I've been eating a lot of great weed salads this spring! Even when the ground looks brown and barren, or when the grass is just getting green, there are some great weeds to eat raw in salads! Here are 6 tips for putting together a really great early spring weed salad:
Tip #1. Pick clean. Winter and early spring weeds are small and it's easy to get other plants mixed in without paying close attention. It's a good idea to keep each kind of plant separate so when you get to the kitchen, it's easier to tell if you picked something you didn't really mean to.
Tip #2. No one kind of plant will be producing enough for a whole salad, so the more kinds of edible weeds you include, the easier it will be to get a big salad. And I personally think the more kinds of weeds that are in a salad, the more interesting the flavors are, too. – But that brings up
Tip #3. Little, young weeds can look different than when they are bigger and older. So it’s important to be able to identify each kind of weed when it is young and tender! Some of the weeds that I think are easiest to identify even when they are small are the dandelion, dock, cleavers that are also known as stick-tights and a lot of other names, bittercress, plantain, and wild chives. These are pretty hard to mistake!
Tip #4. Pass over poor plants. In the late winter and early spring, not all plants have started putting on new growth. Don’t pick those! There is no way I am going to pick this old winter-survivor plantain! I ‘m going to wait until it puts on new growth!
Tip #5. In the late winter and early spring, some of the earliest weeds for eating are most common in the open ground - and they will be growing close to the ground. So the plants can have a lot of grit and mud! These little plants need to be washed off really well!
Tip #6. To mix the flavors in the salad, cut those weeds into small pieces. I chop mine up really fine! I do add some non-weed things, too, like cabbage or kale, but not too much! I like to let the flavors of the weeds come through. They really taste great and are worth eating!
Bonus Tip #7: Pick from uncontaminated areas. Nobody wants to eat food, wild or domestic, from places that have been contaminated. I don't pick from places that have been sprayed by weed killer or even lawn fertilizer, because it might be the "weed and feed" kind. I don't pick off the downslope from any road, only the upslope and near the right-of-way fenceline. And I don't pick from building foundations because so many are sprayed with long-lasting pesticides to prevent termite problems. In urban areas, if the soil is good enough for food gardening, then it's good enough for eating weeds.
With these 6 tips, there’s a lot of good eating out there! Weeds can be real food for regular people! What wild plants are you enjoying in salads this spring? Let me know!
My playlist on foraging for wild foods: [ Ссылка ]
My channel: Haphazard Homestead: [ Ссылка ]
"George Street Shuffle" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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