Transplanting Chickweed

My youngest son has been struggling lately with sleeping all the time, and I believe part of his problem is that he is not getting enough of the proper nutrition he needs.

Since we prefer to get our nutrition from the food we eat, as opposed to popping pills, my husband referred us to the garden for some fresh greens.

Chickweed

We all love this edible weed, commonly known as chickweed, and it’s pretty easy to identify. So, my husband started cultivating it to grow in our gardens.

This bout with excessive sleep, coupled with our need for homegrown greens in the winter, prompted my husband to start our family on a new project.

Moving Our Weeds Indoors

This week we all spent about 30 minutes together as a family moving some of our weeds indoors.

It was a fairly easy task. I’ll let my kids tell you about it… 

From the Desk of my Daughter:

Today (1/25/17) we worked out in the garden.

We took old gardening trays and dumped the dirt into a big bucket. We ran our hands through the soil and broke up all the clumps and got all the sticks and things we didn’t want in there out.

After we had the dirt all broken up, we put it back into the trays. The dirt had been dry and clumpy before and it would’ve been hard to try to plant anything in it let alone have anything grow.

After taking care of the dirt, Dad brought us over a clump of “weeds” for us to sort out.

The weeds were chickweed, winter cress and another kind of chickweed called mouse-ear chickweed along with a few other random weeds.

After we separated the chickweed from the other plants, we replanted the chickweed into the trays we had previously prepared.

Once all the chickweed was transferred to the trays, we brought the trays into the back room of our house and put them on the shelves in front of the southwest facing windows.

To finish it off we watered our newly planted chickweed. Once we finished watering the plants, we had completed our outdoor task for the day.

I generally enjoy working in the garden and this task wasn’t excruciatingly laborious so I’d say I enjoyed it more than not.

Besides transferring the chickweed, I helped take pictures of what we were doing so we could keep a record of the progress we were (and constantly are) making. I also helped my brothers identify which plant was which.

I like to consider myself the “Forager’s Apprentice” because Dad is always teaching me how to identify different wild plants. I’ve always been intrigued by it, and I enjoy learning how to identify all the different kinds of vegetation.

From the Desk of my oldest Son:

We picked chickweed yesterday because my dad said so. He wants to grow it inside because he says we all like it.

He showed us three plants that kinda/sorta looked like it.

We each filled up a planter that was filled up with dirt, that we put in them, after we broke up the clumps and got the roots/weeds out. It was okay.

I liked petting the chicks more, but everyone else kicked them out.

FROM THE DESK OF my husband ty:

I am shooting to have 14 planters going at all times.  We can harvest 2 per day on a continual basis.  

Here are some nutrition facts concerning Chickweed (stellaria media):

Nutrients
Beta-carotene (Vitamin A pre-cursor)
B vitamins (B1/Thiamin, B2/Riboflavin, B3/Niacin)
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
Bio-flavonoids (including glycoside rutin)
Coumarins/coumarines
GLA/Gamma-linoleic Acid (omega-6 essential fatty acid)
Minerals: calcium, copper, magnesium, potassium, iron, manganese, silicon, zinc.