Dear reader,

Welcome to all new subscribers and to all returning readers.  Here we find ourselves in lock-down again in New Zealand.  I enjoy it as one can't go out and there is time to read, rest and take on projects or do some gardening, walking, or anything you can dream up.  I'm spending lock-down with my Mum and her little dog Lottie.  We're walking in the nearby reserve where I enjoy seeing what's growing.  There's some cherry blossoms and magnolias and in the swampy part onion weed is flowering.  There are lush young, wild lettuces forming magnificent rosettes and big healthy plantain plants.  We even found oxeye daisy flowering (this normally only flowers in summer) and next to it hawksbeard with its smaller than dandelion flowers on branched stems with leaves up the stem (the beard as I call it).  I wanted to take photos of gorse flowering for my next blog featured below and we found some where the new subdivision ends and the area is left for nature to do its thing.

We've now moved to level 3 lock down since I started this so I've decided to put workshops are on hold until we get out of restrictions.  Until then I intend this newsletter will inspire you as to what plants are flourishing now.  They may be already in your gardens or you can look out for them on your walks. Unfortunately in most public places the council sprays or dogs frequent so it is not wise to harvest from there.  But you can still notice the plants, see how many you can identify and also observe where they like to grow.

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Amazing healing power of plantain

I recently received this wonderfully inspiring letter from a woman who was stung by wasps.  Here's her story.

Shirley writes: "Last night I was hitching my trailer to the truck.  Wasps had made a nest in the square tube of the trailer tongue.  I was stung 3 times on the pinky finger.  Within minutes my hand had swollen to my wrist.  I was miserable with it all night despite using cortisone cream.  Today my nephew told me about using narrow leaf plantain.  He picked a few leaves for me.  I chewed one and rubbed the spit and weed juice over my finger and hand, then ate a leaf.  Within 15 minutes the redness and itching was subsiding and the pain was gone.  4 hours later it was hurting a little so I ate another leaf and am now comfortable again.  What a remarkable plant!!!!"

More wonderful feedback

I am just thrilled when I get feedback like this.

Good Morning Julia,
Many years ago I bought your weed book thinking that maybe one day if things got tough it could be handy. Recently I bought your latest book which has renewed my enthusiasm. When we were locked down last week, the day before I was to go to get my car wof and do a grocery shop!!, I got caught and was just about out of green veggies. BUT... with your book I was able to augment my supply with weeds!!! 
I was delighted to see Scots thistle in the new book as I have a lovely big patch that I have always moaned about but now I can't wait for them to grow!!!

So thank you and don't retire yet as I'm sure there are many more weeds you can educate us on!
Keep safe, Jean.

You can purchase my ebook or printed version of the book here.

Does your garden love you?

At my latest workshop in Coromandel, my attention flew to the book 'Braiding sweetgrass' lying on my host Jo's table.  "Oh wow I've wanted to read this for ages"  Jo kindly lent it to me and I'm getting so much out of it.
With all of us spending more time at home many of you will be in your garden or in nature.  Why do we gravitate there? To grow our own food and flowers and medicine, to be in the fresh air and sunshine with our feet on the earth, to feel our hands in the soil, to nurture that same soil thinking of the bountiful harvests to come.  We pour our energy and hearts into our gardens and admire the new forming leaves, emerging flowers and feel very protective of it all.  That sounds like love to me and I can say I really love my garden and all the plants, how lush they are in early spring and how much they give me in food and delight.

Is it possible that our gardens and the earth love us in return?
Robin Wall Kimmerer has this to say "Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one way street into a sacred bond." Pg124-125.
I can say like Robin's daughter Linden said "My garden takes care of me like my own Mama".

I see incredible beauty here in this image of a wild garden, it looks so peaceful and serene.  Let's allow more messiness in our gardens so that nature can flourish - insects and birds will come and you get to rest rather than struggle to control.

Golden flowering Gorse

Gorse or Furze Ulex europaeus is right now covered in golden-yellow flowers adding colour to our wintery landscape. Not a sight many appreciate due to the bad rap gorse gets as a noxious weed. However, this plant is very important to bees during early spring providing protein rich pollen to grow baby bees (brood) and build the new season’s colony.

