Common Weeds You Can Consume as Emergency Nutrition

The majority of people go about their daily lives, expecting little change and planning for even less, not anticipating a food shortage. However, calamities do occur, and shop shelves are frequently emptied quickly. Most people are unaware, however, that there are edible weeds that may be found in or around the common backyard.

Many of the edible weeds may be found in your yard, near your driveway, alongside roadways, and so on. In this post, we'll discuss five common weeds that are edible. Please keep in mind that you must be able to positively identify any wild plants before consuming them, since there are wild plants that appear or are extremely similar to the weeds we'll be discussing yet are possibly deadly to consume.

Because plant identification is outside the scope of this essay, I recommend that you do your homework and study before eating any wild plants or fruits. There are several plant identification field guides available, many of which include color photographs and descriptions of distinguishing traits for edible weeds. This article's content is provided solely for educational reasons to bring the topic of foraging to your notice for further investigation. Let's look at 5 common weeds that you can eat now that that's out of the way.

Lettuce (wild)

Wild lettuce is a plant that a childhood buddy and I mistook for "milk weed" because of the milky white sap that seeps when the stems of these plants are broken. Wild lettuce is a tall, leafy plant with leaves that resemble dandelions. You may consume the young leaves of these weeds. You'll want to boil them for about 5 minutes, just like clover. Boil for another 5 minutes after removing and replacing the water. If the leaves are still bitter, they can be combined with other greens to make them less bitter.

Onion (wild)

During the spring and summer, one of the houses where my family and I used to reside had a backyard full with nearly uniformly spaced wild onion tops bursting up everywhere. Of course, I had no idea they were edible at the time, but they are edible weeds. Chopped leaves can be used in salads or cooked foods. The onion bulb may be picked or dug out of the ground and used for flavouring foods in the same way as store-bought onions are.

Dandelion

Dandelions are a lawn enthusiast's worst enemy. These "nuisance" plants, on the other hand, are edible. The vitamin A-rich leaves can be prepared in the same way as collard or mustard greens are. Dandelions' roots resemble carrots in appearance, and they may be cooked at a low temperature to dry them, then ground and percolated to form a beverage similar to coffee or tea.

Thistle

Thistle is another edible plant that can be found where your yard joins a field or along adjacent roadsides, albeit not in your backyard. Once the spines are removed, the fresh or young leaves can be eaten raw in salads or cooked like collard or mustard greens. Thistle is a biennial plant with no stem in its first year. The roots can be consumed raw or cooked throughout the first year of growing. After removing the outer layer, early stems of the plant in its second year can be consumed raw or cooked.

For millennia, we've lived in a culture that relied on farmed vegetables and fruits to feed our plates. Foraging for food was, however, considerably more frequent in the past than it is now. Fortunately, you may forage and take use of the numerous edible plants that we typically think of as weeds right in our own yards in order to endure difficult times and bypass food lines if required.

Clover

Clover leaves and blossoms may need to be cooked for around 10 minutes to make it easier to digest, but it is an excellent source of protein. You may also grind the dried flower heads and seeds in a hand mill to generate a flour that is probably healthier than the bleached white flour we usually use.