Sunday, June 27, 2021

Purslane Bloody Purslane

A man of words and not of deeds

Is like a garden full of weeds


   I've quit talking abut my garden and started planting one. And once a garden is planted, it must be weeded. I would prefer to weed standing up with a hoe, but we have a pernicious weed called purslane to deal with. It's called purslane because its plump, shiny leaves look like little purses.


   It's possible to uproot purslane plants with a hoe, but most of them will start growing again. If chopped up, each piece will start a new plant. If ignored, it will turn into an inoffensive looking mat-like plant which will shoot its seeds rocket-like all over the garden.


   The only thing to do is to get down on hands and knees with a small entrenching tool and uproot each plant. The plants must then be placed in a container and removed from the garden. One website called purslane a zombie plant for it's ability to return from the dead. They recommended burying the plants with nuclear waste. Another site recommended sending them on a SpaceX voyage, but for me that would be overkill.


   I have fought purslane in the past, but I've always slacked off by late summer, distracted with the harvest. This year I am forming better garden habits. Every day I enter the garden with my tool and a pie plate and concentrate on one quarter of the garden. The place looks good at a glance, but at ground level, new infestations are always coming up, and I set to work. My kill for the day goes into a plastic grocery bag. I'm still pondering what to do with them. I don't want to infest the landfill.


   On a positive note, purslane is edible. Archaeobotanists have found that people on the Greek island of Samos were eating purslane in the seventh century BC. The Greeks and many other peoples still put purslane in their soups, salads and seed cakes. It has a sour/salty taste they say. But I can't do it. For me that would be like wantonly slaughtering 10,000 buffalo then ordering a bison burger. Wouldn't be appropriate.


   Two final notes: I googled "purslane tattoo" and got zero results. That should tell you something right there. Also, there are two South American soccer clubs nicknamed "The Purslanes" (Verdolagas). You can search their various uniforms but you won't find a trace of the famous weed. Maybe someone ate them.

   


   

1 comment:

Joe - Wednesday's Child said...

My simple search of purslane as I read the opening paragraph of this post gave the following in top position: Purslane - A Tasty "Weed" That is Loaded With Nutrients. Interesting how close the word "tasty" is to the word "nasty".

The black dirt in our garden was purchased from Crusty back in our early days. It was chocked full of nasty weeds, but no purslane. My solution after years of chasing 5 persistently phoenix weeds was the Jack Pine bark mulch. I still have to pull weeds, but less frequently each year.