Yes, You Can Eat This Common Weed! - Purslane (BEWARE of SPURGE)

this is something that's been cultivated for thousands of years that speaks to some of the value that this plant has beyond just a simple weed today i'm going to try to change your perspective on one common garden weed guten yarding everybody you know weeding is kind of a two-edged sword on one hand it's kind of a pain to deal with we spend a lot of time pulling weeds out of various parts of the garden and if you don't do that you can have plants that are overrun and just don't perform as well on the other hand it's kind of cathartic to get out there and pull weeds and see that beginning and end result but if we think about the definition of a weed a weed is really any plant that you don't want to be growing in any given area so i guess technically our volunteer tomatoes could be considered weeds but today i want to focus in on one specific plant that's typically treated as a weed it's very common here in north america in fact my understanding is it's very common throughout the world and our focus today is on that plant because it actually is not only edible but provides some pretty great health benefits so let's take a closer look at a couple of these plants that we have growing intentionally in some of our containers well it's not this plant right here this is actually our chamomile our chamomile that's floured and it's reseeding throughout these containers the plant we're looking at today is the common purslane you see we've allowed this purslane plant to grow to about 30 inches wide you can often find this plant growing in what we would consider to be really challenging growing conditions when you do locate this plant you'll notice that it grows from one single tap root here outward and so it's really easy to pull out of the ground using a hoe or even pulling with your hands wherever you find it but today i'm going to talk about why pulling it out and throwing it away might not be such a great idea but before i talk about some of the health benefits of a plant like this let's talk a little bit about how it grows and why you see it so commonly around your property as frequently as you see it even in the same spot you might think that purslane was a perennial but it's actually an annual that just vigorously self-seeds we've seen quite a few of those kinds of plants here on our property our borage is a real self-cedar our chamomile is a self-seeder and if you've ever tried to grow strawberry spinach we advise you not to make that mistake that's definitely a self-seeder now this plant has already flowered it's a pretty yellow flower when it happens and it can happen multiple times during the year a lot of that's dependent on the growing conditions but now we're at the point where we're just left with the seed pods beneath you'll notice where the flower was they'll create a seed pod now these are self-pollinating which means they don't need any kind of bees or anything like that to create these pods and you can see just from this one little flower there are seeds all over my fingers now so that's one of the reasons why this spreads so quickly it self seeds and you end up with more purslane the other thing to note is that if you just take this plant and hoe it up out of the ground and don't discard it you'll likely get this growing back because this thing actually propagates really well simply by cutting off a stem at the node and placing it in soil now i mentioned that this plant is a vigorous grower and it grows in a lot of different growing conditions i've seen this growing through sidewalk cracks i've seen it growing in our clay here it can grow in muck i mean really this plant is capable just like a lot of other plants that we don't necessarily always want it's capable of thriving in a lot of conditions but you can eat this plant and the taste in the way it grows is often dependent on the growing conditions especially on the moisture level available to the plant i mean the size of the plant impart is determined based on the amount of moisture you give it but also the taste of the purslane and we're going to get to that edible piece here in just a second but the taste of the purslane is definitely impacted by the amount of moisture available so it doesn't taste as good in drier growing conditions so if you can keep it watered you actually end up with a pretty tasty purslane all right we're going to talk about what parts of the person are edible and what the benefits of eating purslane are but first there is another plant called the spurge and that just sounds like a horrible name but the spurge is another plant that looks and is sometimes confused with purslane but unlike spurge purslane you can recognize it because it has a nice succulent stem it's actually a nice red color here succulent stemwares the spurge has a woody stem and then the leaves on the spurge are flat versus these nice succulent leaves here on our purslane so that's the big difference you don't really have to be too concerned about confusing the two now the common person is loaded with minerals and vitamins a great source of vitamin a vitamin c potassium and one of the things that i really like about this is it actually contains omega-3 fatty acids much like you get from flax or you would get from fish you can get it from this leafy green and actually if you think about this as being similar in taste and even in some of the properties to spinach i think that'll give you a pretty good idea of the benefits you know the other thing about the perceived health benefits of this purslane is that a lot of people have used this for years as an anti-inflammatory as a way to regulate blood pressure and i won't speak to the veracity of some of those claims but this is something that's been cultivated in some cultures for thousands of years so i think that probably speaks to some of the value that this plant has beyond just a simple weed now there is one thing you should keep in mind about this and it's true of spinach as well the purslane does contain a pretty good supply of oxalates and in general that's not going to have a negative impact on you but if you're somebody who's prone to forming kidney stones that's something you might want to watch out for my understanding though is that doctors typically will say to you here you should be on a low oxalate diet if that's a problem for you otherwise you shouldn't have any issues eating this purslane so which part of this plant is edible well the answer to that is actually all of it the stems are edible the flowers are edible the leaves are edible although most people just focus in on the smaller stems and the leaves when they're eating it and you can eat this raw you can eat this cooked but if you do decide to cook it one thing you should know is that it has the property of becoming mucilaginous now that is a fantastic word it basically just means it's going to become gelatinous and so some people use this as a thickener in recipes but for the most part treat it just like you would treat spinach and so you need spinach raw you can eat this raw i think the taste is a little different than spinach there are some similarities there you definitely get that nice fresh green but again if you're growing it in an environment where you're not providing a lot of moisture you're going to get a more sour flavor to it but if it's well watered like this and you eat it in my opinion the taste is not overly strong it's just like a nice green now there are a number of ways that you can eat this the first recipe that we saw on this was that our good friends at hickory croft farm they put a nice purslane recipe together on their youtube channel and we're gonna put a link to their channel and to that video in the description as well so you can check that out and so you can eat it raw you could cook it up however you'd like to prepare it it's great on salads i like it as a nice garden snack often times when i'm out here in the garden nice early morning right now i just come and grab a couple leaves and chew on them as i go around it's a really healthy green and i get it it's a weed typically that's how we treat it but at the same time with all the health benefits to it i would advise not throwing it out if you don't have this on your property i am confident you'll be able to find it somewhere else this is called common purslane for a reason but hey common doesn't mean that it's not beneficial well we hope you enjoyed this video today and found it informative if you did don't forget to give us a like leave us a comment remember to share and subscribe and most importantly remember when you're with us you are good to grow

Channel: Guten Gardening

Views: 1,023,564

Keywords: guten yardening, yardening, purslane, purslane plant, purslane recipe, purslane weed, purslane benefits, purslane recipes, purslane nutrition, purslane identification, how to identify purslane, purslane plant benefits, purslane health benefits, purslane look alike, common purslane, benefits of purslane, purslane seeds, purslane vs spurge, spurge, prostrate spurge, health benefits of purslane, purslane benefits health, what is purslane, wild purslane, superfood, edible weeds

Id: KY0lYGeNkOE

Length: 8min 51sec (531 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2022