LOCAL. SEASONAL. SUSTAINABLE.

LOCAL. SEASONAL. SUSTAINABLE.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Wet Ground Makes For Good Weeding

And I have pah-lenty of weeds, mostly Little Bitter Cress right now. And it's starting to flower, which means seeds and many, many more Little Bitter Cress. They are among those weeds who propel their seeds when touched, an dastardly evolutionary trick. Hence the nickname "shotweed".

So even though I am trying to be more One Straw Revolution minded, and live as one with the weeds, I just can't bear to let them multiply, even though they are kind of pretty. I just don't want them everywhere.

It looks like they may be edible, but I haven't tried them yet. I have seen a couple of forager blogs making this claim.

They identified as Cardamine oligosperma, and are in the family Brassicaceae (Cruciferae) .
Here's a nifty weed identification tool.
Weed ID from University of California

So yesterday I pulled out hundreds of weeds, and it felt good, very good. It was a bumper crop. I also pulled out lots of Forget Me Not volunteers. And I came to the conclusion that the name Forget Me Not is not sweet and old fashioned it is cruel and ironic. Plant it once and it will never be forgotten.

And it looks like it's going to be a great year for slugs too. I wish I still had the hens to feed them to. I took great pleasure feeding them slugs and they loved them. On the bright side I guess I should be glad that my soil is healthy enough to support so many thriving life forms.