🌱 Spring Time In Your Garden

🥰 Hi beautiful people 🥰

✍️ A bit of follow up on my previous blog post "Spring Nibbles From Your Garden", I'm going to show you some pictures in practise and give you more tips what you can do during this time.

🌞 Spring is wonderful time to get yourself ready for autumn and winter. What???!!!

I can hear you saying. I know, spring has only just started. Everything is bursting with life and colours and you'd like to savour this for gloomy and sniffing season.

🌿 The list is endless and I won't be able to cover everything in this post. I can give you some ideas, what you can enjoy fresh, what you can dry for later or preserve as pesto, what you can eat as your guilty pleasure or perhaps you can enjoy in your wonderful bath.

🌷 I'll give you some ideas about common shrubs, wild & garden flowers and we check some common weeds too.

🏃‍♀️ And you'd better be quick! The season might be short for some flowers or leaves. Yes, I kept saying myself I'm gonna do this later...

💪 But when I finally did, what I said I was going to do I felt EPIC! 

❓ Thinking what was that fuss about? Why did I keep postponing it?!!

😂 Can somebody relate?

🌼 Drying leaves & flowers for tea

🌸 Heather flowers 

🍵 I'm sure you might have this beauty in your garden. You can dry its flowers and needles and enjoy them as refreshing tea later in the season.

🍃 Cowslip leaves and flowers

🍋 The flowers have a slightly citrus taste and look great in salads.

The leaves are slightly bitter but covered in dressing make a good salad ingredient.

🍇 Currant leaves (Blackcurrant, Redcurrant & Whitecurrant)

💪 It's packed with vitamin C. Make sure you dry for later use in tea when sniffling season hits us again.

🌸Lungwort (𝗣𝘂𝗹𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮 𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀) Flowers and Leaves 🌸

👪 It's a member of the family Boraginaceae.

🌸 Lungwort has lovely purple flowers, which start off pink.

🍃 Young Lungwort leaves are edible raw and are great addition to spring salads. You can also eat the beautiful flowers.

🤧 I'll dry some leaves and flowers for colder months, they make an excellent tea for coughs and colds. 

✂️ Once it stops flowering, cut it back to ground and enjoy another flowering season.

🥳 I'll try it myself this year.

🎨 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸 𝗢𝘂𝘁 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀! 🎨

❓ How beautiful they are?

👃 And the smell? Divine! I wish you were here! 😂

🌻 Cowslip

🌼 Pansy

🏵️ Violet

🌸 Magnolia

🤤 Enjoy them fresh while you can!

And don't forget to savour their goodness for later use.

🛀 Use them in tea, bath (for romantic souls), cakes and so on...

Whatever tickles your fancy!

❓ And you know what else is nice about them?

🌻 Every single one bloom at their own pace.

💐 They don't bother what size they are, who's got bigger or brighter petals and so on.

❤️ They create community and support each other.

👩‍🏫 We can learn a lot from these beauties.

💐 Be like them;

✅ Be yourself.

✅ Mind your own business.

✅ Bloom at your own pace.

✅ Compete less and cooperate more.

🌿Stinging Nettle 🌿

❓ Did you know that Stinging Nettle is a very abundant and under used superfood that is very easy to identify? I have dedicated area in my garden for it.

🤤 I enjoyed very nice spring-cleaning nettle soup for my lunch and guess what???!!! I still had plenty left to enjoy a lovely herbal nettle tea and I also rinse my hair with nettle water. How versatile is this?

🌿 Only young nettles or bright green tops of larger plants are usable for cooking. It is not wise to eat nettles when flowering between June and October as they have a laxative effect and the plant will then contain cystolith crystals that can upset the urinary tract. The fresh growth from nettles that grow after being cut back is fine though.

💡 It's wise to keep nettles in your garden (be mindful where you plant them though, you don't want them to overtake your garden). They make excellent liquid feed for your plants. 

🌷 Edible Tulips Petals 🌷

🤤 The petals can be eaten raw or cooked but loose much of their colour when cooked.

🥒 They can have many flavours: Bland, beans, peas, and cucumbers.

Pink, peach and white blossoms are the sweetest, red and yellow the most flavourful.

🍡 While you can use them to garnish salads their more common use is to hold appetizers or dip.

⚠️ As with anything else, when trying something new, please proceed with caution. Some might have an allergic reaction.

⚡Just stating the obvious you don't eat anything which has been sprayed with chemicals. 

🌺Flowering Currant 🌺

🌿 This is an ornamental plant that is popular in gardens and parks, it has naturalised in the UK. In the wild, it is usually found in woodland and hedgerows, but can be found in open places as well.

🍹 The flowers can be used to make a very interesting a beautifully flavoured cordial, sorbet, or syrup. They can also be sprinkled over savoury and sweet dishes.

🍇The berries can be used to make jams, jellies, cordials, wine, syrup, fruit leather, and chutneys, but need more sugar than other currants. 

❤️ A good morning starts the night before. ❤️

🌷 I'm never bored with garden garnish combinations especially in sweet treats! 😜

❓Have you got Primrose in your garden ❓

🏵️ This beauty will keep producing lots of flowers. Again and again.

🥗 The flowers are refreshing and sweet and the young leaves can be used as a green vegetable or in salads.

🤤 Enjoy!

🧄 Have you got 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲-𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗟𝗲𝗲𝗸 in your garden?

😂 At least this little rascal is more under control now!

My advice to you, don't fight it, just eat it!

It's quite invasive, however, on the other hand it's a free food for you (pesto, pancakes, butter and son on...). 😂

⚠️ It is an offence under Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act in England and Wales to plant or otherwise cause to grow this species in the wild.

🌿 All of the plant is edible. The young plants can be uprooted when found in profusion and treated as baby leeks or spring onion, the leaves and flowers can be used in salads or the leaves in soups or stews, the more mature onion like roots can be used as onion or garlic.

✅ I mixed it with some chives too.

👩‍🍳 Hey presto! Lucie made some pesto!

🌻 Yellow Archangel 🌻

🌞 The flowers of yellow archangel come into bloom just as the bluebells are fading, replacing the blue carpet of a spring woodland with a golden-yellow one.

💪 Used in a tea infusion, Yellow Archangel helps to energize, fights against inflammation, works as a diuretic, and stimulates digestion.

🥗 The flowers are pretty garnish.

⚠️ If you have it in your garden, it's another invasive one. Make sure you give it a proper border, so it can't escape.

🌻 Dandelion Root 🌻

🥕 Dandelion root is often dried and made into tea, but you can also eat it whole as you do other root vegetables. The root can be dug up and roasted in a fire.

You can also check out this Dandelion Root Coffee Recipe.

🤤 Or Is Anybody Getting Ready For Dandelion Fritters??!!

🌱 𝗘𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 🌱

🔥 In my usual mix below I also have some Rosebay Willowherb aka Fireweed (green tips).

🌿 The very young shoots can be treated like asparagus and served with butter and lemon, the older leaves get very bitter.

🍃 Young leaves can be added to salads.

The soft inner part of the stem can be easily removed and used as a thickener for soups or stews.

🌺 The flowers can be used to brighten a salad.

🚶‍♀️🚶‍♂️ What did you find in your garden or on your walks?

👇 𝗟𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗲 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝘄.

🌞 The Only Way Is Yellow 🌞

💛 I love playing with colours.

🌻 Yellow Archangel

🌻 Primrose

🌻 Pansy

🌻 Cowslip

🥰 I hope it inspires you.

💋 Happy Spring To You! Enjoy This Wonderful Season.

From my heart ❤️ to your heart.❤️