Weed eating hot topic

They're not what you'd expect to see flying off the shelves at a Saturday market, but Sue Boyd's bags of weeds are doing just that.

Sue Boyd with her in-demand bags of weeds. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

Sue stumbled upon the nutritious benefits of some regular garden weeds when reading Julia Sich's ‘Edible Weeds' book.

'After reading this book we thought: ‘Wow we're sitting on these plants growing out in the garden naturally', so we started harvesting.”

Many of the book's weeds Sue found around her 60 acres of land, and hidden throughout her vegetable gardens.

Already frequenting the Tauranga Farmers Market, she decided to bag up a few samples and was shocked by how fast they went.

'We got people asking if we have plantain and yarrow and we started putting those bags together.

We usually bring about 20-30 bags and they go every time.”

Of particular demand is dandelion, so Sue grew a bed of the weed.

'My husband said: ‘What the heck are you doing that for? There's a whole load in the paddocks'.

'It's amazing what you can actually eat in the garden, we had no idea. My husband goes in front of the cows and picks the tickseed.”

The weeds are not for cooking, but are mainly used in smoothies or salads.

'There are a lot of minerals in them that you can't get in vegetables grown conventionally today. A lot of nutrients are in those plants.”

Sue's favourite use for dandelion is to make tea and coffee.

'You wash the roots and dry them. We have a wood fire cooker, we put them in there and they go a lovely, dark coffee colour. Pop them in the coffee grinder and into the plunger: beautiful dandelion coffee.”

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