Aside from our spring flowers the most bountiful and beautiful stuff was a patch of volunteer burdock (edible) that came up in a load of somewhat rocky compost that we got for free last fall.
Hubby pulled it all the other day before it seeded and put it into his leaf compost pile. He also picked a batch of poke greens and fixed a mess of polk which he made and ate.
He knows I don’t like it, so he never even offered me a taste. LOL I had made up my mind that I would surprise him and take a taste, but he wound up surprising me instead. LOL
Seriously this polk grows under the butternut tree, and that is the only thing that ever has been able to grow there. By the end of summer it’s a patch about 48 sq. feet or more and about 5 feet tall give or take a bit.
That’s a whole lot of what most in my family and his consider mighty fine eats.
My ‘mountain’ grandmother would make “creasy greens”, also considered by the family to be fine eating. By the time I came along, she was too old to go out looking for them, but I’ve heard stories from my dad about those creasy greens his mom used to make. Since it was one of the earliest greens, after a winter of eating canned food, creasy greens were a very welcome addition to their diet.
From the link http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/2352/
“So, what ARE creasy greens, really? The botanical name is Barbaraea verna; they are a mustard in the Brassicaceae family. Creasy greens are a small leafy green often known as upland cress, winter cress, and early yellow rocket. They are similar to watercress in taste but do not grow in bogs the way watercress does.”