I remember hearing someone from the community garden comment on how you could make a good pesto out of chickweed a few years back, but I dismissed it. The idea of eating weeds somehow felt wrong, like bypassing your garden of carefully selected and grown food for the stuff at the back of the refrigerator. Not necessarily the worst thing, but not a preferred choice.
Then I started adding sheep sorrel to a kale potato soup I made. The lemony flavored plant added a nice accent. Sheep sorrel grows freely in my garden. Last year, I decided to let it go a bit in order to have more for culinary activities.
This was a mistake. The reason weeds are weeds is that they take over and crowd out other plants. I learned to harvest by pulling out the roots and controlling their spread throughout the rest of the garden bed while still having enough to add to dishes.
This year, I’ve discovered chickweed is as great as Delores mentioned. As I weed my bed, I continue to look for other edibles. Some plants, like buttercups, are not edible. In fact, the entire plant, from the leaves to the flower, is toxic.
So far in my garden, I’ve found chickweed, sheep sorrel, and pineapple weed. I keep searching for purslane and in moments of craziness, I think about transplanting it into my plot. So far, I’ve been able to restrain myself, but as I keep finding interesting recipes with purslane, I might lose this war.
Chickweed grows in mats and its root system is shallow, making it easy to harvest. It will eventually form white, star-like flowers. The entire plant is edible, tastes like alfalfa sprouts when raw, and has a nice mild flavor when lightly steamed, similar to spinach but not as robust.
I throw chickweed on sandwiches and into salads with other greens. A friend introduced me to Syrian hand pies. Fatayer is a Middle Eastern meat pie that combines greens, nuts with lemon. Chickweed combined with other foraged greens such as goose tongue goes nicely as well. It’s also good if you use it to make chimichurri, an Argentine green paste. I mostly use chimichurri in pasta or to make a green rice.
Sorrel is another weed I harvest. There are three types of sorrel that grow here. I’ve seen mountain sorrel out at Eagle Beach. These leaves are very narrow, but still retain that distinct sorrel shape, a narrow half oval with an outward swoop towards the stem like Marie Antoinette’s wig.
Sheep sorrel grows in my garden and has wider leaves with that same shape. In other garden plots, you can find people who purposely grow French sorrel. All sorrels have oxalic acid, which gives them their distinctive sour lemon taste.
People warn against eating too much oxalic acid. Oxalates bind to calcium and can cause kidney stones in those prone to them and they can also prevent mineral absorption. I would warn, as with anything, eating too much of one food is not going to bode well for you and to remind you that some other favorite greens including chard, kale and spinach, contain oxalic acid.
When you crush or rub false chamomile, you get a distinctive pineapple smell. Just like chamomile, pineapple weed makes a nice, relaxing tea. You can sip it while you contemplate whether or not you should introduce new weeds into your plot so that you can harvest more of them.
• Corinne Conlon is a freelance writer based out of Juneau. She can be reached at dirtgirlgardening@gmail.com.
