Five Common Backyard Wild Edibles

[Music] hello friends and welcome back to my homestead today i'm in my garden because i've decided to to work uh pulling out some of the weeds because they just overtaken everything and because of all the moisture and all the rains we've had in the last few days and more to come i need to pull them out just to make more space uh for the airflow uh for the for the vegetable plants so but did you know that many of these weeds common weeds that grow in your garden common weeds that you walk through in the path in your backyard are edible and not just edible but a super nutritious power foods because they often not just resemble the vegetables that we grow but they surpass a nutritional value so today i want to introduce you to a little patch of weeds that are growing in my backyard in just one little space with a ton of different of them and i'm gonna introduce you to five different edible weeds so let's start okay so this is what i was talking about look that's obviously the cucumbers they're going to be climbing up the vine there and here are my potato plants i have a row of them but then i have another row of potatoes those are my cabbages but right here in the middle where there's um a path in between the rows there's like so many weeds growing and i've decided to let them grow a little bit longer so i can show you that they actually are edible and i'm going to be cooking them tonight for my family's dinner so in just one little patch there's ton of them well i'm going to introduce you to five well here is one big guy right here in the middle okay look how it's getting tall it's probably about 20 inches already maybe even taller and it will get much taller it can get as much as tall as three feet tall and right now it's beginning to make a little pods here in the middle okay little pods here growing and this will turn into this beautiful red deep red color flowers and um in little seeds it actually can be eaten as quinoa so this plant is actually um an invasive plant but it is amarath and look at this beautiful plant if you pull it out some people call it uh pig's weed why because when you pull it out i'm gonna pull it out actually right now if i can it usually has deep root oh goodness come on i wanna oh i broke him all right i can't even pull him out oh goodness [Music] it has this reddish pink tail okay so some people call it pigweed look at it isn't it beautiful so all of the parts of this plant is edible sorry i broke it all okay but i have plenty more to show you so hold on a second so the stem has it's a woody stem but it has some reddish on it it has leaves that alternate everywhere and here's the younger leaves it has beautiful green colors with little veins and the veins are actually a little reddish sometimes they're reddish sometimes they're not these ones are actually white veins but when they become more mature the plant will deepen in color and become more maroon-ish okay and as i've said to you it produces a ton of these little pods everywhere let me see if i can zoom in a little bit see that and this will turn into maroon reddish maroon color flowers and little seeds so this guy is packed with a lot of nutrition so it has carotenoids proteins vitamins minerals minerals such as calcium magnesium phosphorus copper zinc and iron so i'm going to bring him in a house i'm going to wash them up and i'm going to cook him tonight put this guy aside for now all right all right right next to him well i made a mess here but right next to him this guy do you guys know what this guy is it's actually a common purse lane come in purslane and you will see it growing along the walkways look how beautiful it is it spreads like a spider almost okay and it has beautiful reddish color stems and they're very plumpy stems they're around stems and then the leaves the leaves are nice shiny green leaves very plumpy leaves as well and it's very very low to the ground it's literally like crawling underground and i read an article about purslane stating that it has better nutrition that many cultivated vegetables that we buy so again it's a power food it's packed with many many nutritional values however people who tend to have kidney stones are not advised to eat it because especially the seeds so yeah if you have kidney stones avoid purslane but purslane can be eaten raw in salads and i'm gonna eat one right now it has um it has a very pleasant taste it tastes almost like um little lemony it has a slightly lemony taste to it so i really really like it all right let's move on the next guy i want to show you is called common chickweed and it's growing among all the other plants here so it's kind of hard to tell but it's beautiful light green petals on the thin stems and they grow like like a spider almost because they will spread out everywhere and they will make this tiny little buds in the beginning that will turn into white little flowers they look like stars i think this one is opening hold on a second the beginning to open white little flowers like stars and they are very mild to taste very pleasant they can be eaten fresh in salads smoothies or put in like cooking and it holds up to the same nutrition value pretty much as a