If, like me this
year, you don't have healthy "weeds" to pick on your own land, or if
you've spread chemical fertilizers or insecticides over the area you
otherwise would have liked to pick in, you can always ask a friend for
their weeds. While most people are bemused by requests to harvest
their dandelions or chickweed, they're almost always happy to have you
come in and carry away what they've been probably been trying desperately
to get rid of anyway.
Having found a
neighbor willing to share the healthy crop of dandelions, clover and
plantain in her chemical free yard I packed up my trusty trowel, a pair of
gloves and a couple of bags to store my catch in and hurried over. Just
like with cultivated plants, picking or digging up a weed is almost like
pulling the plug from a sink - the vitality starts draining out of the
plants immediately. Knowing this, I made sure that what I needed for
storing my harvest (clean glass jars with two-part lids, a pot large
enough to seal them in a hot water bath, and a rack for them to sit on in
the pot) was ready before heading out and that I had plenty of time to take
care of the plants once I got them home.
Once I started
digging the dandelion roots I found that when working in firm soil it's
much easier to loosen the dirt around the plant with a trowel than to dig
it up directly. When going direct it's all too easy to chop the top of
the plant from the root by mistake, which makes it nearly impossible to
get the rest of the root up.
I learned to grip the
base of the largest, healthiest looking plant in one hand while I worked
the trowel around it in a circle, loosening the dirt; then I worked my
hand down the root as far as I could, making sure that I was digging along
the root and not across it. Dandelion roots will go straight down into the
ground given the opportunity, but obstacles like big rocks or having been
cut off by over eager diggers can leave them crooked. Again around the
root with the trowel, then again reaching into the hole, and before long I
lifted the dandelion, root and all, straight out of the hole.
For clover I snipped
healthy-looking leaves, stems and flowers that weren't showing any signs
of dying back or fungus blight. Just like you wouldn't want to eat
meat from a sick animal, it makes sense to choose the healthiest plants
for keeping yourself healthy, doesn't it? I put the clover flowers,
stems and leaves into another bag together; while some might find them
hard to digest raw, they are edible. A small, sharp pair of scissors
came in handy for snipping clover stems since they can be a little tough.
I could have differentiated between red clover and white clover by
looking for the distinctive "V" on each red clover leaf but didn't bother
since I was picking for nutritional purposes, not medicinal. So long as
everything I got was edible I didn't mind mixing similar plants.
