Epazote: One of Mexico’s Best Kept Secrets

[macmex]

epazote: pronounced “Aye-paw-zoat-ee”

Recently, walking across our yard, I was pleased to happen  upon a beautiful epazote plant, growing right beside our stock trailer. Okay, so Epazote may not be high on your list for beauty. Most folk will see it as nothing more than a weed. But for some years I associated epazote with some of the most delicious Mexican food I’ve ever encountered. I wouldn't call it gourmet food, but rather the best of home cooking.


The scientific name for this plant is dysphania ambrosioides. It’s native to Mexico and Guatemala, perhaps also to some other Central American countries, but it has naturalized all over North America and Europe. I often find it as one of my “beloved weeds” in the garden. It hurts to weed it out, but sometimes I need the space for other things.

The name “epazote” comes from Aztec (Nahuatl). I’ve heard that the name means “stinky sweat” in the original. Whoever named it that certainly wasn’t into marketing! Epazote’s smell and flavor is fairly pungent, having tones of mint, oregano and I-don’t-know-what. Some people instantly love it. Some instantly hate it. I have most often eaten it as an addition to beans. Other uses are to add to quesadillas, and some have made a tea out of it, supposedly to reduce bloating and gas or the influence of parasites.


Sometimes one can find epazote in the produce section of a grocery store with lots of Mexican food items. It’ll come in a bunch and need to be kept hydrated. One could easily stick a branch in water and root it in less than a week. Plant it in your garden and… it won’t grow much. The branch remembers where it was on the original plant and stops after only a couple more inches growth. But it will live, and, more importantly, it will produce SEED! The seed will volunteer freely after that, and those plants may reach up to 4’ in height. So don’t leave too many.

I find epazote in vacant lots, among weeds in vegetable gardens, and on the edges of fields. Where we once lived, in NJ, we had a strain of epazote that had little flavor. A friend found a plant with great flavor, growing behind a Mexican restaurant (where else?!) and got us a cutting. From then on we had good epazote!



To try epazote, simply pinch off about 4-5” of leaves and stem and drop it into a pot of beans, which is about 15 minutes from finished. This will infuse the beans with that classic epazote flavor.

[heavyhitterokra]

Interesting that you wrote, "The branch remembers where it was on the original plant and stops after only a couple more inches growth."

I used to do a lot of construction work across the whole United States. Part of that work involved using copper or steel divining rods, to locate buried water lines to avoid digging them up with a backhoe. The rods I used were simply coat hangers bent in an "L" shape and held loosely in each hand. Sometimes, I used #12 copper wire if a coat hanger was not handy. I always kept a pair of them handy in the truck whenever we were digging trenches.

After several years of 'divining' for water lines, I noticed that, not only could I find water lines, but I could detect the direction they were oriented.  If I used two rods, they would cross as I walked over the waterline.  If I used only one rod, it would orient parallel to the waterline, indicating the direction the waterline was running. I could also find buried gas pipes, electrical conduits, phone cables, or just about any previously disturbed soil.

I've used divining rods to find car keys, thrown from a second story window into a heavy snowdrift in Upper State New York. I've found expensive arrows for deer hunters across the Country, who had overshot targets into tall weeds. I could find just about anything if I had a picture of it in my mind before I went looking for it.

One day, we were messing around with these rods and a guy said that I already knew where the pipes were, before I pointed to the spot, so to prove to him that I could divine these objects without any prior knowledge, I had him walk off behind my back to cut a green, or "live," tree branch and draw on a piece of paper, the location of the branch he cut off, in relation to where it was on the tree, along with the size of the tree and the length of the branch. I told him to fold that paper and put it in his pocket. Then he would cut a section out of the branch about as long as a pencil and throw it on the ground behind me.

When he said, "Ready." I would take my "L" shaped coat hangers, walk over the piece of "live" wood and The rods would cross every time I walked over the 'Ghost' of what would have been the tree, if it were still attached to the branch that he laid down.  (This is called the 'Aura').  I could lay out the shape and size of the tree it came from, by marking the ground with my heel every time the rods crossed, as I went along. I would tell him which end of the branch had been facing the tree's trunk and how long the original branch was at the terminus, on the side facing away from the trunk. I could tell him how tall the tree was and which end the roots were facing in relation to the piece of wood he had dropped.

When I was done, he'd take out the pencil drawing he had folded in his pocket and check it against what I had sketched out on the ground.

