Dock– A crop becomes a weed and a crop again
Inspired by visitors from the Black Forest region in Germany, who attended a foraging tour, here is some information about dock and its many uses, that might be new to you. Here in Ireland we have mainly curled dock (Rumex crispus) and broad-leaved dock (Rumex obtusifolius), both will hybridise; then there is also Rumex alpinus at higher altitudes (like in the Black Forest).
Dock is commonly known as a noxious weed, feared for its long tap root, but most people know that crushed dock leaves help against stinging nettle bites and to soothe blisters..
The leaves are cooling and can also be used against burns as a friend told us recently (he used it against burns from hogweed). Herbalist Katharina Reichmuth from Switzerland makes a dock ointment from the leaves for joint pain. A decoction of the roots is used to treat constipation and skin conditions. The roots and leaves are used in traditional Austrian medicine internally to treat viral infections. The milk in the dock leaf contains tannins as well as oxalic acid which are considered as an astringent
Dock is also used as a flower essence. (Aquarius Flower Remedies). As the root can reach up to 2m deep and break up hardened and dense soils as a Bach flower remedy it's used to dissolve old, encrusted ways of thinking and promotes strength and courage to change.
In the kitchen: The seeds are delicious roasted and the leaves are great for cooking, for example, vegetarian roulades. When cooking over embers (meat or especially root vegetables are wrapped in the leaves and then covered with a clay coating and placed in the embers to cook. Very tasty. The moisture is retained in the food being cooked, and the natural flavour of the vegetables is enhanced), it can also be prepared similarly to spinach. The most tender leaves and the best lemon flavoured ones come from young docks with flower stalks that have yet to develop. From early to mid-spring, young leaves are tasty raw or cooked. The young roots can be prepared like rhubarb compote.
Note: Consume in moderation due to the high oxalic acid content.
Nutrients: Dock leaves contain 100 times more iron than conventional leaf spinach.
Dock root contains 40% starch, while potatoes contain 16%. See also: https://hof-neufallenbach.ch/ )
Below we publish an article about dock that was sent to us by one of the participants.
Dock– A crop becomes a weed and a crop again
December 29, 2014
Today, dock is one of the most hunted weeds. Organic farmers combat it by laboriously digging out its roots; conventional farmers combat it by poisoning large areas with herbicides specifically targeting broad-leaved plants or by treating individual plants with a so-called dock gun. Today, dock creates a lot of costs to keep it in bay. Many farmers therefore do not dare to switch to natural and organic farming: they have too much respect for the plant and fear that without chemical control, the problem will no longer be manageable.
What happened? Dock loves compacted and nitrogen-overfertilized soil. That's why we find the plant in monocultures where animals overburden the soil (compacting the soil) or where they deposit their faeces and urine (overfertilizing the soil): in the stands around stables, especially visible in the Alps. This is where dock thrives; it tolerates no competition, creating plenty of shade with its large, broad leaves.
The input of nitrogen into our agricultural soils has increased enormously over the last century, especially after the First and Second World Wars. After the end of the war, nitrogen could no longer be used for explosives in bombs and weapons and was sold cheaply to farmers. As a result, agriculture slowly compacted and over-fertilized the soils. Nitrogen from petroleum combustion for heating and transport, which also entered the soil with rain, exacerbated this situation. The current state of the soil strongly promotes the spread of dock. This occurs both in arable soils and in natural meadows. Added to this are increasingly heavy machinery: a normal tractor today, together with a hay wagon or a medium-sized slurry tanker, weighs around ten tons. A combine harvester weighs around twenty tons, and a sugar beet harvester that drives into the wet soil in November can weigh up to thirty-six tons.
In addition to combating dock, there is another method of response. Ernst Frischknecht, the well-known Swiss organic farmer who was one of the first to use the herb, wrote years ago: "Dock is your friend and helper." With this statement, he irritated a large portion of the farming public. He himself allowed the plants to grow on his farm. According to Frischknecht, only dock helps the soil to improve the very situation it promotes, even in the long term. Its huge, incredibly tough, and strong taproot brings air back into the compacted soil; its proliferating, mass-forming leaves extract precisely the excess fertilizer from the choking and over-fertilized soil. Thanks to its specialization, dock regulates the site over the long term; over time, it then eliminates itself. It leaves behind more balanced, looser, and no longer over-fertilized soil, thus acting as a remedy for the mistakes made by agriculture. Therefore, it is simply wrong to combat it.
The fact is that dock in leaner and less densely populated locations are soon attacked by a specific, bright, greenish-blue iridescent dock beetle (Gastrophysa viridula). This beetle, along with its soon-to-hatch nursery, eats the leaves until they are completely defoliated, thus weakening the plant until it disappears.
Martin Ott, Canton of Zurich, 2014
Text published in: Florianne Koechlin: Beyond the Leaf Margins. An Approach to Plants. Basel 2014, pp. 164ff.