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Off-Topic Area => General Plants and Gardening => Topic started by: Martin Bohnet on May 01, 2022, 06:35:52 AM

Title: eat your weeds?
Post by: Martin Bohnet on May 01, 2022, 06:35:52 AM
At this very moment I'm munching a salad of chickweed, ground elder, a bit of sorrel and Allium ursinum
. In the summertime, there would also be some Portulaca olearcea - and no more sorrel for the higher oxalic acid content.

It may just be psychology, but those always seem to taste a bit more delicious, just because one knows they won't pain you anymore in the garden - even though you'll never be able to get ahead of ground elder or chickweed with your appetite alone...

What weeds do you enjoy to consume?
Title: Re: eat your weeds?
Post by: Diane Whitehead on May 01, 2022, 08:22:33 AM
Hairy bittercress, Cardamine hirsuta.

Dandelion, but only in the winter.  It is too bitter when it begins flowering in the spring.
Title: Re: eat your weeds?
Post by: Robert_Parks on May 03, 2022, 06:24:31 AM
If the volunteer Miner's Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) seeds well, I'll be eating them next year. The existing plant is over grown and bitter at the moment. If allowed to escape in irrigated gopher free (hahaha) areas, Oca would definitely become weedy.
Title: Re: eat your weeds?
Post by: Martin Bohnet on June 05, 2022, 09:48:20 AM
my currenly most favourite weed: extremly fast with runners, can even get into pots if they stand around a slightly raised bed, difficult to eradicate with brittle roots - and very good at bribing the gardener.
Title: Re: eat your weeds?
Post by: Judy Glattstein on June 18, 2022, 11:40:47 AM
Garlic mustard, Alliaria petiolata. Young leaves are good for salad or pesto. Older leaves - feed to neighbor's sheep.

Ostrich fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris. Fiddlehead fronds in spring, quick blanch then stir fry.

Tawny daylily, Hemerocallis fulva. Young shoots, semi-blanched by nature with heaped up fallen leaves. Prepare kimchi style

Butterbur, Petasites new flower bud shoots before they expand very much
Title: Re: eat your weeds?
Post by: Martin Bohnet on June 18, 2022, 12:02:17 PM
That fern sounds like an interesting dish - how does it taste?

Of the daylily I only eat the flowers - but they don't behave too weedy around here. Meanwhile, the purslane/portulaca season has started - I really like the succulent texture, but you have to get it before it flowers, the seeds are somewhat sandy.
Title: Re: eat your weeds?
Post by: Judy Glattstein on June 18, 2022, 12:35:14 PM
The fiddleheads taste . . . green, not quite like asparagus but that's about the closest I can come. Won't make you pee smell funny either.

Here's a picture of garlic mustard and fiddleheads, foraged but not yet prepared.

foraging_2020-04_fiddleheads and garlic mustard.jpg

And another of chow fun stir fry with pork, asparagus, fiddleheads over broad noodles

Foraging_2020-04_pork with fid[attach id=1458]Foraging_2020-04_pork with fiddleheads, asparagus over wide noodles.jpg dleheads, asparagus over wide noodles.jpg[/attach]