burdock

interesting blog post about burdock:

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2010/11/harvest-meal-kinpira-gobo.html

The post, if it were the whole thread, might belong more in the "cooking" forum, but what interested me were the photos of the roots, and commentary on them:

Gobo is reputed to be anticarcinogenic and an excellent tonic plant for the liver, and it's also supposed to make you strong.  The joke is that you don't get strong by eating gobo; you get strong from trying to prize the suckers out of the ground.  Gobo roots will grow up to a yard long if given the right soil conditions.  Euell Gibbons recommended against even attempting a frontal assault on the wild variety.  It's pointless to try to dig the root out directly.  Instead, dig as deep a hole as possible alongside the root, then pull the root into the hole and cut it as low as you can.  Like I said, our gobo was planted in extremely well worked earth, amended with a lot of compost.  And it still felt like earning my dinner to harvest these roots.  Every single time I dug for a gobo root, I left part of it in the ground.

This makes radishes seem like a much less effective way to till soil. A yard deep?!

It would be great if the clay soil I typically encounter could be loosened and imbued with organic matter a yard deep. That would make our six rainless months much less of an issue. It might be interesting to dig a deep post hole, fill with compostable material over the winter, and plant a ring of burdock around it in the spring. Soil could drain toward this central hole, especially as earthworms worked on it. The lack of support for the walls of the hole would also give the roots more room to expand. The worm-worked soil would then be relatively easy to dig through (following Euell Gibbons' method) at harvest time, and a second round of soil amendment could be added to the resulting (larger) hole for a subsequent year's crop, perhaps something like a three sisters mound.

I saw burdock mentioned in discussions of Masanobu Fukuoka, but couldn't visualize its function until I saw photos of the actual roots.

I have tried to grow it but it didn't do well for me.  It probably prefers the cool, moist climate of Japan. 

It grows all over around here (Vancouver, Canada) on in disturbed soils - two plant books I have say it was originally from Europe. I've seen it growing in sidewalk cracks in my neighbourhood, as well as alongside forest trails.

Has a nice, rich, earthy/woody flavour. I ate it today in a beet soup (from a local farmer). I wild harvested some earlier this year that I dried and used for tea. Something about the unique flavour really attracts me to this plant.

Burdock used to grow all over the place in wild, unkempt places in Wales.  I seem to remember spending chunks of my childhood attempting to remove all the sticky, velcro-like burrs off my clothes if I'd been exploring somewhere I shouldn't and got myself covered in them. 

Also, dandelion-and-burdock is *still* sold (or it was till recently - not been back to the UK for a few years now) as an old fashioned fizzy drink with a unique and 'earthy' flavour. 

Burdock is prolific around here, especially in horse manure and horse paddocks. It's come up in moderate numbers in my garden this year (our first year here) and I'm happy to let some go to seed. Some chef's are into it at the beginning and end of the season and I can get about 6-8 bucks per pound.

Two ways I find to pull out burdock:

1) Backhoe

2) Pigs

Pigs are more effective as they enjoy doing it, eat the roots, stems and leaves and they have time. Saves me to do other things.

We have no burdock in our pastures as a result. We used to when we just had sheep. Bit of a bother. Never roll a sheep in burdock!

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

If you don't have pigs or a back hoe, and want to get rid of burdock or at least keep it under control; Don't bother digging up the plants, its too much work IMO. Simply cut the second year flower stalks to the ground when their flowers have bloomed. At this stage, most of the plants life force energy is in the stem and flowers,  so cutting it leaves a root system that doesn't generally have enough life or time in the year to pop up another batch of flowers.

It may take a few years because there'll be dormant seeds in your soil from previous flowerings but over time you should see a reduction in the amount of burdock in your area.

This also works well with thistle.

Yes, that is what we did for years before we had pigs. We still do that outside the paddocks with both thistles and burdock. It works. Pigs are best as in easiest. I would love to close the road and let them graze the edges. We only get a car an hour... hmm...

Burra, Fentiman's is still making the dandelion and burdock soda; one can get it as an import at a few upscale grocers in the US. I love it, even though it's far sweeter than I'd like to have regularly, being made with glucose syrup. I'd like to try making it myself with honey or molasses, or as a water kefir.

Burdock has the best name. Burdock.

A YARD??? That is madness! No wonder it is good for you, it must be the king of the dynamic accumulators.

I've never  been able to harvest more than 2 feet of the root. It breaks off at about that point. I suppose I could double dig to get further down but that wouldn't be time, or cost effective, and I'd feel bad about causing so much disturbance in the soil. Though the burdock might like that, all things considered.

