That's the best way to do it. In my case, the previous owners retired and moved away. The new owners had nothing to do with the hedge row and have no interest in maintaining it. They are good people, and good neighbors, but I guess I cannot blame them for the previous owner's decision to put in those bushes that need constant maintenance.
I havnt found [Purslane] since, unless you count the cracks in the grocery store parkinglot... but I dont want to eat that! I miss it. Its not technically native here, but its all over in the cities.... I just not where I feel safe eating from.
I was going to say just take a snip of the parking lot Purslane and regrow it at home. But I would have been partially wrong. You are right to be cautious...
Purslane Safety Considerations
Best Practice
Bottom Line
How It Works Best Practice Bottom Line Well, it sounds like if you want to start growing Purslane again, there is a way to do it safely even if you have to start with a cutting from a parking lot plant. It sounds like a healthy plant to eat and free for foraging. I'm planning on looking for some this spring and transplanting them into pots on our deck.Hah! Yay! So my suspicion that it would clean itself after a season was correct! YAY! Thank you, I am glad to have the confirmation.
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Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is edible and nutritious, but where you harvest it matters a lot.
- Parking lot plants: Purslane growing in pavement cracks or parking lots can absorb oil, heavy metals, road salt, and other contaminants from runoff. Even if the plant looks healthy, it may not be safe to eat.
- Snipping a stem: Taking a stem from a contaminated environment doesn’t make the plant itself safer. The pollutants are taken up through the roots and distributed throughout the plant tissue.
- Safer propagation: If you want to grow clean purslane, you can snip a stem from a wild plant and root it in clean soil at home. Purslane propagates easily from cuttings. Once it’s growing in uncontaminated soil, new growth will be safe to eat.
- Don’t eat purslane directly from parking lots or roadsides.
- Do take cuttings and replant them in garden soil, raised beds, or pots.
- Within a few weeks, the plant will establish roots and produce fresh, safe leaves.
Pulling purslane from a parking lot and eating it isn’t safe because of contamination. But snipping a stem and re‑rooting it in clean soil is a great way to propagate the plant and ensure the new growth is safe to eat.
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The key point is this: once you move a cutting into clean soil, any new growth will be safe.
- Contamination is systemic: A purslane plant growing in a parking lot may have absorbed pollutants (oil, heavy metals, salt) into its tissues.
- Cuttings carry history: If you eat the original stem or leaves from that cutting, you’d still be ingesting whatever contaminants were in the parent plant.
- New growth is clean: Once the cutting is rooted in uncontaminated soil, the plant produces fresh stems and leaves using nutrients from the new environment. Those new parts are safe to eat, because they’re not connected to the polluted substrate anymore.
- You can take a cutting from a parking lot purslane, but only use it to propagate.
- Discard the original stem and leaves after it establishes roots.
- Harvest and eat only the new growth that develops in your clean soil or container.
A cutting from a parking lot plant will grow into safe purslane in a clean container — but don’t eat the original stem or leaves. Wait for fresh growth, and that will be safe to harvest.
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I agree with you, but I would also add that it's not obvious to me. The little I have learned about foraging seems to be all those "weeds" that I have been rooting out for years. It's hard to overcome the notion that a "weed" is something that is not only edible but might have health benefits and taste good as well.I could see that, sorry didn't mean to offend! I was fortunate in that my mom had a rudimentary knowledge of foraging and taught me things like Dandilion and plantains as a child. This really helped leave the door open I think.
We dont buy rotisserie chickens, too many preservatives for pur tummies to handle, but we do like to get those big flats of chicken thighs or wings that go on sale! I toss the whole thing into a large crockpot with salt water (maybe onion or mushroom if im feeling fancy) and cook it over night. In the morning i strain it, and debone. The meat and broth get saved, the skin/collagen and bones go back in for another round withh a bit of vinegar for bone broth. After the second night the bones get dried and powdered for bonemeal (instant breakdown plus P for garden) and the skin/other goes to the dog. A flat of wings can make 4 meals of meat for our 7 person family! The bone broth is especially treasured.I took a Senior Citizens cooking class a few years ago when it was offered in our community. Our cooking instructor suggested that we save all our vegetable juices from canned veggies in a container in the freezer and then use those juices for making soup instead of using plain water. That's what we do now. All our juices from canned corn, peas, and beans goes into a plastic container until we make a chicken soup. It does add more flavor to our homemade chicken soup.
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For the two of us, we get a number of meals just from the chicken meat. After a while, we get down to little meat remaining on the bones. At that time, we toss the carcass into a bread bag and store it in the freezer until she makes chicken soup out of it. Honestly, I like her chicken soup better than the chicken meals. In any case, we get another ~3 meals out of the chicken soup.
Dear Wife will also pick up take out fried chicken, but there the leftovers get tossed directly into the chicken bucket and tossed into the chicken run composting system. It can take forever for chicken bones to compost, but I have a nice compost sifter setup which rejects the sticks and bones which I can just toss back into the compost pile.
This is certainly true. I've made it a habit to find at least one new foragable plant each year in my area and to eat a little bit of each plant every year just to maintain the knowledge. I have several on my small property including white pine, mock strawberry, dandelion, daylily, redbud.
I also make a point to learn a few more each year, and was surprised when i learned the daylillies all over our new yard are edible and nutritiouse! Nice tea, but we loved them in salads. The biggest surprise of the year last year was "Perilla" also known as "beefsteak plant" or "rattlesnake weed". Its native to Asia, where its a common vegetable, herb, and Medicine, but it has naturalized all over the US. Its used for everything allergy, sinus or stomach related, as well as making you feel warmer! They even use it in their sushi to help with shellfish allergies. It is a type of mint, and has a dusky sort of mint/basil taste. I have become addicted to it as a tea!
