TweetSo you’ve tried nearly everything you can think of to try to get rid of those garden weeds by benign organic means. You’ve tried hoeing them out and pulling them out but still they come back. If you’ve reached the end of your tether and are considering hitting the poison bottles (not drinking it – spraying it!) but don’t know if you really want to live with your conscience, the consequences or the contamination, then maybe it’s time for a shift in attitude.

If you can’t beat the weeds, eat the weeds. If you can learn to view many common weeds as potential salad vegetables, then you won’t see them as pests but as welcome volunteers. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to all weeds. Some weeds, such as hemlock, buttercups and nightshade, are poisonous. Others, such as dock and grass, may be edible but not very tasty… but I’m sure I saw a health food shop recommending wheatgrass as a superfood to add to a smoothie, so maybe other varieties of grass might do the trick. And just look at what has happened with sorrel, as an example of how a weed can make good. When I was a child, it was just a weed. Now you find it featuring on the tables of gourmets.
And let’s face it: weeds that pop up in your organically grown garden have all the spray-free benefits and a fair bit of nutritional value. Nettles are supposed to be particularly nutritious.

The golden rule for weed eaters is never to try eating anything unless (a) you know for certain what the plant is (a good field guide to weeds or an online encyclopaedia will help) and (b) you know that it’s edible.

The weeds:

Chickweed (Stellaria media): A mild-tasting little green that does well in salads or in a sandwich with cheese. Use chickweed any way that you’d use sprouts.

Nettles (Urtica urens): Obviously, you can’t eat this raw. Cooked, nettles taste like spinach or silver beet. Boil them or steam them for best results. If you have squeamish family members, make a soup or puree the nettles and don’t tell them what it is. Nettles have the advantage of growing over winter, even in cold climates, so they make great fresh home-grown greens over winter. Harvest them wearing gloves.

Fathen (Chenopodium album): Another spinach substitute. You can eat everything except the roots when the plants are young; the stems get a bit tough in older plants. You can use the leaves raw in mesclun salad, you can steam them or boil them, and you can add it into quiche. This plant used to be sold as a proper vegetable and is delicious, so it is due for a comeback.

Daisy (Bellis perennis): You can eat the leaves steamed, in a salad or in a sandwich. You can also eat the flowers – they look delightful in a salad or as a cake decoration.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale): That “officinale” bit in the taxonomic name indicates that this plant has medicinal uses. Raw dandelion makes a piquant, peppery addition to salads and sandwiches – great with cheese and cold meat. You can also steam dandelions or make them into a tea, but this just spoils them, I think. Dandelion’s medicinal uses are mostly as a diuretic for “weight loss”. You can also dry the big taproots for roasting and grinding as a caffeine-free coffee substitute.