Bush Foods

When I log onto Firefox I have the ABC page open up. I noticed in the science programme on ABC Radio National an ad about bush potatoes that was on at lunchtime today. Someone discovered them growing in one of the poorest soil areas of the country and they would be a good food crop for countries where soil is nutritionally depleted.

What made me look it up was the fact that my Solanum centrale (bush tomato) seed is germinating. These are becoming the in thing in restaurants that use indigenous foods in their cooking. I had plans for a separate garden area where I wanted to grow bush tomato, Wild Peaches, Muntries and Acacia victoria, and anything else that would cope with the conditions here. One day I bought some dried lemon myrtle last year to try in fish dishes and in biscuits. This plant would probably have to be a tub plant here. The smell of the leaves is wonderful. Wattle seed is supposed to be good in biscuits also. Haven’t tried cooking with them yet.

I put a number of wild peach seed in individual pots last week. There seems to be no ‘real’ method to propagating these. A friend used a tennis racquet to send them around his block, hoping that they would germinate where they landed. Some germinated at the base of shrubs that he planted, and being parasitic plants, they were well placed to latch on to the roots of the host plant.

I’ve read also that cracking the stone and/or peeling the skin from the kernal, putting the stones in a hession bag and putting behind the garden shed and forgetting them, putting seed in moist peat etc are all supposed to work.