Adding Variety from the Garden - uncommon greens

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lisbetha

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Hey guys,

Looking to add a bit of variety to my Beardie's diet with some garden forage.

I've heard they're safe, but has anyone here had any experience with offering the following?

Grape leaves (cissus sp.)
Hibiscus greens (currently offering occasional petals)
Ficus leaves (Danielle)
Lavender (leaves\buds)

A few others I have in abundance are:
Lime leaves
White sage
Gotu kola
Zebrina tradescantia

Has anyone offered these before or have any experience with them?

A few unique to NZ that I'm pretty sure will be safe:
Kakabeak - this one's in the pea family and everything loves to eat them. Looks like pea greens are 'very' good for beardies, so can't see this one being harmful. Looking at the pea greens profile, sounds like it's actually really nutritious.

Kawakawa - a piper - makes a lovely steeped tea with a mildly spicy flavour. Might make a nice salad topping in small amounts. The heavily bug-picked leaves contain the most flavour\oils. It's sold commercially in tea and tonics here - you can even find Kawakawa icecream.

Our little boy is still quite young, but already right into his greens. I haven't gone much more exotic than nasturtium so far and he has yet to discover the joys of the dandelion as he's snubbed all my offerings :/

Will have to scope out the garden to see what other tasty morsels are around - we mostly leave it to its own devices so it tends to reseed itself and all sorts of things pop up from time to time.

Also, has anyone tried spicing their salads? I was surprised to see Grubby Pie lists paprika and tumeric in its ingredients! He immediately fell in love with it first time I offered.

I'd be curious if anyone would consider any of the above as a potential 'staple green' too. For me, this is more about spicing up the regular ole salad bowl and keeping things interesting, but if any of the above is particularly beneficial, it would be good to know.
 

Gail

BD.org Addict
The only ones I know are safe for sure would be grape leaves and hibiscus but I wouldn't use either as staples.

Dandelion greens and flowers are a great staple, clover leaves can be fed often.
Some other safe yard weeds are
Chickweed
Viola, leaves and flowers
Purslane
Dock in small amounts
Nasturtium
Raspberry and strawberry leaves
Mint
Miners lettuce
 

kingofnobbys

BD.org Sicko
Get some nasturtium seeds , sow them in a 40cm pot , in a few months you'll have more nasturtium leaves and flowers than you will be able to use.
This is our current nasturtion jungle , seeds planted 12 months ago , taken over 9 sq-m of garden bed , very vigorous grower .
IMG-1328.jpg

Gonna be a shame to pull them out to make way for new native flowering shrubs and ground covers in a few weeks - this bed will be covered to our native feature garden .
>> will ask gardener to rescue the main root stock and put these into a 40cm Décor Selfwatering pot , and maybe propogate a few cuttings to "gift" later.

Another option is to buy a black or white mulberry seedling , grow in a pot for first few years til it's too big and the transfer to garden ( near your back fence if this is a sunny spot ), the leaves very nutritious ( Ca/P > 10 ! ), silk worms love them .

Dandelions are easy to grow ( in a garden bed or container ) the whole plant is edible.
 

lisbetha

Member
Original Poster
Yeah, we have heaps of nasturtium. It's companion planted through the garden so rambles through everything. No need to plant more there. :)
We're heading into cold weather, so should prolly put out some cabbages. Lots of kale\brussel sprout hybrid and silverbeet the moment and the garden centre's full of pansies too.

Little man absolutely loves capsicum, it's seems. I've given him green, orange, black(garden cultivar) - always digs into his vege bowl when I sliver up a bit for him.
The hibiscus leaves are quite thick, so will wait till he's older for those.
 
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