Yes, I'm finally back! Sorry it's been a while; the lockdown blues have been getting to everyone, I think! Today we're going to look at one of my favourite plants to forage, and a great starter plant for anyone new to foraging. That's because it's very common and easy to identify. If you have a garden, then you probably already have it lurking in your pots and beds. Here is the hairy bittercress that I harvested today to add to the salad for our evening picnic. One of the nice things about hairy bittercress is that it grows all year round, on an ever-repeating 12 week life cycle. I've used it many a time to brighten up dull sandwiches in the depths of winter. In this photo, you can also see the three-cornered leek that I harvested from the garden yesterday, but that's a story for another day. As I said, Hairy Bittercress is super easy to identify. It's a plant in serious need of a good PR agent, because the name makes it sound very unappetising. In fact it is neither hairy nor bitter. It does, however, contain some very important compounds known as 'bitters', which are essential for maintaining a healthy digestive system. Unfortunately, because bitters tend to taste, well, bitter, they've mostly been bred out of cultivated foods, leading to numerous digestive issues in those of us who rely exclusively on supermarkets to provide our food. The bitters in Hairy Bittercress are extremely mild, and so it's a really tasty way to introduce these key nutrients into your diet. Hairy Bittercress grows very close to the ground in a classic rosette shape, and you'll easily be able to recognise its cress shaped leaves (very similar to the mustard and cress you'll find at the supermarket). After a while, the plant will also grow distinctive flower spikes topped with small white flowers. Once these have finished, the seeds will explode out in all directions (making it a gardener's nightmare), and the plant will die back. Within a few weeks, it will return bigger than before, and repeat the cycle approximately every 12 weeks. Here you can see Hairy Bittercress in action. In the photo on the left, we have a pot of fennel, but as you can see it also has a lot of friends growing in with it. On the right is a large Hairy Bittercress plant, which you can see has reached the flowering stage of its life cycle. On the far left of the pot is a smaller Hairy Bittercress plant at a much earlier stage. In the photo on the right is a pot of chard, but Hairy Bittercress has once again invaded. Since this is also at the end of its life cycle, I cropped this one quite extensively for the salad, but you can still see the cress shaped leaves growing in a rosette below the flowers. If you brush your hands through a Hairy Bittercress plant, you should notice a strong smell of cress. There are a few other types of wild cress out there that you could potentially muddle it up with, but they're all edible, so you don't need to worry about accidentally poisoning yourself. However, please bear in mind all the usual foraging rules whenever foraging for wild edibles. Now, to really test your foraging eyes, how many Hairy Bittercress plants can you spot here amongst my herb garden? And for bonus points, can you spot any other edibles in there too? On the left, our echinacea is just coming back up for the spring, and on the right is an area at the back that we haven't weeded yet.
0 Comments
As we were in the mood for foraging today, we decided to have a starter of wildfood soup. This is super simple to make. Cube a potato, add garlic and onion, and fry lightly. Then add as much vegetable stock as needed and your wild greens (I haven't given amounts of ingredients because it depends how many people you're serving and how much greenery you can find when foraging). Simmer for ten minutes and then either serve as is, or blitz in a blender or soup maker. The wild greens you use will depend on the time of year and where you're able to forage. As ever, please be careful when foraging and observe all the usual rules (see my post on Foraging Rules). For this soup, I gathered in cleavers (goosegrass), bramble, hawthorn, dandelion, plantain, chives, sage, bay, thyme, fennel, dill and three-cornered leek, all found in our garden. Okay, I'll be honest, the herbs in that list were deliberately planted by us, but they still count as foraged food! And here are my parents enjoying our wildfood soup!
The seeds we planted earlier in the year are doing well. The calendula, elecampane and dill are now all being hardened off ready for planting out. Meanwhile, the milk thistle and yarrow can be seen growing in the greenhouse. These will all eventually find a home in the new herb bed (we have a plan sketched out, don't worry!). Over in our patio herb garden, the thyme and hyssop have settled in well. You can see below that the the marshmallow has come up again strong this year (far left, behind the thyme), and here we also have oregano, winter savory, tarragon, chamomile and two varieties of ginger rosemary, both of which are now in flower.
