Young Wild Lambs Quarter – A Free Spring Time Salad Green

This is what the young shoots look like. These came out of some mulch just spread by landscapers.

If you happen to see this common garden weed around in the next few weeks please, don’t throw it in the trash!  This is Lambs Quarter, and it taste a lot like a nutty spinach green. It’s best eaten now because as it gets older it tends to get more fibrous and is more of a steaming or blanching green.  Yesterday, I had a small side salad made entirely of LQ.  It was delicious and nutritious, adding some much needed raw food to my diet.  If you leave a few to grow to maturity each plant can produce up to 100,000 individual seeds that you can save for the following year, or shake over a plot that you would like to cultivate with LQ next year.  It will come back strong, and may even require thinning if planted too densely.  This plant is thought to be the ancestor of quinoa, and can be found in most places where the ground has recently been disturbed.  Like all vegetables, be sure to wash.  Enjoy

This is such a tasty plant that it’s the first thing the aphids go for in a garden. I’ve even seen it used as a trap to draw away sap sucking insects that consume your garden veggies