Salad from the garden on biodiversity day, 22 May, 2016

We ate this green salad – we have one of these most days in the growing season.  The ingredients vary. Some are cultivated, some are edible weeds (you do need to research both identification and edibility).  Some we encourage and some we don’t.  Some are annual and sown / self-sown while some are perennial.  We do grow lettuce but there is none at the moment and actually it is the most vulnerable of our crops to slug attack.

There are so many edible plants and yet we rely on a handful for our food.  That’s why we grow unusual crops and varieties, partly to preserve them and partly to help spread awareness of alternatives.

Here’s what was in the salad.

1. Garlic mustard

2. Ground elder

3. Wild rocket

4. Salad rocket

5. Mizuna (an oriental mustard)

6. Chinese mustard

7. Sorrel

8. Mint

9. Marjoram

10. Vine tips

11. Sweet Cicely (flowers and young seeds)

12. Perennial buckwheat

13. Chives

14. Hairy bitter cress

15. Claytonia

16. Columbine (flowers only are edible)

17. Nipplewort (young leaves)

18. Fat hen (young leaves)

19. Dandelion

20. Musk Mallow

21. Red veined sweet dock.

Also availble:

1. Young hawthorn leaves – getting a bit tough by now.

2. Garlic chives

3. Parsley

4. Land cress

5. Nasturtium (tropaeolum) – just starting

6. Good King Henry (young leaves)

7. Chickweed.

8. Pelagonium (“geranium”) flowers.

9. Turnip tops.