I remember reading that blog post, and that would be a huge concern for me. 95% of the reason I want to grow spineless prickly pears as a fruit “bush” is because my summers are extremely hot and dry, and I’d love to have something that makes tasty fruit that I don’t have to water.
Burbank actually developed multiple prickly pear varieties, as he was convinced that the plant would be transformative of dry climates. At least one of those varieties is completely thornless. There are others that retain the glochids. I grew several types including the feral, spiny type. I was obsessed with prickly pear for a few years; California was in drought. The tender young pads, nopales, are a very nutritious vegetable.
The completely spineless one grew quite large eventually, although my largest one was a type that had glochids. That one grew to about ten feet high. The spineless one, maybe six feet high. That’s one reason why i left it there when i moved.
I imagine that since Burbank was able to develop a completely spineless variety, then this must be a feasible breeding project even if one starts over again.
Oooh! That may be exactly what I’m looking for! I’m in zone 7b, so zone 7a hardiness (in case of unusually cold winters) sounds ideal. Thank you!!
I think I might get it from this source:
The postage cost looks a lot more reasonable, and it will probably be the same thing.
I will say, it took me a few years to acquire a truly spineless prickly pear. It wasn’t until I took a horticulture class at Merritt College in Oakland that I was able to develop the network of gardeners that made it possible for me.
Wow. Did you get it in a trade with somebody?
I’ve been finding that trades with other gardeners (especially on here 
) are a fantastic way to get good germplasm.
Trades with local gardeners can be great, too.
She just gave it to me. She had just pruned her big plant and the cuttings were still lying on the ground. I took a huge branch to get started. Every node can produce roots so they really aren’t fussy. Once they get mature they are very productive. At some point I had to prune my prickly pear “trees” to the point that i used the pads to create terraces on a steep unstable hillside. They are really good for that. They also make good living fences.
I dream of finding a truely spineless and glochids free opuntia! I love the pads but those little glochids stop me most of the time from using them. Opuntias grow all over Mallorca where I am and the other day on my way to the beach, I found a spineless one with just a few glochids, so I’m hoping to one day stumple upon one without any at all.
Ditto on dreaming about the glochid free opuntia. I’d honestly take glochid free over spineless since at least you can see, avoid, or remove the spines easily! Any supposedly spine free varieties I’ve bought have still developed glochids after they grow past a certain size. The one with the least so far has been the variegated pad (Opuntia cochenillifera f. variegata). Though I admit I haven’t tried growing any out from seed since the pads propagate so well here in southern CA.
