Showing posts with label Edible flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edible flowers. Show all posts

7 Aug 2021

Presenting the Not So Humble Nasturtium


Consider the nasturtium... a cheerful little soul, persistent, occasionally very annoying but also somewhat shy at times. Since sowing the first seeds into the veg patch ten years ago, my garden has never been without them. The sight of the flowers brightens my day (and sometimes my salad plate). This year I’ve grown an absolute corker - meet Bloody Mary. (No, not the cocktail.)


Her pink tinged buds open to a clear yellow with splashes of deep blood red - fabulous in itself - but, as the flowers mature, the petals change colour!  Will they be pink, red, speckled ... or stay yellow? My favourite is the deep wine red that some change to just before setting seed. 


Even the seeds are beautifully striped... although that one was nipped off to encourage more flowers; there will be time to collect the seeds later.


At first I thought this particular nasturtium might be a compact variety so grew it next to my Cherry Falls bush tomato in the raised Veg Trug bed; not so, as I’ve discovered. She has gently lowered one stem over the sides to explore new territory and twined herself companionably through the tomatoes with not an aphid in sight. 


The first nasturtiums appeared in the veg patch after a chance comment from a local competition judge that my garden was “very green” - said in a way that conveyed his disapproval at the lack of brashly coloured bedding plants.  That stung, “What’s wrong with green” I countered but that comment started my search to learn more about edible flowers for my food growing space.

Seeds for a creamy white (Milkmaid) and a sumptuous deep dark red (Black Velvet) were duly bought. I wasn’t convinced about eating the plants (that came later with nasturtium pesto) but reasoned that they served a dual purpose of adding colour and would be useful as a sacrificial plant in attracting aphids away from other crops. (A nice idea but I’ve never found them to be very efficient at this - any aphids will colonise all plants and not selectively choose nasturtiums.)

Since then I’ve grown Empress of India, Blue Pepe (small with blue tinted leaves and red flowers), and salmon baby in the veg patch. In the salad garden last year Ladybird Rose had her moment, only to be replaced by Baby Orange this year. Both have been well behaved and not trailed everywhere.

But the nasturtium that has totally captivated me this year with her changing appearance is Bloody Mary. She was a new seed in Mr Fothergill’s range last year and they were kind enough to send me a pack. 

3 May 2017

Red Valerian at the allotment



Red Valerian aka Centranthus ruber.  I was excited to read recently that this plant is edible - some say gorgeous flavour, others that the taste is bitter. I've just treated myself to Mark Diacono's latest tome The New Kitchen Garden (an excellent informative read, by the way) and he reckons that the leaves have a taste reminiscent of broad beans.  In my opinion that would make them rather yummy.

It's a perennial that is happy to self seed itself around and can be evergreen in a mild climate.  This one was photographed on a path near to my shared allotment and has come into flower in the last week. Butterflies are attracted to the flowers which might make them a good sacrificial plant to grow near brassicas but, if you want fresh greens for salads, etc, you'll have to cut the flowers off to stimulate new growth.  (Or perhaps have some for flowers and more for eating?)

Mark writes that while the new shoots are good to eat in spring and young leaves can be picked throughout the year, it's best to keep the plant watered in a dry spell to prevent leaves becoming bitter. As we've had some good rain in the past couple of days, I feel I'll be tempted to have a nibble next time I'm at the allotment and will definitely be encouraging a few of these plants to grow on the plot. I noticed that a few white ones seem to have made their way into the veg patch borders as well. Very serendipitous!

I'd be interested to know if anyone has tried (or would try) eating this plant
or do you prefer to leave it as a flower?  
Or perhaps are not fussed about valerian at all?


16 Aug 2014

Edible Gardens: Medicinal and edible uses for Nasturtiums

It's not so much that I love to grow nasturtiums (I do) but that they love to grow for me. Every year, around this time, they seem to take over their corner of the garden, stretching multiple stems out to sprawl among the veg, growing through netting and up poles (with help). By now the stems can be over four feet long and covered with flowers and then fat 3-part seedpods. These seedpods are so numerous that it's impossible to prevent them sinking quietly into the soil where they decompose to provide next year's flood tide of nasturtiums. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. I seem to have inadvertently ended up with quite a few prolific self-seeders in the garden (orach, fennel, linaria, aquilegia) and nasturtiums rank highly among these.



Luckily, nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) is a bit of a wonder plant - I've been discovering that it's not just a pretty face but really earns its keep in the edible garden. Because of its antibacterial, antiseptic and antibiotic qualities, it has many medicinal uses; an infusion of the leaves can help treat respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis, flu and colds (probably best taken with honey). Additionally, because it's antiseptic, a poultice of the leaves can be applied to wounds; admittedly unlikely to be useful to urban or suburban dwellers but, well, you never know.

