Garden Prep and Rewards

As a person who has a chronic pain problem, doing the hard work at the beginning of the season can take a lot out of me and take a long time. This year I am trying things different and doing small amounts of time daily to get the garden ready for planting. Oregon's Spring transition into Summer is usually predictable with lots of sunny cool days mixed with some colder wet days. We will get a week or two of some really warm weather and think that Summer has arrived only to get the next week of frosty mornings and 50 degree days. So it is smart never to plant too early but you can always start seeds and get the ground ready to go. We are so lucky to have perfect weather for bulbs and tubers and flowers are everywhere by Feb into March with Daffodils, Tulips, Cherry Blossoms, Dog Woods, Magnolias, Iris and more. It is MY FAVORITE time of year!

So this is the mess my garden is right now. Loaded with dandelion, purple dead nettle, nipplewort, and a few other things I am not sure what they are but there are plenty of them.I am going in about 30 minutes a day and pulling weeds. I feed my birds the greens daily and I harvest the dandelion roots. It is better to harvest roots in the Fall, but I need my bed cleared for the starts I will plant sometime between Mother's Day weekend and the Strawberry festival, whose parade makes sure I don't leave my house all day and brings the whole town to my front door. Last year, we dumped a lot of dirt and compost where we had some potatoes growing and the soil never really became compacted after we harvested them in the Fall. Pulling the dandelion roots after a good rainy day is pretty easy. Even only working for a short time gets a good handful of roots.

I take the roots in the kitchen and scrub them with a toothbrush, chop them up and put them on a paper towel to dry in my pantry window. After a few days they are nice and dry and they go in a jar with some silica packs to keep them free from moisture.

To prepare dandelion root for use, we would do it decoction style. One ounce of dried root to one pint of water, simmer down to reduce by 1/4, strain, cool and use as needed.

"Dandelion root and leaf could protect against oxidative stress linked atherosclerosis and decrease the atherogenic index" (Choi, 2015).

Some people find the root a good coffee substitute. Some people use it to support liver and kidney function and help with lactation. More info about the uses of dandelion can be found at the University of Maryland Medical center site, here. 

Read more about the benefits of Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) and make use of that harvest as you prepare your garden this year! 

http://www.herballegacy.com/Chhabra_Medicinal.html 

https://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/d/dandel08.html

WebMD uses, side effects and warnings 


references:
Choi, Ung-Kyu et al. “Hypolipidemic and Antioxidant Effects of Dandelion (Taraxacum Officinale) Root and Leaf on Cholesterol-Fed Rabbits.”International Journal of Molecular Sciences 11.1 (2010): 67–78. PMC. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.