Page 2 of this issue features a captioned slide show on how to harvest and prepare Chickweed, and further information on how to identify the plant. Botanical, historical, and medicinal information, recipes, and links can be found on Page 3.

Tools Required: A basket or bag, scissors (optional).
Total field harvesting time: 5 minutes
Total home preparation time: 15 minutes
Yield: leaves, stems, flowers, seed pods.
Flavor: Mild and sweet. Chopped up, smells like spinach or raw corn.
Harvesting Tips: Eat the whole plant together, stems and all, raw or cooked. In general, harvest before it flowers for tenderest greens. Snip off the stems a few inches above ground, and the patch will keep producing. Snip off the blooms to encourage more growth. Towards the end of the season (when daytime temperatures reach around 70°), let it bloom to ensure next year's crop.
Storage: freezes well, dries well, keeps in refrigerator for several days. I keep bags full in the freezer and grab a handful to throw into just about every dish. Great substitute for parsley.
Serving Suggestions : raw in salads or alone; great pizza topping, cook down as you would spinich, use in soups, stews, omelets, dips, meat pies, fried rice. Very versatile, limited only by your imagination. Also makes a sweet tea and can be drunk anytime, hot or cold. Add a little honey for an even more pleasant beverage.
One teaspoon dried herb = 4 teaspoons fresh or frozen.
Notes: Lateral growth causes chickweed to intertwine with other weeds and fallen leaves. Careful cleaning and culling is necessary after harvest to ensure no other plants are included. You can look for a clean patch, but I usually identify a good patch early on and rake the area clean, then harvest upward facing stems with scissors so I don't disturb the roots or the underbrush. This minimizes cleaning time significantly.
Nutritional properties: High in Vitamins A, C, some B's, phosphorus, potassium and zinc. A natural emulsifier (or "fat dissolver") which can lower cholesterol levels.
Medicinal properties: One of the most well known and highly prized medicinal weeds, especially as an anti-itch cream. Go to Page 3 to learn more.

BELOW: Pictorial comparison of the growth habits of
Common Chickweed and Mouse-earred Chickweed

Common Chickweed
Comparative shot shows Stellaria's more sprawling growth habits and spindly appearance.
This can be harvested even after it is flowering.

Mouse-Ear Chickweed
This is not a "real" chickweed, (Cerastium, not Stellaria) but is often confused with it, and is also edible, in fact, choice, It grows more upright and is less spindly, thus is easier to harvest, and is the plant I'm harvesting in the slide show, long before it gets this big. The flowers appear a bit thicker and larger than on Common Chickweed (above) and this plant is minutely hairy which gives it a "denser", thicker look. Some say it has a more mild flavor. This should be harvested before it flowers if it is to be eaten raw.

Identification: Chickweed is easy to identify, and has no look-alikes. Common Chickweed is low growing, with many prostrate stems, and upright side-shoots usually 4" to 8" tall. Often found under other shrubs. Paired leaves are a bright pale green, tear-shaped, and attached to the stems on opposite sides by a slender stalk. Stems are lighter in color and very easily broken. Where stems touch the ground, new roots are formed. This gives the Common Chickweed a spreading growth habit that often tangles it with other weeds. Star Chickweed has larger leaves, mostly stalkless (not pictured in this letter because we don't have it around here). Mouse-ear Chickweed has stalkless leaves, a more upright bushy growth, and is more sturdy. Leaves and stems are minutely hairy, which causes some foragers to recommend that the older plants be cooked before eating.

Flowers: All 3 chickweeds have small, white, star-shaped flowers at the upper tip of each branch, 5-petaled but with each petal so deeply divided that it appears to be two. This gives the flower a '10-pointed starlike' appearance. Common Chickweed has the most deeply cleft petals, Star Chickweed petals are cleft about 1/2, and Mouse-ear Chickweed petals are cleft about 1/3. Links on Page 3 contain lots of closeup photos of the flowers.