Welcome back to the Lost In the Farmer’s Market Blog. At the current time we have a long-running series that covers useful, edible and medicinal ‘weeds’ that you can commonly find in the southeastern states of the United States. While our survey area is just within Cumberland County North Carolina it’ is possible you can find some of these forage plants in other places. This series was begun to give folks a detailed look into the resources they might not have known were right there in their lawn. Given that the world situation is not that great and there are already shortages of critical grains and fertilizers forage foods may be the most useful answer on a local level. LITFM will keep this series going as long as we keep finding wild resources to photograph and write about. If you have any questions or comments about our articles please leave a comment either here or on our YouTube Channel (The link is at the end of the article). Thank you for reading, and remember just one thing, you can’t eat lawn grass.
An odd feature of white clover is that it has biologically adapted so that specimens found in urban areas produce very little cyanide as an anti-grazing protection. Fortunately for us it's so little cyanide that unless you consume obnoxious amounts of the plant you will be just fine.
Common Name: White Clover
Other Common Names: Dutch Clover, Ladino Clover.
Botanical Family: Fabaceae (The Legume Family)
Botanical Latin Name: Trifolium repens
Season to Harvest: Mid-late spring and summer.
Habitat: While native to parts of Europe and Asia White clover has naturalized in the USA and can be found in lawns, fields, by roadsides and in pastures.
Parts to Harvest: White Clover is a fully edible plant, the leaves; flowers and seed pods are all edible.
Poisonous Lookalikes: None
Related Edible Species: Dutch Clover (Intermediate height variety), Ladino Clover (larger varieties), Large Hop Clover (Trifolium campestre), Small Hop Clover (Trifolium dubium), Rabbitfoot Clover (Trifolium arvense), Red Clover (Trifolium pretense).
Description: White clover can be a low-growing perennial. It has creeping stems that root where the nodes touch the earth or find consistent moisture. The plant’s stems are smooth but may be sparsely covered with hairs. Leaves have three elliptic to oval shaped leaflets while the flowers are while with a pink tinge.
How to Harvest: Individual flowers, seed pods and leaves can be picked as needed. All items can be used fresh or dried and utilized as an additive to other forage materials. I should be noted that the areal shoots of white clover have documented anticestodal (anti-tapeworm) properties when used as a medicine.
Recipe: White clover blossoms make for a particularly healthy tea that can help your immune system and can act as an anti-inflammatory agent.
Ingredients
1/4 cup of fresh White clover flowers
1 cup of water
3 Teaspoons of Unbleached sugar, or Clover Honey (lol).
1 glass jar with a sealing lid to brew this tea in.
Note: this recipe can be scaled up to go in a pint, quart or half gallon mason jar.
1. Heat water to almost boiling.
2. Put the clover into whatever jar you are using.
3. Add your preferred sweetener
4. Pour the hot water over the sweetener and blossoms.
5. Allow to steep for at least an hour.
6. Refrigerate your leftovers and try to consume within a day or two.
With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog. In addition to being able to process card payments we now take CashApp payments so your payment options for my product have tripled. With that said; if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic fruit, herbs, flowers and perennials, come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.
For those of you wondering what plants are going to be at the market this weekend here is the list.
Garden Stuff: ($3.00)
Basil – Emerald Tower
Chervil – French Parsley
Fennel - Black
Parsley – Italian
Parsley – Curled
Sage – Common
Thyme – Common
Cotton – Erlene’s Green Lint
Hibiscus – Luna Pink Swirl
Milkweed – Orange blooming
Tobacco – Flowering “Starmaker Apple Blossom”
Coming Soon:
Purple Heart
Vietnamese Cilantro
Pineapple Sage
How to stay in Contact with Us!
Our group’s online presence has migrated to Nextdoor.com. All you need to keep up with all our activities is to have a Nextdoor account and to look for the ‘Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville’ group and ask to join! You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join us! Feel free to ask all your garden questions of our knowledgeable membership and post your cool garden pictures.
Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville
Also please take a gander at the Youtube version of this blog:
The Videos: Look Here
>Newest videos (2): Caladiums, Marshmallow
Meetings still going on! We now meet at LeClair’s General Store on the First and Third Thursday of every month. Our next meeting is on July 21st between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. We are in the back room so come on in and join us for a fun garden chat.
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