Weed identification - the answers

Thank you to the many folks who helped identify the following seven plants.

Ragweed. I did my neighbors with allergies a favor and pulled it.

Perhaps a type of mustard or shepherds purse, but as Molly wrote, "Anything that flowers that fast is suspect." Math and Tamara think it's field pennycress. I pulled it, but oddly, before ID'ing it, I bought a pennycress plant from a farmer's market herb stall. Unsure, I pulled it.

Yarrow, an insect attractor, tends to be on permaculture lists of "good plants." I did get one warning that it spreads and is hard to get rid of once it's established. I decided to leave it.

ID'd as pigweed or redroot, amaranthus. Most people thought it was edible, though one said no. I pulled it. 

  

Zinnia - an annual flower from seed I threw in with the clover just to see what would happen. The largest of these plants have a flower starting, I left it.

Purslain - edible and delicious according to most people. I left it.

This domestic number is fast outgrowing my patience. I'm going to hack it back this weekend.

Edible weeds from the orchard

The other day I wrote a blog post about trouble I was having identifying weeds growing in the orchard. I've been weeding the orchard to give the clover an unfettered opportunity to create a solid ground cover to protect the soil, fix nitrogen and prevent weeds from coming up. 

One weed I can readily identify is known to me as lambs quarters. I've also heard it called Aztec spinach. Regardless of the name, I think it's delicious.

I pull the lambs quarters well before it goes to seed, which is also when it's tender and effortless to remove. And since the whole idea of this orchard is to be a food forest, I eat everything edible it produces.

As I pull lambs quarters, I gather it in one hand with the roots facing the same direction. After weeding, I cut off the stems and roots with a garden shears, though taking them into the kitchen and chopping them off with a knife would've been fine too.

Here are my two favorite ways to prepare this spring green. If you have a favorite way to prepare this green, or if there are other so called "weeds" that you eat, please share them in the comments.

Lightly sautéed

1. Rinse the leaves and stems and spin out in a salad spinner. 
2. Put a tablespoon of olive oil in a frypan and warm-up. 
3. Put the greens in the frypan and turn a few times until the leaves are coated with oil. 
4. Then allow the bottom leaves to fry a little bit (we're not talking deep-fried here think stirfry), and stir them up a couple of times. 
5. Serve hot.

Nearly done sautéeing.

Steamed with vinegar

1. Rinse the leaves and stems and spin out in a salad spinner. You don't need to get the water off, I just find this helps get the last of the dirt off.
2. Put in a large saucepan with a couple of table spoons of water and a tablespoon of your favorite vinegar. 
3. over and steam for just a few minutes. The leaves will turn a bright green, will wilt and the stems will become tender. 
4. Serve hot.

Weed or keep?

I'm pretty good at identifying annual vegetable plants. I don't know their family names (although I am learning) but I can tell you what's a tomato, what's a squash, and what's an onion. And compared to annual vegetable plants, I can pretty easily identify what a weed is; weeds are what's left after I identified the vegetables!

While weeding the orchard this evening, I realized there are some plants I'm having a hard time identifying. The majority of the orchard groundcover is white Dutch Clover, a low growing groundcover. However, when I planted the clover, I found some packets of flower seeds and mixed them in with the clover; and I don't remember what I sowed nor what they're supposed to look like. Also coming up in the orchard are lambs quarters and pig weed, both I can identify.

If you can identify any of these, use the corresponding numbers and let me know what's growing.

#1, looks a little like a cross between a marigold and a carrot. Any guesses? Weed or keep?

#2, very upright, tubular stem, pretty white flowers.

#3, I'm pretty sure Judy Skog gave me this one, but I don't recall what it is,

#4, flower or foe?

  

#5, maybe a flower, though I honestly have no reason other than to think that some of the flowers seeds must have germinated.