Land Lobster?

My garden is doing splendidly this summer, despite a lack of sun. I have harvested enough Romaine lettuce for two huge, tasty bowls of salad for our family of three, I have given some away to two neighbors, and I still have some left to harvest. I have already planted more!

The squash plants are taking off!

The squash, pole beans, bush beans, and nasturtiums are doing great, too. I still have a few radishes left. All the amendments we added when we built the beds seem to be paying off. The weather has been hot and getting drier, but the soil still seems moist and the plants don't seem very stressed.

A recent mystery was a hole near one of my asparagus beds. I was afraid it was the entrance to a rabbit burrow. Something had been nibbling on my young pepper plants recently.

Don tried plugging up the hole to the burrow, but something kept digging up a new entrance every night. He finally got tired of it and dug the area up, but there was no sign of rabbits or a rabbit den.

Don's Hole

The mystery was solved this morning, when he saw what looked like a small lobster in the bottom of the hole. He killed it and put what was left of its corpse in a pail.

Yikes! Looks like a small lobster, but what is it?

After a little research, we determined that it was a crayfish. I always thought they lived in water, but there are some species that live on land, too, including the swampy areas of nearby North Carolina. This one apparently failed its geography lesson, or land crayfish are more widespread than people think. It's hard to find information about them, even online. If anyone knows of any good sources, please leave us a message below.

*** Update on 6/14/12: I have received a few emails about the crayfish from crayfish- and crawdad-lovers all over the country. Apparently, these "land lobsters" are common in other parts of the U.S., and I am told they are good cooking and eating if you are patient about picking out the meat.

I am a vegetarian, so I'll pass on that.

They are generally harmless except for the annoying holes from their tunnels around the lawn and garden. They actually tunnel down to the water table. They come out only at night and are opportunistic feeders and eat decaying vegetation and occasionally worms and bugs. In some areas they are called prairie crayfish. According to one website the latter are red and live in the grasslands of Missouri, so I doubt ours was that species. Texas prairie crawdads apparently include some rare species. If I learn any more about the species that live in Virginia, I'll post an update. I have also just learned that chickens love them and will gobble them up if given the chance. Since I want my own chickens, this is useful information. One reader says they will eat plants in nearby gardens, but I am not sure they can climb. The plants damaged in my nearby garden were in a raised bed, so I won't be quick to blame the crayfish. (The same reader later assured me that they can climb).

In the meantime I have requested of Don that if he finds any more of these interesting and colorful critters, he leave them be.

Backyard Foraging, Or, Adventures in Eating!

The asparagus beds are done. We are just waiting for our order of asparagus crowns to arrive. Now we are moving the rest of the soil, prepared compost, etc., into our two vegetable beds. We lined them at the bottom with cardboard, with paper bags from the grocery store, and with some oversize "lawn and leaf" paper bags I bought at a discount store two weeks ago. Don put a quick fence around the area that he intends to go back to. It needs tightening up and it needs a gate, but it will keep the dogs from using the raised vegetable beds as a digging pit.

While we were working, our Asian neighbor was working on her side of the back fence. She looked at what was to me a weed tree in the wooded are at the back of the yard. "You have a porcupine tree," she said as she gazed at it with great longing. She told me the shoots, properly harvested, blanched and eaten with a dipping sauce, are a terrific seasonal delicacy. She taught me how to properly break off the young shoots, which I did in order to share with her. She said the tops would grow back to be harvested once more, and that the harvest would be over by April 15. The shoots must be harvested young, she said, or they turn bitter. She also warned me to be careful because the plant is very prickly.

She also recommended that I blanch the shoots and then dip them in an Asian-style sauce in order to eat them. There was one shoot left, so I picked it the way she told me and cooked it up. The greens had a strong but pleasant flavor, a little resinous(?) and like nothing I've ever had before. My neighbor had said they taste like broccoli, but she was doing them a disservice.

I blanched the shoots and then dipped them in a combination of minced garlic, minced fresh ginger, organic sesame oil, and Paul Newman's Asian Sesame salad dressing. I also tried the shoots plain, which were just as good.

I ran an online search under "porcupine tree" but only found the name of a British Rock Band and a blog post about someone's gumball tree. This is not the same tree, so I will post some pictures below. If anyone knows the horticultural designation or some common names for this edible weed, please let me know!

Update 8/12/2012: I found out from Karl Klein through the Organic Homesteading and Gardening Yahoo Group  that this tree is Aralia spinosa, commonly known as the Devils Walking Stick. Thanks, Karl!