If you yank them too fast or the soil is too dry, you’ll only get the stem. To get the root out you need to do it the day after a good rain and use a dedicated tool to get leverage beneath the surface.
Yep, the roots are remarkably good at staying in the ground. In the western (desert climate) US you pretty much have to carry a watering can if you want to harvest the roots. It takes minutes for the soil to moisturize and loosen up enough to get those roots out
Keep in mind you damage the soil when you dig up wet soil. Best to leave room between ones you want to dig up and try to disturb as little as possible.
Years and years ago, before the Internet, I saw a lady being interviewed on some gardening show who had been gardening organically for a billion years or something. At one point she sticks her arm into her garden bed up to the shoulder, and casually says something like, "you should be fluffy and lose a yard deep"... This was rich dark lovely soil with all kinds of plants booming up out of it, and she can reach into it w/o digging arm-deep. Something to think about, eh?
Sure, loam is a great thing to shoot for, but most people have a hard time making really good soil. It's much harder than just growing an average plant in less ideal soil
In particular, I did not realize that they were brought over by settlers. Likely on purpose as a food source/herb then spread with western expansion. Another thing I remember is that he says there are accounts in China of roots getting much longer. 10+ feet IIRC, compared to 2 claimed in this article. Although that's a bit hard to believe. I guess it is used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Of course now they are just seen as a weed. I guess I have mixed feelings The yellow flowers themselves dont put me off but seeing large patches of them after going to seed dont look good. Unlike many here probably, I do like a pristine lawn but even still I don't think the flowers themselves are a pure eyesore.
> but seeing large patches of them after going to seed dont look good
This seems like the primary metric we as a society use for assessing plants as weed or desirable. I wonder if it is the right metric or whether we should start with the environmental impact (and what metrics would make this assessment, like impact to pollinators, etc).
“The cinnamon can be eaten, and so it gets cut down; the lacquer tree can be used, and so it gets hacked apart. All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless!” — ZhuangzI
God invents a beautiful little flower, a bright yellow reminder of the star which powers all life on our planet, which happens to be edible and tasty. When they go to seed, they turn into little puffballs that my kids pick and use to make their secret wishes. When my dog runs through the yard, she kicks up little clouds of seeds which float gently away on the breeze to spread more little flowers.
And humans are like, "fuck that, I just want grass. God forbid any little flowers should pop up on my lawn."
(disclaimer: I don't mean to shit all over your lawncare - I just find the impulse kind of funny. It's fine that you like a pristine lawn, to each their own).
Im also quite fond of the dandelion for the reasons mentioned, but it's about tidiness.
Tidiness reflects the care and love of the person responsible to his or her surroundings (that is, his environment). Its hard work to weed your lawn, to prune your roses, to edge your sidewalk! Keeping the lawn you painstakingly weeded weed free is a study of grass' lifecycle.
That being said we now have the worst of both worlds. We're lazy and irresponsible but want to pretend we're not to our neighbors, so we hire a bloke to spray poison everywhere. We have lawns where there is no water instead of coming up with a neat yard with more suitable vegetation.
When I was growing up I was so annoyed at my dad who made me pull weeds out by hand with him. Why couldn't we use Round Up like every one else? Now I see the wisdom of his monk-like personality.
My daughter was quite put out when her teacher awarded extra credit for the students who brought in long dandelions --- they were the first weed which I'd managed to eradicate from our yard (by digging them up by the roots).
Next was the plantains, buckhorn, and uncommon.
The big thing is, eliminating such weeds means that the grass needs to be cut less often, since it's the growth rate of the grass which determines this, which is an important consideration since I use a reel lawnmower.
You have to mow the grass like that because the soil conditions got worse.
Dandelions, for example, thrive in calcium-poor soil conditions. Their deep taproots mine the calcium from below the grass’s root zones and surfaces it up to the leaves. If you don’t harvest the dandelion yourself and “chop and drop them” over the course of several seasons, the soil will have sufficient calcium for other plants to outcompete the dandelion.
In other words, dandelions are pioneer plants, and has a role within ecological succession. They are great for soil building.
You could, of course, just add oyster shells into areas of large numbers of dandelions. But you would not get the benefit of a dandelion breaking up compacted soil.
I too use a reel lawnmower. But I’m slowly turning my front yard into a perennial garden, which is a great hedge against inflation.
What I did was systematically dig out the dandelions and amend the soil with mulch, digging down a shovel length or more and screening the soil to remove all the rocks (and adding more mulch to make up for the volume lost from removing the stones).
Since then we've gotten compost from the township and raked it over the lawn to fill in low spots, and I'd like to think that allow over two decades of grass clippings to mulch in have helped as well.
I also allow the grass around the edges to grow long and cut it by hand w/ clippers, spreading it for birds to make nests of.
It is a social sensibility evolved from an earlier practice where keeping a useless lawn not used for grazing was a sign of wealth.
Now everyone is doing it, and it turned into something expected instead of a sign of wealth long after the truly wealthy moved on to other signals of wealth. People even somehow associate it with an aesthetic. A common justification I have heard are, “I want kids to be able to have some place to play”.
It’s amazing to me how cultural ideas set and ossify.
NoLawns is going mainstream though. There are alternate ground covers (white dutch clover, or even thyme), and people are posting beautiful, tidy, but ecologically resilient and diverse non-lawn landscaping on r/nowlawns.
> It is a social sensibility evolved from an earlier practice where keeping a useless lawn not used for grazing was a sign of wealth.
