• shalafi@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve got 2.5 acres of swamp in NW Florida and I’d LOVE to learn more about growing forage. Help a brother get his feet wet?

    • DavidGarcia
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      1 year ago

      I’m just a beginner and I live a totally different biome, not sure I can help you much. I guess learn the basics of foraging and plant&mushroom ID (like never eat something you aren’t certain you’ve identified correctly). See if there’s any local organizations that can help you out. If you’re a social type you could make friends with some local forager and gather seeds and plants to propagate. If not, buy some books about your local area, find a foraging YouTuber in your area. I generally use plant&mushroom ID apps to scan everything I see, look up the plant and what its uses are, what are common poisonous lookalikes. You will get the hang of it pretty quickly and have a few plants that you can confidently identify. I’ve looked it up and perhaps you can find these in your local area: Cattails, Watercress, Water Mint, Water Lily, wapato, Water Hyacinth, Elderberry, Pawpaw, Fiddlehead Ferns and it seems many of the culinary and medicinal mushrooms should grow where you live too.

      I guess if you’re planning to grow non-natives too, you could try to plant some perannial/ self-propagating/hardy staple crops. Taro, water spinach, wild rice, lotus, sorghum etc… Perhaps the Chinampa technique works in a swamp? Perhaps you could use the swamp water for self-wicking raised garden beds to grow regular crops that are pretty hands off like sweet potatoes. Might want to do a water test to check for salinity and excess nutrients tho.

      I guess you can always have some gator barbecue too, if you are so inclined.