Today, on my walk around the neighborhood, I saw a man spraying his lawn with weed killer. And though I always hate weed killer, now — of all times — is the perfect time to NOT use weed killer.
We are in the middle (start?) of a pandemic. We don’t know when or how it will end. The grocery stores, thankfully, are still open and stocked with fresh produce, but we don’t want to casually run in anytime time we need something. And while our cabinets might be stocked with canned foods, dried beans and grains, and our freezers full of frozen fruits and vegetables, there is nothing like fresh produce for taste, joy, vitamins, and minerals. And if, heaven forbid, our access to fresh produce from the store should be cut off, or, as it is now, limited, we actually have access to dozens of fresh foods right outside our door. That is, if we know where to look and we stop spraying our weeds.
I’m not just talking about dandelions, though I absolutely love dandelions. They are edible from root to leaf to petal. But they’re bitter and most people don’t like them, at least not at first. Though how one can resist those sunny yellow petals sprinkled on salad or mixed into pancake batter I’ll never know. But there is way more out there than the sunny dandelion.
Right now, at the start of April, chickweed, violets, cleavers, deadnettle, stinging nettles, and plantain are popping up in our lawns. Should I go on? Clover, garlic mustard, onion grass, Japanese knotweed, creeping Charlie, catnip, lemon balm, along with fuzzy green-gray mullein leaves — a tea made from which loosens mucous from our lung. There are morel mushrooms, redbud flowers, and soon the daylilies will bud and bloom. After that there’ll be berries: mulberry, black raspberry, wineberry, serviceberry, wild blueberry…I think you get the picture. There’s a lot out there.
So grab a guide book for medicinal flowers or edible plants…or find an app on the phone, or visit your favorite plant identification website, and start identifying the weeds in your neighborhood and on your walks. Make one hundred percent certain you know what a plant is before eating it: I can’t stress how very important this is. There are deadly poisonous plants out there. You’ll definitely want to avoid wild carrot if you’re new to plant identification. What you see out there now is NOT wild carrot, also known as Queen Anne’s Lace; it is poison hemlock which is deadly so avoid at all costs! But many plants are safe and have no poison look-alikes, the books and apps and websites will tell you which ones.
So stay home and stay safe, but when you do get outside for some exercise, fresh air, and vitamin D, look down and see what fresh bounty is growing right under your own feet.
