Weeds That Feed

Written by Yee Tong

Today's industrial agriculture system has been busily breeding plants for traits that make them good “products”, but much has been lost with this relatively recent focus on industrialization.

These days plants have been bred for compatibility with machinery, yield, transport, shelf-life, and in the case of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), anything imaginable. In the pursuit of industriousness, taste, substance, and biodiversity have fallen off the bandwagon. 

 

Recent studies have documented that agricultural soil nutrients have been in decline for many years and many of the hundreds of micro organisms (present in organic soils) that make many micro nutrients available to plants have been decimated by agra business practices in wide use on commercial farms.  Even the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has acknowledged that the quality of agricultural soil has declined over the last six decades.

Growing plants in ecologically managed soil and eating ‘organically grown’ crops are ways of ensuring that food contains the nourishment your body needs. In many ways eating from the wild, is the holy grail of health and harmony.  The wild is the birthplace of all cuisine. Mother Nature’s pantry. Weeds grow where the ecosystem supports them, without human intervention, and they just might contain those nutrients not found in the grocer’s isle. 

 

For something different, a little more…wild tasting, explore the possibilities of orach (lambs quarters), purslane, chickweed, dandelions, nettles, plantain, sorrel, ox-eye daisy, cat-tails, evergreens, grape leaves, rosehips, burdock, chicory, nuts, berries, algae, fungi, and the list goes on, if you dare.

Wild plants that can be eaten immediately, raw and right there in the wild, teem with flavor and vitality. Edible berries, orach, purslane, chickweed, sorrel, young chicory and dandelion leaves can be combined to create an atypical mixed green salad that will catapult your taste-buds to new frontiers.


So, bring your vinaigrette or an empty salad wrap. And, no napkin required as leaves make excellent biodegradable wipes. 

Rosehips can be eaten raw, but care must be taken to remove the hairy seeds as they are known to cause itchy bottom.

Edibles like nettles, plantain, cattails, burdock also require special instructions for harvesting and preparation.  For example, you will be more comfortable harvesting the young tender shoots and leaves of nettles if you wear gloves. They must be cooked for a minute or two in a pot of boiling water and then drained and cooled before squeezing out excess water that would otherwise make your nettle recipe watery - unless it is a soup or stew recipe. If this is the case then you may wish to simply add nettles directly to the soup pot. 

Plantain leaf is best when cooked, as are the young flower stalks reminiscent of baby corn.

Cattail bulb, inner stalk, pollen and flower head can all be eaten once boiled, braised, or roasted. An challenging recipe for cattail crepes means visiting a couple dozen cattail flowers to harvest a cup of pollen. If this is too tough, you could extend the pollen you have by cutting it with flour and following a crepe recipe, such as one egg for every cup of flour/pollen plus two cups of milk and one tablespoon of oil. 

Many wild greens contain large amounts of vitamins and minerals: dandelions have vitamin A and C, thiamine, riboflavin, calcium and potassium; chickweed offers calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc and selenium (the latter three nutrients are important to our health and often deficient in the modern diet), purslane has essential fatty acid content; rosehips, fir and spruce needles have stellar amounts of vitamin C, and nettles are exceptionally high in several vitamins and almost all minerals recognized as being important in our diet. 

But be sure to know the environment your wild edibles are coming from. Steer away from busy roads, trees visited by dogs, areas with animal droppings, and contaminated soil or waters (particularly important when harvesting cattails or watercress).

Even people who want to eat well often do not make the time. Try to innovate with efficient work habits, the right tools and methods.  You would get twice as much done in the garden by knowing how to eat wild. Once aware of which plants are edible, you can actually harvest wild plants while you ‘weed’ them from your garden rows. You may even choose to leave some weeds behind as cut-and-come-again edibles. Lunch becomes fresh, free, and fast. 

There is an art and method to washing greens. Keep a large pail, or two smaller pails, full of ice water nearby to quench the greens as you pick them. Back in the kitchen, stir them to allow dirt to settle while you get you prepare to cook and store your harvest. When ready, gently transfer the greens to a salad spinner, sturdy bag or large linen, leaving the dirt and most of the water behind. I use an old burlap rice sack that has been washed out. If you don’t have a salad spinner, take your bag outdoors, grip it firmly at your side and swing it like a pendulum. The centripetal force will pull the droplets of water off your greens.  If you are using a plastic bag, pour the water out and repeat. If using linen once drained set the greens in an appropriately sized container/basket along with the linen to keep them from drying out and store in a cooler. Dry greens wrapped in linen keep better, and they will also do more justice to your salad dressing. 

Eating a variety of plants and plant parts helps to ensure our bodies get the spectrum of nutrients it needs, and mitigates the unwanted build-up of compounds like oxalic acid found in spinach, rhubarb that our bodies process more slowly. It is in every ones best interest to maintain populations of edible plants by treading lightly but also by limiting harvest in sensitive areas.

There are numerous books out there for self-study. Internet searches also provide a good starting point but neither substitute hands on experience.  To begin, collect foraging books and attend courses. Learn to recognize the most common edible weeds and the poisonous ones. If you are not absolutely sure that you have the right flower or plant pass it up. The greater your depth of knowledge about wild edibles, the more enjoyable foraging will be. If you can, the best way to learn is first-hand from a wild edible guru in your community, who will inspire you with tasty recipes and teach you the properties of each plant. 

Exploring and tasting the wild fosters our awareness that we need an effective way to protect our ecosystems. When ecosystems are healthy and intact, nature provides for us, free of charge.Good luck on your journey into the wild!