—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, Nov. 2,1974
44
ORGANIC LIVING
Br
Robert Rodole
Weed* Are Good Enough To Eat
How much time and effort have you expended on getting
the dandelion plants out of your lawn? ,
None, I hope. Far from being an unsightly eyesore and a
blight on the neighborhood, dandelions happen to be one of
the most delicious, nutritious plants growing anywhere.
Just one ounce of dandelion, for example, contains 7,000
units of vitamin A.-
Some wise old sage, whose name has since been lost in
history, described a weed as nothing more than a plant out
of place. Many people eat dandelion greens, but there are
literally hundreds of other weeds that are edible. All it
takes is a little know-how and the right attitude.
Consider what Ferris Weddle, an organic gardener
from Kamiah, Idaho, has to say about wild weeds. He
likes watercress but never buys it in a supermarket. “KI
can go to a nearby creek, or to an icy cold spring, and pick
armloads of invigorating watercress, why should I pay a
small fortune for a limp, sad-looking bunch in the
supermarket?”
Also, Weddle doesn’t look upon weeds as intruders in his
garden. Nor does he understand people who do. “I’ve
always been somewhat puzzled by the attitude exhibited
by a friend who says somewhat indulgently, ‘Wild foods
may be find for a hobby or in an emergency situation, but
I don’t want any weeds in my garden.’
“This man refuses to accept the fact that many of the
plants he dismisses as weed pests are higher in food value
than several he regularly plants-and they certainly have
much more flavor in most cases.”
If there Is any one, single reason why a person might
want to find out which weeds are edible, it’s the problem
of contamination.
Hike into the middle of a heavy forest or into the center
of a large abandoned field and chances are slim that any
of the edible weeds found will have been treated with
pesticides, chemical fertilizers or herbicides. And to top it
off, they won’t cost you a cent.
Let’s consider a couple of the more common wfeds
besides dandelion from which you might derive part of a
good meal.
Stinging nettle is one. It gets it’s name from the fact that
its leaves have small spines that inject formic acid into
the skin. Luckily* cooking destroys their stinging
capacity, and the young greens make a good cooked salad.
After drying and crumbling, the old greens are so rich in
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UMBERGERS MILL
RD4 Lebanon
(Fontana)
717-867 8221
A I.HERR&BRO.
Quarryville
717-786 3521
CHAS. J. McCOMSEY & SONS N. G. HERSHEY & SON
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ROYH. BUCK, INC
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717-859 2441
LANDIS BROS., INC
Lancaster
717-393-3906
protein that a handful can be added as an "extender for
hamburger.
Chickweed is another free food that can be found in just
about any spot that is moist and has been abandoned for a
period of time. Served raw or cooked very slightly, chick
weed is particularly good in salads when it is picked
young.
In “Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants” (Stackpole
Books), Bradford Angier notes that the roots and lower
portions of cattails are good raw, baked, roasted or boiled
for a short time. All you have to do is scrub them and peel
them while they’re wet and you’ll have a delicious ad
dition to your table at no cost.
Obviously, with hundreds of plants available for table
use, there is some room for error when out wild-plant
hunting. If you’re new to the game and haven’t developed
a discriminating eye, there are a few common-sense
precautions that you should follow, says Roy G. Scarfo of
Thomdale, Pa., who markets educational charts
illustrating a wide variety of edible wild plants.
Unless you are absolutely sure that the plant is safe to
eat, he warns, you should avoid anything that tastes
bitter. When you have any doubts about a plant, cook it -
first. He also says that you should avoid all plants with a
milky juice.
Hubbard
Introduces
New Layer
The Hubbard Leghorn
breeder will be offered to the
egg industry by Hubbard
Farms in 1975, according to
an announcement by
Wentworth Hubbard,
president of the company.
The Hubbard Leghorn, he
reported, is the result of
many years of intensive
genetic studies by the firm’s
Research and Development
Division. In the past two
years it has undergone ex
tensive testing in com-
Bring in your early order for NK seed corn now And bring in
your top corn yield next year
As you know, severe weather damage in midwest seed pro
duction areas is expected to drastically limit the availability of all
seed corn for-next year
Your signed order in the hands of your Stanford Seed dealer
is your best assurance that you will have the top performing
Northrup-King corn hybrids you need for your farm So bring in
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mercial layer operations in
the United States, Canada
and Western Europe.
Although Hubbard Farms
has achieved international
recognition for its work with
male and female parent lines
for the production ■of
broilers, Mr. Hubbard
pointed out that the company
began more than 50 years
ago as a breeder of egg
strains.
This area of research has
been uninterrupted over the
years, he added. The Hub
bard Golden Comet, a
commercial brown egg
layer, has been highly
successful in this field.
Information on the Hub
bard Leghorn may be ob
tained by writing Jacey
Huttar, Hubbard Farms,
Walpole, NH 03608.
m/Trmm /Tew ce. I MCI
« ' y ## # / J
M. —/ si/ >o<^
P O Box 230, Plymouth Meeting, Pa /P O Box 366, Buffalo. N Y
For whatever reason, be it coat or a desire to get closer
to an organic way of life, people are returning to wild
foods in growing numbers. People are starting to balk at
tasteless displays of plastic-wrapped vegetables that
were picked weeks ago. It’s about time.
Dr. Arthur W. Galston of Yale University notes that
mankind is using only a fraction of the world's plant
resources. “Most of our important crops, especially our
cereal grains, were domesticated by our neolithic an
cestors. It's entirely conceivable that a blight could wipe
them all out. It was feared a few years ago that a corn
blight might prove irresistible,’’
Wild foods might prove the answer-or one of the an
swers-to the growing food shortage around the world.
Perhaps this is one reason why you should think twice
about getting rid of all those dandelions in your yard.
After all, when they’re all gone, you’ll just have to plant
some more.
(Editor’s Note: The opinions appearing in “Organic
I.Mng” are those of its author, Robert Rodale, an in
dependent columnist. Rodale’s comments do not
necessarily reflect the thinking of the Lancaster Farming
editor or anyone else on the Lancaster Farming Staff.)
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