Purslane peeking up through the woodchips and being tasty

So far my favorite part of growing food has been thinning the purslane. I am liberal in my seed-planting methods, which means I scatter a lot with little care to proper or orderly spacing. As a result the new plants often come up very close to one another. This is fine when they are very small, but we want them to become very big and if they are crowded together they can't grow and bigness won't be possible... so we must thin the plants. Thinning seems to just be a nice word for weeding, it's basically weeding something that was planted on purpose. You have to be strategic of course, taking the smaller ones in between the bigger ones is generally a good strategy. Every day I go out and thin the purslane, and I eat as I thin. The tender little bite-sized shoots are so delicious that I can almost sympathize with the deer who just ate off the tops of all my purple bean shoots that recently sprouted.