There is so much food already around us, we don’t necessarily need to grow it in a formal way. Whilst we wait to build on our land we have been minding a friend’s house.
It’s been subdivided from a dairy farm, a bare one acre that we planted flax around the boundary on. When the cows stop grazing it something magical happens.
The soil begins to heal itself by growing a huge variety of plants. We went from an acre of kikuyu to naturally growing edible plants. I went walking in our yard with a friend who loves to forage.
I knew of a few things that we can eat, she gave me a whole lot more ideas. Here are just five of many
- Dandelion – eat the root and flowers, young leaves in salad
- Clover – the flower is full of sweet nectar, can be dried for tea, leaves for salad
- Comfrey Leaves – when they are small for salad or cooking
- Onion Weed – stalk like leaves can be chopped in salad and it’s a lovely onion flavour
- Daisies – you can eat them!
The red clover flowers are so pretty, I spent 20 minutes plucking as many as I could, putting in a dehydrator and there you have it. Tea in a jar, straight out of the garden. Fun activity to do with kids too, and if you don’t have a dehydrator, leave them in the sunshine inside the window, a little more colour is lost, it still works though!
