Horticultural

Foraging meadowsweet, and a bitter encounter

Photo: Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) by amandabhslater on Flickr

To the man with the black dog, I was a woman with a kid in a buggy engaged in antisocial behaviour.

To me? I was engaging in an ancient practice, learning about my local environment, providing for my family, and not breaking any bylaws.

I was down by the river in my hometown, picking meadowsweet flowers to make cordial, while at the same time introducing my son to the wonder of watching a white-lipped snail bungee jumping on a sliver of grass. I hadn't noticed the chap until passed by and called back to me, in a tone that left no doubt as to his irritation, "those flowers are for us all to enjoy". In other words, "stop picking them, you good-for-nothing, irresponsible layabout".

I tried to explain what I was doing, but he kept on walking. I would have loved to have been able to chat with him: to tell him that I was picking perhaps 5% of the dozens and dozens of meadowsweet blooms in that spot, a public place: that I only picked enough for my purpose and left the scene looking as if I'd never been there, and that I wouldn't return to that spot that year to make sure the plants - an extremely common plant locally - have a chance to regenerate.

And I wasn't picking meadowsweet to sit and wilt in a vase - they were to be infused and turned into a cordial for me and my kids to enjoy in place of Fruit Shoots, cartons of orange 'juice' and all the other "healthy" drinks marketers try to convince parents to buy for their offspring.

It was the first time I'd ever been challenged by someone while out foraging: perhaps he wouldn't have batted an eyelid if I was blackberrying, but I think it was the fact that it was flowers that made the difference (He'd have had more of a point if I was picking flowers from the local park, but meadowseet flowers, though pretty, aren't exactly a bower of roses.)

This is a dilemma: despite the trendiness of foraging right now, most people still have no idea what foraging is, or what rules good foragers follow (there's a useful set here). And of course, foraging's newfound popularity means there are doubtless some people who are acting irresponsibly. And I don't like being told off by men with black dogs.

Perhaps education is the answer. Or wearing a T-shirt saying "I am foraging responsibly".

The cordial, meanwhile, was easy to make. This recipe makes a smallish amount, which I've stored in a jar in the fridge. Perhaps ironically, meadowsweet - used to flavour mead - is also said to reduce irritation in the stomach.

Meadowsweet cordial

50 meadowsweet blossoms 2 l water 250 g sugar 2 lemons

Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-meadowsweet-cordial
Copyright © celtnet

50 meadowsweet blossoms 2 l water 250 g sugar 2 lemons

Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-meadowsweet-cordial
Copyright © celtnet

• 15 meadowsweet blossoms (shake off any insects)
• 1l water
• 150g sugar
• 1 lemon

Add the water and flowers to a large pan. Bring up to a boil then add the sugar, lemon juice and zest. Leave to infuse for 24 hours then strain through a muslin into a bottle or jar.

 

Winter salads for free: how I kicked the supermarket salad bag habit

A while back I made a decision that I wasn't going to buy supermarket salad leaves any more. It wasn't one of those big, announce-it-on-Twitter-and-write-a-blogpost-about-it things. More just a gradual realisation that I was fed up of drab lettuce that cost 10p a leaf when there was a world of green stuff to be grown and gathered without recourse to the shops. I already knew that bagged salads cost a packet, to the consumer, to the environment and to the workers who are exploited in their production. Then I read Charles Dowding's How To Grow Winter Vegetables and realised that, with a bit of planning, I could use my potting shed to grow greens year-round to supplement the foraged stuff.

Around six months on, it's so far, so good. I am eating homegrown/foraged salads three or four times a week, rather than letting a sad plastic bag of pricey leaves go limp in my all-too-tiny fridge. The picture above's fairly typical of what I am eating right now: there's some hairy bittercress, which is a weed that's growing in one of my raised beds and providing a fantastic crop of watercress-flavoured leaves; baby chard; 'Red Streaks' mustard leaves, 'Bulls Blood' baby beet leaves and some baby lettuce leaves.

Dowding's method is simple: pick the right varieties (winter lettuce, Chinese leaves and chard all do well over winter), fill any old container (a washing up bowl with holes cut in the bottom or a wooden banana box are good) with well-rotted cow manure, top with a thin layer of compost, then sow your seeds. (It's a bit more complex than that, you need to be aware of timings and sowings now may struggle more than those done in, say October. I'd recommend buying his book, it's a great read that will inspire you to extend your growing season into winter).

I didn't have any manure, so I tweeted @charlesdowding to ask if wormcasts from my wormery would be an acceptable alternative. "Even better!" he tweeted back, and we were off! I've sowed about six trays between September and now, and probably had 5-10 croppings of cut-and-come-again leaves off each. I guess I've been lucky with the mild winter we've had so far, but if the cold sets in my salad trays will be fine swathed in a layer or two of horticultural fleece. The quanitites aren't huge - somewhere between microgreens and cut-and-come-again leaves, but topped up with foraging finds, it's been plenty.

It's amazing quite what's still fresh and green and available for the picking right now in December, both the"weeds" in my garden and in other local green spaces. The aforementioned hairy bittercress is a banker, but I have also discovered that the leaves of the ubiquitous garden weed Oxalis corniculata var. atropurpurea or creeping wood sorrel are just as deliciously lemony as cultivated sorrel (although you have to be a bit careful not to eat tonnes of the stuff as it can (like a lot of things) be bad for you in very large quantities. Then there's dandelions and cat's ear (bitter but good in small quantities, who needs chicory?) and nettles (select only the fresh green tops) and chickweed (good for you) and violet leaves (a bit bland but a great bulking agent).

I was planning to get the seed sprouter out if the foraging got lean or the cultivated salads failed, but so far I haven't had to. Alfalfa's ok, but my own saladings are better. Now I am just waiting for an opportunity to feed all my friends and relatives a big ole plate of weeds at the next family gathering.