Saving the Weeds: A Lunch in the Community Gardens

On a hot summer Sunday a few weeks ago I hosted a "weed walk" in our community gardens. I served iced tea made with red clover, violet leaves, mint and raspberry leaf. I made a sweet bread using some of the japanese knotweed I'd canned in the spring, as well as a melilot cheese dip served on wild seed crackers (recipes below).

We had decided to Get Organized and to Do Something about the plots that were claimed by people who hadn't shown up to plant anything and about the weeds taking over the shared areas of the gardens. I envisioned "my" beloved wild patches suddenly tidy and barren. No more red clover tea, no more mugwort baths, plantain salves for mosquito bites, lamb's quarters and amaranth greens quiches, violet blossom jelly, purslane pickles...

Wild crops make up more than half of what I harvest. I grow my tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, herbs, corn, beans, beets, carrots and more, but these can only be harvested for a brief few months. By contrast, the wild harvest begins long before the first garden vegetable seedling is popping up under its plant light in our apartment, and continues for weeks after the last basil plant has either been turned into pesto or turned dry and brown.

I am all in favor of the community gardens being well-taken care of, and I certainly pull up a fair share of plants that try to crowd out my herbs and vegetables. However, I also have a deep respect for the wild volunteers which contribute to my food and medicine. I wanted to share some of that respect, which is how I came to be hosting a "weed walk" in which I shared information on how to identify and use some of the plants we were busy yanking out of the ground as part of our clean up.

At the end of the afternoon one of the other gardeners thanked me and said, "I'd always felt like half of gardening was waging war against nature taking over. Now it feels more like stewardship." That comment was a gift I will treasure for a long, long time.

Melilot Cheese

This is a variation of a recipe in Maida Silverman's 'A City Herbal', which has excellent information on how to identify common edible plants that grow wild in the city. Unlike most culinary herbs, the flavor of melilot only comes out when it is fully dried. You can substitute other culinary herbs for the melilot.

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