It wasn't a solid field of ramps, like I've seen in some pictures online, but patches here and there. I saw a patch... took a couple steps... saw another patch... took a few more steps... saw more ramps...
It was actually much easier to pick this way- I could squat, dig, pop out the bulbs I wanted and move to the next patch without stepping on any plants. Because I'm taking the bulb, there is a danger of over-harvesting and preventing new growth, so if there was a root with 5 plants growing up, I would take 2 and move to the next.
These bulbs were very easy to pop out. I stripped the dirtiest exterior skin off, to reveal a pretty white bulb:
This made clean-up much easier when I got them all back to the kitchen. After much washing and cleaning, I had:
Some bulbs are quite large- nearly the size of a quarter in width- but most averaged dime-size in width. I'm giving most of these to friends and co-workers. If the weather's nice this weekend, I think I'll head back up the hill and pick a few more.
My plans for the ramps are:
Ramp butter with the greens
Ramp pesto with the greens
Pickled ramps with the bulbs
Flatbread with whole ramps
4 comments:
Is it possible to transplant the bulbs in your own yard? Seems like a mighty handy thing to have close by...
I've heard that they can be finicky about where they take. I plan on collecting seeds when they all flower and scattering them around closer to my house in late summer/fall. It's good exercise, though, to hike my butt all the way up the hill to fetch these :)
Beautiful forage! I used to pick fiddleheads when I lived in Vermont, are those out yet?
Fiddleheads are up but they're awfully small this year- I don't know if it's from the weird winter/spring that we had.
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