what from your garden comes into the kitchen?

[Lulu-amongst-the-blooms]

A thread on eating ground elder made me wonder how self provident or adventurers the other gardeners here are?

I love foraginbg for food, somehow it always tastes better for being collected in a sort of caveman style. Like cooking over open fire does the same.

But its pretty full on thing to do. My veg gardening gets worse and worse to be honest, last year, after slogging to carve out somewhere to put a vfew veg in they all grumbled there way through and the only thing that did really well were the courgettes, which we got bored of very quickly (we haven't touched the ones I froze yet this winter!).

But besides fruit and veg gardening, and proper foraging a lot from by garden ends up on our plates. We have a passion for edible flowers, both in traditional ways, like candied roses and violets, lavender with lamb and in cakes (and it makes a beautiful coloured infusion to drink)and the less traditional, a salad without petals is a painting with no colour sometimes, honeysuckle makes a sumptuous jelly. its surprising how many of the flowers we grow or that grow despite our best efforts are edible. DH is almost always yellow around the face when working in the field from nibbling on dandelion. Last year we ate lime leaves (as in the non citrus lime) and they make a nice green addiion to a cheese sandwich.

[elemire]

I have mostly fruit trees and shrubs that produce edible stuff, so not much weirdness there. I do plan to get a good rugosa or two for the hips - I like the jelly out of it. It is a bit of work, but it is really good. Still searching for which rugosas yield best, as the space is an issue here.

One of my favorite companions for the roses is oregano. It does not grow too big, bees love it, and its airy bloom stalks compliment the roses really well.

I also grow calendula and Matricaria chamomilla (camomile) from seed in my wild flower + roses border, which I mostly dry for the winter, as they are good ingredients in anti-cold teas. For the same reason I gather the blooms of the local linden. Apparently linden buds are also edible, never tried it myself though.

Another edible in the progress are rowans - still too small to even bloom, but there is a hope for the future. The berries are utilized a lot in Russia, I probably will try and buy one of the Russian varieties to replace my japanese cherry if it croaks next year.

Aronia (chokeberry) and medlar are other two more interesting and rather decorative edibles, which I do not grow at the moment, but would like to have, as well as Schisandra chinensis. Our neighbors used to grow hardy kiwi (actinidia arguta), which tastes alright as well, just not all that attractive as a plant.

[Lulu-amongst-the-blooms]

oh elemire, rowan jelly is wonderful, and I love medlars! We're trying to choose fruit trees to order next year and varities are so hard to pick, choosing the pears took me forever and I'm still a little sad I didn't get a perry pear (I dislike cider but like perry). I don't know chokeberry so I'll look that up. I also recently saw ''june berry'' trees, which I'd never heard of, but might plant one on our north border.

I've seen kiwis do really well in Italy and france, but I've not seen them in UK, though know a fair few people grow them. We have a suitable south facing wall over in the veg garden, but.....I'm not sure whether to try or not.

[elemire]

One of the pears that I want to get is nashi pear (also known as sand pear or Chinese pear). They are really great when eaten from the tree, but they also are lovely when canned, looking all that translucent, very decorative.

Chokeberry I grew for years in my old garden. It stays more like a bush than a tree, and the berries are rather dry, but they make a nice syrup, or even wine. Care free as well, and autumn foliage is rather nice, as well as the gray bark.

With kiwi's, it is not actual kiwi, but its relative that I was talking about, hardy kiwi, actinidia arguta. It is hardy in z5 (that's where the neighbors grew them, they are slowly escaping to the forest it seems), so I am sure it should overwinter here as well. The fruits were like a smaller size plum or big cherry. It is like hazels, you plant it somewhere in the corner and they form some kind of thicket, with edible stuff on it.

Next year I should have some black currants hopefully, from the bunch of sticks that I brought back from the Lithuania. I also love gooseberry, modern ones even are mostly thornless - the ones I remember from the childhood were prickly monstrosities and much more sour. They cannot grow too close to the currants though.

I love our plum Victoria as well, it is really great for eating raw and for jellying. I still want Reine Claude and Stanley (they are good together for cross polination), but the only way I can plant them is if we ever get rid of the shed...

[jo_blogs]

Hello -
Why can't gooseberries grow too close to the currents? I just planted two self-layered redcurrents right next to my gooseberries so if this is a very bad idea say so double quick!

I plant things mainly for eating - the roses are my guilty pleasure, you might say. Last year we had somewhere around 45 different edible products from the garden - easier than you might think except for the endless watering ... I quite agree about courgettes though, there are really only so many you can eat in one summer. I have a recipe somewhere for courgette fritters which are an OK way of using them up - a bit like falafel but not quite as good. Say if you want it and I'll post it.

Which reminds me - someone (Rosarom?) had a recipe for rose petal jam. Post please!
xx

[elemire]

Originally Posted by jo_blogs

Why can't gooseberries grow too close to the currents? I just planted two self-layered redcurrents right next to my gooseberries so if this is a very bad idea say so double quick!

Actually it is a good question why, for some reason they seem not to appreciate the neighborhood sometimes. In my old garden we had somewhere around 20 currants and about 5 or so gooseberries. At first, we planted them somewhat randomly, mixed (something like 1 bush of gooseberries, 1 of currant, etc.), and gooseberries stayed somewhat stunned. In one of the gardening books my mother found an advice, that they should be planted separately, which we did the following year. That seemed to solve the problem, even though the distance was not all that great, like a few meters between the row of currants and gooseberries, just not mixed next to each other.

So all in all, they probably won't die instantly, but they might have some issues with each other. Part of the problem might be that they like rather different soils, gooseberries prefer light and slightly acidic, when currants prefer heavy clay and more alkaline. So if for example you add something that makes a soil more alkaline, currants would thrive, and gooseberries sulk.

[Stefanie]

Well I certainly won’t eat my roses – not with that amount of spraying I put on them….

I do get a quite a few requests for petals for making rose water, rose liquor and even jam. I refuse to give them for the same reasons I won’t eat them but there is a farm near by were one can obtain petals from organically grown roses.

Maybe in a few years time will I approach the organic way but for that I need a different set of roses.

We do have a herb garden (far way from any roses) and enjoy a selection of cut up herbs mixed in with olive oil over our salad.

[SerenaSYH]

Here in a crazy organics garden where Lincoln roses are gigantic cabbage flowers and very prolific, I've made tons of Lincoln rose petal jam! I'm not sure why this is but Lincoln HTs are prolific bloomers in my garden. Some gardens they just have normal Lincoln HT blooming periods, but not in mine. So I go hog wild. They are soooo delicious with red meats or with pork loin, anything with pork. Or you can put it as an ordinary sweet spread....

Also in a lazy lumpy gardener's garden, herbs are fantastic to crowd out the weeds. If there were no herbs to help crowd them out, I'd be going crazy!!!!

So I've got several kinds of thyme, several kinds of lavender, sage, and winter savory.

[jo_blogs]

Wow, rose petal jam. Can you post a recipe? ta xx

[marianne-se]

I made this preserve for the first time last year and a lot of bother it was to remove the seeds from small canina hips. It was very good with game, reindeer today, and a beautiful bright red, but I don't think I will make it again. It is made with sugar, spirit vinegar, cinnamon sticks and cloves.