Gorse is a very spiny, woody perennial shrub growing up to 2 m or more. After the pea-like flowers black pods appear that split explosively when ripe dispersing the shiny, smooth, round
seeds.
Gorse in full flower

Gorse has established in New Zealand on thousands of hectares of hill and marginal farming areas.  The efforts to spray, disc, slash and burn this plant has not solved the problem.  It recovers quickly from burning and heat activates seeds to germinate. The Anglo Saxon word ‘Furze’ or ‘Fyrs’ means ‘a waste’ relating to where it grows or the litter of dead leaves that accumulate under it. The wood is very hard and I’ve seen it used as a flint to start a fire. The ashes of burned gorse are very alkali and were used for washing in place of soap.

Gorse was originally brought to New Zealand for wind breaks and fences, as well as feed for stock. In the UK it was used as fuel for ovens and kilns and fed to cattle and horses after being crushed, ‘gorse and broom (Cytisus scoparius) provide excellent food for horses and sheep and are said to increase the milk yield of cattle’. At one time they were planted as a rotation crop for this purpose. ‘Before the invention of

Gorse bush - good wind break or hedging

mechanical crushers … spiny gorse foliage was beaten with wooden mallets or ground down with special stones. In Midlothian in 1795, an acre of gorse could keep six horses for four months, with twenty minutes spent “bruising” the foliage daily.’  It was also given to horses to ‘take the worms out of them’.

Could harvesting gorse for animal feed be a solution to our gorse problem in New Zealand? It grows fast on poor and steep marginal land and it would be a less toxic, perhaps cheaper option where we work with it making the most of its virtues than fighting against it.
Other than animal feed it can be made into pulp and used as paper or bricks.

Being in the Fabaceae or pea family gorse fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere improving the fertility of the soil for native bush seedlings which are protected by the thorny foliage. Once the seedlings outgrow the gorse, the shade gradually kills it. Nesting birds are also protected by the thorns. Gorse is excellent for stabilizing erosion prone land. Use it mulched up around fruit trees or whole branches as protection from rabbits or chickens and over germinating seeds or seedlings to deter mice and birds. In the past gorse and heather were bound together to make besom/witches brooms, which were then tied with the same jute string used for binding straw bales.

Gorse flowers

The flower buds can be pickled, the bark and flowers produce a yellow dye.  Gorse flowers have been used to add flavour and colour to beer in Denmark, whiskey in Ireland, and wine and tea in Britain. Gorse flowers are edible and can be added to salads but picking them is a prickly business. The flowers are a Bach flower essence remedy for hopelessness and despair and the soaked gorse seeds have been used as a flea repellent. The sight of the gorse flowers bring me joy. I hope a little more gorse positivity has rubbed off on you too.

Wild lettuce

Above are two healthy wild lettuces Lactuca virosa.  I pluck leaves from them pretty much daily but they regrow incredibly fast.  The round leaves popping up are Gotu kola - I eat them avidly as well.  They're great for circulation, memory and widely used in Asian cuisine.  If you're interested in learning more about it I wrote a blog on Gotu kola with a recipe called 'Kola kenda'.  See it here.

I love gathering a big handful of wild edibles for lunch on my open sandwich. I have two pieces of paleo bread toasted and spread with coconut oil and avocado, salt and then add the leaves.  They all blend in flavour together so that nothing really stands out.  To the left I have wild lettuce, gotu kola on the toast, nasturtium, chickweed and creeping mallow  to the far left of the photo. Pretty calendula flowers add a touch of colour.  The plants like gotu kola and wild lettuce can be strong flavoured on their own but together they create a synergy and it tastes delicious!  I usually have a boiled egg with the sandwiches or soup.

There's growing interest in Wild lettuce, Prickly lettuce or Opium lettuce as a source of a natural pain killer.  It is true the whole plant is rich in a milky sap that flows freely when one breaks a leaf off or cuts a stem.  It has a very strong smell unpleasant to some. This hardens and dries when in contact with the air. The sap contains 'lactucarium', which is used in medicine for its anodyne (pain killing), antispasmodic, digestive, diuretic, hypnotic, narcotic and sedative properties. Lactucarium has the effects of a weak opium, but without its tendency to cause digestive upsets, nor is it addictive. It is taken internally in the treatment of insomnia, anxiety, neuroses, hyperactivity in children, dry coughs, whooping cough, and rheumatic pain. Concentrations of lactucarium are low in young plants and most concentrated when the plant comes into flower as seen in the photo below - they can grow to over 2 metres tall. It is collected commercially by cutting the heads off the plants and scraping the juice into china vessels several times a day until the plant is exhausted.  The plant also contains 'hyoscyamine', a powerful depressant of the parasympathetic nervous system. An infusion of the fresh or dried flowering plant can also be used. The plant should be used with caution, and best with the supervision of a skilled practitioner. However, in the past the early American settlers and the American Indians used this plant for food and medicine as pain relief.  They made a paste which would keep for when needed.  Here is a video  of the method.  It is simple and I'm going to try it since we have an abundance of leaves.  There are obviously different ways to make this medicine and only trying out what resonates with you will prove its effectiveness.

