At a recent garden meeting, we talked about helping gardeners learn about weeds in the garden. Which can you eat? Which should you immediately pull? Where should you put them?  These are all such great questions that we decided to make a series, both physically at the garden and on the website. 

A weed is an opinion. 

The first thing to understand is the term “weed” is an opinion depending on what you are looking to gain (or not) from your planting area.  “Weeds” are typically fast-growing plants which take nutrient away from the plants you are purposely growing.  With knowledge, some weeds can be helpful by producing an extra, no-work food source and ground cover (to prevent drying of the soil); alternatively, they can choke the life out of your desired plants. 

As with your 2-hour per month commitment to the garden, you should be finding yourself weeding a lot in pathways and around the perimeter of the garden. If you know what you’re looking for, it will not only make it easier, it may be a gift! 


Next in our series are some fuzzy friends: Lamb’s Ear & Lamb’s Quarter   

We chose to showcase these two plants together because they’re both kind of fuzzy, and they both say “Lamb” and well, sometimes people interchange the names on them., but as you’ll soon see, they don’t really look anything alike.

Let’s look at the two side by each: 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wendellsmith/
Lamb’s Quarter

Lamb’s quarters has some distinctive traits that help with identification. It has alternate, triangle- to diamond-shaped leaves that are coarsely toothed or shallowly lobed. Many people liken the shape to the webbed foot of a goose. The leaves bear a whitish-gray powdery coating, which is especially evident on the emerging young leaves.

The coating is a natural part of the leaf, made of fine crystal-like concentrations of wax, which the plant presumably produces as a waterproof coating. This is fine to eat—there’s no need to attempt removal. Hold a leaf under water and the waxy coating causes the water to bead up in a beautiful iridescent fashion. This coating may sometimes possess a coppery-fuchsia sheen and is sold as a cultivar called “magenta spreen” in some garden catalogues.

Lamb’s quarters grows to 3-5 feet (1–1.5 m) and is a branching annual with a grooved stem which is often tinged with red, especially at the node, or leaf joint. The seeds are shiny and black and about a third the size of a lone quinoa seed. (source)

Photo (c)2006 Derek Ramsey (Ram-Man)
Lamb’s Ear

Lamb’s Ear is a spreading perennial that forms a low, uniform mat of blue-green leaves with white wooly hairs under ideal conditions. The leaves are 2 to 6 inches long and tongue shaped. Twelve to 18-inch tall flower spikes appear in the summer with small purplish flowers. (source)

I don’t see a lot of Lamb’s Ear in the garden. Lamb’s Ear looks much more like Mullein, but unlike Mullein, it forms in dense masses of rosettes, and Mullein is more of a loner plant. Mullein is that fuzzy rosette that you see along highways, and sometime in July they produce a very tall, very yellow conical flower. I always laugh when I see Mullein because someone one told me that old cowboys used to use it for toilet paper – but only one side would be comfortable.

Here’s a really interesting article about the uses of Lamb’s Ear in Before Times – maybe even still used in Current Times.


Are you itching for more weed identification? Here’s URI’s Weed ID and soil condition worksheets. Additionally, see Invasive Plants of RI and Weed Bingo.  (Thanks, former gardener, CB, for the links!) 

Please do not consume any plant you are not certain is edible. Please continue to research, ask friends you know and trust, and don’t take your chances with lookalikes. 

On a final note, please don’t compost weeds; rather, use a brown bag. Sometimes, when I am weeding in the garden, I carry a small bucket or pot with me to collect, then bring them to the bag. This way, we don’t end up with a bunch of bags all over the garden. When the bag starts to get heavy, please move it out into the parking area by the trash cans for the city to pick up. 

Please post any questions you might have about these plants in the comments area of the post! And if you have any problems posting, please let us know. 

Weeds in the Garden: Lamb’s Quarter / Lamb’s Ear