Short answer: we all learn to eat thistle. Here’s why.
For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to rid my garden of some thistle that just keeps on coming back no matter what I did to get it out. Usually, I would use a weeding tool, getting down 8-10” and get what looked to be most of the root. But, it would still come back.
This spring I wanted to try to eliminate it. So, I started by trying to dig out the entire root. With most of them I’d get down 12-18” and then the root would split and run out in two opposite directions horizontally. Well, no wonder why my previous weeding didn’t help a thing.
Despite all my best efforts (and many hours) digging, I still have shoots of thistle coming up in several places. So, alas I’ve given up on my vow of organic gardening and have used a little bit of Round-Up (applied via a paint brush to localize the application) to try to finally kill the stuff.
Okay, so why would this solve the world hunger problem? If this stuff is this hard to kill, we’d never have to worry about replanting it. You cut it to the ground and in one or two days you have a huge plant back for more. It would be sort of like Manna. You could go pick your entire crop one morning only to return the next morning and find it regrown to where you picked it the morning before.
It doesn’t seem to care about soil quality either. I’ve found these roots happily tangled between densely packed rocks. I’d wager that you could add a tablespoon of dirt to 100 pounds of rock and thistle would grow there.
So, all we need to do is find a way to prepare this stuff that wouldn’t taste too bad (I’m thinking deep frying) and we’d have an amazing food source.
Who’s with me? 
