Purslane......Weed or Not to Weed!!

Our flower beds are FULL of this weed which closely resembles Rose Moss,

Portulaca grandiflora, which you grow ON PURPOSE! I was reading about purslane this morning in a book by Edwin Way Teale, 'A Walk Through the Year.' He wrote this in diary form and I read it day by day.  This morning I read ahead to  July 27th where he describes gathering the purslane for his wife to cook. Come to find out you can actually EAT this weed fresh in salads or cooked as you would spinach!

I mentioned this to Louis Dean and he declared he wanted NOTHING to do with eating WEEDS!! I also found out this plant is an annual reproduces from seeds and stem pieces. This means you do NOT use a tiller (as we did earlier in the year) NOR do you chop it up with a HOE as Louis Dean did a month ago! This only insures purslane MULTIPLICATION! So what shall we do? I have left it alone before as it is not altogether unattractive....but it does get leggy and spreads into the territory of other plants I am growing ON PURPOSE! The article I read on the Internet suggests pulling it up by the fleshy roots. Louis Dean is setting up some soaker hoses to make the ground soft enough to do some weed pulling this evening after the sun sets. We used to have Nut Grass (weed) by the thousands! Now it is the purslane! Wish our cultivated plants did half as well as these WEEDS do!

Just in case you want to try these EDIBLE weeds.....for recipes go to:

www.prairielandcsa.org/recipes/purslane.html .