Press Herald interviews Fuller about growing, harvesting fiddleheads
The Portland Press Herald spoke with David Fuller, a fiddlehead expert and agricultural and nontimber forest products professional with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, for an article about some Maine residents choosing to grow their own fiddleheads instead of harvesting them in the wild. The first coiled fronds should start poking up through the ground this weekend in southern Maine, Fuller said. But where there are wild fiddleheads, foragers follow, and entire patches can be picked clean in no time, according to the article. Fuller suggests that if more people grew their own, it would take some of the pressure off the wild harvest. A home garden patch of 10 plants could supply a family with two or three fiddlehead meals in the spring, which is probably enough for most people, Fuller said, since they’re not something you eat every day. “It’s a special treat, like brook trout,” he said. “When the weather’s right, they can grow several inches in a day, and they’ll go by before you know it,” Fuller said. “If you have them out in your yard, you can pick them when they’re ready.”