Posted on 03/22/2009 1:51:13 PM PDT by nickcarraway
In the not so distant past, spring herbs were eaten as food or teas were made from them as spring tonics. They were meant to detoxify the body from winter’s diet of preserved, salted, or dried foods and to get the juices flowing.This is the South: the trees are already blooming and the weeds are springing up. You can easily harvest weeds to add to a fresh salad! First, you need to know some safety precautions for gathering food from your lawn and garden. You can harvest weeds only from yards that have not been treated with chemical fertilizers or pesticides for at least TWO years or more. Never harvest plants for food that are growing by major roadways. The carbon monoxide gets into the plants and makes them toxic. Do not harvest weeds near your neighborhood road where local dog walkers allow their animals to use the yard as a toilet. Many people do not clean up after their pets and carnivore manure is not good for the soil where food is grown.
But what is edible? Dandelion greens (Taraxacum officinale) would be a first choice. Young dandelion leaves are edible and provide a bitter tone to the spring green salad. Some spring green mixes found in stores already contain dandelion leaf! Eat them fresh or steamed along with chicory and endive. Dandelion leaves and the root, whether as a salad green or tea, stimulate the liver and help it to eliminate toxins from the blood. This handy little weed contains a great deal of minerals the body needs to survive and is quite nutritious. The root is known to clear obstructions from the spleen, kidneys, bladder, gallbladder and pancreas. It soothes the stomach, too. All you need to do is steep a cup of dandelion root tea and drink a half cup every half hour until there is relief! The side effect? It seems to help lower blood pressure.
Dandelion root can be cut up finely and roasted slowly on a cookie sheet in an oven set on low. It has a pleasant coffee-like scent and is often combined with roast chicory for a great coffee substitute.
Chicory (Cichorium intybus) is another spring green often found in lawns and in the mixes found in grocery stores. As mentioned before, the root can be roasted and has a coffee-like scent along with dandelion root. The famous coffee, Café Du Monde from New Orleans is a chicory coffee. The leaves and root have similar properties to dandelion, but have a more calming effect and help build the blood better.
Chickweed (Stellaria media) is a ground crawler and is quite the noxious common weed. It can be eaten raw in salads or brewed as a tea. It is mildly diuretic and mildly laxative. Chickweed has traditionally been taken for blood toxicity, fever, inflammation, and obesity. It is used in salves for the skin for rashes, eczema and psoriasis. Two ounces of the fresh herb boiled and steeped for tea and drunk three times a day before meals do seem to help a person feel full and reduce weight!
Ramps are unique to the Appalachian hills and are revered by the locals for their spring tonic benefits. You will find ramp festivals in full swing right now all over mountain communities. The best way to describe them is like a cross between a leek and garlic. The young shoots are sautéed in butter (or nonfat oil) and eaten. They are enjoyed pickled, too. They do detoxify the body rather well, but the person eating them will certainly smell strongly of them for days! Wild onions come up in many yards and are edible, but are often too strong to be enjoyable. Just chop up only a tiny amount if you want to try it for flavor.
Have these common weeds as a salad by itself or give it more zest by mixing with other spring greens such as Swiss chard, kale, beet greens, collard greens, or mustard greens. Eat the weeds!
I am looking forward to some roadside asparagus.
It’s perfect with roadside roadkill, cooked in aluminum on a hot engine.
cool.
I just loaded my lawn with Scott fertilizer with Halts.
I like a nice lawn in front and I put my vegitable garden in the back yard.
I love fresh greens
Reminds me that years ago I got a GREAT buy on a used rototiller.
The guy used lawn fertilizer on his garden by mistake.
I guess the weedkiller was specific for dicots, because grass is a monocot. So he had a garden where NOTHING would ever grow again, except corn. And he didn't like corn.
It was an old gas rototiller, but for $25.00..? Not bad at all.
The “natural health” writer of this article says not to eat plants that may have been exposed to carbon monoxide, but apparently that has little or no effect on plants, which require carbon dioxide otherwise. To plants, there appears to be little difference between CO and CO2.
http://www.flowers.org.uk/plants/health/carbon-removal.htm
As long as it doesn’t come into contact with dihydrogenmonoxide it should be fine.
Poke Salad Annie.
Mother Batherick bump /ultraobscure
LOL...yes, that can be a dangerous product, especially in great quantities...many people require lessons in advance to survive a potential overdose.
Don’t pick any wild mushrooms. We get about one story a year from SF about Orientals dead from mushrooms they find in parks and the woods. Apparently one type that’s commonly used in China looks a lot like one here that kills you in about a day.
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