Article on eating weeds

[Chris]

http://www.jsonline.com/features/foo...257179551.html

What home gardener hasn't cursed purslane, the uninvited fleshy plant that appears annually in the garden and spreads like a rash on the soil?
It's just one of many unpopular garden intruders. Other trespassers include burdock, violets, dandelions, chickweed, lamb's quarters and the most despised, stinging nettles.
Before yanking these upstarts or smothering them with Roundup or some other chemical-based weed killer, consider the alternative. There's a salad in that garden, a potential produce department ready to be harvested and served in a variety of recipes from salad to soup to spanikopita.

Click link for more.

[hunter63]

That a pretty good site...even has recipes....Thanks for posting.

Also good advice about location if your foraging.

[Rick]

Very good article.

[Sunset Sam]

There are indeed many edible weeds and purslane is one of the best. It is very high in a lot of important vitamins and minerals (which would make it a very smart addition to a dried meat/jerky diet in a survival situation. It tastes good enough to pick, shake off, and eat as is. At home, we pick it from the edges of our gardens and eat it with salad dressing as a fresh salad. Do not plant purslane from seeds as it will take over anyplace it is sown. Purslane is one of the most prolific of the re-seeders in the weed world. Also, glyphosate (e.g.,Roundup) will not eradicate it without repeated heavy doses to the point of contaminating the soil. (Someone once paid me a lot to try -- it took 2 years.

Stinging nettle mentioned in the article can indeed be harvested as a young plant. Mature nettle is just a little too risky to try, because if you are not successful in completely removing the stinging bodies on the plant, you will be extremely sorry to have eaten some.

Another common weed in my area is lambs quarters, also used as a salad green. Easy to recognize and harvest, with good nutritional values.

If, as suggested in the article, you harvest weeds off of private lands, make sure the weed patch has not been sprayed with herbicides. Some herbicides, especially those kinds used in rural areas, persist in the soil and are taken up in the plants that survive. No matter what the manufacturers claim to the contrary. Many of these items make glyphosate look tame.

Many folks can benefit from classes held in the field at local colleges on plant identification. Trying to learn about edible weeds only out of a book -- especially those with line drawings instead of good color photos -- is difficult. That being said, the best book for plant identification for me is "Weeds of the West" by the Western Society of Weed Science. Not cheap and too heavy for backpacking, but great coverage. See page 516 for purslane. This book does not attempt to distinguish between edible and inedible plants. It is good for everything in the US west of the Mississippi and much of western Canada.

The local Extension office is a good resource for this kind of info, especially if one of their Master Gardeners is available. (I bet there are some Master Gardeners and Advanced Master Gardeners on this forum but plant ID over the internet is not very workable.)

[Rick]

I've never had a problem with Purslane and grow it every year. I've planted a lot from seed. They do produce an abundance of pepper sized seeds that can be ground into flour and they will grow just by pinching off a piece and transplanting that piece but I've never had trouble with it being invasive.

[hunter63]

.........................................but I've never had trouble with it being invasive.

Ha....Your dirt must be good dirt.....It will cover the garden if I let it.....even had a piece of carpet for mulch and grew on that!

[Rick]

That's wild. I wish I had that problem. I love the stuff. I always have a small plot of it and I let some go to seed for the next year but it's never been a problem. I must have the polite stuff.

[Wildthang]

I have a lot of purslane but it is in my yard and garden. I think I will till up a place back in my nature area and plant some back there, then try to get rid of it around the house and in the garden, if that is possible! I also have some peppermint in one of the flower beds, and that stuff is invasive as heck, so I think I will plant some of it back in my nature area as well!