I'm familiar with the history but this is too reductive. I don't care about those things as evidenced by many other ways I chose (not) to maintain my image with my neighbors. But uniform, healthy, green grass looks nice. To me and many others. I don't even put in that much effort and I dont hate clover, dandelions, etc. I also appreciate the no lawn movement because it reduces maintenance.
A lot of aesthetic senses are more personal preferences, and can change. I, too, used to think that about uniform, healthy, green grass and had the same attitude about minimal effort at maintaining a lawn. But it isn't really set in stone and people's values and aesthetic sense can change. I think many people would be surprised by how much of their own personal preferences are informed and conditioned by culture.
> Tidiness reflects the care and love of the person responsible to his or her surroundings
This is a very very specific way of demonstrating care and responsibility to environment. It's extremely informed by culture and history and the ecological specifics.
Maybe you didn't intend it but the implication that choices other than tidiness are not loving and responsible is very gross.
> (disclaimer: I don't mean to shit all over your lawncare - I just find the impulse kind of funny. It's fine that you like a pristine lawn, to each their own).
Nah, no offense taken. And I would like to clarify what I mean. I think large swaths of perfectly uniform and healthy grass looks very nice. I even think it's commendable when people put in the time and energy (and gather the knowledge) to maintain their lawn to this high standard. I would say I'm about 1/2 to 2/3rds to that extreme. I can live with some dandelions, clover, a few bare spots, etc. I find you need to increase effort exponentially to maintain a lawn to a high standard. So I commiserate with the "no-lawn" movement from a "remove things that need maintenance" perspective.
I also think people have lots of unknown biases when it comes to lawns. In particular geography. I live somewhere pretty green. I'm on well water. For all intents and purposes water is a free, unlimited resource for me. I think many people here are from west coast or even just cities so they come to this discussion with the assumption that water is scarce.
> Another thing I remember is that he says there are accounts in China of roots getting much longer. 10+ feet IIRC, compared to 2 claimed in this article. Although that's a bit hard to believe.
Have you ever seen the lengths people go to for pumpkin competitions? I fully believe that people committed to the cause could grow 10' dandelion roots. Tons of fertilizer, optimized "sun" exposure, repeat for generations and propagate the seeds from the record-setters.
My father grew up fairly poor in the 1930s and they often were short on food but he said they always had vegetables. They harvested dandelions, ate them, and actually made dandelion wine (according to him).
He and his siblings loved vegetables as during certain times of the year they were the one thing they had "too much of". Everything else was basically rationed but they would get various peak harvests where they could eat until they were full.
Dandelion wine is delicious and not that hard to make. You just have to make sure you're harvesting dandelions that haven't been sprayed with a chemical. The final taste is mild but like a light mead and honey-ish.
Do you have a recipe that you prefer? I have seen a bunch of different recipes and have made it a few times with different ones. While I would agree that it isn't difficult to make, it has been pretty labor intensive when I have done it, so one of the big trade-offs for my recipe choice has been how much dandelion to use and have been curious about the tradeoffs there, though not curious enough to do any real experimenting.
I didn't make this dandelion mead, but I did follow some of his other wine and mead recipes and they were good. You need a lot of dandelions by the looks of it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-C9uJ90eLc
Dandelion & Burdock is SO SO damn good, I always wondered why it didn't spread to the rest of the world, it was my fav soda growing up. Weird because Americans and Canadians really like Root Beer but not Dandelion & Burdock.
I've never even heard of Dandelion & Burdock, but am quite familiar with Root Beer/sarsaparilla. Since you mentioned them together, are there similarities to the taste?
Any suggestions on where to find this concoction on this side of the pond? Fentiman's seems to a brand that pops up in searches, but only seeing ridiculous prices like $28 for a 275ml (whatever that is ;-) bottle. No wonder it's not as well known.
If you do feel like putting an order of weird British stuff, I'd recommend: Tunnocks Snowballs, Ribena Sparkling Blackcurrant, Jacob's Jaffa Cakes, Chivers UK Lemon Curd, Hula Hoops Variety, Twiglets, Tunnocks Milk Chocolate Caramel Wafers, Custard Creams, Twirl Orange.
> Weird because Americans and Canadians really like Root Beer but not Dandelion & Burdock.
Dunno how D & B's made, but American root beer isn't made with the "real" ingredients anymore. They're banned because if you give a megadose to mice, sometimes they get cancer. One of those "maybe actually bad, but maybe not really and just overzealous regulation" things.
I mean, also I'm sure it's cheaper to make fake-flavored root beer, but there'd at least be some craft ones making it the real way. But no, it's banned.
For some reason our kindergarten teachers (in germany) told us that the plant is poisonous. That taught me very early to question authority figures like teachers, because the same day when I came home from kindergarten I found my grandfather sitting on his yard bench eating dandelion leaves.
Thinking about, they might have told us it is poisonous to keep us from playing with them, because the sap colours skin and clothes brown with hard to remove stains.
That would be funny, because on other occasion I remember collecting huge bouquets of "Hahnenfuß" (we called them "Butterblume") on walks with the kindergarten group. :)
I had a similar experience with the anti-drug propaganda as a student. In the US there is (was?) an anti-drug program called DARE that as students in the 80s and 90s we were routinely subjected to. It was basically anti-drug propaganda. They went over all sorts of downsides/side effects of drugs (which are EVIL) including marijuana. The most terrifying "side effect" to most of us boys was the shrinking of your penis (yes seriously this was taught).
Once I learned the reality around "drugs" it was a startling lesson to me that you need to question authority figures, even though this at times can infuriate them. Now with teenagers of my own, hearing some of the things their teachers teach them as "fact" can be depressing, especially when it's tech-related and it's clear that the teacher has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
when they have the ability/authority to "punish" you, you care. You may decide that you care more about your independent spirit than you do their happiness level, but you do care. As someone who stood by their unpopular opinion on principle even though the punishment (a very low grade) blemished an otherwise sterling GPA, I don't think it's possible not to care.
