What it is
Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is in the Portulacaceae family. A sprawling succulent weed that's one of the most nutritious greens on earth — but learn its toxic lookalike.
How to grow it
It wants full sun, water it very low — succulent, and give it any, even poor soil. Target a soil pH around Adaptable. Expect roughly Year-round in warmth. Warm-season annual.
How it's used
Purslane is used: raw, cooked, pickled.
🔎 How to identify it
- Fat smooth red stems
- Thick paddle-shaped leaves
- Clear (not milky) sap
Edibility
How to grow & propagate purslane
Everything I've worked out about starting this one, keeping it alive through a Texas year, and turning one plant into many — free.
How to propagate purslane
Purslane is almost aggressively easy — tiny seed germinates in warm soil, and any broken stem laid on damp ground will root at the joints. That's exactly why it shows up uninvited in sidewalk cracks. Lucky for us, it's also one of the most nutritious greens you can eat.
Growing purslane in Texas
Give it full sun and any, even poor soil. Match the spot to the plant and most of the battle is already won.
Time your planting to our long warm season and watch the frost dates at both ends; the live weather tool on this site is built for exactly that.
Once it's rooted in, this is a low-water plant — overwatering does more harm than drought here. Water deeply to establish, then back off and let it prove how tough it is.
Harvesting
Figure on roughly year-round in warmth before you're harvesting. The part you're after: leaves, stems, seeds.
Making more for free
Every seed we sell is open-pollinated, which means you can save your own from the best plants and it'll grow true next year. Let a few of your strongest plants finish and go to seed, dry it fully, and store it cool and dark. That's the whole point of heirlooms — buy once, grow forever.
Before you forage it
A safety note, because this one grows wild: positive identification comes before anything goes in your mouth or your medicine. Confirm it on several features — leaf, stem, flower, smell — not a single resemblance, check the lookalike warnings, and never forage from roadsides or sprayed ground. When in doubt, leave it out.
Keep this knowledge offline
A garden full of purslane is a real asset when times get hard — but the know-how to grow, store, and use it shouldn't live only on a website you can't reach. That's why I keep a copy of the references I rely on on a local server at home. Project NOMAD is a free, open-source way to run Wikipedia, survival and medical guides, maps, and even a private AI on your own hardware — knowledge that keeps working with no internet, no cloud, no signal.
See how I keep my library offline →Part of the free Texas Roots plant database, compiled by Jordan Polasek from his greenhouse in El Campo, Texas. Free to read and share. If it helped, the best thanks is to grow something.