spinach i would say it has a d c vitamins b complex iron potassium phosphorus magnesium iron silica so it's very nutritious and you can just if you all will make sure you always collect them harvest in a clean environmental place but you can literally rip this out just like this okay and eat them fresh if you're hungry and it has a very very nice taste very mild i know there were studies were done about the benefit of common chickweed in weight loss especially especially if it was related to progesterone levels the hormone levels so here it is common chickweed it's a beautiful beautiful invasive plant and we find plenty of it in the spring in a garden all the way through the summer it likes those wet um soils so right now it's been raining a lot and we have chickweed everywhere so put it in your salad friends it's delicious and now i want to show you the common white clover i know everyone talks about the red clover and how it can be used medicinally but everyone ignores this little guy and look how cute and low to the ground it is so this is white clover with three little leaves it's so so cute and it produces white flowers and it's super low to the ground and they spread like little vine everywhere and they take oh if they can take over your yard if you let it which we're fine with because my bees love this stuff and my neighbors bees fly here and they absolutely cover my yard and sometimes i come in come out in the morning and i sit and i listen to the buzzing in my yard and it's so so much fun drinking coffee and just getting prepared for the day and listening to the bees so clover all parts of the clover well especially the greens and the flowers are edible the flowers can be used as decorations as in on cakes decorations in salads on your plates but the greens are also edible these little guys are edible and they can be put fresh in oh my goodness my cat came over to say hello buddy say hi to everybody um and the greens can be eaten fresh in salads and they are wonderful and they have very very mild taste very pleasant so they're not going to overtake the taste of the salad but it's a good addition and it's rich in vitamins a b c and also they have a lot of minerals such as potassium magnesium calcium and those are these okay and now let me introduce you to this guy and this one is called lamps quarters it's a common name called lamb's quarters and it's an interesting plant it can also grow super super tall one year i let one of this guy grow and it has grown taller than my daughter who is uh over five feet tall so it's kind of funny that it was five and a half close to six feet tall and they make a lot of seeds so be careful if you let them go into seed you're gonna have lots of seed problem in your garden a lot of these gonna grow everywhere but they are super delicious and they have very mild taste to them and again um they can be cooked you know put fresh in salads or into smoothies or also they can be put cooking just like spinach yeah they have good mild green taste on they similar to spinach taste definitely spinach taste and i know that they have high amount of vitamin a c they have a lot of fiber calcium copper iron they also have some omega-3 and six fatty acids so it's about to rain so i need to move fast and i'm gonna bring some of this wild weed edibles from my garden that normally would be just discarded and put in a compost pile but i also have plenty of animals who enjoyed eating all of these weeds so but i'm going to bring some in a house and i'm going to cook with them later on tonight all right so here is the pile of purslane that i brought home and i washed it and i'm gonna be cutting off the roots and i'm gonna be cooking it today in my chicken stew and it's gonna be perfect perfect in the stew um okay so i just wanted to talk to you guys about anytime when you go foraging it's very important that you know what is safe and what is poisonous noxious so you really really need to know and i always recommend to have some sort of book with you when you're going foraging specific to the area where you live so in my case i have a small book it's it's a pocket book it's very convenient it's not heavy can fit in your pocket or in your backpack it's from national auburn society field guide for new england specifically and about it used i mean come on it's okay this one is more um broad this is also from the national auburn society field guide to north america wildflowers and again i like it because it has colored pictures and descriptions as well and it will tell you if it's safe if it's not safe um it's very very important because you can't always rely on internet when you're going hiking at a distant places because it doesn't mean that you're always going to have self-service wherever you're going so on this note friends i hope you stay encouraged to look into wild edibles forage for them or even just foraging your own backyard so be encouraged and try something new

Channel: Luli's Homestead

Views: 496,320

Keywords: homestead, homesteading, garden, organic, forage, wild herbs, wild edibles, purslane, lambs, lambsquarters, white clover, amaranthus, chickweed

Id: Vaj2Ft8MrlU

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021