Foraging

Have you noticed how the prices of food basics have crept up lately? Apparently it's down a few months of wet weather that has left crops well below supermarket standards, left farmers with low yields  and root veg such as potatoes, carrots and beets rotting in the fields or soon afterwards.

Apparently people don't want pale salad and wonky veg. I have sympathy with the farmers. Most of my little crop has been wiped out by sodden soil and a snail and slug invasion. You plan for at least a 1/4 loss anyway - the snails get some veg and salad, the hedgehogs and birds get those and other garden pests. Even snails are worth eating, if you don't mind hand feeding them to cleanse them. Not really worth the effort though :)

But I've lost two thirds stock. but I'm quite used to wonky carrots, and with a bit of barter I've managed to acquire 4 lbs of  gooseberries, 5lbs of early cooking apples, with a promise of more later. I've had a good crop of sweet plums to trade with later. Some of the stuff I've bartered for will be re-bartered or turned into jams and chutneys in exchange later for late season veg. 

It helps if you know a few little tricks. For instance, spring onions. Spring onions are immature onions. If you simply use the green leaves, cut 1/2 inch above the white bit - then put the white part with the roots in a glass of water, and change the water every couple of days. Kept on a windowsill, it will keep producing leaves for weeks for salads or cooking.

If you are feeling adventurous, same as above, but plant in compost in a plant pot, and allow to develop. Use when your patience runs out. 

Likewise, if you buy onions, red or white, chop the root end half inch from the root. Float on a glass of water for a few days, then transfer to a pot. It will produce 'spring onion greens' eventually. I'm told they may even, given time, produce onions.  If you don't mind planting some cloves of garlic the same way, the leaves offer a mild and delicate garlic flavour to salads.

I was asked recently whether you can grow carrots, beets, turnips and swedes from the tops you may cut off? Not in my experience. But you can produce gorgeous, delicate, beet, carrot, turnip, swede  leaves for salads, soups and casseroles. Frequently used in restaurants. Which reminds me....

I'm off on a wobble with some cooking apples and frozen gooseberries to a neighbour with a "weird 8 foot  weed taking over her front garden" It's Fennel leaves - I estimate about 5lb in leaves alone. Nice in salad and soups, and I feel a recipe for home-made aniseed sweets coming on.........