Eating Weeds?
Pretty much all that is growing in the garden right now (besides a few lonely spring bulbs) are weeds. I know! How dare those weeds enter our garden.
Oooh…that henbit is pretty much all over the garden. We’ll pull that right out when we get started digging and planting next week.
Sadly, there are only 2 small clumps of chickweed. Sadly? Yes, sadly! This is pretty tasty stuff. It would be a great addition to your salad tonight, if you can find some. It tastes a bit like raw corn on the front end, and has an earthy, beet-y flavor for the finish.
Actually, any number of common garden weeds are edible, especially the young, tender versions of those weeds. Of course dandelion is a fairly common edible. Other edible weeds include purslane, lambsquarters, pigweed, stinging nettles, plantain, sheep’s sorrel, burdock roots, and violet or Johnny Jump Up flowers. You can probably find a few more if you do some research.
Of course, if you’re going to start eating the weeds out of your garden or yard, make sure you haven’t used anything toxic (or had pets) in the area recently!
Posted on March 18, 2010, in Around the Garden, Harvesting & Eating and tagged garden cleanup, gardening, salad greens, weeds. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
The Demo Garden Blog 
We prefer to eat those weeds secondhand… the ducks do quite a number on them, and one of our neighbors has asked to borrow the ducks to weed his lawn. Basically anything with an animal name in it means it’s edible by at least that animal, I’ve learned.
Except crabgrass, sadly. That thrives in the duck yard.
That’s a bummer about the crabgrass! …Have you tried crabs?!? 🙂
Heh. No… I’m pretty sure the ducks would eat them, considering them strangely-shaped, pinchy cousins to snails. Crazy ducks are voracious. They’ve at least tried to eat mice, and I think they’re plotting against the squirrels. And the dachshund.
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