One of nature’s first vegetables of the growing season is ready to harvest, but be warned it comes with a strong smell.
Ramps, sometimes called leeks, are now being harvested in woodlands across the state. The wild onions have a stronger smell than onions, but the demand for this fresh vegetable is growing.
Eric Burkhart, Penn State associate teaching professor in the College of Ag Sciences' Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, is working to promote sustainability and healthy eating options with ramps.
He said if you live south of Interstate 80, people know them as ramps, but in the north the wild onions are called leeks.
What are ramps?
He said the best way to describe them is a cross between garlic and an onion. If you are in the woods, looking to harvest them, he said to make sure you can smell a strong onion odor to help make sure it’s a ramp and not another plant that could be poisonous.
“There are a lot of look-alikes,” he said about the need to be educated about what you eat from a forest. Foraging for food can be fun, but it can be dangerous if you don't know what you are eating.
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“Give it a smell test,” he said explaining that ramps smell similar to garlic and onions.“It’s a wild onion so it would smell like onion.”
He said for generations, ramps have been culturally significant as one of the first sources of green vegetables for people to eat each year.
He said the word "ramps" dates to Europe. He said the plants would be ready to eat when the sun is in the astrological phase Aries, which has the symbol of a ram. People started calling them ramps and ramsons. When settlers arrived in this country, the name continued.
Family affair
A family in Friedens, Somerset County, enjoys picking ramps for others to enjoy.
Stephannie Foster helps her sons, Jeremiah, 14, and Elias, 12, pick ramps in a wooded area near their home. Instead of eating them, the boys pick them to sell to people in the community.
They start picking in April, butsome of their customers prefer ramps later in May when the bulb has a chance to grow larger and tomature. Stephannie’s mother-in-law Gloria Foster, said “They’ve been here for 50 years.” The bulb plants continue to grow and spread through the woods.
“We don’t over pick them as we want them to grow another 50 years,” Stephannie Foster said. "It’s one of those things you either love them or hate them,” she said about the strong tasting onions.
A video of the Fosters shoveling ramps is attached to the online version of this video.
Cooking with ramps
Jeremiah Foster said people like cooking with the ramps, making butter and eating the leaves in salads. He said they are into sustainability and they have been studying about this wild crop. “They are a lot harder to find than they were50 years ago,” he said.
The key is to make sure there are enough to spread and grow in50 years.
Burkhart said ramps are good to eat from April through May and the small snowball-shaped flowers that appear in mid summer on the plants are great on salads and with making pickles.
Burkhart likes chopping ramps and putting them in a food processor to mix with butter. The butter can be used for sandwiches, eggs and frying and any other needs you have for a similar herb or garlic butter.
Other uses for ramps include adding them to mustard, salt and even vodka. He said some restaurants are now serving ramps with some of their dishes, and the demand from consumers is growing. You can find them at some grocery stories and local farmer's markets, too.
How to harvest ramps
For picking ramps, he suggests waiting until May as you get a larger bulb than in April, meaning you get more weight out of the same plant as opposed to picking them earlier in the season. He said it’s a good way to remove fewer plants from your area while still meeting your needs.
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Burkhart teaches sustainability with wild plants. He said if you pick a lot of ramps, go back in late summer and spread the remaining plants and seeds. He said the bulbs can divide but it takes two or three years.
For his classes, he adapted an Appalachian proverb, “Take care of your ramp patch and your ramp patch will take care of you.”
The leaves can be harvested while leaving the bulbs in the ground; it's another good way to keep your ramp patch intact.
At Penn State he said research is underway to help understand the nutritional value of ramps. Being one of the first green vegetables of the year, he said the plants help people with their digestion – sort of a spring-time tonic. He said there’s belief that ramps have similar health benefits to garlic and onions. There is a chemical called Allicinin ramps that is believed to be helpful in reducingcholesterol levels in humans similar to how it’s found in garlic.
“We don’t have all the info on how much you should eat,” he said. “I eat lots of ramps, and I feel like it promotes my health, but I don’t really know.” He said Penn State staff are working to put a little science behind it.
He explained the research doesn’t have a set agenda but is aimed at helping people behave and be responsible with this wild vegetable. “It’s a tremendous resource, and we are helping people enjoy them,” he said, adding thatteaching people how to be sustainable with this annual crop.
Ramp research
His Penn State research team is looking for more ramp patches to study.
The researchers are interviewing and surveying individuals who harvest ramps for personal use or for commercial sale at farmers markets or to restaurants and businesses. If youharvest ramps, personally or commercially,the team would like you to email Cathryn Pugh at cvp5259@psu.edu or call 814-867-1743.
Researchers are also studying ramp habitat in Pennsylvania to better understand environmental factors that determine ramp occurrence on forestlands, to assist with management and forest farming efforts. If you haveramps on your property, they ask you to email Cassie Stark at cjs7115@psu.eduor call 814-867-1740.
Brian Whipkey is the Pennsylvania Outdoors columnist for Gannett. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com.
