Fermenting wild greens

Not really sure if has been tried before, but is it possible to make a fermented (like Kimchi) type of food using wild greens . I'm thinking of using Dandilion, sour dock, curly dock type of greens. I think my wife will get mad at me if I kill us by accident, so want to be safe, not sorry!

Try this
https://gallowaywildfoods.com/fermentation-of-wild-plants/

I've never tried fermenting wild greens, but if the greens are safe to eat fresh I can't imagine fermenting would make them toxic in any way. But it's the sort of thing is might be best to try in very small amounts till you know how your systems will react.
My lovely Bulgarian neighbour made me a bowl of "Granny's cleansing spring soup" with plenty of wild greens back in early April. It was waaaaaay more cleansing than I needed or wanted! I suspect fermented wild greens might have a similar effect.

super cool idea! I might try this with cleavers. Makes me think of the asian famine food of watercress dishes.

Last year I used lamb's quarters to make "gundruk" using the recipe from Sandor Katz's "Wild Fermentation."  It worked we, but takes a lot of time and space.  You tamp the greens down in jars, smashing the leaves enough to release juices, leave them in sealed jar out in warm weather for a couple weeks "burping" if needed, then spread the fermented leaves out in sun to dry.  The texture is like dry tea leaves.

Alright, you all are making me hungry!! John that page really has me incouraged to go ahead and try this. Hopefully this weekend I can get something started so we can find out if I live or not. Thanks everybody for all the comments!!!

Alright, I've taken garlic scapes, onion seed stems (don't know if you call them scapes or not), two different kinds of dock, and two different types of plantain. All wild, and have started to ferment them. This is (according to the recipe) time to put them in a jar to ferment for a week or so.  They didn't have quite enough juice, so I tried a little kumbucha I've made up to top it off. So in a few weeks I'll be able to report back on the taste. (If I live!)

Sorry so long getting back. I didn't die or even get sick after eating the fermented wild greens. I let them ferment about a week, on the counter in the kitchen before trying them. I just did a simple, no spice, only a little salt, mix. I didn't read the instructions as good as I should have ( imagine that!) and didn't shred the greens as fine as I should have. It tasted pretty bland and texture wise resembled eating soggy paper. (don't ask how I know what that is like.) I really am impressed with the opportunities this opens up. It took me a week or so to use them all up, but we got it done. Next time (next week or so) I want to try more types of greens, chopped finer, and a little more spice. Also am going to try pickling wild garic with some recipes I picked up on line.

Yep, I tried "kimchi"ing some cleavers. It was hideous.

Cabbage has a lot more water in it than most wild greens, at least around here where the weather tends dry.
I use cabbage as the base of my ferment,. and add some handfuls of wild greens, and then I still get a deep enough liquid to cover the leaves and keep it from molding.

I had a huge glut of green onions one year. I chopped them up and mixed with some minced garlic and ginger. Kind of a proto kimchi paste.  It was sooooo good after fermenting. Really strong, so more of a condiment than a food, though.  Some garlic and ginger would probably make pretty much any green taste better.

I tried fermenting purslane and it failed. Got really mushy and didn’t taste good. But it’s possible that I let it ferment too long. From what I understand about fermenting, the foods in question should be ‘hard’ or crunchy so they don’t turn to mush, but there’s probably a way. I’m gonna try sunchokes next year and mabie burdock root.

I have made plenty of garlic mustard-kraut. It is very delicious! And the spiciness or bitterness is tamed by this method.

I also have made gundruk but not liked it that much. I preferred eating them dry to cooking them, though.

This Summer I fermented some of the wild Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) that likes to blanket my garden.
I snapped off tender growth from the plants before they were flowering and put them in a jar of brine on the shelf a couple weeks.
It was quite tasty, though it got a bit slimy.  The remaining post-ferment brine juice was strongly flavored and made a good addition to soup stock.
As others have mentioned - if it is an edible green then it is likely fermentable...  

Steve Brill’s book on edible and medicinal plants says that fermented sweet clover is dangerously toxic due to its blood thinning properties.

On the other hand it sounds as if the “fermentation” in question was actually from moldy sweet clover fed to cows. In general eating moldy things is considered risky but it raises the question of whether they might not be so dangerous. It seems like something to look into more closely.

M Ljin wrote:I have made plenty of garlic mustard-kraut. It is very delicious! And the spiciness or bitterness is tamed by this method.  

Yes!  I do mine like a kimchi with radish, green onion, garlic chives, and carrot (with the brine having blended tart apple, ginger, chopped garlic, gochugaru, soy sauce, maybe fish sauce this year).  It's still pungent and spicy, but in the good way.  The unopened flowers and more tender stems are really delicious when used, too.

When you kraut the garlic mustard, do you cut it into shreds like one would cabbage, or do you leave the leaves whole?

That sounds like a lovely recipe!

S Tonin wrote:

When you kraut the garlic mustard, do you cut it into shreds like one would cabbage, or do you leave the leaves whole?

I have done some of both. More so, I have fermented the shoots and flower buds (along with some leaves). I love the fresh leaves in their first and early second year but prefer the shoots in their fermented forms.

I ferment greens as a means of long-term preservation when I have a glut of something. A couple years ago I had thousands of wild bitter-gourds sprouting around my yard so I kimchied them. Still eating that.

I love sautéed sweet potato leaves, but at the end of the year there's just loads of greens. I usually let them go to mulch, but one year I harvested every healthy looking leaf, salted generously, packed in glass jars, and fermented for a few days. Then I spread it all out on trays in the shade to partially dry, until the moisture content was like a good pipe tobacco. They I repacked them in jars for future. I recently re-found one of those jars 8 years later, and it was as sweet smelling as ever. I just add some to a stew or sauce for flavor.

So this year I did the same with my copious amaranth when they wanted to go to seed. So easy. Food security!

I've also fermented plenty of ramps and pine blossoms for salads, but they get eaten up pretty fast.