Dear fellow plant-tender,
I came in from the garden this morning with green under my fingernails and a basket fuller than I'd planned. I'd gone out meaning to simply enjoy the fresh air. I came back with deadnettle, henbit, and a fistful of dandelion greens.
That is the thing about April in Zone 7a. Nature has been sleeping all winter and now she is in a generous mood — generous to the point of insistence. What she offers first is not the elegant, cultivated stuff. It is the so-called weeds, the plants most folks meet with a lawnmower instead of a basket. This week, I am setting the cultivated beds aside and writing you a foraging letter, because the medicine outside your kitchen door will not wait politely until you find time for it.
So let us talk about three of them — the two pretty pink-flowered cousins that everybody confuses, and the yellow-headed old friend that needs no introduction. Here is how to tell them apart, how to prepare them, and what the studies actually show.