For many people, a weed is a weed and it’s unwanted and needs to die. Now that I have my own yard and gardens (and a much more expansive understanding of the ecosystem), I have a much more complicated relationship with weeds. Like many other avid gardeners, I feel a weed is just a plant out of place. I don’t even like the word “weed” - I think it’s kind of speciesist.

But without going too deep into the eco-philosophy, I am faced with “out-of-place plants” every growing season. For example, the ubiquitous dandelion. We pick our dandelions with a Weed Hound (if you don’t have one, and you have dandelions you want to get rid of, I highly recommend one). Our daughters have said it was unfair in the past when we’ve passed yards filled with dandelions. They love making crowns and necklaces from the bright, golden blooms - and better yet, making wishes before blowing on the seed heads. Still, dandelions aren't very comfortable to walk on with bare feet or roll around in, so we opt for grass instead of a yard full of dandelions. It really has to be one or the other.

In our gardens, there’s also a battle with tree propagation - the pods and helicopters drop by the pound and any open soil becomes a breeding ground. These are ripped from the ground as soon as they sprout. I know there’s a big environmental push to plant more trees and I completely understand how important trees are and I love trees. I just really have no space to spare for any more trees in my small, urban patch of Earth.

But one of the most difficult “weeds” I have to deal with is clover, which grows rampant in our yard, choking out our favorite perennials. I used to yank it all. Then, one glorious summer day, my oldest daughter, who was four then, came up to me chewing, with a fistful of clover in her hand. Her face was literally glowing with enjoyment. “Mmmmmm,” she moaned, “sweet, juicy clover.”

My daughter has been a clover-hunter ever since. There’s a certain variety with a purple-hued leaf that’s her favorite.

Our weeds have become her salad bar. Over time, I’ve grown to appreciate the look of clover. Maybe my daughter’s bliss combined with the legend of the four-leaf clover and the childhood dream of finding one has converged to create a new affinity for the plant. It is quite lovely. Really, is this a weed?


The simple, rounded foliage creates a nice balance to the rocks. They're really not drastically different from the creeping thyme I've been planting as a ground cover. A similar aesthetic.

Anyway, my daughter's almost nine now and she’s still a clover aficionado. She has also taught her younger sister to forage for clover and the sweet taste of success. And, while I used to think it a bit odd, I’ve increasingly seen clover on entrees at gourmet restaurants. In fact, my husband just took me out for dinner the other night for my birthday and I found it on top of my marvelous goat cheese ravioli with pine nuts and fava beans. Mmmmmm. It was sweet, juicy clover, with a delicate freshness that counterbalanced the other flavors magically.

A gentle reminder: Kids will put almost anything in their mouths. Start teaching them young, very young, that they should ask you before sampling any plant, "weed" or otherwise.

So, is clover a weed? Not to our family.

But I’m not sure about this:


Seriously, anyone know what this is?

Find more from Janelle at Healthy Child Healthy World, WebMD, MomsRising and on Twitter.

Back in the days before we had a kid and a bunch of blogs and had time on our hands, we spent a couple of years with a home garden big enough to sell produce at our local farmer's market. We specialized in hot peppers - habaneros, jalapenos, hot banana, cayenne, chiltepin, the list goes on - and cherry tomatoes, specifically Sweet 100s, which are like the candy of home fruit and vegetable gardening, and Yellow Peard, which have a lot of sweetness but also a delicious citrus edge. We also sold okra, but there wasn't much of a market for naturally-grown okra at that time.

At full tilt we were showing up with 30-40 pounds of cherry tomatoes in a 10-gallon storage container and selling them by the pint for $3 a pop. The farmer's market was struggling and we never sold more than 20 pounds or so, but between that and the other produce we would sometimes walk away with $100 or $150 for four hours of our time that were very rewarding. When you factor in all of the gardening time and expenses, of course, it never made financial sense.

Then came a child, and the immediate reduction and slow ramping back up of our gardening ambitions. At four, Z is actually a big help and a lot of fun to have in the garden, and takes pleasure in every part of gardening, except weeding (did you know some goatweed has thorns?). A few weeks ago, we visited the farmer's market to buy vegetables after a bit of an absence, and were surprised to see how much it had grown. The market was thriving, with twenty or thirty sellers and everything from fruit and vegetables to locally-roasted coffee, soaps, and handicrafts. The parking lot the market is held in was crowded with shoppers, too. As we recalled the pleasure we got from selling at the market during its slower days, and the fact that we had suddenly moved back into having more cherry tomatoes than we could eat or even had time to process and save, we realized that coming back to the farmer's market once or twice would be a lot of fun to do with Z.

