Homestead Vlog: Eat Your Weeds! Lambsquarter aka Wild Spinach
This vlog features one of our favorite wild edible herbs at Mountain Jewel: lambs quarter (Chenopodium album).
Also known as fat hen, this fast growing annual has made its way onto our plates for the past 2 months almost daily! We love this plant. It shares a family with spinach, beets, chard, quinoa and others.
The patch featured in today's vlog showed up this spring after we brought one mature plant to the compost pile last year.
We have made numerous cuttings from the patch yet haven't planted, weeded or watered once! Perhaps that's why most folks on this continent consider this a weed; it loves to grow.
Weed can be a bit of a harsh word so we prefer to call it an opportunistic wild edible. There are even varieties of this plant that are cultivated.
This is a great example of making use of the abundance of nature. These plants showed up in great numbers all on their own in many patches of bare soil. The first 2 rounds of spinach we planted have already bolted, whereas this wild cousin is still producing tender young growth. We are simple harvesting what this landscape is producing, not trying hard to "make things happen".
Eating this common wild edible is a great strategy for anyone gardening as it is widespread, fast growing, nutritious, easy to ID and delicious. We are aware of high levels of oxalic acid (make you sure you cook it; steam it), but with a well rounded diet and healthy lifestyle we aren't concerned about eating too much of it.
Hope this gets you out eating your weeds!
banner by @radicalunicorn
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
I am a big fan of spinach and my green vegetables - I support spinach!
:) glad to hear it, popeye! imagine this one takes little to no effort on the gardener's behalf!
this is my favorite @dtube channel/ steemit blog ....BY FAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thank you so much for all you share!!!!! i could happily watch a few of these videos every.....single.....DAY!!!!!!! so much to glean!!!!! i am INSPIRED!
Aww, you're sol sweet. We both absolutely LOVE your enthusiasm!!! It's inspiring to us and feeds us too. Thankful for your super duper awesome socks appreciation !!! Most def will keep putting the goods out there ;)
Oh I love fat hen, it is such a great source of nutrients and it grows everywhere over here in the south of Spain, it is a bit darker in colour here, which is natural I would imagine as the soil would be quite different.I love to just walk about and munch on it, and I have juiced it before. yeah to the abundance of amazing plants around us, we are so lucky, great video xxx
we are so so lucky! i loved that you called it fat hen. is that what everyone calls it where you are? do you know it by any other names? i'm always so fascinated at the names plants take on around the world. no one really calls it fat hen around here, but i read that it's called that and since then have adopted the name as i love it! cool to hear that you use it too :)
Thats what I would call it in Ireland, I actually don't know the Spanish name for it, but I like the name fat hen, I love all my wild greens there are not so many here, Ireland has so much more, I go back in a few weeks so will be foraging for sure xx
oh that's so cool. i'd be really interested in seeing some you have there in ireland if you have time/want to do a post about it!! :D <3
Wow! What an interesting way to make friends with the most bothering element in my garden THE WEEDS.
Well I will get to trying this soon.
Thank you so much. This is wonderful.
:D happy to hear your openness to making friends with the weeds, they're truly great allies for us if we only perceive them a bit differently. you're so welcome and enjoy!
I ate some of this tonight for the first time. It is volunteering in my garden so why not! Delicious I might add!
great to hear it!! yes, why not! it's sold in markets in some places, i've seen. certainly a hardy, nutritious food source :)
I am amazed at the sheer number of wild edibles that people go out of their way to irradiate, rather than harvest.
exactly!! me too. it's all about perspective :) i think aligning with these wild edibles is one of the smartest things we can do. pascal baudair out of los angeles makes a living doing this and get this: selling these wild plants to chefs! lol
I seem to have a lot growing around my place. Now that I have more time I am looking forward to learning more about what is available here!
Love this article! We also eat dandeliaon leaves, young nettle and goatweed
i'll have to look up goatweed and see if i know it better by another name. long live wild greens :)
Great article. Both my kids went to school in California and they have outdoor ed where they stay at a camp for several days. The highlight for both of them was foraging for edible plants and learning about what nature provides.
What quality education! That should be standard curriculum right? Learning how to live where you are like all other creatures: eating what's growing around you. Thanks for sharing.
Very cool!
I see this plant all the time and never knew what it was!
right on! it's a lovely and tasty wild edible!
STOP