By Louise Køster, Rabarbergaarden

It is everywhere. Especially right where you, above all, don’t want it to be. It grows all the time from early spring and far into August. You pull and toil multiple times during the week to keep it down.

It’s weeds I’m talking about. Everything from melde and scentless camomile to the awful couch grass. If you are organic certified and believe that herbicides don’t belong in the garden, then elbow grease is all you can use to get rid of weeds.

You can choose to curse and swear that the weed is there, but I can guarantee you that it won’t disappear from that. You can take another approach and ask yourself if the weed can be used for anything.

And it can be used. Most of it can be eaten and, on this farm, we arenlucky that the weeds we don’t want to eat ourselves, the animals will eat 

Here in the house and in our restaurant on the farm we are especially fond of melder, also called goosefoot. It has small and soft oval leaves, and when the plant is small it has a nice spicy taste which goes well with a salad or as topping on a warm dish.

Chickweeds also sprout in the garden and between the paving stones in the farmyard. They are easy to pull out and have a nice crispness and slight salad taste. They grow a small white flower which only makes them more lovely as a garnish on a piece of fried fish for example.

Another thing you might get irritated about is when the herbs bloom so early that you need to cut them down and wait for them to bloom again.

But we are also going to change this to the positive and ask: what can you use the flower for?

Firstly, most of them have a nice taste of the herb they descent from and then they can spice up a dull stew from the day before.

Here on the farm, we use thyme flowers, seed heads from cow parsley, sage, oregano flowers and seeds from rhubarb as a garnish, but also as a flavouring for syrup or seasoned salt.

Seasoned salt is so easy to make, and it peps up your steak or fish on the grill.