Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Liz" <liz@allslash.org>]

Barbara, very sorry, I just saw this.

Autumn olives are considered to be invasive weeds here too, but they are
also a valuable food. They have higher levels of lycopenes than raw
tomatoes, and are also high in carotenoids. Here is one link that describes
their nutritional
value-- http://www.psa-rising.com/eatingwell/wild-foods/autumnolive.htm

I mash them and remove the pits with a Victoria strainer, and then use the
juice to make jelly or wine. I also freeze the juice to mix with other berry
juice, like blackberry. Haven't tried mixing it with grape juice, since my
grapes haven't begun to bear yet and I don't have a source for reasonably
priced organic grape juice. But it should be good with grape juice. We also
just eat them straight off the trees. They're a good source of food between
the time when blackberries are ripe and when persimmons are edible. This is
the first year I've had chickens, so I haven't tried feeding them to the
chickens yet. That will be interesting. I'm always looking for forage for
them, to cut down on the amount of purchased food.

You can find a similar plant in nurseries (and in juice and tablet form in
health food stores) sold by the name of goumi. It's a relative of the autumn
olive that is apparently not as invasive. I wouldn't bother planting it
since we have so many of the autumn olives here.

Liz

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barbara Money" <bmoney9@verizon.net>
To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2011 9:41 PM
Subject: [Livingontheland] Autumn olives


> Liz wrote:
> "Well--I hope everyone on here is ramping up their garden plans for this
> year. I doubled the size of the garden last year and would like to do that
> again before the end of the summer. Also added chickens and a separate
> plot
> for food and medicinal herbs. Wish I'd made more of an effort last year to
> process the abundant wild foods--blackberries, autumn olives and
> persimmons.
> Got a few buckets of blackberries, but that was all, won't make that
> mistake
> again."
>
> Liz, we have autumn olives around here too; they are invasive weeds. What
> do you do to prepare them?
>
> Barbara M
> Foster, RI
>
> --
> "Animals Are A Gift"
>
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