Yarrow: Not a weed, but edible bee pasture
Created: 07/07/2022, 11:30 am
By: Ines Alms
Yarrow can spread like a weed in the garden, but it is a tasty addition to the menu for humans and insects.
Munich - Yarrow can be found in two variants in the garden: on the one hand as a white-pink flowering wild form and medicinal plant, on the other hand as a cultivated form in numerous flower colors.
Either way, the plant attracts numerous bees and is therefore not a weed.
In addition, the plant repels snails and it is even edible.
Yarrow: Not a weed, but edible bee pasture
The common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is popular with bees and as a medicinal plant.
(Iconic image) © blickwinkel/Imago
The pretty wild form of the perennial is the common yarrow (Achillea millefolium), which attracts many beneficial insects such as bees and butterflies with its spicy fragrance and high pollen and nectar content until September.
If you make a manure or a decoction from the yarrow, it should work against snails.
And if you leave 20 grams of dried blossoms in one liter of water for 24 hours and spray this diluted cold water extract onto plants, you get a preventive home remedy for fungal diseases and sucking pests.
If you still find them to be weeds in your garden because they take the lawn by storm, you can fight them by removing them with a weed puller or mowing the grass weekly, but not less than four centimeters.
Yarrow is a fine wild herb in salads or in herbal salt
However, it is better to simply eat the slightly bitter yarrow.
However, only the younger shoots and flowers are suitable for this, because older leaves are woody or fibrous.
This is how the plant can be used in the kitchen:
Fresh blossoms and tender sprouts in the salad
Dried flowers in a herbal salt
Finely chopped in butter or cream cheese as a spread
As yarrow pesto
As yarrow syrup from the flowers
Dried or fresh as yarrow tea (as a medicinal plant, especially for menstrual cramps or abdominal pain)
The flowers instead of elderflower in a yarrow lemonade
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Caution is advised if you have an allergy to daisy family, as eating the plant can trigger yarrow dermatitis.
Also, if you're not entirely sure that the plant in your garden is common yarrow, it's a good idea to make sure it's not a poisonous double like spotted hemlock that's growing there.