HORT 105 - Weed Lab

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I'm taking HORT 105 this semester just for fun--and I love it! This class has the funnest labs ever! In the previous post, I talked about our pepper lab where we basically just tried out different peppers. In this lab, since we had just learned about weeds, we did a lab on...weeds.

Sorry if the title is misleading (it was meant to be), but this lab has nothing to do with cannabis. What kind of University would allow that in their classrooms?!

Much like the last lab, we were just trying different plants and veggies.

Make Your Own Tea

Dandelion Root - 2 tsp
Chickory - 1 tsp
Terragon - 1 tsp
Stevia - 1 tsp

So we had at least two dozen different kinds of ¿weeds? and stuff to choose from and I just added whatever looked pretty. Honestly, it was pretty good until I added Stevia, a natural sweetener. That stuff is gross! So gross!! So gross!! Stevia...no good!

Eat Arugala Salad

The arugala was picked fresh from U of I's greenhouses! It even had little bugs still crawling on it. Are they called aphids? Harmless. So I ate 'em.


Eat Veggie Straws w/ Cream Cheese Made with Kudzu Root & Lemongrass

Kudzu Root - Supposedly this could be used to treat hangovers. You can either make a tea out of this and drink it when you have a hangover. Or you can drink the tea prior to drinking and it'll curb how much you drink. Who knows if this is true. I did get a baggie of this Kudzu Root from my TA, so maybe I can test it out sometime.

Valirian Root
I don't have a picture of this, but I think this is the most interesting weed. It's a sleeping aid and you can actually get this in pill form at various stores and stuff. However, it is known to sometimes have strange side effects. Though it's known to be quite successful at putting the individual to sleep, it may also elicit crazy dreams. My TA found this out firsthand. He had a period of insomnia and so he tried this in pill-form to help him sleep. The first time he took it, as the pill promises, he knocked out. That night, he had a dream where he was playing catch with his dad in an open field. It started really nice and friendly. They were both all smiles and having a lot of fun. One throw went too far and so my TA went over to fetch it. He picked it up and when he turned around to toss it back to his dad, his dad was pointing a gun right at his forehead. GULP. Anyways, I got a baggie of this from my TA too. I'll try it sometime with my roomies...or whoever dares. :Þ