It may have been Canada Day today, but this afternoon at the barn, I harvested a bag of Lamb's Quarters, a bag of mallow, and another bag of dandelion. On our walk over to the rec centre at noon today, we went through the community garden area, and the Burdock and broadleaf plantain are huge!!! I gotta do some processing tomorrow to free up some trays, and then get over there to do a major wild harvest on the ground around the private raised garden beds.

Watching the sumac trees too for when the red cones appear. Hoping to make more sumac juice (tastes like lemonade).

The burdock leaves can be used as food wraps for cooking instead of tinfoil or parchment paper. I still put a tray under them, but they are a natural way to do this type of cooking. Burdock root is highly medicinal! It's a pain to dig out of the ground, but really helpful. The leaves contain the same compounds, just milder. The second year stalks can be stripped and then cut up to make a wild version of artichoke dip. I continually forget to try my hand at that and a few times, brought home the stalks, but they dried before I could get to them. Don't try eating the leaves or stalk alone, as the flavour is quite sharp by itself. Burdock flowers are also medicinal and can be put in medicinal teas. When the flower is dry, the spines are more furry than sharp, more like soft burrs than sharp spikes.

If you need burdock but don't have it growing nearby, see if you have arrowleaf balsamroot growing nearby, it has pretty much the exact same nutritional/medicinal profile, but the leaves are narrower and not as good at being used as food wraps unless you are wrapping something narrow. We accidentally used arrowleaf balsamroot in our first herbalist-suggested double-oil infusion to treat my daughter's horse's rain rot. But it still worked! And the root is just as hard to dig up!