Milk Thistle

Blooming milk thistle.

Milk Thistle is one of the "alternative" crops we're growing on Prairie Heritage Farm. "Alternative" in this case means the alternative to wheat, barley, and corn, making it pretty easy to grow something that is alternative.

Milk thistle seed is used to improve liver function. I've eaten whole and find it nutty with a slightly bitter aftertaste. I've heard of some people putting it into tea and some grinding it and sprinkling it on any number of things.


Thousands of ladybugs crawl over the heads helping me with the aphids.

The plant looks an awful lot like a couple of noxious weeds around here: bull thistle and Canada thistle. Noxious it's not, though. It's a beautiful plant that has broad spiky leaves splashed with white (hence the "milk" in the name) with large purple blossoms. It has spikes from the top to the bottom, though, and harvesting entails dressing up in armor since the plant will poke through denim or any other similarly wimpy material - like kevlar.



As the blossoms dry out and the seeds (attached to little parachutes) start to emerge, I walk through the patch and cut those heads. So far I've been cutting every other day, but soon, I think, I'll be cutting every day. I've heard of people using their big combines to cut milk thistle, but in doing so, you have to determine the optimal moment when the most are mature and cut them all down at once. By hand cutting (which I can get away with on 1/10 of an acre of the stuff), I only cut those heads that are ready and let the others mature.



The seed with its parachute still attached.