When it's a state who can throw you into a cage and lock the door for extende periods of time, you're going to care. If you don't, I would seriously question your sanity (or honesty).
I too remember the DARE program. Prior to DARE, I didn't know much about drugs, and after I knew all the major kinds people did, the kinds of effects they had, how to use them, and where to go buy them.
Oh yeah, they also gave a bunch of those horror stories about them, some of which I am sure were true, but many obviously weren't.
This was shown by multiple studies [0], but the program ran many more years.
It could be a coincidence that everyone involved in the program profited immensely from it.
The guy who started DARE, Daryl Gates, was roundly blamed for LAPD's racist culture; so much so that he 'retired' after the Rodney King riots.
Here's a fun quote of his: "... blacks might be more likely to die from chokeholds because their arteries do not open as fast as they do in 'normal people'."
Speaking of questioning authority figures, a more recent saying comes to mind: The next time that somebody tells you, "the government wouldn't do that," oh yes they would!
That would never have flown in our (UK) class, where we grew up drinking Dandelion and Burdock pop
It was however playground lore that touching them and licking your fingers would make you wet the bed. Indeed the French name for them is literally that, pissenlit, which they must have had good reason to choose over the perfectly fine English name for them, dent de lion.
At least in the US, people routinely spray dandelions with weed killer. So an argument could be made in favor of telling kids - especially in a classroom setting - where you'd rather err on the side of keeping kids from picking dandelions from any yard they pass by, and eating them.
There was a time in my life when I was all-but homeless, and pretty much penniless, despite having two jobs --- the only reason I didn't get exposed to Round-up on at least one occasion was because I was careful to blanch the dandelions I was planning on eating by placing a heavy stone on them for a day or two or three --- this goes a long way to make them less bitter in taste.
I am glad you have made it. As sad as the story is, it is also fascinating to me. Would you be willing to go into more detail ( among other things, why would heavy stone work in this case )?
There's not much to it --- made a bad life decision, had some follow-on bad luck, falling out with family, and was fortunate to have support of some friends and to land the two jobs.
As noted, dandelions are bitter in taste, and this can be mitigated by blanching them --- putting them under a heavy stone is one way to do this, or one can dip them in boiling water briefly. It also softens them a bit.
Yeah we tell our kids about edible plants like dandelions, but caution them to basically never actually eat any they find.
Really, just saying "they're poisonous" would be quicker and the outcome wouldn't be all that different. They do have to be treated as poisonous, kinda, in urban and suburban settings.
Weeds with such an impressive root system need a different approach than just mowing, but many are unaware of this.
My city's landscaping services are fighting a losing battle with a local patch of Asian knotweed. Mowing it down doesn't do much because it just grows back and spreads.
I had some Japanese knotweed attempt to mess with my yard. Luckily even the knotweed is not exempt from laws of physics so after keeping it cut down for a while it gave up.
It can be a problem if you can't prevent it from setting up foliage. At least it's somewhat edible, and the dry stalks have airtight sections that explode if lit - kids love it.
It's also possible to make dandelion flower tea, if you have a bunch of these plants around maybe it's worth trying it out on the weekend. It seems a bit lower effort than digging up the whole root.
That's interesting, since Dandelions are wild plants. Basically every vegetable or fruit we eat today (carrots would be pretty close I guess) are cultivated. Usually they hardly resemble their wild ancestor.
I'm surprised Dandelions didn't get cultivated to have much larger roots.
Basil is a cultivated herb that often breaks out of containment and goes wild. Sometimes, people will redomesticate those because the ones that survive the local conditions are well-adapted to the climate.
but wild coconut palms are exactly the same as farmed/domesticated ones. There is no difference between them (atleast until before the green revolution)
I have a bunch of wild lettuce growing here. They look like dandelions, though they are not, with significantly smaller leaves than cultivated lettuce, a fetid odor, and a slightly bitter taste. But edible raw.
Purslane is another good example. The domesticated ones have larger leaves, but the wild ones are good eating if you know it hasn't been sprayed.
Dandelion root coffee is good enough that I buy it on a regular basis. I'm very much into real coffee and I make espresso at home, but I like dandelion root coffee in the evening when I don't want more caffeine.
It doesn't taste like coffee, but it tastes good, and it's close enough in flavor to scratch the itch. Much better than carob or chicory. (Although chicory mixed in with coffee à la Café du Monde is great.)
For anyone interested in incorporating wild plants into their cuisine (including foraging, preparation, storage, recipes, etc.), I cannot recommend Samuel Thayer's books highly enough: https://www.foragersharvest.com/sams-books.html
At this point, he is an authority in the foraging community, and his books are well-written. Got all of them in my bookshelf.
Dandelions are an incredible gift from nature. What other plant is completely edible, self propagates with no intervention, brings up nutrients from deep in the soil for other plants, blooms beautiful flowers year round and provides endless entertainment for children?
The number of intractable societal problems that would suddenly become non-issues if the average household engaged in basic permaculture boggles the mind. It’s hard to think of a more apt metaphor for our ills than the fact that we actively apply cancer-causing poison to kill them as a matter of course.
The invention of broadleaf herbicides like 2,4-d (herbicides that kill broadleaf “weeds” but not grass) has been disastrous.
Now it’s expected you regularly spray chemicals on your lawn. Sometimes your neighbor can even use county, state, and city laws to compel you to do it.
