Stopped using pesticides on my backyard lawn two summers ago and let me tell you, it is a veritable sea of weeds out there now. So I did the only thing I possibly could. I signed up for the Edible Landscape class at the Chattahoochee Nature Center. However, just a couple days before the class, I received a call from a naturalist there who told me that not enough people signed up and the class had been cancelled. Cancelled! Not enough people want to eat their lawns? What's this world coming to?!
Just about then, I noticed an interesting crop for sale at the Farmers Market--lamb's quarters. The farmer keeps writing "a vegetable, not a meat" next to lamb's quarters in the farmers market's weekly e-newsletter, which obviously means folks keep showing up looking for a few chops or a rack of lamb.
When my eyes first fell upon lamb's quarters, I suspected instantly. That may be the plant that is popping up here, there and everywhere in many of my garden beds. I took a few leaves to bring home for comparison, to be sure what I had in my garden wasn't simply some evil poisonous cousin. Turns out, yes, I have an abundant crop of lamb's quarters. Now what?
A little research reveals the exciting news--lamb's quarters is a member of the spinach family and is an edible weed that is a good source of niacin, folate, iron, magnesium and phosphorus, and a very good source of dietary fiber, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B6, calcium, potassium, copper and manganese. As the French boy in the movie, A Little Romance, likes to say, "Bingo!" As a new vegetarian challenged daily for enough protein and iron, I've just hit paydirt.
Lamb's quarters' leaves and stems can be eaten raw in salads or steamed like spinach. Its black seeds can even be cooked like quinoa or ground into a flour. In the garden, it is an excellent companion plant because it attracts leaf miners and keeps them from your other crops. It also serves as food for many types of beneficial insects and birds.
This talk about edible weeds reminds me of a little poem I scratched out when I was 17:
Do not rely on others to reassure you that you are good.
Instead, be like the dandelion
Who knows in his own heart that he is a beautiful flower,
Just misunderstood.
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2 comments:
I love lamb's quarters and I remember playing in large patches of them at the back of a field when I was little. We would pull out enough to make little tunnels going into a "room" in the middle. Last year I leased some space in a community garden and a bonus was the large amounts of lamb's quarters flourishing on the edges. I'm sure that most people didn't see the nutritional and taste bounty, only the weeds.
Laurie--I love that visual of children building a secret hideaway in the lamb's quarters! I'm actually going to include your comment in today's post about the book, Last Child in the Woods!
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