Gardening Tips and Tricks - Eat Those Garden Weeds! - Two Strategies for Great Garden Weed Eating

Do you have weeds in your garden? Don't fight them -- eat them! They may be tastier than what you are trying to grow! This is my entry for the Gardening Tips and Tricks Contest that @alohaoy has going on until 5pm EST on February 17.

Most gardens have weeds. Besides planting and harvesting, a lot of gardening effort deals with weeds. Pulling weeds, hoeing weeds, mulching to prevent weeds, putting down plastic to block weeds, spraying chemicals to kills weeds. Every gardener has their own approach to dealing with weeds.

Here's my approach to dealing with garden weeds -- I eat them! I don't use chemicals to kill weeds in my garden, so I can eat any of them that are edible. And over the years, I have learned that a lot of garden weeds are as good to eat as anything that I have planted. Here are two key strategies for picking weeds to eat from a garden, with some helpful tips along the way.

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Strategy 1 -- Focus on the Weed That is Winning

The first strategy works best when you have one kind of weed that is taking over and trying to dominate the garden. This works best, too, for a weed that needs to be pulled out because it will persistent if just gets cut back.

With this strategy, focus on harvesting that one specific kind of weed that is so prevalent. Get out in your garden bed when that weed is perfect for eating. Have a big container handy to collect the edible part of the weed you are pulling out.

I came home from a work trip and found this Redroot Pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus) taking over my pepper patch. I ate them all and my pepper harvest turned out just fine. These are delicious weeds, as good as any spinach or Swiss Chard!

Don't just throw the whole weed into your basket, bucket, or box. Take the time to pull the whole weed, then pick off the parts that are prime to eat. Put them in your container to take into the kitchen.

Treat the rest of the plant in your preferred way -- chop and drop back into the garden as a green mulch, or collect them for your compost pile or yard waste collection services. If you have animals that can safely eat that type of weed, you can use the weeds as feed, too.

Here are two tips for using this strategy:

1. Choose only the best to eat. Even though you may pull all the weeds, you don't have to keep all of them for the kitchen. Don't save the ones that have been stepped on, or that are stressed.
2. Keep another container handy, to add any other edible weeds you encounter. There may not be many, since this strategy works best when there is just one dominant weed. But sometimes, you will run across one or two other edible plants that you just can't pass up! Don't mix them, though, because it takes more effort to double-check your harvest back in the kitchen.

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Strategy 2 -- Pick a Wide Variety of Weeds

The second strategy works best when there's a mix of different plants, mostly at their young, tender, and mildest-tasting stage. This strategy is to pick a wide variety of weeds, even though no one kind will be enough for a meal. This strategy takes more mental effort while you are weeding, to look at each plant and decide what it is and whether to keep it for the kitchen.

There are 10 different common garden weeds in these bowls. I kept 5 kinds separate from each other and used each in different ways. The bowl in the middle of the bottom row has 5 different weeds all mixed together. These weeds are all great food!


Here are five tips for this strategy:

1. Keep your picking organized, to make it easier in the kitchen to confirm you only have the edible plants. And it's easier to deal with any special preparation needs of different plants, like blanching with a change of water. You might have to have several containers to keep your harvest organized.
2. Pick clean, without a lot of plant material you will have to sort through and throw out in the kitchen. Pick off the part of the plant that you will eat and dispose of the rest, just like in the first strategy. Note that if some of your weeds may be toxic to your animals, they will need to go in a separate disposal pile.
3. Use this time to really get to know your weeds. The more weeds that you know how to identify well, the more you will take back to the kitchen. And, you will be able to identify these edible weeds out in the wild, away from the garden, too.
4. Choose only the best to eat. Don't feel like you have to keep all the weeds. Don't pick the ones that have been stepped on in the garden or that are stressed. Keep only the best ones for the kitchen.
5. Be sure to wash them well! Plants in the garden will have more dirt on them than wild ones in the tall grass.

Every one of these salads has common garden weeds in it as the base. There are a few garden plants in them, like purple cabbage, but not much. The weeds are as good as the garden plants, no joke!

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What Do You Think?

Do you have any edible weeds in your garden? Do you eat them? Which garden weed is your favorite to eat? I really want to know! Let me know in a comment below!

Do you have any tips and tricks for @alohaoy's Gardening Tips and Tricks contest? Be sure to enter by the end of February 17!

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How To Get Started

I hope you take the time to looks closely at the weeds in your garden and really learn which ones are good to eat, and enjoy them! If you want to know more, I'll list, down below, some of my previous posts where I show you how to eat weeds. Many of them have a quiz, so you can test what you know!

And I have a YouTube channel, too, that shows how I eat a lot of different weeds. Here's the link to my YouTube channel - Haphazard Homestead. Here's my Playlist on foraging wild edibles. And here's my playlist on cooking, which includes cooking with a lot of common garden weeds.

My Steemit Posts About Eating Weeds

1. Spring Salads from Weeds, Tree Leaves, Flowers, and Seeds
2. Fall Salads from Weeds and Flowers
3. Wild Extravaganza Salad
4. Winter Weed Salad
5. Paleo Winter Weed Salad
6. Another Winter Weed Salad
7. Homestead Smoothie from Weeds, Flowers, Fruit and Seeds
8. Wild Sheep Sorrel Soup
9. Grilled Italian Peppers Stuffed with Weeds and Smoked Fish
10. Backpacking Ramen Noodles with Weeds and More
11. Fire-roasted Wild Roots

I write about foraging because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wilderness.

I would like Steemit to be the premier site for Foraging on the Internet! If you have any thoughts about foraging, or experiences to share, write a post and be sure to use the Foraging tag. And check out the @foraging-trail to see curated quality posts about foraging. Happy Foraging!

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** Haphazard Homestead **

*** foraging, gardening, nature, simple living close to the land ***
All content is 100% Haphazard Homestead - photos and all!

I participate in Operation Translation. All my posts are available for translation under the rules listed on the linked post from @papa-pepper. Logo provided by @oepc85. Post goes 100% to Steem Power! Logo provided by @merej99