Drippin’ Gardening Growing Weeds in Your Garden – On Purpose!

I have had a lifetime of gardening experience and in all that time, I only considered weeds in terms of how I could get rid of them. I had looked at these plants as an unwanted scourge on the landscape. You too? Recently, I have come to appreciate their potential value as a green manure crop or for composting, or as an incredibly healthy addition to my meals.

One of my gardening mentors was my great grandmother and she always said, “God don’t much like bare ground, if you don’t grow something there He will.” Which is to say that nature abhors a vacuum so it will produce a groundcover of weeds if a vacuum (bare ground) exists.

We have all seen weeds in our gardens and rushed to pull them out. But, have you ever stopped and wondered why they are there in the first place? Or why weeds are anywhere? One of the main reasons that weeds are actually wonderful is that these plants photosynthesize and recycle nutrients as they go through their life cycles, and as a result, they can actually improve soils with added carbon and minerals when they expire. I have also come to understand that many weeds are a signpost for nutritional deficiencies or environmental imbalance in the soil. The weed seeds can survive for up to seventy years in the soil and they germinate when “ideal” conditions present themselves. This may be dry conditions, compacted soils, wet conditions, soil acidity, salt, or a lack or excess of specific minerals. Knowing the weeds that grow in your area can give insight into your soil! However, I have never considered these yield-stealing competitors as a potential food. Until recently.

It was a huge paradigm shift to walk in my garden and observe, identify and accept these former foes as friends. In light of my newfound interest in eating a more nutritious and more plant based diet I have been researching “wild greens” and their nutritional and therapeutic value. It was a major shock to find that some of my despised enemies, weeds that are abundant in our gardens and are actually edible, and in most cases delicious! Not only that, but many of them are decidedly therapeutic, far more nutritious than the greens we normally eat, and have been used in herbal medicine for centuries.

I need to make an important note here: Always ensure that you know your weeds before consuming them from your garden – not everything is edible or safe. In addition, never, never eat a mushroom from the wild unless an expert has confirmed that it is safe to consume!

Common weeds like dandelion, purslane, plantain, and dollar weed grow in abundance and can really add a huge nutritional boost to your diet. Of them all, I think that my favorite is purslane.

Most of us are familiar with the powerful health benefits linked to the leaves of succulents like aloe vera and yucca and many are discovering the taste treats from the antioxidantpacked harvests from things like dragon fruit. However, few are aware of the suite of benefits associated with the common weed we call purslane. This is a member of the portulacaceae family and is sometimes called wild portulaca. There are some vibrant colored, prolifically flowering, hybridized portulaca but these do not contain the nutrition found in the wild variety. Hybridization is often about selecting for one set of characteristics at the expense of another. In this case, there are many more pretty flowers on the hybrids but the nutritional profile has dramatically changed.

Purslane originates from India and it was a favorite food of Mahatma Ghandi. It is also a sought-after component of Greek and Asian cuisines and it is even available in cans in some regions. This plant has only recently caught the attention of nutrition researchers but some of them are now claiming it to be among the most nutritious of all green vegetables. This seems like a big claim but it certainly caught my attention.

For years I would pull up any purslane in my yard and garden and burn it as, like all succulents, each leaf can grow a new plant, and I was not sure that composting would destroy this regenerative potential. Not anymore! Now I have a specific section of my garden dedicated exclusively to growing this wonderful plant. I am harvesting it for the table and could not be happier.

Purslane has an extraordinary amount of Omega-3 fatty acid, which is normally found in fish and flax seeds, but it is free so that beats the price of salmon! It also contains high levels of the vitamins A, C, B, as well as magnesium, calcium, potassium, and iron. It also has something called “alkaloid pigments” which is indicated by its reddish stems and yellow flowers. These are potent antioxidants. One US study actually showed the high doses of vitamin A in purslane were more effective than flu vaccinations. This fat-soluble protector stores in the body for up to three months with the potential of flu protection for that period. I’m not saying you don’t need to get a flu shot, I’m just saying why not add purslane to you diet and be even more protected!

Purslane is extraordinarily alkalizing, too. Many research studies confirm that much of the population is ‘acidic’. Acidity breeds disease in plants, animals and humans, so the consumption of alkalizing foods and the correction of mineral deficits (involving the alkalizing minerals) is important.

The recognition of the alkalizing benefits of purslane is not a new thing. King Henry the 8th was renowned for his excesses in all things including food and partners (and his treatment of those unfortunate wives). He suffered badly from the acidityrelated disease, gout, and his favored tool to counter the ravages of this painful disorder, was purslane.

Many so-called weeds provide amazing sustenance and therapeutic benefits for free. There are a few cautions to keep in mind if you plan to become a wild food forager. If you are seeking out these herbs outside of your own garden, you need to be sure that they have not been sprayed with chemicals. This will usually be the case in a well-groomed public park or garden, for example, but it is much less likely in less tended areas. Roadsides can also be a problem if they receive regular herbicide treatments. My strategy was to collect these plants from my own yard and place them in my garden, ignore them (because that’s what they want!) and let them thrive. For more information on purslane visit my website at www.GardeningAustin.com.

I believe that eating a more nutritious diet is critically important, especially now, when we are mired in a symptomtreating health system where prescription medicine has become one of our Nation’s largest killers.