I have long been interested in growing dandelions for food and medicine. I have foraged dandelions, including from my own yard, in years past and love them.

Although I have purchased seeds for cultivated garden varieties with pink flowers or red-veined leaves, I first wanted to see what our typical naturalized dandelions would do in the garden.

Dandelions can survive, reproduce, and even thrive is soils too poor or compacted to allow many other plants survive. But they sure won't say "No" to loose rich soil with plenty of water as my thriving plants attest. To be fair, I've only had experience for two growing seasons with these.

A bushy cluster of dandelion (I say cluster because there is more than one rosette in each plant, so it seems they are coming up from multiple root bases):

These came up from roots I transplanted out of a pot also containing a rose bush. When it was time to up-pot the rose I pulled out all the volunteer dandelions (I thought!) and planted a few roots in a raised bed and chopped and dried the rest for tea.

In spring I harvested enough flowers from my two clusters of dandelion plants to enjoy in fritters a couple of times.

I originally planned to harvest flowers for medicine as well but every time I thought of picking them there would be so many cute sweat bees, striped hover flies, and little bumblebees I ended up leaving them for the pollinators instead.

I have harvested leaves all summer by picking a few at a time. These I use in stir-fry or soup and am also drying for use as tea or in soup later.

Here is the same plant cluster as above after I picked about 1/3 of the healthy leaves:

In another month or so I will dig these guys up and dry the leaves, clean and dry most of the roots, and put a few roots back in the ground.

I've saved seed from these as well and will plant in late fall and early spring and see how they do.

#gardening #homesteading #permaculture #herbs #dandelions