Pod People

It occurred to me awhile back that I should experiment with food crops that make sense for the desert.  Since I have a yard full of mesquite trees and mesquite pods are supposed to be quite edible, that seemed like a good starting place.   See what I mean?

That's a flowering agave in the foreground, but notice lots of mesquites behind it?  The native mesquite around here is Prosopis velutina.  Well, I'm getting a lesson in the uncertainties of agriculture.  We had a cool spring and lots to plants, including mesquites, had a delayed flowering.  No problem, I thought.  I talked to my horticulturist friend Gene while I waited.  He said that nutritional quality of pods varied widely.  Pods with reddish highlights are supposed to have a higher sugar content.

Practically none of the mesquites in my yard have flowered and fruited this year.   Only one plant had reddish pods, perhaps a couple of pounds.  My next door neighbors plants had some great-looking pods, but since they like to spray their yard with a blue pre-emergent herbicide, I didn't want to harvest those.

So I've wandered around looking for good mesquites, including on my commute from work.  At one point my son called out to me from across the street on the steps of his fiance's apartment when he saw this guy in bike clothes messing with mesquites, then realized it was his father.  So far the best ones I've come across in the neighborhood were a couple of miles away next to a school yard.  Here's the best plant--

And here's a closeup of the fabled red-tinged pods--

For comparison, here's a nearby plant with white pods--

I ended up half filling a paper shopping bag with pods, which are I weighed at about 7 pounds before I set them on the shelf to dry.

I may try to collect some more pods, but I have enough to go see Desert Harvesters, who have a hammer mill.  I'll post more as my experiments continue.