Dandelion - Friend or Foe?

The dandelion is a familiar visitor in my garden and where it does not bother, it is allowed to spread freely. This is because it is both my friend and my enemy.

The dandelion - my friend:

• All parts of the dandelion can be eaten - leaves, flowers, root - and processed into, for example, dandelion syrup
• Dandelion is an ancient medicinal plant and can be used to cleanse the body
• Dandelion flowers can be dried and used in tea
• Dandelion adapts to the conditions - If there is plenty of space, it grows up to a metre high and if you mow the grass, it adapts to a height of 5cm and still achieves a flower - That's fantastic
• Dandelion has beautiful yellow, bee-friendly flowers all summer
• Dandelions are one of the first plants to respond to sunlight in early summer and start to flower when the first bees and insects are struggling to find food
• Children can make beautiful flower wreaths from dandelions
• Dandelion is an excellent food plant for chickens, rabbits, etc.

The dandelion - my enemy:

• Dandelion is hard to get rid of where it is unwanted - You have to get the whole root up, otherwise it just shoots up again and with more stems
• If you pick a yellow flower, dandelion doesn't just wither away - it can still transform its yellow flower into a seed pod and disperse its seeds with the wind
• Dandelion always pops up in the most annoying places and can grow between tiles where it is impossible to remove the root
• The white sap of the dandelion causes black spots on the fingers that are difficult to remove
• The dandelion cannot be used for bouquets as the flowers close immediately after picking

Conclusion: For me, the dandelion is more a friend than a foe. It's a pain to weed it out again and again in the vegetable bed, but I enjoy the yellow flowers in summer and the flavour of dandelion leaves in my spring salads more!

Pictured: A dandelion where I only got half of the root up last summer. It is now shooting from below with 20 new plants from the severed root.