Yeah it is a huge issue. Oregon last year stopped enabling HOAs to force homeowners to spray herbicide or insecticide on their properties. HB2409 2021 https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_94.763
In America, we demand the finest green laws that money and better living through chemistry can provide. A persons lawn is indicative of their status in society and how high functioning they are. Perfect flush and lush green is sought after, many big YouTube channels only discuss how to achieve a better lawn than the jerks down the street. Bonus points for symmetrical patterns mowed into the lawn.
So it’s a status symbol. Lots of people do deleterious things to achieve status. I don’t think it’s “weird” but rather maybe a bit dumb
Do you eat non organic cereals of basically any kind? Those are loaded with it too.
Even better, we dump pesticides all over our yards to kill mosquitos, grubs, and beetles. There's signs all over town here advertising spraying for mosquitos with who knows what. There's trucks driving around advertising spraying for everything with more than four legs and even a number of less desirable things with four legs. And then we wonder why our pollinators are all dying off. Agricultural pesticides are bad enough. Covering every last inch of green near our houses with pesticides and herbicides is another nail in the coffin.
Not in your USA. There are multiple USAs it seems. I did No Mow May last year (on just a small part of the yard) and the guy across the street started shouting at me until June (at which point he just started shouting about other things)
That's how I interpreted it too. Dang text. My neighbors don't give me any trouble about my yard thankfully. I just try to minimize the number of dandelion seeds I share with them. Collected a bunch of flowers for a friend the other day who wanted to make some jelly with them. I haven't put any chemicals down in the back yard since we moved in and she was talking about how she didn't know what was safe to harvest. Went ahead and got her set up, lol. Keeps the puffballs down and she's got her jelly ingredients. Win-win.
I've seen ads for "No mow May" here in the US. I can't imagine there will be much buy-in, but it would be nice to see a change in opinion against lawn culture. I personally would rather keep the lawn relatively short (still taller than most "respectable" homeowners prefer) while allowing the violets and clover to have their place in the mix. The dandelions wouldn't bother me if they didn't get so out of hand so quickly, especially this year. I don't want a dandelion monoculture any more than I want a fescue monoculture. The dog traffic in the back yard is hard on the grass and that just gives the dandelions even more of an edge. Now I'm wondering if I should start seeding clover and other groundcover that's more traffic-tolerant. I just think the dandelions will outcompete even the clover. If anyone has ideas for groundcover that will pop up even earlier, I'm all ears.
I'd very much like to put a border down for a 10' diameter circle out of my front lawn and dump wildflower seeds in there. They e got mixed that kind of come up as each flower's preferred season comes around. I figure if there's a border, that makes it a garden and not weeds even if my neighbors weren't super chill.
In addition to the good qualities you listed, they are also good indicators of compacted soil (plants with thick taproots tend to spring up in compacted soil).
They are technically invasive where I am (northeast US) but I have never seen them take over an area so much as to choke out native species. I would argue that they have become naturalized.
As far as I can tell, in the US they are only considered invasive in Oregon and Alaska. Invasive is a separate definition from non-native. An invasive(native or non-native) has to be a threat to the established ecosystem, which dandelions generally aren't.
I'm going to question the 'beautiful flowers' part of that. From an aesthetic point of view Dandelion flowers don't have a lot going for them. They're aggressively yellow and tend to visually dominate over other plants (and they're extremely efficient at propagating, so if you don't actively control them, they'll quickly become the majority flower) while they're blooming, and the blooms don't even last very long, sometimes less than 24 hours, and a dandelion head that's shed its seeds looks kind-of ugly.
I generally have a very light-touch approach to gardening, but even I draw the line at dandelions. The correct method of dealing with them is a trowel though, not weedkiller.
Indeed, Dandelions are beautiful when blooming, but less so before the blooms where they appear as alien hydras with many heads and flailing tentacles.
The flower stalks grow unbelievably fast too. I have been trying to rein in dandelions on my lawn this year, and thought I could control them by just snipping off the flower heads. Soon, I realized this would take an hour of labor a day that I didn't have to spend on lawn maintenance.
As a recent lawn owner/steward of a small strip of ground, this is my approach as well. My view is if you want a more or less monoculture of grass, you should have to physically work for it (no fuel-powered tools either). In this sense, I treat the grass portion of my yard as a garden and do end up spending some time every week troweling out a few dandelions and other unwanted plants. I _do_ make sure I compost all the "weeds" I pull. Overall this seems environmentally friendly, and I do get a good chuckle every time someone asks me which herbicide I spray.
This is true even if you're not going for monoculture. The daisies and clover can live in my lawn as much as they want, since their flowers are much less salient.
I don’t control our dandelions. I’m in a rural area with a large yard. I did try for a year or two and then realized I don’t actually dislike them and it’s not like I have neighbors that can see my yard.
Believe you me though, there’s absolutely no way you could trowel your way out of my yard’s situation. Even (selectively) spraying wasn’t enough.
I'm an avid gardener and I love the environment but we have to realize the real numbers for how we feed ourselves. It would take about one acre of land to feed yourself on wheat in a year.
>An estimated value of 720 pounds of wheat is said to be consumed by a family of four yearly. 60 pounds of wheat can be got from a bushel.
Since a bushel of wheat can be grown on 0.25 acre of land, you’ll need 0.75 acres of land per person. You’ll need approximately 3 acres of land for growing wheat and grain yearly for a family of four.
I think you're misunderstanding what a household engaging in basic permaculture means. It doesn't mean that they have to grow all their own food. It doesn't mean all farms have to switch to permaculture overnight.