Unable to practise though I may be, my Dad and I are still working hard at the new herb bed. Today we planted some borage seeds. We opted to put them straight into the herb bed because borage has a long tap root, so doesn't really like to be disturbed by re-potting. Then, further along the bed, we seeded an area with evening primrose. As you can see, we've erected some rudimentary cat defence, because our neighbour's cat, adorable though he is, can be a real menace when it comes to rolling enthusiastically in any newly turned earth he can find.
All our other herbs are also settling in well, and the variegated lemon balm is coming back up a treat. Look what today's foraging walk produced! First up, we have sprigs of elderflower, destined to become the basis of elderflower cordial. Then we have a crop of lime leaves, which we'll be using to flavour tonight's salad. Their tasty sweet flavour is actually the result of aphids excreting sugars onto the leaves, but it's best not to think about that! Finally, we have a delicate bunch of red clover, which will also find its way into our wild food salad. I'll be writing more about all of these herbs later in this blog, so do keep checking back!
Our new herb bed is still coming along nicely. The old lavender that had died off has now been cleared. We'll be adding elecampane and meadowsweet into this space once they've grown up. Meanwhile, the vervain and comfrey have settled in well.
Work on the new herb bed is continuing apace. The sage and chives have been moved over to the other side, to join the oregano, feverfew, bay and lemon balm. Meanwhile, new arrivals comfrey and vervain have been planted to the left of the elder tree (this unfortunately has to be surrounded in netting due to the fact that we have frequent visits from overly enthusiastic deer).
Time for an update on the new herb bed. As you can see, more layers of home-made compost have been added, and the area thoroughly watered, as we don't really get rain here any more! Meanwhile, our greenhouse is full of seed trays in preparation for stocking the new bed. We've also made some additions to our patio herb garden, with new recruits thyme and hyssop joining the rosemary, winter savoury, chamomile, tarragon and marshmallow.
If you come to visit me for a natural remedies consultation, you'll often be supplied with a tincture to take home with you. The properties of certain herbs are best extracted in tincture form, which involves macerating the herbs in alcohol. Here's a quick look at how we go about preparing our tinctures. Step 1: Take a sterilised jar and add the herbal matter to it. Here I'm preparing a tincture of chamomile. Normally I would add more herbal matter than this, but I happened to want to create a very small amount of tincture on this occasion. Step 2: Add alcohol. It's important to use a strong, unflavoured spirit; I generally use vodka. Different herbs will have different ratios of alcohol to herbal matter, so when preparing tinctures for my natural remedies for clients, I would weigh both the herbs and alcohol when adding them. Step 3: Seal the jar and place in a dark cupboard for 4-6 weeks, shaking daily. Generally I would fill the jar to minimise oxygen, although the vodka does a very good job at preventing bacterial contamination, but in this case I wanted to make only a very small quantity of chamomile tincture.
In a later post, I'll show you what happens when the 4-6 weeks are up! If you're interested in booking an appointment to see how natural remedies could help you feel better, please see Services. As you know, we try to grow as many herbs as possible ourselves, rather than buying from suppliers, so that we know exactly what goes into our remedies. Generally we raise herbs from seed, so that we can ensure they are grown organically from the start and therefore we can be sure only the finest quality plant matter ends up in the final remedy we supply. However, we only have so much room in the garden! My wonderful father has therefore been hard at work this winter preparing an extension to our main herb bed. On the left here you can see the existing herb bed, and behind it we now have a whole new area for an exciting range of additional herbs. Since we live on the worst kind of clay soil imaginable, this has taken a lot of hard work to prepare as a fit growing medium, so thanks again to my fantastic father. We've already started to plant the seeds for the herbs that will eventually find a home in the new bed, including elecampe, echinacea and valerian.
Further updates will follow! If you would like to book an appointment to discuss how natural remedies can help you feel better, please see our Services page. |
Kate PalmerIn this blog, I'll be passing on some of the knowledge I've gained on specific herbs over the years. You'll also get a 'back-stage' pass to where the magic happens! Archives
March 2021
Categories
All
|