This is year 2 of working a shared garden space. Which is a huge blessing to us. We are unable to garden at our home in the city, besides the pots of greens, some herbs, and a bean tee pee on our front steps, house plants and the occasional batch of sprouts and homeschooling plant experiments....Keeps our hands in the dirt at least a bit on a regular basis.
About 1/2 hour outside the city some dear friends offered for us to share their large garden space, so we share in the work as much as we can.
If you've read past posts you'll know about my little obsession with wild weeds! It's just so fascinating to me how we pull out these "troublesome" weeds - which in many cases are edible, medicinal and power packed with nutrients. Just to name a few that get yanked out on a regular basis; Lambs Quarters, Plantain, Dandelion and there is so much more!
This weekend after some weeding (snacking on some of that too), we spaced the beets and I'm currently dehydrating batches of beet greens to use for soups, salads, and beet-green-chips (which the 'littles' love). I'm hoping to pickle this first batch of beets - pickled beets and pregnancy go hand in hand for me!
Back to the edible weeds. Mon amour and I discuss how perhaps the art of eating weeds faded when folks became less dependent on the land and chose more "palatable" foods. Plantain has often peaked my curiosity. Chew it a apply it to bee stings and other skin ailments, steam it like spinach, or eat the baby greens in salad....this is well known information. But the seeds - I have read, soaked in water, become a little gelatinous like chia seeds or flax seeds....I'm thinking that there my be some Omega 3s in there.
So we got ourselves some tall plantain stems that grow near rivers, brought them home - shucks, they weren't brown like the should be when you harvest them in the fall....but then I read that some folks fry up the seed pods in butter anytime of the year - so I thought, I'm sure they could be tasty dried out in the oven under 150. We gave it a try - Lovely! Delicious! Nice on salad, it has a nutty taste like hemp seed!
Any wild weed revelations or recipes stirring up in your home? I'd love to hear about it!
We love picking wild teas. Two of our favourites are wintergreen and labrador tea. Unlike plantain which was not indigenous to Canada and were brought over by European settlers, these are native plants and can be found in appropriate habitats throughout the province. Wintergreen plants have shiny oval green leaves and red berries. They taste just like wintergreen mints and candy you buy in the store of course because that is where the original flavor comes from. The tea turns a pretty pink reddish color and is delicious. The plant is found in dryer pine type forests, up on rock ridges, etc.
ReplyDeleteLabrador teas is also called Bog tea or Hudson's Bay tea and as its name indicates it grows in bogs. It kept the settlers alive with its vitamin C content. It is a long pointy leaf with a fuzzy rust color underneath.
I am also interested in making flour from the cattail plant and hope to do so this fall. I will let you know how that turns out!
Re: inkyapron, LOL thanks! I would love to hear more about the Christopherus curriculum - I was actually looking at it a couple of months ago. I'm jealous of your gardening efforts - nothing will grow in this blistering Texas heat!
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteGreat information! We just discovered wintergreen last summer and are hooked! The berries seem the nicest when they are white, I had read that they were traditionally eaten with cream.
And cattails interest me as well. They seem to be one of the most versatile wild foods there is. Between the leek-like base, the tuber-potatoe-like/grind into flour and the pollen can be used like flour as well. We haven't done it yet - but I intend to sometime!
If you have link to some of your discoveries please leave it! THanks so much!
Marisa,
ReplyDeleteI can definitely let you know how the Christopherus material goes! If I could send you some of my fresh garden produce - I would!!!!! :)
I would love to have such a beautiful garden like you. That is most definitely a lot of work. Thumbs up.
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