Is wheat the most impactful-per-area crop? Would other crops yield sufficient quantities in smaller areas compared to wheat?
As others mentioned, the original idea is to supplement, and not replace. If every household strove to grow at least some of its food, we could probably reduce our need to transport, store, and distribute edibles by a non-insignificant amount. And the GP's point especially revolves around the lack of effort involved. While some crops require a lot of preparation and attention, in the case of "weeds" like dandelion, the effort can be no greater than walking outside and pulling them from the ground.
Plus,the University of Nebraska mentions this regarding winter wheat:
A review of seedling rates vs. yield potential is helpful. On average, there are 22 seeds per head and 5 heads per plant, or 110 seeds per plant. With an average seed size of 15,000 seeds per pound or 900,000 seeds per bushel, a pound of average-sized seed with 80% germination and emergence has a yield potential of approximately 1.5 bushels per acre. Seeding 40 lb of seed with a weight of 15,000 seed per pound has a yield potential of 60 bushels per acre.https://cropwatch.unl.edu/2019/determining-seeding-rate-wint...
You know I think you are right and that this often repeated answer on the internet may be wrong or maybe the yield you can get using permaculture type methods at home is drastically lower than professional farmers using fertilizer and industrial equipment (very likely).
Let's say a home grower could maybe get 1/4 of a professional farmer's yield. 45/4= 11.25 bushels per acre is 675 lbs per acre, which would be enough for four people for a year.
It makes me feel better about the feasibility of growing my own grains and living on it in an apocalypse. I've always wanted to try growing a field of wheat or something in my backyard. Maybe I'll try it someday. I've often wondered if garden grown grains and bread would have the same massive difference in quality and taste that you get with a homegrown tomato vs. store-bought.
Though I agree that dandelions are awesome, your description of them also describes sow thistles perfectly. Not only are sow thistles often mistaken for dandelions (at least in their earlier growth stage), but they are woefully underrated as edible wild plants.
In fact, I appreciate sow thistle even more than dandelion. People assume they must be bitter or even poisonous because they have white sap and can look kind of ugly in their late stage of growth, but if you pick them when they're tender they aren't bitter at all. If a person wasn't aware they were eating a common weed, they might assume they were eating a gourmet green from the produce section. I've used it to substitute spinach for creamed spinach, and though it doesn't taste like spinach, it was very tasty. But I usually just pick and eat the greens raw!
Specifically, I am referring to the "sow thistle" that is of the genus Sonchus. It is not a true thistle, and I think that there's other plants called "sow thistle" that aren't this one.
I've never tried using the roots and don't know whether they have properties similar to dandelion. Dandelions may have a leg up in terms of the root, but I'm not sure. Sow thistle is otherwise highly nutritious.
As someone who's been foraging for over a decade, I find it crazy how most foragers completely overlook this plant despite how it's both common and tasty in contrast to many of the more sought-after plants.
Here is a good article on identifying sow thistle which also includes a recipe:
Please stop with the "nature's bounty" rubbish, it's just soft thinking. Since you ask let's try carrots, beetroot, fat hen, strawberries (yes, leaves and stems are edible too), samphire etc. If you want to broaden out a bit, various fungi and seaweed.
> Since you ask let's try carrots, beetroot, fat hen, strawberries (yes, leaves and stems are edible too), samphire etc. If you want to broaden out a bit, various fungi and seaweed.
...yes? All of those sound like good things to try; are you attempting to disagree?
I'm objecting to anthropomorphisising (sp?) nature. Dandelion roots being edible to humans is just how it is, and it might very well not have been if we had or lacked certain enzymes. Nature isn't here for us, to make our lives easy. Or for that matter, hard. It just is.
There is no objective proof and asking for it is disingenuous (unless you want to be clear about exactly what 'proof' comprises, that would be interesting).
That was exactly my point above, though stated indirectly as a reductio ad absurdum style argument, somewhat sarcastically.
IOW: Either one can make a rigorous argument, XOR one can make an informal one. Upthread, both you and your parent commenter made the latter kind. Ergo, their argument is as valid or invalid as yours. Yours is not more valid, although you may think so.
Had some dandelion leaves in salad yesterday. I have added the roots to a batch of fermented cabbage (etc- at times it's more like kimchi, especially if I add fish sauce and peppers, other times sauerkraut).
I made a dandelion petal gin and a whole dandelion tincture last week, and both were a big hit at a cocktail party. I also sprinkle the petals and greens on my salads for a boost of nutrition, flavor and color.
My favorite cocktail with the gin/tincture is a Bees' Knees but substituting lime and agave for the lemon and honey. I call it a Dandy Lion!
I've been pulling dandelions from my yard so maybe I am sensitized to any news but lately I've seen a lot of stories on them:
Europeans brought them over to the New World they were a common food source and used for medicine.
Dandelion comes from Lion's Tooth in French due to the look do the fine pointed flower leaves.
They are seen as a nuisance now since lawns were once only for the very rich. You had land you needed to grow all your food on it.
A local biologist said "no mow May" is nonsense bees should be using wildflowers not dandelions. To bees dandelions are like junk food the pollen is poor quality.
Dandelions do not need to pollinate seeds are ready to go that's why they are so numerous.
All parts of a dandelion edible young leaves taste good but old are bitter, such is life.
I've always found the French word for dandelion unreasonably amusing. I'm imagining walking in a garden or nature path pointing out plants to a child:
What pretty crocuses! And there are some beautiful tulips. Here we have some bed-pissers. What a lovely rose bush! Oh, look out for that patch of pants-shitters. Etc.
That's... literally, by definition, not true. Edible specifically means, per https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/edible , "something that is suitable or safe to eat". If you could only eat it once, it wasn't edible.
