(lively upbeat music) (light music) - Super exciting right now.

We are standing in a milkweed colony and I've never had the pleasure of really standing in a such an established colony.

It's a real treat because obviously due to habitat loss, this lovely milkweed plant is threatened as are so many others.

What it is, when I say colony, all of the milkweed that you can see here around me, it actually is one plant.

So the rhizomes are its root system underground and then these little plants pop up.

So they are all connected, they are all one.

And these three here are actually a really great example of what we can talk about today.

So, milkweed has three different stages of harvest and we're gonna talk about sustainable harvest too because that is of the utmost importance.

But, in the spring, and obviously we're getting to be late summer right now, but in the spring, those rhizomes underground that we can't see, they pop up the chutes, which would be the young plants emerging from the soil.

And those chutes are edible when young and they taste a bit like asparagus.

So then as the season goes on, the plant continues to mature and grow, and then we reach a stage, I'm gonna say early July, well even now we're seeing here in August, we're seeing these tight clusters.

Those are called umbles.

So every plant has right around two to five.

And these tight little flower clusters, they continue to grow until they bloom.

They have their stem that grows out of the stock and then each individual flower has its own stem.

And what's cool is there's about 60 different, up to 60 flowers on an umble.

Each flower on this umble can produce up to one to two milk pods, if they're pollinated.

So we need those pollinators as well.

And then what happens is you get this stage.

So after the flower petals have dried, you get something like that and then it starts growing the pod.

And that's the seed pod, and what we're here to talk about today because it's also a delicious edible.

For one umble, which again, there's up to about five on a plant, depending on how many of those flowers on each umble are pollinated determines how many seed pods you're gonna get.

But on a plant, I mean, I've seen around 20 and I've seen as few as as one or two.

So when I am out harvesting milkweed, obviously sustainability is at the forefront of my mind.

All the insects and pollinators that need these plants to sustain themselves, they are first and foremost in my mind.

So when I harvest, I am only going to take one or two small pods per plant, and I'm not gonna hit every plant around me.

I am gonna stagger my harvest.

But what I am looking for is pods that are, for me about one to two inches.

So I'm gonna go for the small pods that have a little bit of firmness to them.

And so I'm just gonna take one off.

And here you can see the sappy residue.

That's actually toxic to humans if it's not cooked.

So a very fine edible wind cooked, but this sap actually has been used throughout time.

Wart removal, various skin issues, dysentery kind of stomach issues.

But again, you want to cook the chutes of the milkweed, you want to cook the umbles, and you want to cook the pods.

And so what I'm gonna do, again, only one or two per plant.

This has several pods that are still gonna be forming and this has got quite a few pods on it already, but I am only gonna take one.

For me, this is the perfect size that I wanna harvest.

And again, you just kinda wanna feel it.

Push on it a little bit, see that it's got some firmness to it, and when you cut it open, it's gonna look like this.

And so, this white flesh is what's going to be seeds and you can kinda see they're all white, but you can see the seed pod.

And so you want 'em small.

If they get large and get going later in the season, you're gonna cut this open and you're gonna have fluff, and you're gonna have a whole bunch of black seeds in there.

So again, we want it when it looks white and fleshy like this.

And then what I do for my pods is I'm gonna bring them home and I'm gonna scald these in boiling water for about three minutes.

And then of course, put 'em into cold water to stop that cooking process.

From that point, I can freeze them and enjoy a little bit of summer in the wintertime.

Or I can chop them up, incorporate 'em in some kind of skillet dish.

I think they're technically considered a vegetable.

To me, they taste like one and so that is how I treat them when I cook with them.

A very earthy, green, kind of broccoli, asparagus, Brussel sprouts, kind of along those line.

It's just a really rich green flavor.

So one of my favorite things.

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