Apios Americana / Hopniss / Groundnut

Homesteading & Country Living Forum

Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Katie Müller

Awesome Friend
Neighbor
Joined
Feb 28, 2022
Messages
324
Does anyone have any experience in growing hopniss? I ordered some last year, but not all of them did very well. I'm hoping they do better this coming year. But I'm wondering if there are any tips or tricks to growing them?

The Indians ate them like potatoes and taught the pilgrims how to find, harvest and cook them. I've been trying to incorporate more of these edible plants into my gardens. And have really high hopes for the hopniss.
 
I see it growing wild often. I see it so often that I wouldn't try to grow it. I only try to grow species here on the farm that are rare or hard to find.

I checked my books, it likes sandy loam soil. Which is everywhere here. It seems to be sensitive to the amount of water in the soil, boggy vs well drained. My books didn't say which, just that its sensitive to water. If you're having problems growing it, water might be the problem.

Here it can be hard to notice in the woods. It's leaves (not leaf pattern) are almost identical to Clematis, another vine and a good migraine medicine. There are actually 4 species of clematis growing wild here. "Devils darning needles" is one of the native clematis species.

Ground nut is in the pea family so it's blooms are easy to recognize. Word to the wise... there are a lot of toxic plants in the pea family, more than a few are vines. Others are medicinal like the Black Locust tree, also in the pea family.
 
I checked my books, it likes sandy loam soil. Which is everywhere here. It seems to be sensitive to the amount of water in the soil, boggy vs well drained. My books didn't say which, just that its sensitive to water. If you're having problems growing it, water might be the problem.

We've been dry here and I thought maybe it was too dry. We're sandy-loam here. I heard that it likes water. I tried to give it enough but maybe I overdid it then?

Do you know if its immune to juglone? No one could really give me a straight answer on that.
 
We have cattails around here as well as Jerusalem Artichokes. I have a few videos of harvesting cattails on my computer and my dad's harvested cattails before, esp. when he did boy-scouting with my brother.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top