Which "weed" do you like the most?

Laura Nunes wrote:Dandelion, creeping wood sorrel and lambs quarters. All prolifically self seed and provide an endless supply of animal forage or salad leaves without any effort from me.

For me, my best weed hands down is purslane; It grows without help, tastes great for the whole growing season, and if perchance it grows where I don't want it, I can pull it off (and transplant it elsewhere).
It transplants super easy too!
Because it grows close to the ground in my sandbox, I can tuck it under bushes. it covers the ground nicely so rain droplets can't do damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea
It is definitely not a bad plant!

My favorite weed is the dandelion.   I have made salads, cookies, dandy burgers (no meat) and fried them. When fried, they taste like fried mushrooms. No kidding.

Mardell Bontrager wrote:My favorite weed is the dandelion.   I have made salads, cookies, dandy burgers (no meat) and fried them. When fried, they taste like fried mushrooms. No kidding.

I'm fond of my dandelions. Apart from enjoying looking at them and at the wildlife they attract, I love eating them. I only ever eat them raw (I call this "lawn salad" because I wander around my lawn, stooping down, plucking the choicest dandelion leaves as I come across them, and eating them on the spot, preferably while neighbors watch in confusion); I am aware they can be made into tea, and I once learned about how confederate soldiers would make the roots into a rather poor coffee substitute...

...but I have never heard of "dandy burgers". How do you make them into burgers, and what should my expectations be as someone who likes actual burgers (made of dead cows) as well as black bean burgers (made of dead legumes, rice, and other veggies)?

If I had to pick just one, that would be stinging nettle. When snow melts a tiny seedlings are pure vitamin bomb, so much needed after winter. I simmer them for 10 minutes usually and drink "nettle tea". Later, when nettles are a bit bigger, they are staple in my breakfasts, chopped and fried with eggs. They grow a bit bigger, and they are steamed as spinach. In the same time they go into buckets to turn into compost tea for a garden. I plant them in forest garden, to use as "chop & drop" mulch. They are the only food for some butterflies' caterpilars. Later in the season they go to seed, and the seeds have high nutritional profile as well. You can use nettles to make a strong cord, dye fabric or cure arthritis with their stings too if you are brave enough :)

I sent in a soybean crop residue sample (with many weeds) for nutrient analysis and it looks like weeds take up nutrients much like crops. The only thing that stood out was the very high iron content, about 550 ppm vs my normal 100 ppm. Soybeans do take up a lot of iron but not that much. I have to wonder if some of the weed crop is also quite a scavenger of iron. Had lamb's quarters and redroot pigweed as the main weed species. Another thing came to mind and that is I cut up the residue with a pruner, could that impart some iron into the test sample? What about the residue going through a combine and all of the steel contact there including the straw chopper.

My favorite weed is one that does not compete greatly with my intended crop. Don't mind a few weeds, a sign of good soil health.

There are plenty of "lawn weeds" that I like a lot. Henbit, creeping Charlie, dandelion, hairy bittercress, self-heal, clover, wild violets, lady's thumb, and others. If I had to choose one favorite, it'd be creeping Charlie, because I love the smell (very nostalgic for me) and it behaves itself well enough, in my opinion. Wonderful groundcover

I love pokeweed! I don't use it for anything, but I let a patch of it grow in a corner of my yard because it's beautiful. I also really like trumpet vine, even though I've fought battles against it - it's just a stunning plant when it's in bloom, and it draws in the hummingbirds like crazy!

quote=Ned Harr]

Mardell Bontrager wrote:My favorite weed is the dandelion.   I have made salads, cookies, dandy burgers (no meat) and fried them. When fried, they taste like fried mushrooms. No kidding.

I'm fond of my dandelions. Apart from enjoying looking at them and at the wildlife they attract, I love eating them. I only ever eat them raw (I call this "lawn salad" because I wander around my lawn, stooping down, plucking the choicest dandelion leaves as I come across them, and eating them on the spot, preferably while neighbors watch in confusion); I am aware they can be made into tea, and I once learned about how confederate soldiers would make the roots into a rather poor coffee substitute...

...but I have never heard of "dandy burgers". How do you make them into burgers, and what should my expectations be as someone who likes actual burgers (made of dead cows) as well as black bean burgers (made of dead legumes, rice, and other veggies)?

I hope I am responding back to you in the correct format.  This is my first.  I like black bean burgers too. So you may like it.  Not only are Dandy Burgers cheap to make if you have dandelions, but I think they taste similar to hamburgers when you add all the onions, garlic, ketchup and all that.  The recipe is 1 Cup packed dandelion petals ( I pinch off the bracts) , 1 cup flour. 1 egg, 1/4 cup milk, 1/2 cup chopped onions, 1/4 teas. salt, 1/8 teas. pepper, 1/2 teas. garlic powder, 1/4 teas. basil, 1/4 teas. oregano.  Make into patties and fry up til crisp on both sides.  

I stopped thinking of wild plants as weeds as I started eating them, and putting them to good use. I typically transplant everything that needs moving.

My most protected weed is milkweed, and before when I was caring for an adjacent lot, it was orchids. Many of the "weeds" I simply consider vegetables (the stinging nettles I deliberately cultivated) and volunteers like lambs quarters. Or they are medicinals like wild sasparilla, cohosh, heal-all, wild leeks, or pollinators / tea like echinacea, rudbeckia (black eyed Susan's), bee balm etc., or wild carrots to hold up my compost hills.

And edible fruiting bushes are certainly not weeds, even slightly invasive ones -- they can all be managed

Clover in my opinion is certainly not a weed: it is an important part of the ecosystem.

There are no weeds except for poison oak/ivy and invasives, which kind of depends on where one lives.

Nina Surya wrote:My favourite weed is nettles, closely followed by chickweed and brambles. My least favourite is Rumex crispus (curly dock/yellow dock).

Nettles are underrated.  I just learned how to get the fiber out of nettles.  I had no luck in the fall but they've naturally retted by now and it's as simple as rubbing them