Wow! I picked a lot of wild spring greens on the big foraging trip around my Haphazard Homestead! Now it's time to inspect, clean, and prepare all those greens. The weeds that are covered in this video are: dandelion, dock, field mustard, bittercress, plantain, henbit aka purple deadnettle, wild geranium, cleavers aka goosegrass aka bedstraw, prickly lettuce and prickly sowthistle, which is a lettuce relative not a thistle. The standard method of preparation for each weed is to boil them until they are tender, but some kinds get a preliminary soak in boiling water -- a parboil. After all that preparation, I taste each batch of greens. They are all really tasty! To see how the cooked greens are used to make tasty meals, check future videos or subscribe!
Part 1 of this mini-series covered my foraging at the front part of my homestead. Part 2 is about the edible weeds in the back part of the homestead. Part 3 covers cleaning and preparing all the greens, including looking at some of the finer points of identifying some of the plants. To see how the cooked greens are used to make tasty meals, check future videos or subscribe!
Dock: Rumex crispus, Family Polygonaceae (buckwheat family)
Dandelion: Taraxacum officianale, Family Asteraceae
Bittercress: Cardamine ssp. Family: Brassicacae.
Cleavers: Galium aparine. Family: Rubiaceae
Plantain: Platago lanceolata Family: Plantaginaceae
Dovesfoot Geranium: Geranium molle, Family Geraniaceae
Henbit: Lamium purpureum, Family Labitae (mint family) . Also called deadnettle.
Prickly Lettuce: Lactuca serriola, Family Asteraceae
Prickly Sowthistle: Sonchus asper, Family Asteraceae
Field mustard: Brassica rapa, Family Brassicacae (mustard family)