Friday, May 23, 2008

wild plants galore!




Wild carrots.  Notice the fine hairs on the leafy stems.  If no hairs watch out and don't eat! (These were tasty but a little tough raw. )


Now that spring is in full motion everything is up out of the ground and turned to green. I have been toying with the idea of creating a weed garden. Not really a weed garden but a wild plant garden which just happens to be made primarily of what we know as weeds.  Each time I cut my yard the thought passes through my mind that I am cutting up my food storage! I have dandelions, plantain, wild garlic, onion, wild leeks and even a bit of grass growing in my yard, all of which are edible. I am not in the habit of eating these foods regularly but know that they are edible and useful in other ways. I have acorns year round that can be made into flour or meal and then also have some transplanted wild raspberries and grapes. Of the storebought plants I can eat the flowers of the daylily, the hens and chicks plants, mulberry leaves and berries, fruit of the peach and plum trees and some rose petals. It just surprizes me how much food really exists that is normally never on my food list! The weed garden might be interesting for the fact that I could see how a little care and no cutting might make a difference on the quality of the plant. What do you think? Leave the weeds to the mower or start my garden?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I say eat em up! You only get one spring and you can always fix the yard next spring! Or atleast try it out for a month or two. I hope me and Amber can get a house soon so you can help me pick out what to plant and what we can eat without dying.

Megan said...

I would really like a review of these "foods". I'd love to hear how they taste and what they do to the system. That would be really interesting and you are the only one brave enough to try it. You could even make a section of edible nature on your website. That would seriously be fascinating. I hope you'll do it.

Anonymous said...

i think that i want to read about your weed garden and try one of my own. i'm new to gardening and wild edibles so i think it will be fun to try these out. today i tried wild cattails boiled, the shoots white and green shoots with the spade shaped leaves is good, but some part of the stem was very bitter and almost stung my mouth.

anyway thanks for the blog i liked it.