Weeds and Why I Eat Them

We've all heard stories from the Great Depression and how many folks resorted to eating weeds like dandelions in salads and sautéed. Eating "weeds" goes back a lot longer than the 1930s, however. In Medieval Europe, dandelions and other wild greens were used for medicinal and culinary consumption. Both traditional Chinese and native Americans used dandelions in herbal medicine.

three watercress plants pulled up from
the cracks in a walkway around the garden

What is a weed? One definition is a weed is anything that pops up where you didn't plant it. By that definition, my watercress is most definitely a weed. It pops up every year in early spring in the cracks of the walkway surrounding the gardens. In many regions, watercress is viewed as a weed, and an invasive weed at that.

I started my watercress with some rooted watercress from the produce section at the grocery store many years ago. I had made watercress and butter tea sandwiches and simply had more watercress than I needed. But it's now a wild plant and seeds itself where it pleases.

homemade blackberry vinegar -- wild blackberries
infused in white vinegar in the fridge for 3 months

Edible weeds have a reputation for being sharp or bitter in flavor, most likely why most Westerners don't eat them. However, edible weeds are often higher in nutrients than their cultivated cousins. In fact, In England during World War 2, folks were encouraged to grow watercress from seeds in a dish on their windowsills, as a major source of vitamin C. In addition to vitamin C, watercress and other edible weeds are very high in antioxidants, beta carotene, vitamin K, and many minerals.

tonight's watercress salad with 1 tangerine peeled and chopped,
a single serving of dried cranberries, and a tablespoon of "bacon" bits

So, while I have a fridge and freezer full of vegetables that I could choose to go with dinner tonight, I'm opting for my wild watercress. It will do my body a heap of good. Watercress has a sharp taste, so I prefer it raw in a salad, and dressed with a sweet vinaigrette, made with a fruity vinegar like this homemade blackberry vinegar, along with with sugar, salt, pepper and oil, or an orange juice vinaigrette, made with a small amount of orange juice, vinegar, honey, oil, salt and pepper.

Weeds also can be more tough than a green like lettuce, so when I make a salad with weeds, I slice it chiffonade-style, leaves stacked and sliced into narrow ribbons.

Besides the nutritional benefits, eating weeds is quite frugal. It's just important to only eat weeds that you know have not been sprayed with anything toxic.

Have you tried eating weeds? What were your impressions?

Early Spring Garden Produce

We're in garden hardiness zone 8b, which means the average extreme low temperature is between 15 to 20 degrees F in winter. Early spring is chilly, here, with a slow warm-up as the season progresses. And yet, we can still harvest fresh produce by mid-March each year.

I'll be sautéing these kale leaves to go with tonight's dinner.

The produce we're harvesting is limited in quantity and variety. It's  primarily the biennial greens that I planted last year that over-wintered and are now putting on spring growth, like kale, Brussel sprout greens, and parsley. These biennials will start to produce seeds by sometime in April. We'll harvest  leaves until I need that growing space, perhaps mid-April. 

I thinned these seedlings earlier this week to use as the base for a tossed salad tonight.

The other greens that I can harvest this early are the tiny seedlings that I thin from the flats started under lights for this summer's garden, a mixture of lettuce, chard, kale, cabbage, and Brussel sprout seedlings.

I have 1 head of garlic left from last summer's harvest.
We'll use garlic powder, occasional purchased fresh garlic,
and cuttings from these two pots for garlic until this summer's harvest.

In addition to leafy greens, I also have chives that are up and ready to harvest and the leaves from garlic. In fall, I always miss a few garlic bulbs, try as I might. So in spring, I use those missed bulbs for harvesting leaves, sometimes called garlic chives. This year, I potted up all of the errant garlic in two pots, now sitting close to the kitchen door. My hope is by making the garlic chives more convenient to the kitchen, I will clip these greens often as I'm cooking this spring. And as I run out of fresh garlic, I am also near the end of our onions. It all runs out at once! I'm glad I have the "regular" chives to fill in until I buy another big bag of onions.

If you keep a produce garden, what items are among the first that you can harvest in spring?