(Also, what's even your point? Dandelions are actually edible.)
Dandelions.
I hate them, ugly and naughty.
If you do not pay attention, they grow over your head.
I rot them out, boil them alive into a soup, along with the goutweed, nettles, parsley and chives.
Now and then I also mix this ineradicable brood into a pesto.
And eat it.
Never show weakness to weeds.
Χόρτα[0] is a common dish in Greece. I recommend giving it a try with dandelion. My great-grandmother used to stop alongside the country road with a little sickle and cut various greens for cooking down later.
The most interesting thing I discovered about Dandelion roots is that earth worms appear to nurse off them. Whenever I dig up a big Dandelion root, I also find a large earth worm. Earth worms also like cows milk.
Just remember when foraging for wild edibles (including dandelions) to avoid areas that have been treated with pesticides, or where dogs may have peed. Avoid golf courses and train tracks and old farms.
Dandelions are pretty prolific but I would also be mindful of abundance when foraging other plants. If there is only one or a few of them around, don't take it. There's a 1-in-20 rule for this.
There are a ton of books, YouTube videos, and probably some in person classes in your area on this stuff.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadIsn't it strange?
I mean, that's literally what life does: make really good soil, eh?
I found this video on their history interesting.
Dandelions and Civilization: A Forgotten History: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyePMeGE3CI
In particular, I did not realize that they were brought over by settlers. Likely on purpose as a food source/herb then spread with western expansion. Another thing I remember is that he says there are accounts in China of roots getting much longer. 10+ feet IIRC, compared to 2 claimed in this article. Although that's a bit hard to believe. I guess it is used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Of course now they are just seen as a weed. I guess I have mixed feelings The yellow flowers themselves dont put me off but seeing large patches of them after going to seed dont look good. Unlike many here probably, I do like a pristine lawn but even still I don't think the flowers themselves are a pure eyesore.
This seems like the primary metric we as a society use for assessing plants as weed or desirable. I wonder if it is the right metric or whether we should start with the environmental impact (and what metrics would make this assessment, like impact to pollinators, etc).
And humans are like, "fuck that, I just want grass. God forbid any little flowers should pop up on my lawn."
(disclaimer: I don't mean to shit all over your lawncare - I just find the impulse kind of funny. It's fine that you like a pristine lawn, to each their own).
Tidiness reflects the care and love of the person responsible to his or her surroundings (that is, his environment). Its hard work to weed your lawn, to prune your roses, to edge your sidewalk! Keeping the lawn you painstakingly weeded weed free is a study of grass' lifecycle.
That being said we now have the worst of both worlds. We're lazy and irresponsible but want to pretend we're not to our neighbors, so we hire a bloke to spray poison everywhere. We have lawns where there is no water instead of coming up with a neat yard with more suitable vegetation.
When I was growing up I was so annoyed at my dad who made me pull weeds out by hand with him. Why couldn't we use Round Up like every one else? Now I see the wisdom of his monk-like personality.
Next was the plantains, buckhorn, and uncommon.
The big thing is, eliminating such weeds means that the grass needs to be cut less often, since it's the growth rate of the grass which determines this, which is an important consideration since I use a reel lawnmower.
Dandelions, for example, thrive in calcium-poor soil conditions. Their deep taproots mine the calcium from below the grass’s root zones and surfaces it up to the leaves. If you don’t harvest the dandelion yourself and “chop and drop them” over the course of several seasons, the soil will have sufficient calcium for other plants to outcompete the dandelion.
In other words, dandelions are pioneer plants, and has a role within ecological succession. They are great for soil building.
You could, of course, just add oyster shells into areas of large numbers of dandelions. But you would not get the benefit of a dandelion breaking up compacted soil.
I too use a reel lawnmower. But I’m slowly turning my front yard into a perennial garden, which is a great hedge against inflation.
Since then we've gotten compost from the township and raked it over the lawn to fill in low spots, and I'd like to think that allow over two decades of grass clippings to mulch in have helped as well.
I also allow the grass around the edges to grow long and cut it by hand w/ clippers, spreading it for birds to make nests of.
Garden areas are my wife's problem.
Now everyone is doing it, and it turned into something expected instead of a sign of wealth long after the truly wealthy moved on to other signals of wealth. People even somehow associate it with an aesthetic. A common justification I have heard are, “I want kids to be able to have some place to play”.
It’s amazing to me how cultural ideas set and ossify.
NoLawns is going mainstream though. There are alternate ground covers (white dutch clover, or even thyme), and people are posting beautiful, tidy, but ecologically resilient and diverse non-lawn landscaping on r/nowlawns.
I'm familiar with the history but this is too reductive. I don't care about those things as evidenced by many other ways I chose (not) to maintain my image with my neighbors. But uniform, healthy, green grass looks nice. To me and many others. I don't even put in that much effort and I dont hate clover, dandelions, etc. I also appreciate the no lawn movement because it reduces maintenance.
This is a very very specific way of demonstrating care and responsibility to environment. It's extremely informed by culture and history and the ecological specifics.
Maybe you didn't intend it but the implication that choices other than tidiness are not loving and responsible is very gross.
Nah, no offense taken. And I would like to clarify what I mean. I think large swaths of perfectly uniform and healthy grass looks very nice. I even think it's commendable when people put in the time and energy (and gather the knowledge) to maintain their lawn to this high standard. I would say I'm about 1/2 to 2/3rds to that extreme. I can live with some dandelions, clover, a few bare spots, etc. I find you need to increase effort exponentially to maintain a lawn to a high standard. So I commiserate with the "no-lawn" movement from a "remove things that need maintenance" perspective.
