"Weeds" that we can eat but maybe don't

While we out weeding yet another area that we had neglected we started talking about weeds that we have in our garden.
Dandelions...I sometimes use the young leaves in salads, the flowers in wine but never used the roots for "coffee". The stems have been used as bubble stems much to the amazement of our boys when they were young.
I have used young nettle leaves in soup.
But after that....we have fat hen, good king henry, bitter cress but we just pull them up.
Are we missing something from these free plants or do we just keep pulling them up?
We also grow many different bamboos but have never been brave enough to take the very young shoots and eat them. Has anyone done that and if so what did you do with them to make them edible?

 

I've nibbled the odd flower, just to see. Edible - even nice but I like the flowers. I can never bring myself to destroy a chive plant -such pretty flowers

 

Given how easily these edible native weeds grow, the fact they aren’t staple crops must tell us something? Just because something is edible doesn’t mean it’s worth eating except maybe as part of a project or need to be self-sufficient.

I’ve tried a few, ground elder, nettles and yes they are edible but not interesting enough to try again. Like @BB3, I get more enjoyment from my edible flowers in the garden more on my plate

 

I've tried several edile weeds, hairy bittercress, purslane, dandelion leaves (bitter, have to be very young), nettle soup etc but didn't really like them. Some garden flowers ard nice, rose petals, day lilies, nasturtiums, violas, but I prefer to see them in the garden. However, sometimes I sow nasturtiums in the veg garden, peppery, good in salads.

 

I like dandelion leaves in a salad but they have to be young and well blanched. Too forgetful to do that for myself and they're expensive to buy. We have wild apple mint in our plot and I sometimes harvest it but I also grow other mints in pots. Lots of other weeds we don't eat.

As for flowers, I like nasturtium flowers and young leaves in salads, chives, dill, fennel, rocket and thyme flowers as well as the leaves. Dahlia flower petals are edible, as are hemerocallis, begonia and dianthus as well as fuchsia berries.

One of the garden club members has a small-holding and grows edible flowers and leaves for high end restaurants in our own region but also Paris. Now and then she invites members for a tour and taste of her plants.

 

Apparently you can pickle/brine unripened nasturtium seeds and use them like capers. I haven’t tried. I read about it a couple of years ago and the last two summers since my Nasturtiums haven’t done very well at all

 

Lots of garlic mustard here. Too bitter to eat!
We put cammelia flowers we freeze on a yearly nasi goreng we make as a family. One night when a nearby house left, having moved out, I nicked all the sumac fruit from their tree they werent gonna eat it!

 

My mother used to say she made sandwiches of Dendelion leaves when she was a little girl. Never fancied them myself .
I've seen people (and I do it myself too) with a grass shoot in their mouth as they're walking along. I suppose that's a form of eating ... well it's in your mouth.

 

There are said to be more than 20000 edible (that is, not harmful) plants but less than 400 varieties which are generally eaten . The typical supermarket contains around 20.