Are Dandelions Taking Over? Call Cannery : Weed, Fiddleheads Are the Big Sellers
Let the rest of the country attack the stubborn weed with trowels and poisons. Adrian R. Wells prefers to grow his dandelions by the acre, then put them in cans so people can eat them.
Wells, who owns a canning company that has been in the family for four generations, plans to ship 1,000 cases of dandelion greens this year from his little cannery in the western Maine foothills.
Wells, who hates to see a thriving dandelion go to waste, talks about the plant with fondness, respect and knowledge. The roots, he explains, can be made into herbal tea; the bright, yellow blossoms can be pickled or made into wine and jelly; the leaves are excellent cooked or served fresh in salads.
“And the stem, you use that to siphon gas out of someone’s car,” Wells deadpans. He admits that he has grown weary of offers of dandelions from homeowners plagued by the hearty, prolific weeds.
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Wells sees dandelions’ tendency to grow back after being snipped, a trait that frustrates gardeners, as another plus. Five days after the last batch of foot-high dandelions was harvested, new shoots appeared.
Wells’ W.S. Wells & Son cannery was founded 102 years ago by his grandfather, Walter Scott Wells. The barn-size factory also packages beans and cans beet greens and a vegetative delicacy known as fiddleheads.
Fiddleheads, named for their deep-green stems that are gracefully curled a couple of inches from the ground before they sprout into ostrich ferns in swampy, northern woodlands in late spring, make up the bulk of the products bearing Wells’ Belle of Maine label. His only competition comes from canners in Canada, where fiddleheads also are popular.
While fiddleheads are best known to New Englanders, who gather them with ritualistic zeal in late spring, they have a few scattered devotees as far away as California. Wells, 52, also ships fiddleheads to fashionable restaurants in New York and Philadelphia, “and I do a whale of a business in Boston.”
