Ok this is day 1 of je Japanese knotweed extraction.
We went on the river bench and chose the knotweed plants that were the greenest, they are the ones with the largest roots.
We dug a little into the gravel and unrooted quite large portions of roots. We are interested in the thick and lively roots that bear some red onto and inside it, it is the red color that proves the anti-oxydant presence. It has a notable smell also.
The root needs to be quite bulby and thick the small rhizome is not useful, but on the contrary we were at first very glad to find a very thick root, it looked like a tree branch growing under the ground; however this was too old it did not have any red on it, it was not energetic anymore.
We have taken care of putting all the leaves and branches we had broken into a plastic bag so that they do not end up into the river, and root elsewhere.
We will burn them later on.
We have decided to do a small fanzine presenting the recipe, and we will bring it to the market along with some beverage made from knotweed and kefir, so that people can reproduce the process and use the knotweed that is out there instead of having it proliferate.