Travis Philp wrote:
I've never  been able to harvest more than 2 feet of the root. It breaks off at about that point. I suppose I could double dig to get further down but that wouldn't be time, or cost effective, and I'd feel bad about causing so much disturbance in the soil. Though the burdock might like that, all things considered.

That was my understanding from what I've read. Thanks for confirming it from your experience!

I think it is tough to work organic matter deeper than two feet or so: it might not be worth the effort of adding, but it's definitely not worth the effort of removing. The top portion of the burdock root would, then, feed me, and the bottom portion would feed the soil.

I wonder if it could be grown in a raised bed situation--filled with loose soil/compost. Remove one side of the bed at harvest time.... just brainstorming.

Joel; no problemo. Usually burdock is found in large numbers where it grows, so there isn't a need to get so much of each root. And yeah, I feel good about leaving some of the root intact. That way I'm not being a total thief.

Feral; I've harvested burdock from a sheet mulch-raised bed in a sandy soil and it came out without a shovel! Couldn't believe it...

We grew a few patches of these this year and they did really well.  I left some to go to seed, cause I'm into seed saving AND  I read somewhere that the seeds are the most strongly medicinal part of the plant?  Can anyone clarify that? 

They are kind of a pain to harvest, but I think planting them in an area where you intend to have disturbed soil in the fall can work.  We immediately planted garlic where the burdock had been, and mulched the now-garlic-bed with the burdock leaves. 

I pickled the burdock roots in brine, along with some wild yellow dock roots that came along during the big dig.  They are lovely in frittatas and stirfries, for sure. 

I looked up burdock here:

http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/b/burdoc87.html

It seems medical preparations that call for "seeds" actually use the dried fruit. It seems like a similar situation to beets or black medic: it's not worth getting the seeds out of the fruit, so we think of the whole multi-seed package as a single "seed".

It makes sense that the plant would send tannins and such into the fruit: the stored materials in the root are all tending to flow up the stem in the second year to drive the production of seeds, for one thing, so medicinal substances might get caught up in that flow as the root shrinks. Separately, since the fruit is a burr, animals might tend to bite them out of their fur, so it might be that the plant has been selected for bitterness or some other effect to encourage spitting versus swallowing.

Feral wrote:
I wonder if it could be grown in a raised bed situation--filled with loose soil/compost. Remove one side of the bed at harvest time.... just brainstorming.

or in poly-bags like potatoes?

hobbssamuelj wrote:
or in poly-bags like potatoes?

I think they prefer to send roots down deeper than would be practical for poly bags, but it would be worth a try.

Ate some kinpira gobo at our local Japanese restaurant today.  It is also a standard in our home, as my wife is Japanese and schooled in macrobiotic cooking.  Gobo is also used in soups & stews, and sometimes tempura fried.  Great stuff.  

I have made kinpira with wildcrafted burdock up in Massachusetts.  Taste was fine, but much more fibrous than the cultivated varieties found in Japan (or Japanese markets).  I assume it is a combination of breeding and cultivation methods that allows them to get yard-long nearly perfectly conical taproots.  Japanese farmers tend to have very fine cultivated soils, looking as though they have been put through a screen.  Organic farmers, at least, use a lot of rice bran for organic matter, and have meticulously removed rocks & pebbles over hundreds of years.  Japanese consumers like perfectly shaped geometrical vegetables, and perfectionistic farmers meet their demand for the most part.  The national pastime of over-packaging stuff extends even to organic vegetables.  You can find perfectly conical organic carrots, beautiful greens included, individually wrapped in cellophane for sale at a farmer's market.  

Good to know it is edible.  I hope the one that volunteered in my garden last year will come back.
Burdock is a very important medicinal plant for the Amish. It is used in the treatment of burns,  severe burns, and wound treatment.  The application of a burdock leave takes away the pain.  Amish will  treat their own when they have burns,  I know of one child that was kept comfortable and healed with hardly any scarring, no skin grafts or the like.  They make a salve to go with  it.  My Amish friend cut himself on the band saw and his wife just put a burdock leave on it and it kept him pain free and it healed quick.  To have the leaves available in winter, dry them whole, then if you  need one, soak it in water and apply.  Boil the water first of course.

I had a really bad eczema on my hand that I suffered with for years.  It is one of the reasons I started reading about herbal remedies in the first place!!!  I use burdock in my treatment with calendula, comfrey, plaintain and yarrow.  In the spring I gather the young leaves and infuse in olive oil, then make a simple salve with beeswax.  In the beginning I would just mash the leaves and rub the juice on the sore areas directly and it helped with the stinging pain and itching.

Where I used to live should be called "Burdock Place", it is overrun with the stuff!!  I have NONE here.  My soil here is a work in progress, has a lot of pine trees and not so much organic matter in the soil.  And it is on the dry side.  There the soil is heavy in organic matter and VERY moist, the areas with the most burdock are more constantly moist, so I think it prefers the higher organic matter and moisture to grow in the wild etc. 

