List of edibles (and how to eat them)

[Dixana]

I've been seeing little comments here and there "dandalions are edible" "you can eat tulip tubers" etc
So I would like (please and thank you) a definitive list of WHAT weeds and flowers and such you can eat, and how to eat them (salads/need to be cooked first/etc)

[!potatoes!]

sounds like a big request...I have a couple field guides to edible wild plants, each at 400-500 pages...so a definitive list will be looooong.

a couple of my most-often-turned-to favorites are as follow:

lamb's quarter and green amaranth - excellent greens, cooked lightly. when the amaranth is getting fleshy in the stem but no real leafy yet (early in the season), the whole stalks can be cooked and are (to my taste buds) better than asparagus

daylilies - the corms, or bulbs, are edible too (I've heard but haven't sampled), but the flower buds and open flowers are crunchy and delicious, right off the plant. they'd be good in salads, I suppose, but they never seem to get inside, ending in my mouth too quickly. the dried buds are used in chinese cooking sometimes.

stinging nettles - a great cooked green (handle with gloves until cooked)

the roots (and aerial tubers) of chinese wild yam (which is somewhat invasive and not real popular in my neck-of-woods) are excellent - the aerials are nice, thrown whole into a stir-fry, the big tubers can be treated as if they were potatoes (they've got a strange sliminess to them raw, but it disappears when cooked).

garlic mustard - an invasive plague on much of the eastern us, but good as a raw salad green (used in moderation, they taste strongly), or cooked green.

poke and milkweed - both need to be boiled in several changes of water to be edible/safe, but prepared that way, they can be quite nice.

[Dixana]

OOOH! Daylilies would be so pretty in a salad too! So you can eat the whole flower not just the petals?

[rainbowgardener]

this post:

https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=66667&highlight=edible+flowers#66667

is a list I did awhile back of edible flowers.

I would add marigolds, squash blossoms, and borage flowers.

You can see from how long the list is just of edible flowers, that trying to list all edible plants would indeed take a book (or two).

[Dixana]

Thanks rainbow! My hubby drives truck through and to OH every week...I'm gonna have him drop me off with you so you can teach me things

[GardenJester]

Yeah... ummm... I wouldn't eat the weed growing in your lawn thou. unless you have been very careful about the chemicals and fertilizers you put on it. some of them can stick around for a long time and not to mention drift from neighbors that use these chemicals.

[Dixana]

We don't put anything on our lawn, and considering our house was used as a rental for the last 5 years I highly doubt any of those folks did either the kind of people who chuck cig butts in the lawn an leave a junked truck sitting in the yard are just not my kind of people....

[applestar]

Another reason to go totally chemical-free and organic!

We're enjoying what DD calls "Dandelion Juice" at our house, thanks to the heatwave:

Pick dandelion flowers, rinse if preferred (but you lose all the pollen), then remove the base and bract/sepals of the flowers (you can pinch out the middle flowers, use a paring knife, or just cut off the bottoms and live with bits of sepals). Eyeball equal amount of white sugar (only because it makes the resulting "juice" pretty yellow -- about the only time I use white sugar, which I buy for hummingbirds), then enough water to cover (about the same amount as 2x flowers+sugar). Bring to simmer -- no more than 20 min. Strain through fine sieve, pressing the flowers with a spoon to squeeze out every bit of liquid. Chill in fridge. If too sweet dilute with water to taste.

[Dixana]

5ounds great! Oddly enough though...we have no dandelions lots of crabgrass though if anyone has recipes for that

[DoubleDogFarm]

no dandelions! Well forget roasting the roots and grinding for a coffee substitute.

[StorageSmart2]

this post:

https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=66667&highlight=edible+flowers#66667

is a list I did awhile back of edible flowers.

I would add marigolds, squash blossoms, and borage flowers.

You can see from how long the list is just of edible flowers, that trying to list all edible plants would indeed take a book (or two).

Marigolds are amazing in a salad. I also found this recipe for marigold pie a while ago that I've been thinking of trying, but I'm just not a desert person. Not only do I not eat baked goods very often, but they never seem to bake the way I planned them either. It takes real talent to burn and undercook a cake at the same time.

https://www.greenchronicle.com/recipes/marigold_pie.htm

[StorageSmart2]

We don't put anything on our lawn, and considering our house was used as a rental for the last 5 years I highly doubt any of those folks did either the kind of people who chuck cig butts in the lawn an leave a junked truck sitting in the yard are just not my kind of people....

Oh, forgot one more thing. Toxins in the yard might not all be originally from insecticides and fertilizers. Sometimes people (particularly the kind who chuck cig butts in the lawn and leave junked trucks sitting in the yard) end up poisoning the soil without realising it.

For example, a junked truck might be leaking any number of fluids into the ground beneath it (some tranny fluids are milky/clear in colour and wouldn't leave a "stain" on top) if no one bothered to empty out the fluid pans before storing it. If you get heavy rain that would help to soak things into the soil. I would probably get the soil tested at some point. Just in case.

P.S. Kudos for going all organic.

[applestar]

I also found this recipe for marigold pie a while ago that I've been thinking of trying ...

https://www.greenchronicle.com/recipes/marigold_pie.htm

I was intrigued, but this is an odd recipe. At a glance, ingredients don't seem to add up to fill the pie shell.... Well, it says to "fold in" the 3 egg whites, so would they whip up to that kind of a volume? And the amount of sugar seems way too small...? Also, the flower petals are parboiled? -- I'm picturing that at 4 Tbs=1/4 cup fresh petals, we're hardly going to see them let alone taste them after being parboiled... maybe they're supposed to be dried petals???

[petalfuzz]

I've been seeing little comments here and there "dandalions are edible" "you can eat tulip tubers" etc
So I would like (please and thank you) a definitive list of WHAT weeds and flowers and such you can eat, and how to eat them (salads/need to be cooked first/etc)

Try out this book: [url]https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976626608?tag=eol-20&ie=UTF8[/url]

It's got an adequate number of plants listed, in your zone, and lots of full color photographs. I think it would be an excellent reference point for a beginner forager.

[petalfuzz]

I also found this recipe for marigold pie a while ago that I've been thinking of trying ...

https://www.greenchronicle.com/recipes/marigold_pie.htm

I was intrigued, but this is an odd recipe. At a glance, ingredients don't seem to add up to fill the pie shell.... Well, it says to "fold in" the 3 egg whites, so would they whip up to that kind of a volume? And the amount of sugar seems way too small...? Also, the flower petals are parboiled? -- I'm picturing that at 4 Tbs=1/4 cup fresh petals, we're hardly going to see them let alone taste them after being parboiled... maybe they're supposed to be dried petals???

About that recipe: it's british, as far as I can tell, and they're not talking about Marigolds like we Americans think of marigolds. "Pot marigolds" are what we call Calendula. And the brits call all sorts of things "pie" when they're aren't what we Americans think of as pie at all. Way too little sugar (icing sugar is powdered sugar). So it's actually more of a Calendula Torte (or tart). If that is the case, I'd use cream cheese instead of cottage and make it in a tart pan. Maybe they're making individual sized?

[soil]

check out eattheweeds.com

as well as the 100+ videos he has on eatable weeds.

dandelion is one of the many videos.

[Dixana]

Thanks for the book reference Carolyn!

[StorageSmart2]

Petalfuzz;

Thanks for the info on Calendula. To tell you the truth, I had only ever been exposed to the one type of Marigold(common/french). I had no idea there were so many other kinds.

I'm going to have to look into this more to find out if they would all taste different, if any are not edible, and if they have different effects on the soil, plants, and insects around them. I think the Marsh Marigold is really pretty.