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Being an avid gardener, you can learn a lot of surprising facts about weeds. If your parents and grandparents are avid gardeners as well then you will learn even more. First, let’s define a weed because weeds are everything that isn’t pretty and that we don’t have a use for. Remember when you were child and was bringing pretty flowers to mom, only to be told that they are really weeds?

A weed is simply something growing where it isn’t wanted. By that definition a tomato plant can be a weed. On the other hand, if people were to educate themselves on the positives of some of these so called weeds, they might actually want them around. They would just like them to grow in a place intended just for them.

What many of us assume to be weeds in present day were often used by Native Americans and early settlers to America. Some of those uses included food for both people and animals, medicines, and dyes. Some of what we consider to be weeds are plants that are not native to our surrounding area or perhaps to our country. Many different plants were brought over to America because the immigrants had a use for them in the native land.

Some unlikely and some not so unlikely plants were used in past times for dyes. Perhaps the most commonly thought of for this purpose would be the Dandelion. Most obviously the yellow flowering portion of this plant and the roots as well can be used to produce a reddish color (we have all marked on our siblings faces with a Dandelion as kids). On the unlikely side, Poison Sumac was used for its red producing berries as well as pokeweed berries. Cattails were often used for browns as well as using the white fluff from the seeds to stuff toys and blankets.

Many so called weeds have medicinal properties. Dandelions, nettles and chickweeds are a few that are commonly used for urinary tract health. They are also used as healthier alternatives to diuretics because they won’t deplete your body of important minerals. There are many great websites and books at local libraries that can tell you which weeds are good to use as natural medicines.

Perhaps you have heard of Grandma having an afternoon cup of Dandelion Tea? Check by the leafy greens in your local supermarket. That’s right, they actually sell Dandelion greens. Chickweed tastes like spinach when cooked and is named as such because chickens love to eat it. What about those pesky burdocks? When you boil the root of the burdock it tastes similar to artichoke hearts, so much so that you can interchange it in any recipe. It has also been said that Burdock was the inspiration for the invention of Velcro.

Many weed seeds remain viable for many growing seasons. Which means they will likely be coming back to haunt you time and time again. The good thing is that as growers, we can study weeds and where they grow to tell what type of soil they are growing in. They can speak volumes about the abundant nutrients or the lack of them. It can also tell you if the soil is moist or dry, clay or sand and so on. An example would be that Bindweed grows in crusty surface soil with light sand. Another example would be that Plantains grow in extremely wet soil. Again, this information is easy to find online or at the local library.

One last piece of useless trivia to leave you with: Supporters of Presidential candidate, James Polk, wore the stems and leaves from the Pokeweed on their clothing to show their support for him. Certainly that has to be a surprising fact about weeds!

Jo is a writer for Japanese Knotweed Solutions, (http://www.jksl.com), experts in Japanese Knotweed elimination. If you are a devoted gardener, a home builder or a nature lover, sooner or later you will come upon this horrible weed. Japanese Knotweed is one of the most invasive species of weed, causing huge amounts of damage each year to homes, concrete structures, and rivers and streams.