Dandelion has unsuspected health benefits such as inhibiting cancer cell growth. (NaturalNews) So many people can't wait to get rid of them once they start growing on their lawn, since dandelions are often seen as unwelcome weeds. Some of you may also recall the Rolling Stones song named "Dandelion" that came out during the summer of 1967.
It was possibly the last time that dandelion was truly put into the spotlight, but new hope has now emerged that could very well make it the most wanted weed around. The dandelion greens are closely related to the sunflower plant family, which includes over 22 000 other plant species, such as thistles and daisies. This herb had a much better reputation in the old days, regarded by most as a formidable healer. The dandelion leaves are recognized for their ability to purify the blood, help with digestion and hamper the formation of hardened crystals known as gall stones. Ongoing research is most importantly starting to show that dandelion may possibly turn out to be an exceptional alternative for chemoresistant forms of cancer. How to eat wild stuff and not get poisoned (how-to)
Let's play pretend for a moment. Are you with me? Let's pretend you can't go down to the supermarket for food to eat. In fact, let's pretend that there is not a supermarket for one hundred miles in any direction, and you don't have any food with you. In this pretend land, you are stranded in the wilderness. Perhaps your GPS navigation unit directed you to detour onto a closed mining road in the middle of nowhere, and you didn't have the sense to second-guess it until your rental car got stuck in seasonal mud, and you decide to head out into the woods instead of following the road back. Does this seem unlikely? What this guide is:This is a guide to wild things that are 100% safe to eat. What this guide is not:This is NOT a guide to figuring out if something may or may not be safe to eat.
BerriesThis is very easy to make 100% foolproof. Unless you are completely sure, do not eat non-aggregate berries - berries that are shaped like blueberries or gooseberries. The Fantastic Four – 4 Essential Wild Edible Plants that May Just Save Your Life | Tactical Intelligence. Did you realize that knowing just 4 wild edible plants could one day save your life? If there were any four categories of plants that I would recommend all people to know how to use and identify it would be these: Grass, Oak, Pine, and Cattail. For the knowledgeable survivor, knowing just these four plants can make the difference between life and death if stranded in the wilds – for each one is an excellent food source which can sustain you until help arrives. Throughout this week and part of the next, I’ll be going into details on how you can prepare and eat these plants. For now though, here’s a quick overview into what they have to offer: Grass Surprising to many is the fact that you can eat grass.
The young shoots up to 6 inches tall can be eaten raw and the starchy base (usually white and at the bottom when you pluck it) can be eaten as a trail nibble. Oak Oak – specifically the acorn – is a great source of food in the fall and early winter time. Pine “You can eat pine?!” Cattail. Why Eat Wild Herbs and Edible Plants? The Benefits of Wild Edible Plants For hundreds of years people took advantage of the medicine cabinet at their doorstep. Before the advent of processed foods and modern convenience stores, wild plants were a common dietary supplement. They were the ultimate natural multivitamin! Often the plants we call weeds have therapeutic value.
Our pharmaceutical industry bases many new medicines on the healing factors in herbs. Why eat wild herbs? They are power packed with phyto-nutrients, hundreds of times the vitamin and mineral density of a supermarket lettuce. What if you live in the city? Not everyone lives in the countryside these days, with healthy spray free wild herbs at their doorstep. Drink herbal teas made from wild herbs, like nettle . If you do live rurally, how do you spot the good ones?
People ask us, "how do you avoid the poisonous ones?” What to do with wild herbs and dark leafy greens? Wild herbs can be juiced (the forerunner to wheat grass juice!) What are your favourites? Hi Anna, What is the universal edibility test?" Getting lost or stranded in the wilderness is serious business, and you need to make sound decisions to give yourself the best chance at survival.
It also helps to know some basic wilderness survival skills. To make sure you're safe from the elements, you'll need to know how to build a shelter. To provide you with an opportunity to cook food, boil water and send a rescue signal, you should learn how to build a fire without a match or lighter. The other crucial component to survival is finding water in the wild. People can live without food for up to a month, but water is necessary to keep us alive.
But just because you can live without food doesn't mean you should. It's dangerous to eat a plant you're unsure of, especially in a survival scenario. If you're in a survival situation and you don't have a book on local edible plants, there is a test you can perform to give yourself a good shot at eating the right thing. Foraging: 52 Wild Plants You Can Eat. Here are a few common North American goodies that are safe to eat if you find yourself stuck in the wild: Blackberries: Many wild berries are not safe to eat, it’s best to stay away from them. But wild blackberries are 100% safe to eat and easy to recognize. They have red branches that have long thorns similar to a rose, the green leaves are wide and jagged. They are best to find in the spring when their white flowers bloom, they are clustered all around the bush and their flowers have 5 points.
