Useful Wild Backyard Plants
DISCLAIMER: The following is not to be considered a recommendation of use of any of the described wild plants nor to be taken as specific dosing of any described products. If anyone is interested in using these plants, please do your own research and take your own risks.
People have been using wild and later domesticated plants as herbal treatments and other non-food uses for thousands of years. Most modern, industrialized “advanced” societies have generally replaced any use of wild plants for production-based pharmaceutical medicines, both prescription and over-the-counter. Some of these medicines started off with a wild plant basis but are now almost all synthetic. People generally treat anything except lawn grasses, ornamental plants and shrubs, and desired trees as “weeds” even though some have been long used by people for health reasons. There is a sub-culture in say the United States called “forgers” who find edible and useful wild plants and there are plenty of YouTube channels that will describe their adventures. I’m not a forger but I’ve learned enough of some of my common weeds to harvest them, prepare them for longer term storage, and sell or give some away. The following is my dealings with a few of them, although these just touch the tip of the iceberg on what is potentially available to people if they spend the time and energy to learn, find, prepare, and use such plants.
If your backyard has any sort of semi-unkept area, a useful plant that might show up is the common mullein or the “great” mullein or in western parts of the U.S., “cowboy toilet paper.” Mullein is an old-world plant but arrived in North America soon after European settlers started showing up and is now wild throughout most of the temperate climate realm. Mullein takes two years to get through its life cycle, the first year establishing a rosette that stays low to the ground. It is during the second year, when the flowering spike takes off, that the plant produces its velvety soft leaves in a larger way. I usually allow at least some mullein to grow in my garden space and harvest only blemish free leaves for drying. The number of plants can vary year to year, this year I had only one second year plant that I had found and it turned out to be a weak, spindly one so it got yanked the other day without any leaves harvested. I do have some rosettes forming so more mullein action next year.
Four second-year mullein plants starting to form their flower heads. Picked mullein leaves about to be placed into a drying container. Dried mullein leaf bagged up ready for storage or perhaps sold on eBay.
Mullein is supposed to have multiple beneficial health effects. One of the main ones is that it reportedly keeps the lungs “clear”. I’ve given several bags of dried leaf to Thor and he likes to drink mullein tea after he works with his dusty grain bins. He says he also eats the wet mullein leaves after the tea is made so I guess the leaves’ fine “hairs” (what gives the fresh leaves their “velvety” feel) doesn’t affect him much. I gave Thor a bag full of mullein seed one time but he never confirmed that he planted them or not. He might have enough mullein on his farmstead without my seeds, the place is about “perfect” for mullein to show up and stay a good while. I have sold some bags of dried mullein leaves on eBay but it’s not a big mover. I think people want a more refined “production” item for use, more on such “beyond the native state” when we talk about yellow dock.
I think it is a fairly large jump from lung health via mullein use to pain relief from “wild” or “opium” “lettuce” but this soft thistle is another common backyard “weed” that shows up in edge areas. The plant is fairly easy to handle compared to most thistles and easy to dry. It has a white sticky sap, similar to milkweed, when you pluck the leaves off of it so the first time you set leaves up in a container to dry, your fingers will need some washing, although as the leaves start to dry, the stickiness goes away. Wild lettuce is mostly associated with pain relief, thus the common name from the 1700s and 1800s as the “poor man’s opium” comes into play. Its pain relief and probably more importantly its potential addictiveness has been researched, and as of now, it’s considered “uncontrolled” by the U.S. FDA. My only experience in trying it out was making probably a way too concentrated tea from some dried leaves (a nice light coffee brown) and after about three sips, I got noticeably light headed and thus ended the experiment. I sent a bag of dried leaves to an out-of-state work colleague but I never heard back if it helped out her pain issues. I sold a few bags on eBay, but again, not a big mover, although the amount of time I have invested in the whole processing of wild lettuce is minimal.
A wild lettuce plants before they start to flower. Harvested leaves ready to start drying. Final died product bagged up.
Another common weed that often shows up on yard edges is yellow (curly) dock. Again, this plant is not native to North America but has been here so long that its now a naturalized wild plant. Many of these herbal plants are also edible as greens when the leaves are young, but some, such as yellow dock and purslane, are high in oxalic acid so people who have been told to avoid this in their diets should only use in small amounts or avoid them all together. Extracts from yellow dock root are used for anemia and as a mild laxative. I do not suffer from either such condition so I have not used yellow dock root extract myself but have dug and processed the root to try selling on eBay. My backyard creeklet slope along the boundary between what I own as my lot and the city’s “drainage” ditch is abundant with yellow dock. It has actually started to spread into my garden space so I should dig out those offending plants this year. I have found that the root needs to be “peeled” when it is fresh because after it is allowed to dry, it becomes nearly as hard as a light wood. I have used a potato/carrot peeler on freshly dug and washed yellow dock root and it works well.
