Last winter, my forest gardening map put dandelions amid the other dynamic accumulators around the bases of my fruit trees.  But I just couldn't make myself put the dandelions in the ground.  Here I was hacking at the long taproots in my vegetable garden beds, and I wanted to plant some dandelions elsewhere in the garden?  Was I nuts?

But a bit of research suggests that dandelions have a lot going for them.  They are dynamic accumulators of sodium, silica, magnesium, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, iron, and copper, which means they could bring trace minerals to the surface where the tree roots can access them.  Dandelions are also an early, prolific bloomer that feeds honeybees both pollen and nectar in the spring before many other flowers are out.  Plus, dandelions are perennials that self sow readily, so they can fill gaps in the forest garden that might otherwise come up in less helpful weeds.

I didn't get pushed over the edge, though, until our larder started getting pretty bare and I decided to find some spring greens to saute for lunch.  I'd been eying the dandelion greens since early March, remembering that they were an edible but suspecting that they were also quite bitter.  When a walk around the yard turned up only a handful of creasies and Egyptian onion tops, I decided to round out my pot with young dandelion leaves, and the result was scrumptious!  Perennial greens that are ready to eat in early March with no care on my part?  I think dandelions have finally won a place in the forest garden.  Now I just have to decide if I'm going for the wild version or am actually going to pay money for cultivated dandelion seeds.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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