Back in the kitchen, I already knew that the young lilypad-like leaves can add a peppery bite to salads or be used when making pesto. The flowers, being edible, can make a tasty addition to salads, a summer fruit bowl or jug of party drinks. Or get creative and top a pizza with them for a girlie teenage sleepover party? I can't guarantee the reaction but it just might be cool enough to be acceptable.

Florally speaking, I've found that newly-opened flowers, freshly picked, will last for up to a week in a glass (or vase!) of water - make a sweet country garden arrangement by adding  herbs such as fennel, lovage or mint which also last well in water.  It helps that in the garden they're a bee magnet and I grow nasturtiums in every shade from deep red through orange to cream.  My favourites are a glamorous showstopper called 'Black Velvet' and its alter-ego 'Milkmaid'.  But it was to the orange ones that I turned when I decided to make nasturtium vinegar last month. I'm quite partial to honey and mustard dressing or, let's face it, a big dollop of mayonnaise (yes, from a jar). But, flicking through Pam-the-Jam's preserve book for the River Cottage series, I couldn't resist the lure of discovering another use for all the nasturtiums in the garden - flavoured vinegar.


Packed and ready to go ...

The method is simple enough: a wide-necked jar packed full of flowers, a small palmful of seed pods, a few peppercorns, some salt and a couple of chopped shallots. Cover with white wine vinegar (obviously, use a good one), seal and leave on a sunny windowsill for about a month, giving it a little shake every so often.

Patiently admire its translucent beauty for 30 days ...

… then strain into a clean jar and add fresh flowers.


I started a jar off in July and my vinegar project is now complete, with the now-pink vinegar strained into a clean jar with a few extra flowers added.  The taste is subtle but pleasing.  The original recipe suggests using it in a dressing made with 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 100ml nasturtium vinegar and 200ml olive oil. Mmmm, yum - a delicious way to bring a fresh tang to your salads.

Thinking ahead:  I'm a big fan of presents with a bit of thought and effort behind them. In a beautiful bottle or jar, with a ribbon and hand-written label, I think a bottle of nasturtium vinegar would make a simple and unusual present for a keen cook.  Nasturtiums will start to slow down by the end of this month - although they won't keel over until the first frosts - so this is a project that's best started now. It's also a great project to do with children, especially if they're the ones growing the nasturtiums next year.

In the photo below, you'll see a couple of jars of 'capers' from nasturtium seed pods. Right now is an excellent time to be gathering these - and a useful way of reducing the tide of seedlings next year.  More about these in the next post.

Herbed nasturtium capers, nasturtium vinegar and a pretty vase for the kitchen windowsill.
(The physalis in the front were just picked from my Cape Gooseberry plant and are my treat to myself!)

13 Sept 2013

Broad Beans - Top of the Pods

Picked beans

The weekend before last, during a big garden tidy up, the last of the dried broad bean pods were cut for seed and the plants dug up and added to the compost. It's been a strange year for broad beans as they're usually cleared well before now but I was harvesting beans until end of July (maybe I sowed later) and there's even a couple of plants that are resprouting having been earlier hacked in half by kids playing sword-fighting with my canes. (Grrr.) This year I grew two varieties of broad bean; the Karmazyn beans from last year and a crimson flowered heritage bean for colour.

Shelled beans

cooked and peeled
Heritage beans on left, Karmazyn on the right. 

Karmazyn is a variety with white flowers, green pods and pink beans. The beans are rounded, heart shaped and sit apart in the pod so there's usually no more than 4 or 5 to a pod. (The heritage pods are firmer and smaller.)  Once shelled and deskinned, the young Karmazyn beans are the most beautiful bright green. Last year's end of season pods contained inedible but useful beans that were dried and saved as seeds for this year and all germinated from an early March sowing.

I sow my broad beans in spring (rather than autumn) so when I bought some Heritage red flowering bean seeds earlier this year, I was still in time to sow those as well. I wanted to grow them alongside the Karmazyn to see if there's a difference, other than flower colour. There were subtle differences,  mainly in the taste, with the Karmazyn beans being sweeter and nuttier. (Some of my seeds were given to a friend working at the local City Farm and he agreed about the taste, finding it very pleasant.) The heritage crimson beans had a more pronounced bean flavour and were slightly harder and more floury in texture after cooking. As a recent convert to liking broad beans, I prefer the Karmazyn beans.

The plants all grew vigorously to the same height.  Karmazyn were slightly quicker off the mark but perhaps they'd adapted to my growing conditions as they were grown from saved seed.  A few of the crimson flowered beans didn't germinate whereas, like last year, the Karmazyn beans all grew. The flowers have been so beautiful:

White flowers for pink beans

Crimson heritage bean flowers

and, strangely, also from the crimson heritage beans, striped pink flowers ... lovely!