I have tried selling some smaller bags of dried and peeled yellow dock root on eBay to be used in making of a tea but I have had only limited success. I think one reason is that there are so much commercial, industrialized forms of yellow dock out there, both on eBay and on-line in general. I suspect the convenience of taking a capsule or a pill instead of making a tea on their own is attractive to many people and I suppose that they believe the industrial process makes the product “safer” because, you know, a corporation has made and sells it. A quick perusing of completed eBay auctions today does show some homemade yellow dock pieces have recently sold so perhaps I’ll try it again this year, maybe from the plants that have invaded my garden space, a just “revenge” (maybe).
Yellow (curly) dock plants with their seed heads drying down. Freshly dug yellow dock root. Washed off dock root. Peeled yellow dock root drying. Final bagged product with soft drink can as a scale reference.
The last of the useful backyard plants I’ll detail my experiences with is “catnip”. This member of the mint family (also called cat mint) is commonly found in yard edge areas but tends not to be as spreading as domestic mints that people can buy and plant. It is known mostly as a “treat” for domestic cats, although about a third of them don’t respond to it. Catnip is native of the Old World but not of Africa and so the genetics of various cat breeds and their generational exposure to catnip may be part of the reason why some are not affected by it. Catnip was also used for traditional folk remedies for human ailments, such as stomach cramps, but most modern societies have little use for it now except for their pets. Catnip oil, rendered through steam distillation, is also an effective anti-mosquito agent as well as other bugs. I learned this today from Wikipedia.
Catnip is easy to harvest and prepare for use. I like to get it before it flowers and I’ll pull up a majority of a clump of it, leaving some to set seed for next year. I pick the unblemished leaves, trying to remove the stems, and place them into a plastic wider container for drying. I then shuffle the leaves around once or twice a day, and in the summer time, it will take about three days for them to completely dry out so they won’t mold in storage. I sold a number of bags of dried catnip at the local farmers’ market over the years but because of both my limited supply and not an overly large market for it, my sales were still limited. I’ll have to ask Thor if he or some of his organic friends have used catnip for more human use.
A nice-looking catnip plant behind one of my blue spruces early this summer. Fresh stems ready for the leaves to get plucked. Dried leaves in a drying container. Bagged up ready for sale or later use catnip.
A couple of other backyard weeds I’ll quickly touch on, one I’ve started to use and the other that I haven’t quite gotten up the courage to start eating. Purslane is an annual succulent that comes up in many areas (there are several varieties that are actually sold as flowering plants) because each plant can produce hundreds of tiny seeds during its lifecycle. I have about six or seven larger planting pots and all of them have a substantial bank of purslane seed in them that come up every year so I have to keep those down for my other things to grow. Younger purslane (once washed of the dirt) can be eaten in salads or other ways to use greens and are rather bland and kind of slippery when eating. I gave some to an old professor of mine earlier this summer and he told me that he and his wife were surprised how mild the taste was in their salads. Larger plants can have the leaves removed and used in various dishes. Purslane is high in a number vitamins and minerals but also high in oxalic acid so the same caution as mentioned with yellow dock holds true here as well.
The other plant that I haven’t tried yet but some people swear by as a great “spinach” is stinging nettle. The whole notion of eating a plant that when uncooked is undesirable to handle bare skinned sort of turns me off but Thor loves and eats it regularly, and even after the plants get big, he picks off the growing top leaves and makes either something to eat as a warm vegetable or drinks a tea from the leaves. There are some species of stinging nettles native to North America whereas others were also introduced by European settlers. There are a number of cultures that use stinging nettle in various food dishes and other uses, such as fibers from the stem for textiles. It's certainly a plant that can spread. Maybe next spring I’ll break down and try some young tenders of this plant, probably cooking them outside.
A growing pot covered with some younger purslane; some stinging nettles (center to left-center of the photo) in the shade edge of some my home garden space.
Even though people have domesticated and manipulated hundreds of food producing plants from the natural world, there are many, many more that remain mostly “wild” that people use in various ways. Some of these are mainly classified as ‘weeds” in modern societies and are generally controlled or ignored. A whole sub-culture of “forgers” seek these plants out, typically without attempts of cultivating them. Other folks such as gardeners and some agriculturalists tolerate or use some of these plants in various ways, from self-use to trying to sell some derivative of them as a customer product. There is certainly a lot that can be learned from investigating such plants beyond turning them into green fertilizer by pulling them out of the ground and leaving them to break down in a garden or on a lawn. As we live in various human-modified ecosystems, it can be a good thing to keep an eye out for useful plants that are found within them.
The on-line vegetable seed and corn for home grinding store remains open. Its always interesting to hear how website “re-developers” think they can make things so much better even with seasonal items. On the bright side, I get to “meet” people from around the world 😉.
https://dakprstreamseed.us/
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Next time: Bloody Butcher: the Magnificent Heirloom Red Corn