Eat Your Flowers

Edible flowers make a great addition to a salad, look good on top of a dessert or floating in a cocktail.

The taste varies from mild to spicy and some have subtle flavours like the hint of cucumber from Borage flowers.

It's not as scary as you think you already eat cauliflower and broccoli flowers!

These are the plants we grow and eat:

Borage

Separate the flower from the green sepals at its base.

Calendula or Pot Marigold

The flower petals used to be used to colour butter. You can eat the petals or the whole flower. We eat them in salads.

Nasturtium

What a great plant, you can eat all of it and it grows prolifically. Eat the leaves as a spicy salad tasting similar to watercress, the flowers look great on top of a salad. The seeds can also be fermented or pickled 'poor man's caper' Nasturtiums also attract beneficial insects and can also act as a catch crop for black fly.

Wild Violet

We used Johnny Jump up from Real Seeds sprinkle on salads, the tiny flowers can also be candied.

There are many other flowers especially from herbs that you can eat an internet search will bring up lists with herbs such as Dill, Garlic Chives, Greek Oregano, Lavender, Purple Basil, Rosemary, Thai Basil and Spearmint which are commonly grown in the UK.