Ouch! You don’t have to pull so hard…Oh no! Not my beautiful blossoms…You’re not just going to throw that away, are you? Roots and all? If only we could hear our weeds speaking to us, they might sway our opinion of their usefulness. What…? Useful weeds, you say? They are invasive, aggressive, ugly. They are a nuisance in my garden, the bane of my lawn. But take a closer look, and you may have a treasure chest of useful, nutritional, and even medicinal plants right under your feet, if you would kindly take your shoe off my tendrils, thank you.
I had a bit of an enlightening weed experience meeting a group of teenagers pulling weeds at the end of First Street. Teens Inc. gets local teens involved in maintaining the beauty and balance of the wild lands around Chipeta Park and Barker Reservoir. All summer long, teens will be pulling up Knapweed and Scentless Chamomile – non-native and very invasive species. Nothing goes to waste – while the plants are not yet in bloom, they are left to compost naturally where they were pulled, improving the soil. When they do begin to bloom, they will be composted elsewhere to control propagation.
Coloradans, especially in the nearest small-mountain town of Nederland, are weed-crazy these days. Everyone from Nedheads and Nedlist on facebook to Nedmamas and the Nederland town homepage are all chatting about weeds. Weed-pulls are being organized en masse: the CSU extension office in Gilpin County has weed pull and wildflower identification events planned all summer (directed by Irene Shonle, details on their website: http://www.extension.colostate.edu/gilpin). Diana Maggiore, one of our local weed-pull organizers helped me get hip to the noxious weed-craze. At the “Let’s Pull Together” a town-wide weeding event, volunteers learn about the state mandated noxious weeds, how they propagate and how they can be eradicated (viz. Diana Maggiore’s article in the Mountain Ear, “Thank you June noxious weed pull volunteers”, Thursday, July 3).
I had a chance to ask Diana if there were any beneficial weeds that are currently labeled as noxious. “Native weeds certainly provide benefits such as attracting pollinators or herbal medicines while not taking over into monocultures. There are even noxious weeds that are medicinal!” Now you’re speaking my language.
Attention weed-pullers! Before you dig up some of these weeds, consider harvesting some of these medicinal species for your totally natural, wildcrafted and wonderful herbal pharmacy!
While not all thistles contain “sylimarin” they do have liver protective properties. Thistles are prolific propagators and very difficult to weed out once established in your garden or field – not the least for her strong and proud stalk, and her tough, spiky defenses! But if you allow your thistles to seed and harvest the blossom with the seeds mid-summer, you will not only have a delicious bitter green to add to your stir-fry and stew; but you will have one of history’s most important liver remedies on hand. Dried and crushed for a strong tea or tinctured, Thistle is a blessing in disguise!
Every county in Colorado is mandated by the state to implement noxious weed control, and yes, I haven’t yet found anything really wonderful about scentless chamomile, think before you pull! Even “noxious” weeds have little voices, even “non-native” and “invasive” species are here for a reason…ask a weed and she just might tell you what that reason is.
theholistichomestead.org