Edible Weeds on Farms: Northeast Farmer's Guide to Self-Growing Vegetables

A resource guide for wild edible plants on cultivated soils. Edible weeds are nourishing, resilient, powerful, culturally rich, ecologically essential, economically useful, and much maligned. Weeds can compete with cultivated vegetables in some spaces, but to consider them a nuisance is to disregard the ecological, social, and economic benefits they contribute to a farm or garden. To the farmer, edible weeds provide supplemental income, diversify production, abate biological risks, offset labor costs and fossil fuel input, and open new markets. To everyone else, edible weeds offer novel flavors and phytonutrients that may be inaccessible from cultivated crops. Ecologically, weeds can increase biodiversity, heal soil, protect water, and guard sown crops. Socially, they encourage the sharing of cross-cultural food stories, strengthen farm communities, address food insecurity, and raise opportunities for environmentally harmonious land stewardship.