A Weed by Any Other Name is Purslane

Since first reading about English Pot Herbs grown to give medieval families a bit of green nourishment over the long dark months of winter, I have been fascinated by the purslane plant. At the time, however, I was altogether unaware that it was the same noxious weed that our parents expected us to pull out of the family garden all summer long when we would rather have been out playing. I used to argue endlessly with my parents about the definition of a weed, and now it turns out I was right all along.

Just a few years ago it was almost impossible to find any information about purslane online except for hints about how to get rid of it where it grew wild.

The fact that hubby love purslane as much as I do might even have been a key factor in our getting together. In any case we crowded together like two kittens at the milk bowl peering into the grow holes to examine the purslane seeds we planted in a grow hole in the AeroGarden Deluxe. Now this nutritious herb is as ubiquitous online as it is masquerading as a weed in everyone's garden. The main reason is that it is acknowledged to have more beneficial Omega-3 than any other vegetable. We also happen to love the taste.

But since throughout our long years of apartment dwelling the only purslane we managed to see was the occasional clump tenaciously clinging to life between the cracks of some sidewalk, we always thought of this succulent as a drought-resistant plant and wondered if it would do well growing aeroponically.

The photos accompanying this article show the progress over a four day period of seeds we planted in an AeroGarden Deluxe indoor planter. We were interested to find out whether this succulent would grow as happily with its feet in water as it does outside on the dry ground. Concerned that seeds collected from wild plants in the neighborhood would have pesticide traces, we ordered two domestic varieties of purslane to conduct our test. The first photo show how, to our wonderment, leaves were already visible on all of the seedlings less than 24 hours after planting. The next photo shows two day old plants. To take these photos we had to remove the AeroGrow label and protective dome. By the fourth day, the plants were big enough to photograph with the label in place and they no longer needed the dome. As suggested in the literature that came with the garden, we removed the domes just before the grow lights cycled off in order to minimize shock to the seedlings.
The jury is still out as to how well the adult plant will do in this environment, however, compared to other things we have grown using this technology, I can already predict that they will do fine.