He tested me by saying that it was just a "lucky guess" as I could plainly see what trees were available where I had sent him and had just sketched one of those on the ground... So, I had him take his pick of any tree in any woods, whether it was full grown or just a sprout and try it again.

I outlined it accurately, each time, whether the piece of wood had come from a tall tree or just a small sprout. I never knew ahead of time what he would bring me; He would cut small twigs from large trees, to try to confuse me into thinking they were from small saplings. Each time, I'd walk over them and mark the ground where the rods stopped crossing. Each time, the shape I outlined, matched his drawing.

It amazed him that I could do that and we began to experiment. He took the stick he had cut with him to the opposite side of a wooden wall of an old boat shed.  While on the opposite side of the wall from him; unable to see him holding the stick, I could tell from the action of the rods that he was standing at that location.

Then, he tried holding the tree trunk end of the stick away from himself as he pointed it left or right. I could divine from the opposite side of the wall, which direction he was pointing the stick each time.

It was about that time that Twilight was falling around us and the hair began standing up on both our necks and we took off from that place because it gave everyone in the group, the willies. We never tried it to that extreme ever again. It was too scary!

To this day, I don't know how that works, but I do know there remains an 'aura' around an organic object that has been disturbed; an aura that can be detected by a person holding a pair of divining rods, whether that object be a previously opened trench where pipe was laid, or a thing as simple as a freshly dropped cow patty out in a large field.

I have no idea how I could find arrows or lost keys, but I know there is something there we can't explain. Maybe, it works along the same lines as a touch screen on a computer monitor, or even an induction switch on a touch lamp. (What makes your cell phone know that you touched it where you did?)

I can definitely relate to that branch "remembering" where it came from on the plant because I could trace an entire plant from a single cutting and then determine which direction the plant was oriented in relation to the cutting that came from it. It's weird, but true, that there is a certain energy there that can be detected somehow, by our bodies.

Apparently, machines can also be built to detect these fields, as in metal detectors or in a stylus designed to touch a cell phone screen. Somehow, I can sign my name for farm tax exemption on a screen at the feed store, using only my index finger. How does that work?

I'll bet it's related to the same field that can be detected by a bent coat hanger, using our body as an amplifier; much the same way as an antenna is used, to intercept radio waves and convert them to tiny radio frequency electric currents; which are used in a tuned circuit, consisting of a capacitor connected to a coil of wire, which acts as a bandpass filter to select the desired signal out of all the signals picked up by the antenna.

God, makes some awesome stuff, even, if we cannot fully grasp how it all works, we do know that it is there. That cutting you rooted was a good example of that.

[macmex]

Bon, I suspect that epasote will will transplant readily. I haven't done it, just a hunch.

[heavyhitterokra]

Bon, that's cool to read that you are starting these from seed.

[heavyhitterokra]

Great news, Bon.  That's like finding gold!  Now, just hit that fresh leaf pile with a big helping of fresh, Spring grasses, such as Henbit, Dead Nettles, and Chickweed.  Leave as much dirt on the roots as possible to take advantage of the already existing enzymes and you've got the makings of a great compost pile! Sprinkle a little chicken litter in there and you've got a super booster for a few of your favorite 'pet' garden plants.

You'll thank yourself later in the year while reaping the benefits. 

[Deleted]

Be still my composty heart !  My scythe and sickle should be here tomorrow.  I am now at a surplus of bunny poo and cut grass from the mower.  I do like to hand weed some areas for the dirty roots as you suggest.  I think of you often when doing this.  I don't have chickens, rather some nasty smelly rotten comfrey leaves.  

[heavyhitterokra]

Rabbit litter is even better! It's much milder than chicken litter, so you don't have to be quite as cautious about using it.

Speaking of composting; I need to strap on my knee pads and hand-pick a boatload of weeds out of my elderberry patch before they get taller than they already are. I've got a 55-gallon barrel full of charged charcoal from last year's Bio-char work. I've got a henhouse that needs cleaning out, and I've got about a half-ton pile of leaf mold raked up. Now, I've just got to combine ingredients to see what kind of plant booster I can whip up during these warmer Spring days.

Here's a link to the composting thread ... seedsavingnetwork.proboards.com/thread/235/rons-blog-post-on-compost?page=1&scrollTo=5480

I've got lots of Spring chicken eggs, I'm going out to look for some more wild onions!