Chickweed is a highly nutritious edible and medicative dope that grows virtually everywhere . scrounge for chickweed is gentle , and it may even be growing in your backyard ! Read more to learn how to identify and expend chickweed .
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Wildcrafting Weeds
If you desire to learn more about the eatable and medicative gage that surround us and how to use them , mark off out my eBook : Wildcrafting mourning band : 20 Easy to Forage Edible and Medicinal Plants ( that might be growing in your backyard ) !
Foraging for Chickweed
Ever since I ’ve been a uncivilised food forager I ’ve always acknowledge about chickweed , but for a long time I did n’t come in contact with it all that much .
This is foreign , because mouse ear is really quite a common and abundant industrial plant !
It ’s not that I had never see it , I cognise that I had betoken it out on a few occasions , but I think that more often than not I was merely overlooking it .
Chickweed is a small and retiring works , that ’s for sure . Thankfully , foraging for chickweed is very easy once you know what to see for . You ’ll be take care it everywhere , maybe even in your own backyard !
link : What to Forage in Spring : 20 eatable and Medicinal Plants and Fungi,13 Early Spring Edible Wild Greens
Identifying Chickweed
Chickweed ( Stellaria media ) is a common plant that come up up inlate winteror other spring . It will often make an appearanceagain in the fallonce cool conditions proceeds , depending on your climate .
It is an annual plant that readily ego sow in , making it make out back year after twelvemonth .
Chickweed will often develop in big patches , which is part of why it is debate a skunk . I was happy to discover a big chickweed patch in our front 1000 !
Chickweed has modest leaves and arise in somewhat of a Byzantine lusterlessness . It has small , white , lead shaped flowers with five petals , each one with two lobe .
A single line of o.k. hair run down the shank , which is a great manner to positively identify mouse-ear chickweed .
Harvesting chickweed is well-situated with scissors grip . Just take a clump in your hired man and give it a haircut ! It will continue to grow even after being thin out several times .
Chickweed Look-alikes
There is really only one significant clammy chickweed look - alike to know about , and that isScarlet Pimpernel(Anagallis arvensis ) .
Scarlet Pimpernel is toxic and needs to be avoided .
While it has reddish orangish flower which are different than chickweed ’s clean flowers , its leaves and overall plant structure is very similar to chickweed .
If you are timid if what you have is chickweed , wait until the plant flowers to make a surefooted incontrovertible recognition .
Scarlet pimpernel does not have the single line of pilus down the stem turn that mouse ear has .
There are also some varieties of spurge plant life ( Euphorbia spp . ) that look more or less like mouse ear , but they also do not have the single ancestry of hair down the shank . They also have a milklike tomfool that chickweed does n’t have .
Uses for Chickweed
Chickweed is an amazing industrial plant with so many edible and medicinal use !
Edible Uses for Chickweed
Chickweed is a highly nourishing eatable greenness that can be use up peeled . Combine it withminer ’s lettuce , dandelion common , and maybe somepurple deadened nettleorwild violetsfor a tasty wild gage salad .
Chickweed is also peachy for sum into smoothy or turn into a tastychickweed pesto .
Since it usually does n’t perplex around for the live summertime months , you’re able to evenblend it up and freeze itfor later use .
It is a preferred plant of chickens as well , which is where it catch its name !
Medicinal Uses for Chickweed
Chickweed is also an amazing medicinal plant life . It contain saponins , which makes it cooling and soothing for the skin . It is best used fresh rather than dry out for this purpose .
Use chickweed for making into anherbal salveto use of goods and services on efflorescence , hemipteran bites , or otherwise dry or antsy pelt . sample my recipe forchickweed salvethat uses brisk chickweed .
Thischickweed bath vinegarsounds like a nice way to utilize its benefits as well .
Chickweed is extremely gentle and a great herb for tyke . It ’s one of the herb included in myherbal napkin efflorescence unction .
I also have a chickweed lotion bar recipe in my bookHealing Herbal Infusions .
If you ca n’t find any when you go foraging for chickweed , or if it ’s the wrong season , you’re able to always purchasedried chickweedfrom Mountain Rose Herbs ( my best-loved spot to get high-pitched caliber , organic herbs ) .
Have you ever gone forage for chickweed ? What is your favorite way to utilize it?Save
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