20120710
Mesquite is Coming In
I've been doing some light harvesting from the first mesquite pods which make a rattle sound when I pull them from the trees. Most of these trees are on irrigation so the pods are not desirable for flour, but are good for molasses which I will be adding to our breads and meads.
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4 comments:
Irrigated ones are too moist/sweet?
Usually the irrigated ones are very thin. They seem to be all pod and no bean. They have some sweetness, but not much protein. Also they irrigated ones seem to be prone to larger amounts of beetle infestations.
What variety of mesquite tree? When I was a kid living in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas, we'd suck and chew the pods but spit out the seeds. The old saying was that you could get fat eating the mesquite bean pods and tunas aka prickly pear cactus fruit when the year had good rain.
Stress can urge a plant to reproduce, therefore invest heavily in the seed, so irrigated plants may be less stressed and hence be somewhat lazy in seed production.
Also the plant may be generating seed appropriate for a wetter environment, given the irrigation fools it.
Also it could be a dearth of nitrogen, that can affect seed production.
In any case, at least you can use them for something.
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