My favourite seed to sprout in winter is wild buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum), supposedly the wild ancestor of Fagopyrum esculentum the common buckwheat grown for the gluten free grain. I sow it repeatedly in large pots in earth on the window sill in the leaving room. The plants self-sow on my vegetable beds and each plant produces a lot of seed, so i just leave a few to grow and collect all the seed I need. Harvested some sprouts for lunch today:
I like the comment by Eve Emshwiller in the interesting article http://whyfiles.org/2012/farming-native-american-style looking at how to learn from how the Native Americans had developed stable, sophisticated food-gathering systems:
“There were a lot of people who were not considered agriculturalists, who were [supposedly] just gathering from the wild. But if you really understand what they were doing, there is not a sharp line between gathering and farming. There is a huge continuum of ways that people manage resources and get more from them.” This is a message that I try to get across in my book where many examples are given of this continuum between foraging and gardening.
I grow a couple of the wild gathered tubers mentioned in the article. First, Riceroot is a really hardy edimental and an important foraged food plant across its range (the first group of pictures below). The last three pictures are of Hog peanut (Amphicarpaea bracteata).
