Still more “weeds”

Today’s post is another one about weeds in my yard.  This is the 3rd part of the unofficial series.  I have no idea how many more posts I’ll have on weeds in my garden, but I’m probably close to the end for this season.  It won’t take  long before all the weeds have gone dormant for the year.  Nothing but edibles today.

Yellow woodsorrel

The first weed is yellow woodsorrel, or Oxalis stricta.  In the past, I thought that this was clover due to the shape of the leaves.  But while looking for information about some other weeds, I came across this one.  Every part of this plant are edible, leaves, flowers and immature seed pods.  It can be added to a salad or made into a tea.  Supposedly, it tastes like lemonade.  But I’ve only eaten the leaves which taste a lot like lemons.  It is high in vitamin C, but has fairly high levels of oxalic acid so should not be used in large quantities.

Quickweed (galinsoga ciliata)

This next one took someone from the Self Sufficient Homestead Podcast forum to identify for me.  It is quickweed, or galinsoga ciliata.  I haven’t eaten this one yet.  From the information that I’ve found, the leaves are good boiled and served with butter.

Hairy Galinsoga (galinsoga ciliata)

Now here’s something that I find very interesting.  This is Hairy galinsoga, it looks completely different.  The leaves are nothing like that shot of quickweed.  These are wide and toothed along the edges.  But this is the same type of plant.  It is amazing that 2 plants that have such different leaves are the same kind of plant.

Blackberry

I’m thinking that the blackberry doesn’t require any sort of introduction to the types of people who would read a homesteading blog.  While we have a lot of wineberries growing along our tree line, we have no blackberries at all.  I was happy to see this blackberry popping up, but I was disappointed to see it mixed in where the asparagus is growing.  I’ll attempt to dig it up and move this plant once it goes dormant.  One thing that I didn’t realize about the blackberry is that in the spring, the tender young shoots can be peeled and eaten.  I thought only the berry was edible.