Today's my last day off before going back to work tomorrow night. I took my mom to an appointment in town this morning. While she was there I stopped over at my house to water and check on the condition of the tomato plants on my windowsill (huge, probably too huge for birds to eat) and start mowing the lawn. Before I did that, I took a look at my garden, which consists of the single tomato plant that the birds did not pick away at, a few sunflowers, some radishes and some carrots. I pulled the mature radishes to have in a salad, but noticed that the unplanted areas of the garden were getting weedy. I got out my hoe and began to slice away.
That's when I noticed that what I was hoeing was purslane.
You've probably seen purslane in your garden, even if you didn't know what it was. It grows as a weed, but is edible, delicious, and surprisingly nutritious. It also makes a nice cover crop for areas of your garden that you haven't planted yet.
I didn't get very far with mowing the lawn before I had to pick up my mom, but I'll be going back after lunch to finish the job. Lunch will include a salad made with freshly-picked radishes and purslane. At least I'm getting something out of the garden!
The narcissistic primarily autobiographical blog of the pseudonymous d.b. echo
Owen is allergic to pigweed. I never knew what it was until today.
ReplyDeleteI recently tried purslane--I actually had to pay for it though. It was pretty tasty. Your combination of purslane, tomato and blue cheese sounds good...what kind of dressing did you use?
ReplyDeleteMary Ruth, I used our supermarket's brand of Italian dressing - not quite Olive Garden, but pretty good. I think with the blue cheese I could have gotten away with not using any dressing at all!
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