The sap has also been applied externally in the treatment of warts. I don't know how effective this is, but worth a try.  A homeopathic remedy is made from the plant. It is used in the treatment of chronic catarrh, coughs, swollen liver, flatulence and ailments of the urinary tract.

This information comes from the website PFAF Plants for a future.
Visit it here

There are actually two varieties of wild lettuce Lactuca virosa as I've shown in the previous photos and this one below which is called Lactuca serriola. They both have prickles along the back ridge of their leaves and along the leaf edges and both have the thick white sap.  They both have the same properties. But Serriola has thinner, lighter green leaves and no indentations on the leaves.

Lactuca virosa in full flower in summer.

The difference between Onion weed and Snowflakes

Snowflakes Leucojum aestivum are flowering in spring at the same time as Onion weed or Three cornered leek Allium triquetrum.   Snowflakes ion the other hand should not be eaten.  All species of Leucojum are poisonous, as the leaves and bulbs contain the toxic alkaloids lycorine and galantamine. You can see the flowers have little green dots on the end of the petals whereas onion weed has green stripes on the white petals.  Snowflake leaves are flat whereas onion weed leaves have  a ridge creating three corners - as in their name.

Onion weed is very edible and a great source of green leaves tasting like a cross between garlic and onions, rich in sulphur it is a great boost to avoid colds and flu at this time of year. Onion weed can cover large areas (photos below) and can be seen as an invasive weed but it only grows in cooler temperatures and completely dies down in summer.  I wrote a blog 2 years ago you can read here.  I included a photo of a salad with onion weed flowers as decoration. Onion weed is great in salad and in recipes where you'd use spring onions.

Cleavers

Cleavers Gallium aparine is also flourishing now and a great plant to use for spring cleaning our lymph system.  It is a supreme lymph cleanser.  In the photo above it is the plant at the top of the photo growing upwards.  If you run your hands along the stem it will feel very rough and scratchy due to the stiff backward facing hairs.  The leaves and seed pods stick to your clothes or animals hair and that is how it moves around being carried to new growing places.
The easiest method for using it is to grab a handful and place in a bowl of cold water overnight and then drink the water in the morning.  It is rather tasteless but I was told by a workshop participant that her naturopath suggested she do this and she no longer gets the constant colds and flu she was catching. In addition, Cleavers is rich in vitamin C (as ascorbic acid) and minerals, especially silica, so it’s an excellent plant to include in your smoothies. Cut up finely in soup it adds silica and other beneficial nutrients. Cleavers is even considered a weight-reducing vegetable. From my blog Clingy cleavers.


The other plant in the photos Miners lettuce Claytonia perfoliata which is very high in Vitamin C so another good plant to eat during cooler temperatures. Lush succulent leaves are delicious as a salad vegetable in winter.  It goes to seed in late spring and dies away, returning next autumn from seeds dropped where it grew.

Bitter cress

Bitter cress Cardamine hirsuta is going to seed now but you can still eat the leaves lower on the plant which are laced with high levels of Vitamin C. Belonging to the Brassica family you'll be delighted with the peppery leaves which give a nice flavour in a salad or on a sandwich.  It is also known as flick weed.  When you touch the  stalks with mature seeds the seeds flick out and they can get in your eye, as happened to me the other day so beware of the force of projection!

Before going to seed the plants form nice compact little rosettes as you see in the photo above which like to grow in plant pots and are the bane of nurserymen or people with potted plants.  But now you know you can eat them!

Dazzling edible flowers

The blue flowers above are Felicia amelloides. They're in the daisy family and very edible.  I've just made a cutting as my plant died.  They're very easy to grow.  You take a small branch and put in some potting mix and presto it will make roots and grow.  I did this in autumn.  I cut off all the flowers and reduced the leaves to help the shoot put its energy into making roots.  You could dip the shoot in rooting hormone.  Or you can put some willow leaves or branches in water and then use that to help stimulate roots by using this soaked water to water the cutting.  If you have neither the plant will eventually make roots and grow.

The above gorgeous flowers are pansies - there are the self sowing/wild smaller flowering pansies to the left called hearts-ease pansy.  Both of these are edible and can make great decoration on a salad or a cake.

Until next time, wishing you all health and happiness,
Love from Julia

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