Japanese knotweed and honey soda, from the Brooklyn Soda Works...
Last week, we [Brooklyn Soda Works] put down a new layer of epoxy floor paint, finished the walk-in refrigeration installation, paid the last electrician's bill and today our new steam kettle arrived (we are taking suggestions for affectionate names for our steam kettles). And now for foraging news - this Saturday at Smorgasburg - Japanese knotweed and honey soda. Knotweed is native to east Asia and grows wild on the east coast (it is sometimes classified as an invasive species). It has hollow stems, edible leaves and tastes a bit like rhubarb. We've been working with Evan Strusinski the noted wild food forager who travels up and down the east coast, sending packages of foraged goodies to various NYC chefs and restaurants.
Brooklyn Soda Works
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Japanese knotweed spread by hurricanes, flooding
By LISA RATHKEAssociated Press
BETHEL, Vt. — Last year's hurricanes and flooding not only engulfed homes and carried away roads and bridges in hard-hit areas of the country, it dispersed aggressive invasive species as well.
In Vermont, the floodwaters from Tropical Storm Irene and work afterward to dredge rivers and remove debris spread fragments of Japanese knotweed, a plant that threatens to take over flood plains wiped clean by the August storm. ...
In Vermont, floodwaters and repair work broke off portions of stems and woody rhizomes of the aggressive Japanese knotweed. The perennial, imported from Asia as an ornamental, was already a problem in Vermont and a dozen other states in the Northeast, the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest. It spreads quickly on riverbanks, floodplains and roadsides, choking out native plants, degrading habitats of fish, birds and insects and weakening stream banks.
"The whole Irene event was ideal" for knotweed, said Brian Colleran, a coordinator for Vermont's knotweed program.
The plant, which resembles bamboo when mature, spreads quickly in disturbed soils. Just this week, new young plants were inching out of the silt on the banks of the Camp Brook, a tributary of the White River, where the land looks like a moonscape since floodwaters washed away trees, rocks and other native plants. Once these invasive plants take over, their root structure and a lack of groundcover and native plants and trees with deeper roots, weakens the stream banks, causing erosion, and flood damage.
"We'd like to get out the message that if there's ever a time to hand pull or mechanically control so we can avoid the use of herbicides, this is the one year where that's possible," said Sharon Plumb, invasive species coordinator, for the Vermont Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. ...
Read the full story at link.
Photo credit: AP/Toby Talbot
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