I am now two years eczema free!!  I have found many uses for straight comfrey and I use all those oils for different skin problems, burns, cuts, etc with great results.  Even if you only make some oil to keep in the cabinet and use the straight oil it is worth keeping on hand for everyday use. 

My son was with a friend who had poison ivy starting to itch and he was able to identify jewelweed when they were riding the ATV's and helped his friend.  It's good stuff to know.

Tami 

i have one large burdock that grows by the trunk base of an old standard apple tree, I'm sure it helps the tree..we have others growing in the fields too

maybe not as lofty as the previous suggestions... burdock makes a great "toilet paper" (edit: if you're using a composting toilet!)!  i used nothing else (with one exception I believe) for a period of three months last year.

Thank you to the above poster about how to preserve leaves, that may help me move away from toilet paper in the winter time too!

Joel Hollingsworth wrote:roots will grow up to a yard long if given the right soil conditions.

Uhm... They get a lot longer than that. I have pulled out 6' of root off a burdock that was about 5' tall. There was more root down below that but it snapped off. I used my backhoe to pull it.

For eliminating burdock from a field pigs are the best. They love the tops. They love the bottoms. Burdock balls don't stick to them (or at least slide off).

Why eliminate burdock? You'll understand if you ever have sheep get into a patch of old dead burdock. The wool is ruined.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

pubwvj wrote:
Uhm... They get a lot longer than that. I have pulled out 6' of root off a burdock that was about 5' tall. There was more root down below that but it snapped off. I used my backhoe to pull it.

For eliminating burdock from a field pigs are the best. They love the tops. They love the bottoms. Burdock balls don't stick to them (or at least slide off).

Why eliminate burdock? You'll understand if you ever have sheep get into a patch of old dead burdock. The wool is ruined.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

Incredible.

I thought this thread needed some photos.

I am growing burdock again... Arctium lappa  ( called greater burdock, gobō (牛蒡/ゴボウ), edible burdock, lappa, beggar's buttons, thorny burr, or happy major is a Eurasian species of plants in the Aster family, cultivated in gardens for its root used as a vegetable.).  

The last time I planted it we later put sheep in the garden and I picked a lot of it out of their wool that year...and the next
(Nicole, you may still find some bits in the wool I sent)

No sheep this year and I really want to get this plant established, for food, medicinal uses and just to help break up some of the soil.

Looks like I'll have a little seed to harvest

They do indeed get a lot deeper than 3ft! It's a very common weed on my land a lot has sprung up in the new veg garden, I'm afraid I rip it out even though I do like the taste and it's not hard to dig up in our sandy soil. But I rip it out because spending 30-40 minutes each day trying to get it out of the dogs and cats fur and indeed my hair is too much of an irritation.

I grew one plant that lasted two years then died and went to seed. Now I have a 5 gallon bucket of seed.  WIll scatter it around this spring.

I use it to repel dogs!  For a while every time I walked close to my property line three little ankle bitters would come running growling at me.  They had a nice path worn right by some of my baby trees.  I grabbed some burdock tops and laid them in their path one day.  A couple days later they come running at me again with burdock hanging on them.  I don't know how it works, but after that I never seen them again?

I've found a tool that makes harvesting the roots a lot easier. I never get them out whole, but I get enough to make a meal out of, with only a few minutes of work.

The only problem is, the modern versions of this tool are so wimpy they bend instead of prying!

Here's what it looks like:

Mine is at least 50 years old. I found it in the back of my dad's tool shed. He didn't want it, so I glommed onto it. Stick it vertically into the dirt next to the root you want, as deep as you can get it. Then use it like a lever to pry the root up. The fork at the end bites into the root and pulls it up. Sometimes you might need to poke it down on all sides of the root, but not always. With a little practice, you can get foot-long sections of taproot with almost no effort.

Not enough to eliminate them, but enough to feed yourself pretty easily.

A nice straight crowbar might do the same job. Or maybe a section of T-post?

Travis Philp wrote:If you don't have pigs or a back hoe, and want to get rid of burdock or at least keep it under control; Don't bother digging up the plants, its too much work IMO. Simply cut the second year flower stalks to the ground when their flowers have bloomed. At this stage, most of the plants life force energy is in the stem and flowers,  so cutting it leaves a root system that doesn't generally have enough life or time in the year to pop up another batch of flowers.

It may take a few years because there'll be dormant seeds in your soil from previous flowerings but over time you should see a reduction in the amount of burdock in your area.

This also works well with thistle.

