The Salad in Your Yard

It wasn't long after I started gardening that I realized something was going on that I wasn't prepared for. When I planted seeds of what I fondly hoped would one day become nourishing vegetables for my family, I found other seedlings growing, ten or a hundred times faster, seemingly with every encouragement, no matter what the weather or soil. My friends told me these new, more vigorous plants were called "weeds" and that my life's work was to remove said weeds from the beds in order to give my slower, less lively seeds a greater chance at life. It seemed a reasonable proposition until I started pulling weeds and noted that not only were they greener and hardier on top of the soil; their roots were larger and stronger than anything planted by my (slightly grubby) hands.

Weeds being terrifically prolific in my new-made beds of cow-barn compost and hauled seaweed, I soon had a full time hobby on my hands. I dedicated my life to attempting to nurture the tiny beets, chard and lettuces whose teensy seeds I'd so gladly sprinkled into the soil. I pulled weeds until my hamstrings were unstrung and my back was a hammock of pulled muscles. One day my back rebelled: the next week was spent on the couch, the only place where I could stand the pain, with ice packs and heating pad. Of course, by the time I made my slow way back to the garden, the weeds had triumphed over everything else. They were downright lush.

That was when I got the idea of eating them. After all, they were plants, healthy green plants with lovely leaves. Surely some of them were edible! And the plants I had hoped to grow? Well, some would survive, but why invest in such a shaky proposition when all around me were plants springing from the ground, glowing with health?

I looked around the property, identifying plantain, dandelion, chickweed, cleavers, clover, dock, mallow, pigweed, chokecherry, amalanchier and alder-oh, loads of alder!. There were also plants I categorized as "wild but wanted", which included violets, wild strawberries, wild raspberries and an ornamental quince.

A book called 'Edible Wild Plants of Nova Scotia' soon answered my questions. Nearly everything I'd be yanking from the ground was edible, and the rest could be made into teas. Ha! Ha-ha! I chortled with glee, preparing our first batch of steamed plantain leaves. My expectations weren't high, since the book's highest praise was "tastes like spinach" and many of the plants mentioned required several changes of cooking water to even rate as "edible". We ate the plantain. It was...okay. But the truth is, the second batch, which I blanched and froze, was thrown away in the next spring freezer cleaning. We didn't like it all that much.

Enter Euell Gibbons. A friend loaned me his book, "Stalking the Healthful Herbs", and he told me even more about the potential foods around me. Turns out you can eat the violet flowers, but you can also eat the leaves, and they are more nutritious than anything you'll find at the grocery store. Ditto for dandelions. In fact, when you start comparing levels of vitamin C, A and things like calcium and magnesium, it starts looking like an act of idiocy not to eat weeds. Forget mesclun mix-show me the wild mustard!

One thing Gibbons did that made me nervous was turn all sorts of things into candy. Aside from the fact that he was always, and I mean always looking for something to take the edge of his constant craving for tobacco (by the way, did you know coltsfoot makes a good smoke?), he spent a lot of time coming up with hard candy drop recipes made of various herbs.

"The Secret Lives of Plants" contains information ranging from fact to fantastic: research studies showing plants reacting with stress when neighboring plants were injured, or when someone who had injured them before entered the lab; solid evidence that organic foods are pound for pound significantly more nourishing than non-organic ones, and some interesting stories about how certain weeds tend to grow in soils that have been depleted of exactly the nutrients those particular weeds provide.

An outdoorsy German friend of mine told me she's been throwing yarrow leaf into her salads for years. I double-checked to make sure we were talking about the same plant (seemed kind of hairy to me), and sure enough: not only can you make tea from the flowers, but the leaves, when small, are perfectly edible and actually tasty, without the bitterness that can make dandelions something of a trial. We had some mixed into a dandelion salad, and the next day I picked a big bagful, for a try at a steamed dish of greens. I soon discovered that the buds of dandelions, steamed or lightly boiled, taste like asparagus, and they're fun to pick, too. They're small but numerous: I counted 36 buds in one healthy plant. Now, we eat yarrow or dandelion at least four times a week.

When I was done picking our first dinner of wild comestibles, I nibbled a yarrow leaf in the yard, just pulled from the short, tender stalk. It tasted like rain and good, growing green things. Steamed, the yarrow was so mild and earthy, fresh and tasty, that when I said, "It tastes a lot like spinach!" my husband replied, "You mean it isn't?"

If you've ever had the opportunity to eat a decent amount of organic food for a long period of time, you may have found your appetite changing. Organic food and wild foods share the characteristic of being so much more nutritious than food raised on giant, agribusiness-type farms, that it actually takes less food to make you feel satisfied. Free range meat and eggs, too, fill you up faster, so that if you've avoided buying these higher-cost items, on trying it, you might find you're not actually spending more because you're eating less.

You're also getting more out of wild food. Compare the nutrients found in two cups of dandelion greens to the same amount of romaine lettuce (see chart below). Now, consider the fact that the Environmental Working Group found that of the 43 most common vegetables and fruits eaten, non-organically grown romaine is number eight in the amount of pesticide residue it contains. Now, wouldn't you rather have a tasty, unsprayed weed from your own yard?

I've changed my mind about weeds. Now, rather than weeding my garden indiscriminately, I save patches of them for our nourishment and enjoyment. This year, I'm not going to bother with planting lettuce or spinach at all, saving time, water and the inevitable frustration of having critters eat my greens before I can. Why be stubborn? The greens are already there for the picking.

All around me grows wild, wonderful food, the harvest of which is much more adventurous than the drive to (and trek through) the grocery store. Gathering wild foods can be a family affair or a day out with friends, followed by delicious meals of stellar nutrition. And dandelions aren't the only free, healthy edible plants around. Cattail shoots bear investigating, and there's a patch down the road I have my eye on (A patch removed from potential sources of pollution, such as nearby households or industrial buildings). The nettles-top-of-the-line nourishment-have just begun to sprout in my parsnip bed. The parsnips will be some time coming, but the nettles will be ready to eat in a couple of weeks. I've got to tell you; I can hardly wait.

Sidebar

Dandelion Greens Nutrients (2 Cups) RDA
Boron N/A N/A
Calcium 187 mg 16%
Fiber 3.5 g 14%
Iron 3.1 mg 21%
Manganese 0.3 mg 10%
Potassium 397 mg 11%
Vitamin A 10160 IU 203%
Vitamin B1/Thiamin 0.2 mg 13%
Vitamin B2/Riboflavin 0.3 mg 18%
Vitamin B6 0.3 mg 17%
Vitamin C 35 mg 58%
Vitamin E 3.4 mg 34%
Vitamin K 778 mcg 973%

Romaine Lettuce Nutrients (2 Cups)
Iron 1 mg 7%
Silicon N/A N/A
Vitamin A 5808 IU 116%
Vitamin B9/Folate 136 mcg 68%
Vitamin K 103 mcg 129%

© 2010 Dr. Kelley Hagenbuch. From http://doctorweedmaster.com/wild-plant-nutrition.html
100 grams (about 1 cup)] *Based on USDA research "The Composition of Foods"; Mark Pederson "Nutritional Herbology"

From http://doctorweedmaster.com/wild-plant-nutrition.html