Giant Edible Dandelions

It is no secret that I like dandelions (Taraxacum officinale).  I honestly believe people should grow more dandelions.  I think they probably have more uses than just about any other temperate permaculture crop.

Dandelions take no real effort to grow outside of arid or semi arid zones or polar zones, they are simple to grow organically, they are perennial, they are forgiving of a wide range of conditions, the leaves are edible and more nutritious than almost every other vegetable, the roots are edible and nutritious, the roots can be made into a delightful coffee or tea, the flowers are edible and nutritious, dandelions flower most of the year to feed and attract a wide range of beneficial insects, native birds are attracted to their seeds, poultry and other livestock adore eating the leaves, they are great companion plants for a wide range of vegetables and fruits, the tap root can be very deep, they make excellent compost, and as a real bonus dandelions look very pretty.

Dandelion leaves for comparison - mine at the top, regular ones lower

I have seen people sell dandelion seeds and plants, and often wondered why.  Usually they are selling the same unimproved plants that you can find as roadside weeds, the same ones people try to spray out of their lawns.  These are edible and very useful, but tend to grow into small plants.

Dandelions are incredibly useful and far more nutritious than almost any other vegetable, so I decided to see if I could improve dandelions.  If dandelions were larger, more productive, and more vigorous they would be more useful as vegetables and more useful as stock or poultry feed.

Dandelion flowers are pretty

Dandelion breeding is strangely difficult as they usually tend to display apomixis. This means that cross pollination does not often work.  Each flower is very difficult to pollinate and often sets seed without any fertilisation.  I can't tell if cross pollination worked unless I grow out the seedlings fora long time.  There were a few dandelion breeding programs decades ago, so I read a few old papers and got a few ideas how to increase cross pollination success.

Dandelions tend to grow different depending on the environmental conditions.  When grown in the lawn and mown regularly they tend to produce shorter plants, when grown in long grass they tend to be more elongated.  Dandelions are perennials that also tend to be different sized plants at different times of the year.  All of this makes breeding improved strains far more difficult than I would have liked.

After a bit of work it appears that I did improve dandelions.  They grew larger, more vigorous, and more useful that the regular ones that can be found in the lawn.  My plants can grow huge if treated well.

Massive edible dandelion plant

Regular dandelion leaves often range in length from 10cm to about 25cm, sometimes a bit longer under the right conditions.  If they are to be eaten as vegetables this is a bit too small and you would need to grow a lot of plants to make a meal.

My dandelion leaves reach well over 50cm in length.  This makes them far more useful as leaf vegetables.  The roots grow very thick and long, which makes them far more useful.  Every part of these plants grows pretty big.  One single plant can be massive.

My kids were joking that these plants are so big they should not be called "Dandelions", instead they should  be called "DaddyLions".  I am not sure how I feel about that...

The flowers and seed heads are usually large and fat

My dandelion leaves grow huge

Often dandelion seedlings are exact clones of the maternal parent.  So while mine open pollinate, and there are plenty of wild type plants around that could act as pollen donors, there is a really high chance that each of the seedlings will grow true to type.  If not, then the seedlings should still be large as they would carry 50% genetics from the giant parent.

I now sell packets of dandelion seeds through my for sale page.  They have been grown organically and are open pollinated.  Growing conditions do have a large role on dandelion phenotype expression, so to get large plants they need good soil, full sun, and regular water.  Second year plants grow far larger than first year plants.