Chickweedmight be the most universally tasty and various fresh savage edible that I experience of . It ’s the best for everyday feeding — raw , by itself or as an addition to salad . It can be a spinach reserve for iron content in any soup or sauce formula .
Chickweed also has helpful properties for heal skin . It has a drawing action mechanism when apply topically that can aid removal of foreign objects like splinters or an insect sting , or damaged tissue at risk of exposure of infection in a pocket-sized irritable lesion . When used as a fresh poultice it will take the heat out too . It will cool inflammation and soothe even the internal linings of the mouth , gum , esophagus and stomach as you rust it .
I also appreciate its gamey nutritive vitamin depicted object and will dry the leafage for use as a fine-grained addition to soups and nutrient teatime , as well as in topical resolution . It emerges ahead of time in outpouring and often appear to be grovel along the soil , though it can resist up leaning among sens and other flowering creepers . Depending on wet and sunlight , a chickweed plant could stay short , flower and go to seminal fluid within a matter of weeks .
So now ( or when you find it ) is the time to get it !
An On-the-Fly Poultice
To make a cataplasm on the fly in the field , grab a chewing gum tree - sized amount and jaw it four to five times , then spatter out a muckle of plant ( and spit ) . This dark-green ooze can be direct right on the skin where the bug just bit or thorn just stab .
Once the spicy , peeved feeling subsides and you bulge to feel relief , keep carry the homemade poultice to your bite while you shove another bit of fresh chickweed into your mouth . Keep the first cataplasm in place until the heat or irritability returns to your tegument , wipe off the first and lodge on the new one from your oral cavity .
Doing this as often as you need ( or have solitaire for ) will almost forthwith relieve your provocation . you may fairly much secure that spot will not haunt you for days but be cleared up by evening or the next Clarence Shepard Day Jr. .
Read more : Lamb ’s quarters are a controversial pasture uncovering .
Identifying Chickweed
The Romance name , Stellaria medium , is given for the sensation chassis of its flowers , which are tiny ( see denotation pictures above and below ) . Some could flower in the first place in a ironic , cheery situation . Some may run along the ground , making longer stems and leave-taking , and seeming more succulent as they contain more weewee in their leaf and stems before they flower and go to cum .
Several species are bang in the Stellaria family . Some are fuzzy , but the common chickweed ’s politic leave are much more palatable to the tongue ’s proclivities .
As always , find a versed person to avail you discover it at first before harvest home .
The leave are hard to tell apart from mountain of other diminutive springtime barbarian flowers if you have n’t prepare your middle to their patterns . But in general look for a creeping mat ; pull out one stem , which should run along far from its central growth surface area with several other root . These “ glob ” form “ MAT ” that organize what seems like a carpeting of chickweed from industrial plant to plant .
And of class those lily-white dainty efflorescence should be there . However it take aim a close attention to the particular of their petals and arrangement to tell apart the difference between them and , say , mustard !
Harvesting Chickweed
you’re able to reap the upper part of this plant any meter . The tiny cum are also edible , but quite crunchy . When dry I typically practice bundling them into a newspaper publisher bag and , once the leaf have dried , I give them a shake . Most of the flowers and seminal fluid pods have matured to seed , which accumulates in the bottom of the bag .
Once I withdraw the green plant material , I can take that bag out and excite it over a plot of ground of soil that might need something growing in it , or an surface area where I need the chickweed to compete so that I have more salad in the fall . It can easy seed itself .
If you do n’t have chickweed in your front curtilage , you might easily witness a nurseryman protagonist or neighbour who is glad for you to clear their garden beds around this time of year ( also keep an eye out for solid ground ivy andcleavers ) . Chickweed wish moist mulch and rich garden soil , but the flora competes well even in a teetotal , shady location . It emerges betimes in spring and is timeserving when flowering forbs have operate to seed or a garden has been put to bottom for the fall .
The mouse eared chickweed in my yard is frequently intermingled withCreeping Charlie , henbit and dead - nettle , make it soft for me to grab some scissors and glean a wild salad .
I might hold a special place for chickweed because it was one of the first weed I was able to eat uncivilised in the gardens by the handful without too much of a hike . Its flavor is almost never sulfurous ( like simoleons ) and almost never astringent ( like spinach ) . To me it seems like the perfect salad flavour .
After 20 year of forage , I can still say I ’m mad to find and eat some mouse ear every single prison term .
