The Weeder's Digest
Identifying and enjoying edible weeds

‘What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This book is a practical and attractive guide to identifying and using the many edible varieties of weed. It will appeal to gardeners, botanists and horticulturalists, as well as to anyone with an interest in controlling weeds in eco-friendly ways.

Weeds:

• may be beneficial to wildlife
• can be good for the soil – helping the accumulation of trace elements and acting as hosts for mycorrhizal fungi
• are interesting and unusual ingredients in the kitchen, as well as having a range of other uses.

The main part of the book – ‘The Weeder’s Digest’ – includes over 45 species, with details of how to identify them and suggestions for using them for both cooking and making things. Included are the more common weeds, such as nettles, dandelions, chickweed and elder, as well as the less common – such as brookline and hairy bittercress. There is also a section on poisonous plants and those edible plants that should not be eaten to excess.

With The Weeder's Digest on your bookshelf you can put your weeds to use and need not curse their presence any longer. Whether it’s making soup or jam, dyeing fabric or making paper, it’s all here. Includes colour photographs throughout.

See below for a sneak peek at The Weeder's Digest.

Gail Harland

Gail Harland was born in Aldridge in 1963 and grew up in Sutton Coldfield. She gained a BSc in Nutrition and Dietetics from The University of Wales and worked as a dietitian at The Ipswich Hospital from 1986 to 1992. She started writing articles for the horticultural press in 1993. She was awarded The Royal Horticultural Society’s Diploma in Horticulture in 1999.

Gail writes articles on gardening and avian topics, and has had work published by a number of magazines including The Lady, Amateur Gardening, Country Smallholding and Parrots. She writes a regular poultry column for the Cage and Aviary Birds magazine. Her books include Photographing Your Garden; The Tomato Book, written with food writer Sofia Larrinua-Craxton and published in 2009; Grow-it Yourself, a guide to growing vegetables, published in 2010; and Designing and Creating a Cottage Garden, due out in 2012. She supplies photographs to several picture libraries, including Garden World Images.

Gail is an active member of many horticultural societies, including the Royal Horticultural Society, The Alpine Garden Society, The Hardy Plant Society and The Cottage Garden Society. She is the newsletter editor for The Peony Society and Secretary for The Peony Group of The Hardy Plant Society. Gail lives in Suffolk where she has a cottage garden of about one acre, which she shares with her husband, her two sons and a variety of ducks and chickens.

Gail has been eating the weeds from her garden and feeding them to her husband and children for nearly 20 years. She first wrote about edible weeds for Country Smallholding magazine in 1999. Her book The Weeder's Digest is due out in 2012.