Chickweed is fall and winter greens and medicine

       

Some of the biggest chickweed tops I've ever seen this year, with leaves 1 1/4 inch or more.

          Chickweed is a dependable fall and winter green for chickens and people.  It tastes like grass, sweet and lightly bitter, and makes good salad and sandwich greens or wilted salad for people.  Cut the just the top inch of stems with its new leaves and flowers for best eating.  The stems can be rather tough below that. Chop the tips for salad and sandwiches; cover with boiling water long enough to wilt the greens to eat it like spinach.  Save the water and drink it for the vitamins and minerals, and to help with weight loss.

Unlike dandelion and wild lettuce, it is not bitter when blooming, and is full of A, B and C vitamins, magnesium, iron, calcium and zinc.  This year, I am finding the chickweed leaves bigger than ever before under locusts by the river.

          Chickens love fresh chickweed best in fall and winter.  Chicks love the seeded plants in late spring for their seeds.  I just pull the stems by the handful and fill a grocery bag for my flock. 

Chickweed is also good for eye medicine.  Make a tea with the leaves, let it cool, and drip it into the eye.  It stings a little for a few minutes.  I’ve cleared up many cases of pink eye and kitten eye infections with chickweed tea.  If it doesn’t work, pink eye is not the reason one’s eyes are red, or you may be allergic to it.  I researched it this year and found many medicinal uses I’ve never thought about, including a salve recipe I intend to try.

          It grows best in our area by the river under locust other trees with soft leaves that are quickly eaten by worms and make rich soil.  I’ve seen some under shrubs by the post office.  It starts growing with the first fall rains, and blooms through the winter into late spring, when even the newest growth gets rather leggy and is not as good for salads and such.  This is a good time to pull quantities of the plant and spread it in a good growing location.  Once it has made enough seed, it dies down until fall.

To keep it available for medicine year-round in your garden where it is watered regularly, keep pulling the above-ground portion of the plant as it blooms, before it makes seed.  Being an annual, it will keep growing until it makes enough seed.  It is one plant that doesn’t make a crown between root and stems, so it can’t be stopped by cutting below the crown.  It tends to break off at or above ground level when one is pulling it, so ironically, the way to keep it in your garden all summer is to keep pulling it as it blooms.  The way to get rid of it all summer is to let it seed out in the spring, or smother it with mulch, the easiest way to lose it entirely.

Published 12-21-2021 at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com

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Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

 

An article with almost too much information: https://www.healthbenefitstimes.com/chickweed/

This one has a concise rundown of its vitamins, minerals, and medicinal constituents:

https://draxe.com/nutrition/chickweed/