Edible weed article

[thistlebloom]

Thanks Heather! I have all of those -and more! - in the yard right now.
I should do some salad shopping... but not now, it's hot and I had a tiring day.... but I'm definitely sneaking lambs quarters and dandelion into the next salad!

 

[digitS']

Plantain is too bitter for my tastes. I didn't know what purslane was until I saw it in this article. Feels like I have more edible weeds in my garden than veggies somedays. I've got a little bit of each of those. Given my bad luck with spinach, I might be better off to go ahead and eat the pigweed(amaranth) instead.

Plantian is both bitter and tough - or maybe I just missed the harvest window for it.

Many edible weeds have followed gardeners all over the globe. They are our garden companions . . . sort of.

Red-root pigweed is okay but think about trying orache, Journey. It is sometimes called "mountain spinach" and is actually a spinach relative. Lambs quarters is another relative but a little less tender (I'll put it that way) than orache.

Really, orache is just as flavorful and tender as spinach but it bolts fairly quickly and becomes unusable. I guess that's true with spinach, too . It isn't quite a weed, just a happy volunteer. If you stopped cultivating the ground it would probably be overwhelmed by tougher weeds in a couple of years. My earliest "vegetable" and I like it!

Steve

 

[calendula]

I just ate burdock root the other night. You have to dig it up in its first year, before it flowers, and the root goes quite deep, so it will take you a bit. I made stuffing for a chicken that I grilled, and sliced up the burdock root on a diagonal, sauteed it a bit, and then mixed it into the stuffing. It was pretty good! The root slices kind of reminded me of the water chestnuts in chinese food.

 

[digitS']

No one has mentioned sorrel .

In a previous garden, sorrel showed up. The garden was above a river. I am not sure how it got into my garden.

While pulling the plants out, I realized what it was and would sample it now and then .

American Cookery and a History of Its Ingredients, Sorrel

BTW - asparagus grew wild along the river and I harvested it every year . . . before heavy metal contamination came to my attention .

Steve

 

[Sunsaver]

I have sorrel ("curly dock, sour dock") but it only grows in the ditch, and i worry about toxic run-off from my neighbors yards.

 

[Gnome_Czech]

I have a few books on foraging but lent them to a neighbor many years ago and never got them back. About 2 weeks ago, while pulling up the long grass around the edging, I noticed a big patch of mustard. Since I had been growing greens I decided to see if I could fake my husband out and cook up some of the mustard leaves. So sorry I did! They were bitter, bitter, bitter.

I did my normal recipe of sauteed onion in butter, then wilting the cleaned greens and cooking them down with chicken broth. Those were dumped for the animals the next morning.

 

[bills]

Old thread, but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents about edible weeds.

I'd read about lambs-foot being edible, and finally worked up the nerve to try it..

Wow! Quickly wilted with some fresh minced garlic, and a little olive oil in a fry pan, it was fantastic. (An added squeeze of lemon juice would be good to, I bet).
I also tried some with a light drizzle of Oyster sauce, and it was even better. Friends who I served some to raved about it..

This is one weed that pulls very easy, and is easy to clean too. I never found any bugs of any type on it.
Pull it before it seeds, and enjoy some..you won't regret it..