Pink striped bean flower

In 2012 the beans weren't troubled at all by black aphids; I put this down to the nasturtiums that I grew around the edge of the bed. This year, one or two plants were heavily invaded (temporarily, as I was on squish alert) despite some lovely Milkmaid nasturtiums appearing by their sides.

Nasturtium

As the pods started to plump up, I pinched off all the tops so that the plants put their energy into the pods.  I steamed the tops with a few of the de-podded beans for supper -  they were delicious with just a trickle of butter and grinding of salt and pepper.  Well worth remembering for next time as I've composted the tops in the past.

I've managed to save a couple of large bags of parboiled beans for the freezer but I'm already looking forward to  next year's crop.  My Veg Planner advises that broad beans can be sown in October and November and then again in January.  I usually sow in early spring, i.e. late Feb/early March, but this year, I'll give an autumn sowing a go, protect the seedlings over winter with cloche protection, and see if that makes for an early harvest next year.

Broad beans 25th June
My little patch of broad beans in June this year.

9 Sept 2012

Enjoying the summer

I'm going to gloss over the rather glaring omission of any recent blog posts... I've had a short holiday at home during which I redecorated my living room and I've been making sloe vodka and rosehip cordial after foraging walks on Hampstead Heath.  I've hardly been in the veg patch other than to pick the still prolific raspberries and beans. In short, I've been enjoying a little bit of belated summer (while it lasts).

Despite nights that are getting chillier, the warm sunshine during the day is acting like a tonic on my plants as they're suddenly doubling in size or flowering madly in an end of season rush. Thus, this morning, I opened my balcony door to see that (finally) my Sicilian White Courgette has a male and female flower open at the same time! The netting presents a challenge for the bees to get through so, small paintbrush in hand, these have been hand-pollinated.

Male courgette flower


Although the flowers are edible, this one will not be sacrified;  I'm already savouring the thought of another courgette like this earlier one:

Sicilian white courgette
~ Sicilian White, a trailing courgette. This one grew to 13 inches.  ~
This is a beautiful pale courgette which is absolutely delicious finely sliced and lightly fried in olive oil, adding a touch of finely chopped chilli and lemon zest in the last few minutes, before tossing into pasta of your choice. (I like pappardelle, the wide ribbon pasta which soaks up all the juices.) I keep it simple but I've seen recipes where pine nuts are added, or a parsley/breadcrumb topping added.  In any case, I always throw a good handful of parmesan onto it before serving, either thinly sliced or grated.

It's another beautiful sunny summer's day here in London so, toodle-loo, I'm off to tackle the weeds in the veg garden and see how big my veg patch spaghetti squash is getting today (and how many fruits it's now bearing! Yum!).

8 Jul 2012

Not the Hampton Court Flower Show ...

Wildflower meadow in tray
Wildflower meadow in a tray on my balcony!
Today I was supposed to be at Hampton Court for the flower show.  I had my ticket and programme ready and then I overslept.  I never oversleep.  No, seriously, I'm one of those annoying people that leaps cheerfully out of bed at 6.30 a.m. to embrace the day. Today the fates decided otherwise; between yesterday's extended balcony gardening, repotting and moving plants until beyond nightfall, being kept awake throughout the night by workmen laying gravel on the nearby railway tracks and torrential downpours of rain, I was thoroughly befuddled when I eventually awoke around 9.30!  It wasn't too late to go but I just couldn't motivate myself out of my pyjamas.  It was pouring with rain and I thought about the joys of standing in a large crowd getting soaked and decided to save myself the two and half hour return journey and do some more planting at home instead.

As it approached 4 o'clock, the appointed time for the big Sell Off of all plants there, I rather regretted my decision.  The sun was shining, there was no rain to be seen and I'd just read a good review of the Grow Your Own section over at the Physic Blogger that reminded me I really wanted to see Mark Diacono's forest garden display.  *sigh*  (There are just some days when, whatever you do, it won't go right.)

So, to cheer myself up, I thought I'd post about the flowers currently on display in the Veg Patch gardens and have resolved to be a bit more stoic about going next year. I'm sure it will be worth it.

Day Lily buds
Day Lilies about to flower.

Pea flower
Purple Podded pea flower.
Potato flowers
Potato flower from unknown tuber.

Onion flower
White onion. Several appeared this year after an onion was left for seed last year.
Oriental Lily Red
Oriental Lily - I think this is supposed to be edible but probably a bit chewy.

Tom Thumb nasturtium
Tom Thumb nasturtium: edible flowers and leaves. 
Calendula opening
Calendula opening.

Purple pea pod
Purple podded pea pod.
Margeurite Daisies
Marguerites - so fresh and cheerful.