    Why would you want to get rid of these plants? Burdock is a dynamic accumulator, and thistle is an indicator of iron and copper unavailability, and actually can “reach through a back door” and get them anyway, making them available for other plants. It makes sense to let animals like donkeys and pigs eat them to act as conversion mechanisms to return the nutrients to the soil as manure, but that’s removing the plant by fast-tracking them to being obsolete, not by attacking them.

Burdock is for gout relief. The herb has xanthine oxidase inhibitor, the enzyme that makes uric acid crystals in your blood/ inflammation in your joints.
You can make a tea or decoration of it.  Never tried making a meal of the the roots though, because they taste like dirt.

http://www.goutdiet.org/burdock-gout-relief-prevention.php

Burdock is used to make Gobo, a Japanese dish.

I'm summoning this thread back to life!

I have a particular question about Gobo or burdock.

I can buy the roots locally, and I could probably sell them locally.
They seem pretty ideal for growing in containers, indeed there is a tradition of doing just that.

But can you grow them from roots?
I am hoping I can, just so I can get a cultivar that is considered good tasting right off the bat.

Christopher Shepherd wrote:I use it to repel dogs!  For a while every time I walked close to my property line three little ankle bitters would come running growling at me.  They had a nice path worn right by some of my baby trees.  I grabbed some burdock tops and laid them in their path one day.  A couple days later they come running at me again with burdock hanging on them.  I don't know how it works, but after that I never seen them again?

Have you ever pulled apart a burdock seed, Christopher? The material inside is kinda like fiberglass, super itchy and very hard to remove. Not to mention all the spines on the outside. Now imagine if you had to pull one (or a bunch) of those off of yourself with your mouth! I bet they pulled one sticker off themselves and learned how unpleasant it was. Brilliant solution, by the way. I may have to give this a try.

But can you grow them from roots?
I am hoping I can, just so I can get a cultivar that is considered good tasting right off the bat.  

Are you looking to clone the plant, or grow out a store-bought root of a good variety to get seeds? If the latter is what you're going for, I can't see that it would be any problem. If it's the former, I can't offer anything more than loose speculation. Here goes...
As far as I can tell, burdock follows the standard biennial pattern, right? I vaguely remember from my childhood that we used to cut the tops off carrots (same type of life cycle, albeit unrelated) and "plant" said tops in a shallow dish of water until they grew roots. Now, I don't think we ever grew any out to actual carrots again, and it might not even work (might make a big bundle of hair-type roots instead of a nice, fleshy taproot) but that's one possible starting point. Another possibility is to try to divide the root, to make several pieces that all have a piece of top with (hopefully, unless you wreck the grow point and the plant is incapable of making another) some leaf starts, and a bit of taproot skin that can grow new roots and (again hopefully) a new tap root. You could add something that encourages root formation, like aloe vera or some such, to the rooting medium. Ideally the plant will sense that it no longer has access to a lot of stored energy, and go ahead and store some more, instead of attempting to flower. And then you'd harvest it again (mwahahaha!)

The type I have is a biennial.  The first year it grow tuberous roots that taste like potatoes.  The second year It makes the burrs and the roots become fibrous.  I get the burrs on me all the time and just throw them in places I want more to grow. Many people think I'm crazy for growing it everywhere.  I like the fact it grows well in places that food crops don't do well.  Most I have are along the creek and edges of the food forest. The pigs love to dig up the tubers and eat them. The little seeds will stick in a flannel shirt for many washings.  

my mother in law grows them from roots, and I grow them from the sprouting tops, as described above (the roots do not get to be pretty and "marketable looking"-- they are still gobo, though, and we still eat them at home).
You can indeed do them in containers, my MIL (80+ years old) puts them in fluffy soil in either big fat PVC pipe or piled up against a door or sheet of wood, and then when it's time to harvest they are easy to get out.
I also saw amazing and gorgeous gobo growing in deep wood chips a few years ago at Cornell's Sapsucker woods (as you go out into the boardwalk). At least a meter of chips and the plants were enormous.

Great feedback!
The confirmation on growing store bought roots is thrilling;  thank you so much!
I wonder how chickens would do on the greens and seeds?
This seems like great permaculture plant.
I'm pretty sure I have some of the wild ones growing at my yarden, I've treated them like comfrey.

I think I will try growing the store bought roots in barrels of loose soil, maybe even leaves, charcoal or woodchips.
Maybe rings of fencing or wooden boxes would be better.
Would they benefit from sub irrigation?


I mighy start some inside to find out.
The comfrey I brought in is doing pretty well, and I think the bunnies would like gobo leaves, if I don't.

I am seeing this root as simular to Chinese yam and Jerusalem artichokes.
All three seem to thrive on neglect,  and stay edible when left in the ground long term.
All three can be a bit "invasive".
Time to see how much food they can make per square foot!