Fruiting Mulberry

We have a fruiting mulberry tree right next to he apartment. Free Food! Ok, so you have to wash the berries really well and fight the squirrels for them, but they're really tasty.  Kinda like a smaller not so tart blackberry (yes, with seeds).  The berries are also really close to the ground so it's easy pickings.  The question really is can I get enough of them at any given time to do anything with them?  Who knows but it'll be interesting to see. They of course aren't ripe at the moment so I'm not messing with them yet.  And if the squirrels get to them first then I'll have nothing, which is quite likely.

The only other edible I've seen recently is some wild garlic, or perhaps wild onion.  I didn't dig it up but it was obviously in the onion family and when i picked a tip off of one of the greens could smell the oniony aroma.  Ok, so probably wild onion.  What I would hope for is that it's walking onion.  the little onions that form on the flower head are really good in recipes.  And all you have to do is toss them in.  Well, after you wash them of course.

One thing I want to go get is some bay from fort worth.  Fresh bay is so much better than the stuff you can get in the grocery stores.  We had 40 or so leaves from the last time we went but bay really does go so fast.  It wasn't long before I was picking it up at the store again...

If you have any favorite things to wild harvest let me know.  It's interesting to see what people go out and get.

Invasive Plants

I was reading recently about invasive plants and trees that seem to just pop up without help from us.  One such tree is the mulberry tree, especially in our area.  My first encounter with a mulberry tree was at my first job after moving to the area. Outside on the side of the building there was a nice mulberry tree growing between our building and the next.  Being the adventurous person I am I decided to try some of the berries, being pretty sure I knew what it might be.  I was told by coworkers and eventually my wife after I told her about it that I really shouldn't eat berries unless I know what it is. I'm not dead and now I'm sure I was right about the identification.

Mulberries are one of the least appreciated trees out there.  If you are fortunate enough to have some of these in your area you can usually wild harvest these berries around now by either hand picking the berries or spreading out a sheet and shaking the tree until you have enough berries.  Either way you will want to remove any stems and such and afterward soak in water to get any bugs out. In my experience there are usually a lot of little bugs in the cracks, not harmful to eat in case you don't get them all though.

You can either eat them by themselves or like all berries add them to yogurt or bake them into a pie. If you have a favorite way to eat them let us know.