An invasive weed *and* a salad green
Mar. 28th, 2003 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikI love mache. It is the nature of mache to grow -- through the winter, so I've heard, even in much worse climates than ours. It forms little rosettes of leaves up to about six inches in diameter. They area wonderfully mild and tender.
The dark side of mache is that if you let it go to see, you will find yourself crawling in mache soon afterwards, and possibly for years to come. It can be hoe'd under, and probably enriches the soil nicely... but it seems like it keeps coming and coming.
But if you harvest it regularly, this is such a problem. Right now I have mache volunteering throughout my overwintering greens bed, and I head down every few days and weed myself a salad. I suspect it is pilfering much available nitrogen... but my chard and kale seem to be happy enough anyway, so I'm not complaining. I have to remind myself only to pick the full grown plants, and to come back and get the little ones when they're bigger.
(By the way, I originally planted mache three years ago... maybe four. Haven't replanted since. There was one year in there when it was very badly let go to seed...)
The dark side of mache is that if you let it go to see, you will find yourself crawling in mache soon afterwards, and possibly for years to come. It can be hoe'd under, and probably enriches the soil nicely... but it seems like it keeps coming and coming.
But if you harvest it regularly, this is such a problem. Right now I have mache volunteering throughout my overwintering greens bed, and I head down every few days and weed myself a salad. I suspect it is pilfering much available nitrogen... but my chard and kale seem to be happy enough anyway, so I'm not complaining. I have to remind myself only to pick the full grown plants, and to come back and get the little ones when they're bigger.
(By the way, I originally planted mache three years ago... maybe four. Haven't replanted since. There was one year in there when it was very badly let go to seed...)
