Pick Poke, a Wild Green, for Profit

Image Gallery A shoot of ""canning size"".

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Now's the time to locate sources and markets so—come next spring—you can . . .

I'd been aware of the culinary possibilities of young pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) for years. It's one of the first wild greens I eat each spring . . . cooking the finger-sized shoots like asparagus and the tender leaves like spinach.

I also knew that some people here in eastern Oklahoma pick the plant to sell ... since the sign reading "We buy poke, 5¢ a pound" had gone up in front of the local gas station as it does every spring. It never occurred to me to harvest and market any "extra" greens myself, however, since I figured I'd need to collect an incredible number of the four-inch-tall spears (the size I usually gather for eating) to make such a venture worthwhile.

That's what I thought anyway . . . until one day last May, when a young woman in a pickup truck stopped and knocked on the door.

"Mind if I pick your poke?" she asked.

"Help yourself," I answered. (After all, we have several acres infested with the weed.) "But I'm afraid it's already too large to be really tender."

"Oh, I'm not going to cook the plants," she laughed. "I'm going to sell 'em, and I want the shoots to be as big as the canning companies will buy!"

I inquired it the pay would be worth all the bother.

"Oh, it's worth the trouble, all right," she told me, "if you can locate enough poke . . . the weight adds up pretty quickly when you pick stalks a foot or more in height. Of course, I won't get rich, but I can make a little spending money."

"Well" I thought, as the woman went off to make her pocket money picking my poke, "I'd better look into this!"

A CASH CROP

After asking around a bit . . . I discovered that poke-selling is big business in these parts. The "season" ordinarily begins during the second week in May and lasts until the end of the month. Pokeweed itself dictates a brief harvest time . . . because—while baby shoots are both delicious and healthful—the berries, seeds, and the handsome purple—colored bark of the mature plant—as well as the roots of any sized poke are poisonous.

I also discovered that our local buyers (Allen Canning Company of Siloam Springs, Arkansas . . . and Blytheville Canning Company of Muskogee, Oklahoma) actually prefer the weed when it's much larger than the tender little stems I find so perfect for home use. These firms want stalks about eight to ten inches high and will take them as long as 12 to 14 inches . . . because the leaves are what they "put up". (The stems-except for shoots the size of a little finger—are removed at the cannery.)

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