Weeds make good eats

Asheville gets Wall Street Journal mention:

As suburban homeowners commence their annual battle against weeds, more people are paying top dollar to eat them. The dandelion — perhaps the most common weed of them all — is seeing a huge surge in sales at grocery stores. Other long-scorned greens making the leap to the dinner table include purslane, lamb’s quarters and stinging nettles, a skin-irritating plant that can be eaten safely after boiling.

U.S. supermarkets sold $2 million of dandelion greens in the year that ended in March, a 9% increase over the year earlier, according to FreshLook Marketing, a Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based company that tracks grocery stores’ sales of produce. While sales are still small, they’re growing more than twice as fast as sales of vegetables overall. Grocery chain Wegmans Food Markets Inc. has seen a 25% increase in sales of dandelion greens for the year to date from the year-earlier period. Southern grocery chain Earth Fare Inc., based in Asheville, N.C., says it has seen a 40% increase in sales of dandelion greens for the year to date.