Mesquite pod milling event in Tucson, AZ at Mission Garden
July 1, 2023 @ 8:00 am - 12:00 pm
Free
Mesquite pod milling event in Tucson, AZ hosted and organized by:
Mission Garden 946 W Mission Lane Tucson, AZ, 85745
Saturday, July 1, 2023
8am-noon
Great opportunity to mill your pods into delicious, nutritious, edible flour!
Velvet and screwbean mesquite pods in the bowl. Velvet mesquite leaves in lower left corner. Mesquite flour to left of bowl. Mesquite honey to right of bowl. Photo: Brad Lancaster
HARVEST, STORING, & PLANTING TIPS:
• Pick pods from tree not the ground.
• Pick them when they are ripe, yellow, and dry enough that they snap in two when you try to bend them.
• Taste pod from a mesquite tree. If you like it, pick more. If you don’t like it, go try a pod from another tree. (Every tree has its own flavor).
• Store pods in a DRY place where rodents can not get to them.
• When you bring the pods to the milling event, make sure they are in food-grade containers with your name and contact info on them, and make sure you ONLY have clean dry pods in the containers – NO leaves, rock, dirt, debris, etc.
• NOTE: Native velvet mesquite trees tend to have great tasting pods more often than non-native mesquites, and the native mesquites are vastly superior for native wildlife habitat as the native flora and fauna co-evolved together. So, if planting a mesquite tree—plant a native!
For tips on how to tell the difference between a native or non-native mesquite see here.
In 2006, Chi Lancaster standing beside the velvet mesquite tree planted ten years before from a 5-gallon pot in 1996 by the Girl Scouts. Seed pods from the tree are tasty to chew on, make drinks, or grind into flour. Neighborhood cholla buds, olives, chiltepines, mesquite flour, prickly pear jam, and honey sit on the ground near the curb cut that allows street runoff to passively irrigate food-bearing plants in the right-of-way. Reproduced with permission from “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2, 2nd Edition”
Help out at the event:
If you’ve had experience at other mesquite milling events (perhaps helping people inspect pods to make sure they are ready for the mill, and such), and want to help out at the event; contact the organizers of the event.
Dunbar/Spring Neighborhood Foresters
