milkweed! flowers, fiber, twine

[asakiyume]

This year I'm mainly growing milkweed. Milkweed for flowers, milkweed with the garlic and other vegetables:





In part that's for pollinators and monarch butterflies, but it's also in large part for the super strong, super beautiful **fibers* that milkweed produces. I realized I can put that chambira fiber knowledge to work here with my own, local fibers. I used to have a goal of trying to spin the fibers... in spite of the fact that I've never spun anything. But in the Amazon, they're not spinning the chambira fibers, they're making twine--well I can do that! There are a thousand videos on Youtube of people turning milkweed fibers into twine.

Here are the dried stalks from last year.



And here's some of the fiber:



You separate the fibers from the inner pith, and you end up with long ribbons. They're not pure white like those fibers in the last picture, I think because of the mildew and weathering from being outside. I'm going to experiment with processing fresher stems. The ribbons remind me so much of the chambira palm fibers!



And here it is as twine! I have several little bits of twine now. Next two projects: (1) dyeing it with the madder I've got growing in the yard and (2) making bracelets!

Comments

[ranunculus]

I had to look up "eating milkweed pods". It looked to me like the milkweed that was being picked by that forager was the "Showy Milkweed" which is less poisonous to stock than some of the others. Most of what we have on the Ranch is California Narrow Leaf milkweed and Twin Leaf milkweed, both of which are very poisonous. I the same milkweed family we have Dogbane, which has "cardiac glycosides" which increase heart rate and will kill animals within 6 to 12 hours of ingestion. All of which makes me pretty hesitant to think of eating anything from that family!
Of course tomatoes were introduced to England strictly as an ornamental because they were in the nightshade family. No one in England ate tomatoes for almost a hundred years after introduction from the Americas on the basis that they must be poison. Dahlias were the opposite; they were introduced as a food crop and turned into an ornamental. This fall I want to try eating a dahlia tuber...
Ok, sorry, I got carried away. I'll stop with the trivia.

[asakiyume]

Hahaha, no worries, I love this stuff. I was big into foraging for a while, not so much now. We have dogbane here in the East too.

What we have most commonly where I am is Asclepias syriaca, common milkweed. The directions for cooking I've used involve (1) using only immature pods (which in any case you'd want to do if you didn't want a mouthful of silk), (2) blanching them first, and then (3) frying them. So those things probably help. But I'm not trying to persuade you to try them! Sounds like the milkweed out West is more toxic, and anyway, they're not THAT good ;-)

It's interesting how many things people eat are either somewhat poisonous if eaten in excess (sorrels, chard, spinach), poisonous if not prepared properly (cassava), poisonous at certain times of year or stages of development (pokeweed past the sprout stage), or have parts that are poisonous (rhubarb).

I *didn't* know that about dahlias! I look forward to hearing how they taste, if you try them.

[wayfaringwordhack]

Yeah, here they sell "edible dahlia tubers" that are supposed to be better than the ornamental variety but they are apparently still not that good. :P

Food fashion is a funny thing, and I spent quite a bit of money in the past trying out "exotic" things that a) just aren't that good, b) don't grow as well as they are purported to, c) take too much effort to grow/harvest/cook. I think it is good to diversify one's food sources but sticking to mostly tried and true staples is not pretty smart, too. :D

[asakiyume]

Yeah, exactly! I do like having the foraging knowledge, but it’s not the case that there’s a delicious food source that people have been overlooking—or, well, some foraged food is delicious, but when it’s delicious, it’s usually hard to obtain in some way, and that’s why it’s ended up not commonly consumed.

[wayfaringwordhack]

Bingo! :D