Dandelion flowers make a delicious wine and the vitamin rich, slightly bitter young leaves are used in cooking and the roots are used to make herbal ‘coffee’. Dandelion is a perennial with a thick, fleshy, deep taproot and a rosette of coarsely toothed leaves. From the leaves emerge many unbranched flower stalks, each terminating in a double golden yellow flower. The flowers are followed by spherical balls of seed which are dispersed by the wind.
Dandelion will thrive if you dig the soil deeply and enrich it with rotted compost. It requires a sunny situation and prefers a neutral to slightly alkaline soil. Sow the seed directly into the soil in spring. The plants die down in winter. Cut spent flowers to prevent re-seeding.
Blanch the leaves for culinary purposes by covering them from the light for 2 to 3 weeks before harvesting in late spring, and before flowering occurs. Lift the roots at the end of the second season. Both leaves and roots can be dried for herbal use.
The variety ‘thick leaved’ has leaves that can be used fresh in salads or cooked like spinach. Make a fizzy soft drink from fermented dandelion root.
Dandelion acts as a diuretic!
information sourced from The Complete Book of Herbs
Very interesting thanks Tandy:) *hugs*
thanks for the visit here Michelle 🙂
This is a very informative post! I only knew dandelion salad (yum!!) and herbal tea (a little too bitter to be yum, I think) but had no idea wine could be made with the flowers!
I am going to look out for dandelion wine next time we are in the UK 🙂
I add dandelion leaves to our salads in the spring too.. we call it weed salad.. it is good stuff! c
Weed salad with a bit of flowers sounds great to me 🙂
Woah, some people plant dandelions on purpose? Haha, they’re such a nuisance here, but I still love throwing spring dandelion greens into salads!
they are a pain if they spread wildly – so I shall rather forage than plant 🙂
We sure have enough in our yard to do this!
they look so pretty growing, don’t they?
My paretns always have a little patch growing specially int heir garden to add to salads – and very good it is too!
We used to have it growing wild when we were growing up – I will have to plant some here 🙂
Interesting!
yesterday I found three growing outside on the lawn!