Mesquite beans
I was just wondering, can you eat mesquite right off the tree, and do they have to be ripe, or does it matter?
Pete
Bowie, Arizona
You can eat green mesquite beans off the tree, cooked like green beans or shell beans while the beans are young and tender. After they have dried, you can cook and use like pintos to make refried beans. Or you can use the dry beans to grind for flour to use in baking and thickening soups and stews. It has no gluten so won’t rise when used in baked goods. — Jackie
Volunteer potatoes
I know that you should not plant your potatoes that you saved from the year before because they may have blight. BUT, I have some sprouting up in my garden from two years ago and they look so healthy. When do you know that a plant is blighted? Can you tell by looking at the plant or is there is no telling until you dig your spuds up? I am thinking about letting these plants grow to see how they do.
Shirley Wikstrom
Stevenson, Washington
You’re right, but I also have volunteer potatoes pop up from time to time and I just let them alone to grow unless they are in the way of something else or right in the path between rows. They have always done fine for me. Usually a potato with blight will develop yellow or spotted leaves, then will wilt and die. — Jackie
Volunteer veggies are great sometimes, this year I didn’t have to plant any lettuce, it came up from the seeds that it dropped last year! Also my New Zeland spinach does the same thing, I just selectively pull it where I don’t want it.
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