primalmommy@IVILLAGE.COM on sat 12 may 01
If you want a quick-spreading, eight foot privacy screen in a place where the winters are cold, plant jerusalem artichokes.
If any of you have ever seen "sun chokes" in the fancy section of your grocery's produce department, you know what these are. They are the delicious, knobby roots of a tall sunflower plant -- nice greens, unremarkable little flowers in late summer. You can dig the roots fall through late spring, and cook them up like potatoes, slice them raw like water chestnuts, quite tasty. They're a better starch for diabetics than potatoes. And they spread like peppermint does; under the fence, off to the neighbor's. We keep the bed in line with a lawnmower.
When we were wondering about Y2K, we joked about having a "survival crop" out back; enough to feed the neighborhood. They do die off and drop leaves in winter, leaving a long, straight, hollow stalk. Too light to be much use for pottery tools, but little boys like to have pirate swordfights with them...
You can order them from seed catalogs, they grow wild in fields around here. I'd advise against mailing cuttings -- bamboo or anything -- around the country! Invasive species are no laughing matter. That's how we got lampreys, zebra mussels, kudzu, starlings, gypsy moths, loosestrife, and others that are upsetting the ecosystems they've landed in. Dandelions, too, but like Cindy I love 'em... in salad, in wine, and in my organic front yard ticking off the neighbors ;0)
Yours, Kelly in Ohio... where from my wheel on the studio deck i'm watching the nestling sparrows get flying lessons. My hubby has been vinyl-siding the house, one paycheck at a time, but quit today rather than disturb a starling family nesting in the soffit. Poor man, had to come down from the ladder and put his feet up, watch some hockey with a baby in his lap all afternoon...
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