My wife is feeding me weeds!

Do you recognise this plant?  Is this growing in your garden?  Until this year I thought that it was a useless weed and got frustrated that it grew everywhere.  However it is amazing what a little knowledge can do for you….  Nutritionally, this 'purslane' is a powerhouse. It has more than double the omega-3s that kale has and, as much as any other leafy green. It has over four times the vitamin E of turnip leaves which is more than most leafy greens. It contains antioxidants and has about as much iron as spinach. It also has reasonable amounts of other nutrients and it tastes pretty good too so now I am grateful with its abundance and include it in our salad every night.  Ben tells the kids that I am making him eat weeds from the garden - which is correct but they are super weeds!  

After the rain that we finally had the garden seems to be regenerated - the grass is still crispy and brown, but less brown and I know it will come back - it always amazes me how resilient nature can be and the extremes that it can withstand.  The bees are happy as flowers are starting to open - pumpkins, courgettes and other flowers dotted round the garden.  The tomatoes are starting to swell and we just need to be patient for them to ripen, cucumbers are starting to form and so too are the yellow courgettes - I did have a couple of little fruits (I say did because Ruby wanted to show me what she had found and before I could explain - SNAP the little courgettes were now in her hand.  Never mind a mid morning snack for me).   I love watching the garden change daily at the moment and enjoying bringing more foods to our table.  I am looking forward to our crop of tomatoes and cucumbers!

                   

                    

                   

Strawberry runners will begin our new strawberry patch for next year - maybe next year we will be able to build a raised bed system (like at the fruit farm) for the strawberries, if not the year after!

Comments

[minutepapillon]

karen introduced me to those weeds last Sunday and said they were quite expensive in posh restaurants. tastes a bit tangy. At our farm place I found the strawberries growing in raised bed systems much less tasty then the one they grew on ground level. Maybe a question of variety, not sure...