Hosta!

[dcarch]

So many of you are having a terrible winter. Here in New York Spring has arrived. While you are just getting seeds started, I am harvesting delicious tender hosta shoots.

Not exactly foraging because I grow hostas as a vegetable. Hosta is grown in Japan as a vegetable, it is considered a delicacy. It is probably the most amazing vegetable you can grow in your garden. It needs no sun, no fertilizer, no watering, no trimmimg and it is a decorative perennial that comes up every year before anything else. It will be many more weeks before you can have anything edible from your garden.

Hosta shoots are like asparagus and endive without the bitterness, very mild and tender.

Have you tried hosta? If so, how do you make yours?

dcarch

Hosta tofu soup

Deep Fried pork on braised hosta

[LindaK]

Beautiful! Why did I think that hostas were toxic?

They're about the only thing that grows in the dry shade of my tiny back yard. Shoots are coming up now. How many of the shoots can you harvest without killing the plant? I do need them for groundcover, too.

[gfweb]

There are a million hosta varieties. Do you favor one for taste?

[dcarch]

Beautiful! Why did I think that hostas were toxic?

They're about the only thing that grows in the dry shade of my tiny back yard. Shoots are coming up now. How many of the shoots can you harvest without killing the plant? I do need them for groundcover, too.

Toxic? Ha! People cannot grow them if they are in an area with a deer population. Deer love to eat hostas.

You harvest them like asparagus, cut close to the roots, but leave the roots alone. I cut about 25% from a cluster.

dcarch

[dcarch]

There are a million hosta varieties. Do you favor one for taste?

I grow the plain and cheap kind.

dcarch

[SylviaLovegren]

Srsly!?! All those years living with a huge shady backyard covered in hostas and trying to raise veggies in pots that I moved around and all the while vegetable heaven was just sittin' there agrowin.

[Smithy]

I had no idea, either. I thought hosta's main purpose was to provide ground cover in the shade and give deer an easy excuse to annoy the gardener. Additional delicacies on the eastern white-tail deer circuit are daffodil buds and tulip buds...the night before they open.

[patrickamory]

Mind-boggling. I have a pair of hostas flanking the doorway to my 11th floor terrace in Manhattan. They have come up in their original plastic nursery pots for over 10 years now (I've been too lazy to repot them). The shoots do indeed look like asparagus, but it never crossed my mind that they were edible.

Mine have variegated leaves. I don't think I'll harvest any for eating since I only get about 5 shoots per pot.

[glepore]

Wow. I've gardened for years and never thought of this. Wow.

[Smithy]

btw dcarch, your photos and presentations of the hosta dishes are beautiful.