Sage flowers
Sage flowers. Edible slightly milder taste than the leaves.
Violas in June
Violas, still flowering in mid-summer, probably due to the rain!

Empress of India
Nasturtium, Empress of India
Strawbs, lavender, oregano
A corner of my exuberant herb bed: strawberries, lavender, golden oregano.




















Borage buds
Borage buds. I've sown seeds to flower at different times to keep bringing the bees in.

Veg Patch Lavender
Lavender, nurtured from a tiny wind-sown 2 cm seedling found in the soil last year. 
Kale flowers
Kale flowers, now eaten.  Yum!

So, less of a veg patch and more of a flower garden on this count! I said last year that I hoped to introduce more flowers into the veg garden; hmm, that seems to be happening okay.  And I haven't even mentioned the sunflowers or red orach or any of the other flowering herbs. I promise, there are plenty of veg in here too!

PS.  As I've typed this post, we've had several heavy showers so I'm now feeling vindicated in my decision (if very wasteful of the ticket. Still good causes and all that ... ).  Needless to say, all photos were taken on previous occasions!

24 May 2012

Borage: it's almost Pimms O'Clock

Borage flower

Borage flowers are one of the unmistakeable signs of summer.  Borage is one of the prettiest summer herbs with both edible and medicinal uses and easy to grow from seed. Once pollinated, the flowers develop large black seeds (the size of peppercorns) - be quick to gather these if you don't have the space to let the plant self-seed.

Growers of the herb know that the flowers can be frozen in ice-cubes and used to glam up summer drinks; they have a slightly sweet cucumber flavour that goes particularly well with Pimms, that quintessential English drink favoured by Wimbledon devotees. In her book 'Good Enough to Eat', Jekka McVicar suggests sprinkling the flowers into a salad, crystallising for decoration on cakes or adding to chilled summer soups; she has a nice recipe for mixing the flowers (stamen and pistils removed) with creme fraiche and layering this with a fruit purée for a lovely summer pudding.

purple borage flower

The whole plant is edible: freshly picked young leaves have a salty cucumber taste and can be eaten as part of a salad, or with cream cheese and tomatoes in sandwiches. They're very bristly so are best chopped finely and mixed with other leaves if you're going to use them for this.  Both leaves and flowers can be used to make a nice refreshing tea which is said to have a slightly diuretic effect (not dissimilar to normal tea or coffee).

This is the same plant which is elsewhere known as Starflower (you can see why) and whose seeds have a high concentration of Gamma Linoleic Acid, a valuable oil used to regulate female hormones.  For me though, it's best use is as a companion plant.  Bees absolutely love it so it's a great herb to grow next to your beans for an increased yield. It's also attractive to blackfly which could be off putting unless you grow some as sacrificial plants.

I have a tray of borage, grown from seed, ready to go out into the veg patch but, just in case those didn't work out, I also have two bought borage plants growing on my balcony. A few days ago I noticed that these had produced clusters of buds:

Borage bud

24 hours of sunshine later and warmer temperatures have coaxed the flowers out, first pink then turning a beautiful deep blue.

Bright blue borage flowers

I have gardener Naomi Schillinger to thank for these seeds.  I admired the borage growing in her garden last summer and she swiftly removed a handful of seeds and popped them in an envelope for me.  Naomi has done marvellous work with her neighbours' front gardens and the tree pits in her local streets;  check out her inspirational blog or if you can get to North London, she's participating in the Chelsea Fringe.

The broad beans are also beginning to flower and I'm on blackfly watch for the broad beans in the veg patch.  I spotted a couple on one of the plants this afternoon but I'm afraid that aphids are building in numbers elsewhere - I just hope that the ladybirds can keep up with the feast!  For some reason, I thought that my pink Karmazyn beans would produce pink or red flowers but, no... Unless something dramatic is about to happen to these creamy buds!

Broad bean flowers

6 May 2012

On the salad menu...

Blue nasturtium seedlings

Despite the grey skies over the veg patch, close inspection reveals that things are surely happening. A little pootle around the patch yesterday evening revealed a glimpse of the glories to come in the months ahead.

Having grown Tom Thumb (orange) and Milkmaid (creamy white) nasturtiums last year (some of which are already creeping back again), I was very taken with the variety in the photo above called Blue Pepe; the colour combo of blue/purple/green leaves is a favourite and will be jazzed up with bright red flowers in due course. When I can, I love to grow veg that are one step removed from what's expected and these will do nicely! Entirely edible, too - I'm planning some fabulously stylish salads this year!

I've growing purple carrots, rocket, red crisphead lettuce, red orach, pink broad beans and bull's blood beets to add to the salad list - not only will my food be colourful and tasty, I'm giddily excited at the prospect of it all, which is the fun of growing your own! It's a bit late now but I wish I was taking part in VP's salad challenge!
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