I also think people have lots of unknown biases when it comes to lawns. In particular geography. I live somewhere pretty green. I'm on well water. For all intents and purposes water is a free, unlimited resource for me. I think many people here are from west coast or even just cities so they come to this discussion with the assumption that water is scarce.
Have you ever seen the lengths people go to for pumpkin competitions? I fully believe that people committed to the cause could grow 10' dandelion roots. Tons of fertilizer, optimized "sun" exposure, repeat for generations and propagate the seeds from the record-setters.
He and his siblings loved vegetables as during certain times of the year they were the one thing they had "too much of". Everything else was basically rationed but they would get various peak harvests where they could eat until they were full.
https://abitofhome.ca/dandelion-burdock-330ml.html
If you do feel like putting an order of weird British stuff, I'd recommend: Tunnocks Snowballs, Ribena Sparkling Blackcurrant, Jacob's Jaffa Cakes, Chivers UK Lemon Curd, Hula Hoops Variety, Twiglets, Tunnocks Milk Chocolate Caramel Wafers, Custard Creams, Twirl Orange.
All delicious!
Dunno how D & B's made, but American root beer isn't made with the "real" ingredients anymore. They're banned because if you give a megadose to mice, sometimes they get cancer. One of those "maybe actually bad, but maybe not really and just overzealous regulation" things.
I mean, also I'm sure it's cheaper to make fake-flavored root beer, but there'd at least be some craft ones making it the real way. But no, it's banned.
Thinking about, they might have told us it is poisonous to keep us from playing with them, because the sap colours skin and clothes brown with hard to remove stains.
Once I learned the reality around "drugs" it was a startling lesson to me that you need to question authority figures, even though this at times can infuriate them. Now with teenagers of my own, hearing some of the things their teachers teach them as "fact" can be depressing, especially when it's tech-related and it's clear that the teacher has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
Why should you care whether or not they're infuriated? That's a very subservient perspective you have.
When it's a state who can throw you into a cage and lock the door for extende periods of time, you're going to care. If you don't, I would seriously question your sanity (or honesty).
Oh yeah, they also gave a bunch of those horror stories about them, some of which I am sure were true, but many obviously weren't.
This was shown by multiple studies [0], but the program ran many more years.
It could be a coincidence that everyone involved in the program profited immensely from it.
The guy who started DARE, Daryl Gates, was roundly blamed for LAPD's racist culture; so much so that he 'retired' after the Rodney King riots.
Here's a fun quote of his: "... blacks might be more likely to die from chokeholds because their arteries do not open as fast as they do in 'normal people'."
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Educatio...
LOL OK. But actually most of them do.
It was however playground lore that touching them and licking your fingers would make you wet the bed. Indeed the French name for them is literally that, pissenlit, which they must have had good reason to choose over the perfectly fine English name for them, dent de lion.
As noted, dandelions are bitter in taste, and this can be mitigated by blanching them --- putting them under a heavy stone is one way to do this, or one can dip them in boiling water briefly. It also softens them a bit.
Really, just saying "they're poisonous" would be quicker and the outcome wouldn't be all that different. They do have to be treated as poisonous, kinda, in urban and suburban settings.
My city's landscaping services are fighting a losing battle with a local patch of Asian knotweed. Mowing it down doesn't do much because it just grows back and spreads.
It can be a problem if you can't prevent it from setting up foliage. At least it's somewhat edible, and the dry stalks have airtight sections that explode if lit - kids love it.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pissenlit
I'm surprised Dandelions didn't get cultivated to have much larger roots.
Basil is a cultivated herb that often breaks out of containment and goes wild. Sometimes, people will redomesticate those because the ones that survive the local conditions are well-adapted to the climate.
https://www.agefotostock.com/age/en/details-photo/wild-carro...
Purslane is another good example. The domesticated ones have larger leaves, but the wild ones are good eating if you know it hasn't been sprayed.
It doesn't taste like coffee, but it tastes good, and it's close enough in flavor to scratch the itch. Much better than carob or chicory. (Although chicory mixed in with coffee à la Café du Monde is great.)
At this point, he is an authority in the foraging community, and his books are well-written. Got all of them in my bookshelf.
The number of intractable societal problems that would suddenly become non-issues if the average household engaged in basic permaculture boggles the mind. It’s hard to think of a more apt metaphor for our ills than the fact that we actively apply cancer-causing poison to kill them as a matter of course.
Now it’s expected you regularly spray chemicals on your lawn. Sometimes your neighbor can even use county, state, and city laws to compel you to do it.
So it’s a status symbol. Lots of people do deleterious things to achieve status. I don’t think it’s “weird” but rather maybe a bit dumb
Do you eat non organic cereals of basically any kind? Those are loaded with it too.
I'd very much like to put a border down for a 10' diameter circle out of my front lawn and dump wildflower seeds in there. They e got mixed that kind of come up as each flower's preferred season comes around. I figure if there's a border, that makes it a garden and not weeds even if my neighbors weren't super chill.
They are technically invasive where I am (northeast US) but I have never seen them take over an area so much as to choke out native species. I would argue that they have become naturalized.
I generally have a very light-touch approach to gardening, but even I draw the line at dandelions. The correct method of dealing with them is a trowel though, not weedkiller.
The flower stalks grow unbelievably fast too. I have been trying to rein in dandelions on my lawn this year, and thought I could control them by just snipping off the flower heads. Soon, I realized this would take an hour of labor a day that I didn't have to spend on lawn maintenance.
Believe you me though, there’s absolutely no way you could trowel your way out of my yard’s situation. Even (selectively) spraying wasn’t enough.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-la...
