good morning this is angela with parkour's permaculture we're having a cool snap here in
portland oregon in late april it's overcast and is supposed to be rainy this weekend so this is the
optimal time to plant out a lot of our perennial veg starts now today i'm going to be planting a
specific plant which i featured yesterday in my unboxing video and that plant is apis americana
also known as the american ground nut it goes by other names including potato bean and hopness it
is a traditional indigenous food on the east coast of north america and relatives in the same genus
are highly cultivated in parts of korea and japan and a few other places in asia i believe american
groundnut is a leguminous beautiful flowering vine now i ordered it from goodwin creek nursery
you can see here it already has its tendency to vine right from when it's very small now in
the first year or so it can grow about 10 feet but as the plant ages and matures it can get up
to 20 feet long so you want a good trellis and that's why i'm sitting here in one of my cattle
panel arch trellises because i'm going to be growing it here now behind me is a goji berry
and on the other side of the fence actually right where the camera is on that side of the
trellis i'm going to be growing my aps americana so let's talk about what american groundnut needs
i also want to clarify really quickly american groundnut is not to be confused with the peanut
which is sometimes called a ground nut the again the indigenous name is hopness so sometimes um
i think there's there's a little bit of a push to have it recognized as as that name because
it clearly differentiates it from the peanut and also pays homage to its extensive history as an
indigenous food crop in eastern north america so what does hopnus need it is a perennial long-lived
vining leguminous plant and it produces these tubers on rhizomes and they are edible actually
all parts of the plant are technically edible it grows in zones three through ten now i have
seen some folks struggle with it in zones three and four needing um extra support and shelter in
the winter and in zones nine and ten you would be prudent to give it some shade in the afternoon so
it doesn't bake now it's not native to my part of the united states so because it is a legume
it is a plant that spreads by rhizomes and it produces edible tubers on those rhizomes all
three characteristics that make for a plant that has a potential to become invasive or take over in
my garden i'm gonna start by growing it in a pot to see how it does here um if it does well and
thrives i will think about after observing its growth habit for probably about three years
i'll decide whether i want to put it in the ground or not but i've gotten the largest pot i can find
a freeze resistant pot aps americana needs full sun unless you are in the parts of the
climate zone um down on the far end where it gets hotter consider afternoon shade
so legumes are nitrogen fixer so i don't need to worry about having super
great soil it actually will thrive in a variety of soils but what i'm going to be
putting in my pot because it's what i have is a mix of soil for my garden leaf mold
because i have eight yards of it sitting in my driveway and sand when i grow any tuberous crop
particularly perennial ones like sunchokes or ones where i need to harvest the roots like horseradish
i amend my very clay soil with quite a bit of sand that makes it much easier to harvest the
underground food crop and it means they come out cleaner so consider adding a good quantity of sand
make it much easier on yourself to harvest those ground nuts okay so depending on what cultivar you
have the tubers are going to be from about this big to about the size of a potato hopefully and
they contain 10 times as much calcium and twice as much iron as a potato the same size they also have
significantly more protein than a potato so that along with the starch makes them a great food crop
now a caveat here if you're thinking about growing this and eating it if you're allergic to latex
they do contain some latex in them and there is some thoughts that there is a potential
allergy risk also as with a lot of um the leguminous less traditional leguminous crops
you need to cook them for a long time to break down the indigestible starches so when you cook
this plant if you don't want to have an upset stomach afterward particularly gas and bloating
cook it for at least 30 minutes the tubers that is the flowers make great fritters and you can
cook them very quickly so i'm going to be planting this here and i'm going to show
you how i do it and then i'm going to talk about harvesting it because it is a perennial food crop
but it's not one that you typically can harvest every year so let me um get my pot ready and show
you what i'm gonna do to get it in the ground hang tight okey doke here is my frost proof pot
and into this pot i have put leaf mold because that's what i have on hand
and a good mixture of sand and soil for my garden it's very big very heavy i wanted to put
it where i wanted it before i put anything in it because now it's going to be hard to move around
now with anything you plant in a pot you want to overfill it because the soil will settle over time
and you also want to be diligent about watering now this plant can handle some
some drought as with most leguminous species it is a pioneer and is pretty resilient so
here's my ground nut from goodwin creek garden i can tease a few plants out of this
i definitely can here you can see the tiny little nuts starting to form or tubers
now you might say that's angela that's not that's not a food crop i can't eat that
it's so tiny especially because i need to peel it before i cook it well when you grow american
groundnut you actually don't harvest it every year it needs to grow for about three years and
have time to build big large tubers before you can eat it and just wait and enjoy how it
looks in your garden as it scrambles up a trellis but it is a crop that you have to be patient with
so i'm going to plant it against the back half of this pot in order for it to reach the trellis
and as it grows i'm going to come back and train it and lean it up against the trellis
i have all the rest of this room in this big honking pot and i'm going to fill it with
other things because i don't waste any space my garden is a quarter acre so i have these native
ground cover strawberries and i'm just going to start with those i had to rip them up to um
make room for this pot so these were growing in the ground right under where this pot is now
and i didn't want to kill them so i'm going to give them a new life in the pot now i want
to remove extra foliage as with anything i'm transplanting because that way they have less
above ground material to support with their damaged roots so pinch back some leaves stick
these in the ground and these ground cover strawberries will help fill in i think i'll
probably put something else in this pot as well just for some show i'm not sure what yet um
maybe a geranium i don't know yet i have to think about these in the ground here and i will put some
mulch on top of this to help conserve water and i will show you what it looks like when i'm all done
alrighty here's my big pot
i'll pot it up you can see my strawberries in here and there are my three ground nuts and i will be
supporting them and helping them reach the trellis and they should take off and get about 10 feet
so i'm really excited for that to happen i'll let you know the progress of growing
this plant and how it does here in my garden so thanks for watching today if you enjoyed this
video please give it a thumbs up please consider subscribing to learn more about permaculture and
sustainable living and cottage gardening and please let me know if you have things
you would like for me to cover drop that in the comments and i will definitely give it a look
now just remember this is a food crop that is not widely grown in the u.s and most of
us aren't used to eating it so make sure you do your due diligence and research
how best to cook and prepare this food and whether you might have sensitivities that mean it's not
the best food for you even if you don't grow it as a food crop you might consider american
groundnut for its beautiful flowers its nitrogen fixation and the fact that it is going to be a
food source for your pollinators so thanks again for watching i'll be back soon