The berries ripen around August to September. Dandelions: The easiest to recognize is the dandelion, in the spring they show their bright yellow buds. Asparagus: The vegetable that makes your pee smell funny grows in the wild in most of Europe and parts of North Africa, West Asia, and North America. Elderberries: Elderberries are known for their flu and cold healing properties, you can make jelly from them and are very sweet and delicious. Gooseberries: Mulberries: Pine: Kudzu: Daylily: Pecans: Hazelnuts:
Poisonist and non-poisonist plants in Indiana. US Wildflower's Database of Wildflowers for Indiana. Rainbow Bright. Gleaning. A group of us in Goshen got together last night for an evening of gleaning, and ohhhh, what a lovely, lovely time! Transition Goshen has a project called, “The Low Hanging Fruit Press,” which many of us crowd funded so that we could purchase a community cider press. As a side part of this project, we also began to map fruit trees in town — on private or public property — in need of harvesting. Many people buy homes that already have fruit trees planted, and they find these trees a nuisance rather than a boon. With permission, those people who do appreciate the abundance of free fruit can save the homeowners a lot of work. In some cases, a timely harvest will even save tree limbs from breaking with the weight of unpicked fruit. A number of websites help to match up gleaners and fruit trees, and David and I found something similar when we lived in Madison.
I have eaten a lot of apples in my life, but I’ve never actually harvested one from a tree. Blessings abound! Laura Bruno – How I Did Less And Ate Better, Thanks To Weeds ~ Tama Matsuoka Wong At TEDx Manhattan – 28 August 2013. This was fun! Thanks to “And Here We Are.” David and I attended a Goshen event that aired this conference, but somehow we missed this one. “Tama Matsuoka Wong is a professional forager and the principal of MeadowsandMore, which she founded to connect people with wild plants and natural landscapes. She won the New Jersey Forest Stewardship Award in 2007 for her work on stewarding her own property in western New Jersey. “Tama recently authored the book Foraged Flavor: Finding Fabulous Ingredients in your Backyard or Farmers Market about her several year project with the chef de cuisine at Restaurant Daniel in NYC to turn edible “weeds” from nature in to delicious cuisine. “In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.
Www.laurabruno.wordpress.com / link to original article Like this: Like Loading... Milk Thistle Benefits. Milk thistle has been used medicinally for hundreds of years. It is believed to be one of the most popular and effective herbs for the treatment of liver related diseases such as hepatitis and cirrhosis, and gallbladder disorders. Research in the US and Germany suggest that milk thistle is also invaluable in the treatment of damage and side effects caused by pharmaceutical drugs, anesthetics and poisoning. It is also useful in the treatment of psoriasis. Background The milk thistle is a flowering herb related to the daisy and ragweed family. It is known as many other names including; Mary Thistle, Holy Thistle and Silymarin.
The religious connection is from when people believed the milk that dripped from the thistle came from the dripped milk of the Virgin Mary while she breast-fed Jesus. Its flowering head can be a purple or reddish color and is often seen as an annoying, fast growing weed which can reach heights of 4 – 10 feet. Milk Thistle and the Liver Milk Thistle Supplements Peter.
INPAWS : Indiana Native Plant & Wildflower Society. Types of Wheat: What to Grow and How to Use It - Real Food. Related Content Back to the Old Grind(er) One of our family treasures is an old iron mill. We had an opportunity to get the old mill out this... The great diversity we see today in wheat is the result of millions of years of evolution capped by 100 centuries of breeding by humans. Varieties originating throughout that history — modern types, heirloom varieties from past decades or centuries, and even wheat varieties we can date back to 9,000 B.C. — are still available today. Sorting through the types of wheat and flour to find the most nutritious or flavorful — or the best to use for a specific purpose — requires wading into a deep gene pool. Doing so, however, will give you better breads, more tender cakes and biscuits, and sturdier pastas. There are no “standard” types of wheat.
Which Wheat for Which Purpose? Common wheat (Triticum aestivum), sometimes called “bread wheat,” is the most widely grown species, and yields the flour we buy by the bag. Which Wheat Is Most Nutritious? Resources. Discovery Channel documentary Moringa - The Miracle Tree. Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world.
Strategies For Grafting Fruit Trees | Your Small Kitchen Garden. You’re looking at scions set in the split stump of a small branch that conveniently sprouted two seasons ago. This graft points into a space that could really use a low branch. Notice the leaf buds where the scions meet the stump. The most rapid growth occurs around leaf buds, so the design of the graft encourages the scion to grow into the stump. It’s pruning and grafting time in my small kitchen garden, as it must be for nearly everyone in hardiness zone 6 and lower (north of zone 6). But time is running out. You should stop pruning when the leaf buds on your trees start to plump up in preparation to open, and that usually happens in early April. My last five posts have been about grafting and pruning. Harvesting Stock for Scions You can harvest grafting stock all winter and store it until you’re ready to work. If I have a lot of grafting to do, I focus on it almost exclusively until pruning season is drawing to a close.
Graft onto Thin Branches Graft to Larger Branches Align bark. How to Grow an Oak Tree from an Acorn: 14 Steps. Edit Article Choosing and Planting AcornsTransplant Your SeedlingCaring for Growing Oaks Edited by Dvortygirl, Maluniu, Filigree Peahen, Travis Derouin and 30 others Growing your own soaring oak tree from a tiny acorn - in terms of gardening projects, few are as long-term as this!
Luckily, oak tree cultivation is fairly easy and incredibly rewarding. Ad Steps Part 1 of 3: Choosing and Planting Acorns 1Collect acorns in early autumn. 6Water your seedling. Part 2 of 3: Transplant Your Seedling 1Track the plant's growth. 5Transplant your oak. Part 3 of 3: Caring for Growing Oaks 1Protect young oak trees. 3Taper your care off as the tree grows.
Video Tips Even small oak trees lose their leaves in the fall season (autumn), so don't be discouraged if all the leaves turn brown or fall off.