I'm an avid gardener and I love the environment but we have to realize the real numbers for how we feed ourselves. It would take about one acre of land to feed yourself on wheat in a year.
>An estimated value of 720 pounds of wheat is said to be consumed by a family of four yearly. 60 pounds of wheat can be got from a bushel. Since a bushel of wheat can be grown on 0.25 acre of land, you’ll need 0.75 acres of land per person. You’ll need approximately 3 acres of land for growing wheat and grain yearly for a family of four.
https://permaculturism.com/how-much-land-does-it-take-to-fee...
As others mentioned, the original idea is to supplement, and not replace. If every household strove to grow at least some of its food, we could probably reduce our need to transport, store, and distribute edibles by a non-insignificant amount. And the GP's point especially revolves around the lack of effort involved. While some crops require a lot of preparation and attention, in the case of "weeds" like dandelion, the effort can be no greater than walking outside and pulling them from the ground.
Plus,the University of Nebraska mentions this regarding winter wheat:
A review of seedling rates vs. yield potential is helpful. On average, there are 22 seeds per head and 5 heads per plant, or 110 seeds per plant. With an average seed size of 15,000 seeds per pound or 900,000 seeds per bushel, a pound of average-sized seed with 80% germination and emergence has a yield potential of approximately 1.5 bushels per acre. Seeding 40 lb of seed with a weight of 15,000 seed per pound has a yield potential of 60 bushels per acre. https://cropwatch.unl.edu/2019/determining-seeding-rate-wint...
Let's say a home grower could maybe get 1/4 of a professional farmer's yield. 45/4= 11.25 bushels per acre is 675 lbs per acre, which would be enough for four people for a year.
It makes me feel better about the feasibility of growing my own grains and living on it in an apocalypse. I've always wanted to try growing a field of wheat or something in my backyard. Maybe I'll try it someday. I've often wondered if garden grown grains and bread would have the same massive difference in quality and taste that you get with a homegrown tomato vs. store-bought.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonchus
In fact, I appreciate sow thistle even more than dandelion. People assume they must be bitter or even poisonous because they have white sap and can look kind of ugly in their late stage of growth, but if you pick them when they're tender they aren't bitter at all. If a person wasn't aware they were eating a common weed, they might assume they were eating a gourmet green from the produce section. I've used it to substitute spinach for creamed spinach, and though it doesn't taste like spinach, it was very tasty. But I usually just pick and eat the greens raw!
Specifically, I am referring to the "sow thistle" that is of the genus Sonchus. It is not a true thistle, and I think that there's other plants called "sow thistle" that aren't this one.
I've never tried using the roots and don't know whether they have properties similar to dandelion. Dandelions may have a leg up in terms of the root, but I'm not sure. Sow thistle is otherwise highly nutritious.
As someone who's been foraging for over a decade, I find it crazy how most foragers completely overlook this plant despite how it's both common and tasty in contrast to many of the more sought-after plants.
Here is a good article on identifying sow thistle which also includes a recipe:
https://www.eattheweeds.com/sonchus-sow-thistle-in-a-pigs-ey...
EDIT: And here's a video by the same author of that article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWQ4nGraAdI
While it is edible, it should be noted the leaves are a good diuretic, which may be an undesirable effect for some.
...yes? All of those sound like good things to try; are you attempting to disagree?
So, you're doling out (what you think is) knowledge, while objecting a couple of levels above, to others doing the same?
Did you invent Nature, that you are so sure of its purpose, or lack of purpose?
If you think others are getting it wrong, give some objective proof, first, for why you think your statements are right, including any of them.
Otherwise, you are as little credible as the people you dismissed out of hand.
But you may not be aware that animals do eat other animals and it's not very nice, so start here https://www.google.com/search?q=lion+kill+hunt if you are unfamiliar with the process.
That was exactly my point above, though stated indirectly as a reductio ad absurdum style argument, somewhat sarcastically.
IOW: Either one can make a rigorous argument, XOR one can make an informal one. Upthread, both you and your parent commenter made the latter kind. Ergo, their argument is as valid or invalid as yours. Yours is not more valid, although you may think so.
QED. :)
My favorite cocktail with the gin/tincture is a Bees' Knees but substituting lime and agave for the lemon and honey. I call it a Dandy Lion!
Europeans brought them over to the New World they were a common food source and used for medicine.
Dandelion comes from Lion's Tooth in French due to the look do the fine pointed flower leaves.
They are seen as a nuisance now since lawns were once only for the very rich. You had land you needed to grow all your food on it.
A local biologist said "no mow May" is nonsense bees should be using wildflowers not dandelions. To bees dandelions are like junk food the pollen is poor quality.
Dandelions do not need to pollinate seeds are ready to go that's why they are so numerous.
All parts of a dandelion edible young leaves taste good but old are bitter, such is life.
I'd prefer the name 'dent-de-lion'
What pretty crocuses! And there are some beautiful tulips. Here we have some bed-pissers. What a lovely rose bush! Oh, look out for that patch of pants-shitters. Etc.
That's... literally, by definition, not true. Edible specifically means, per https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/edible , "something that is suitable or safe to eat". If you could only eat it once, it wasn't edible.
(Also, what's even your point? Dandelions are actually edible.)
[0] https://greekcitytimes.com/2021/11/05/greek-leafy-greens-goo...
Dandelions are pretty prolific but I would also be mindful of abundance when foraging other plants. If there is only one or a few of them around, don't take it. There's a 1-in-20 rule for this.
There are a ton of books, YouTube videos, and probably some in person classes in your area on this stuff.