Become a Weed-Eater!

Image Gallery Amaranth is a common wild green, and its seeds may have a future as a hardy cultivated grain. PHOTOS BY ALISON PECK AND ARLINE RICHARDSON

This spring, you can get more flower and nutrition from your diet, reduce your food budget, enjoy satisfying time in the outdoors, and clean up your fledgling garden in the process.

by Marian Peck and MOTHER's staff

"What's this funny leaf in my salad?" she asked.

I'll admit it. I have, at times, stooped to tricking my friends into sampling wild edibles, and I'll admit, too, that those experiments have, more often than not, ended in failure.

Most people are, it seems, pretty well preconditioned against tasting vegetables that don't have a regular place in the produce aisle of the neighborhood supermarket. For one thing, such individuals probably fear being poisoned by a misidentified plant. Most wild foods, though, are easy to recognize. After a little bit of research, you'd be as likely to misidentify, say, the delicious potherb lamb's-quarters (Chenopodium album) as you would mistake spinach (a decidedly inferior steamed green!) for cabbage. (Of course, many parts of our common garden vegetables—including the leaves of potatoes and rhubarb—are quite toxic, yet the same people that fear wild edibles often trust themselves when harvesting their own gardens!)

Other folks, and my friend Nella falls into this category, have simply spent so much time ripping winter cress, purslane, lamb's-quarters, and other such "weeds" from their vegetable plots that they have a hard time thinking of these plants as anything but "the enemy."

It's been my experience, though, that once a person gets beyond such preconceptions, he or she will often become an enthusiastic (I'm tempted to say messianic!) fan of foraging. After all, the hobby exposes you to exquisitely different flavors that can't be had for the simple spending of money, opens the door to a wide variety of nutritious, and definitely organically grown, vegetables (which you can't necessarily say about even the produce available in many natural foods stores!), and may develop into a family pastime that can be enjoyed on walks in the city or country, or—when your foraging eye gets sharp enough—even while driving along back roads. And a rural location is not a requirement for successful gathering. I live in Los Angeles and am able to harvest many wild foods from my small backyard!