So last weekend we got up early, made some green smoothies for breakfast, and packed ten pints of cherry tomatoes and four or five pints of green beans, grabbing her play table and chair on the way out the door. And for a $10 day selling fee, we helped Z set up shop.




She had a lot of fun and did a great job. It took almost two hours to sell all the stuff but between the conversation, the people-watching and the occasional forays to explore the rest of the market, she declined all offers to leave early, even as the sun broke out over the edge of the building we were next to and things started getting hot. We helped her count money and she made change. She drew pictures with markers to give each paying customer. She forced samples on people who had stopped idly to chat, and once they tasted, they bought. When you're selling garden-fresh cherry tomatoes, sampling is key, because they are 100x better than store-bought!

Z was determined to stay until we sold everything, which we almost did, except for a pint of green beans and half a pint of cherry toms left over from sampling, for a profit of $35 less our $10 fee.

As we were getting ready to leave Z discovered that the woman a couple stalls down from us was selling handmade dolls. They were very nice, but I initially rejected Z's pleas to let her spend her portion of our earnings on the doll. It was filled with organic millet, really nicely made, and priced at $10. My thought was that this would work against our goal of teaching her the value of the money she had earned. Plus, I am a cheapskate.

In the end, though, I realized that what she had really learned that day was the value of her work - that she could exchange her labor and something she had produced for something that was valuable to her. That concept in itself is a big deal for a kid to realize. She gets the concept of money, but allowing her to spend her portion of the money (we agreed to split it with her 50/50 - and we got a good bargain, as she was the key to all our sales) was far more instructive in cementing in her mind just what she had accomplished.

Plus, the woman refused to take the stated $10 price of the doll, and gave her $4.25 back (all the change she had). In turn we gave her the leftover half pint of cherry tomatoes and a pint of green beans. My spendthrift heart soared.


And Z was proud to have worked to earn the money for a new, beloved baby.


By the way, that guy at the table next to Z's in the top picture? A honey man. And we're getting bees!

We've been getting a lot of tomatoes in the last couple of weeks, but the real explosion has been in the cherry varieties - a couple dozen plants have offered up maybe 30-40 pounds of tomatoes so far.


It takes several pints of cherry tomatoes to make a quart of dried ones, but they taste delicious.


We use a Nesco Gardenmaster food dehydrator, currently on sale for almost 30% off (about $100 instead of $150) on Amazon. We've used it on and off for years and haven't had any trouble with it. The dehydrator features rigid tray sections topped with flexible polypropylene discs (mesh or solid, depending on what you're drying) that are easy to wash and BPA-free.


The drying process took around 24 hours at 135 degrees, but that was only background noise and occasional tasty checks of the tomatoes' progress. The real time-consuming tasks were washing and splitting the tomatoes and flipping them all on their trays halfway through; despite several clever ideas, there proved to be no quicker way to do this than to gently pick them up one by one and flip them over.

The dried tomatoes are not perfectly "preserved" in that they keep best and longest in the freezer, not on the pantry shelf. You can also preserve these dried tomatoes in olive oil, although it's recommended that you eat any stored that way within a few weeks, sort of a tomato equivalent to refrigerator pickles. I plan to do this with a small subset of these dried cherry tomatoes because I'm sure they will be delicious tossed in a pasta salad or topping a garden salad with spinach and goat cheese.

Last night we processed about 10 pounds of gorgeous whole, "full-sized" tomatoes - deep yellow ones (I'm blanking on the variety name) and lots and lots of Romas. Getting the skins off was easier than I anticipated; a pot of boiling water, a couple-minute dunk, and then dropping them in an ice-water bath to cool, and my four-year-old daughter Z and I peeled the skins off easily. I chopped off the stem end and in some cases pulled out a tougher central pillar while we both peeled them; then all it took for the sauce was simmering and seasoning. It wasn't enough to can, and we're a little wary of our skills at canning low-acid foods anyway. And of course there's the whole BPA thing. We'll freeze the gallon or so of tomato sauce to save it until winter.

Are you harvesting a bumper crop of anything, or planning on one? If so, what are you doing with it? We'll share a few other ways we're making use of our tomatoes in upcoming posts!