Salad Garden!

The recent rains have been wonderful!  As a result, my garden is growing well.  Especially the various volunteer plants!  They always seem to thrive, as they make the most of the opportunities they find.  Nobody planted them and, in fact, some people may call them weeds.  My side yard is a case in point:

Volunteer Plants - Side Yard

And the parkway in the front:

Volunteer Plants - Parkway

At first glance, one might think, "Oh, it's being taken over by the weeds!"

But, a closer look reveals: a veritable salad, or, at least, a stir-fry!  For a lot of the volunteer plants are edible plants that maybe eaten raw in salads or cooked as greens!

Tender young dandelion greens and assorted others that belong to the dandelion family, such as catsear, hawksbeard, and sow thistle:

Dandelion

The bees are enjoying the dandelion flowers:

Bee on a Dandelion Flower

Hawksbeard

Hawksbeard with flower stalk

Cat's Ear

Sow thistle with flower in front, hawksbeard in the back

Sow thistle close up, with buds

Redstem filaree or Stork's bill or Crane's bill, which have purple flowers and seed heads that look like the bill of a stork or crane:

Filaree/Stork's Bill/Crane's Bill (the flowers are barely visible)

Filaree/Stork's Bill (showing the seed heads)

Close up of the seed heads

And, amaranths:

Amaranths

Common names include pigweed, although that name is also applied to lambs quarters, which are also known as goosefoot!  That's the problem with common names!  Fortunately, both amaranth and lambs quarters are edible, although lambs quarters should be cooked because the waxy coating on the leaves tend to be indigestible if eaten raw.

Amaranth

Then, there's henbit:

Henbit

Which has tiny purple flowers, too:

Henbit Flowers

The shape of the henbit flowers reveal that they belong to the same family as mint, sage, rosemary, etc.

This is rocket:

Rocket

Which has yellow flowers and seed pods that look a little like mustard:

Rocket with flowers

More rocket

Mallow or common mallow - which is also known as cheeseweed:

Mallow

And day flower, which is actually something I planted, but it also grows as a "weed" and it is edible:

Day Flower

Later, there will be shepherd's purse and purslane.

If I didn't worry about the stray cats and their "fertilizing", I wouldn't hesitate to pick them and eat them (either raw or cooked).  However, there is a clump of amaranth growing inside the enclosure where I had planted my green beans and okra (which, by the way, is a member of the mallow plant family!), last year, that the cats can't get into - I might pick them, once they are a little bit bigger!

Amaranth in the enclosure

There is also some wild garlic, which grows in one area of my "lawn"

:

Wild garlic 

Other plants will make their appearance in the next few weeks.  As I said, before, I don't generally harvest and eat these plants because of the cats and so forth.  And, there is always the caution that everyone should heed - unless one is very confident of what one is looking at and knows that it is edible, DO NOT eat it!  But, for the person who knows, there's a salad growing in my garden! 

Does anyone else recognize any edible weeds growing in their gardens or along the roadsides?