A closer look at the garden in July and August.
First year Hollyhock plants grown from seeds, on a fresh summer morning. These plants only flower starting in their second year.
Pink and White Dwarf Godetia:
A wild star-shaped flower:
Floor covering Five Spot Nemophila:
Plants in our staircase garden:
Delicate, silky Ipomoea flowers growing through our Star Jasmine terrace railing:
Double African Marigold:
As part of my £50 gardening project, started during National Gardening Week, I prepared the soil and unfortunately had to resort to snail killer (I chose an organic one which is safe for pets as our neighbour has a cat).
Over the last ten days I have been propagating flower seeds indoors. The seedlings are coming along nicely. There are Sunflowers, Marigold, Hollyhock and runner beans.
In year three of my urban gardening efforts, I am no longer nervously waiting for the seeds to sprout. I know, it is a matter of letting them be and watering them regularly – they won’t grow faster just because I look !
I have to say, time has passed quickly and I am rather pleased with the progress:
Sunflowers:
Marigold:
Hollyhock:
Runner beans:
Indian Cress:
Updates coming soon
Hi everyone!
I recently found out that my friend Adam sells edible flowers on his market stall. So, of course, I was intrigued by the idea and wanted to taste and possibly review these flowers myself.
I bought two boxes of flowers from him and started my tasting session. And I must say, I was swept away! These edible flowers were truly amazing!
[this is the dinner I prepared: roast chicken with a flower and tomato salad]
To be honest, I was expecting to eat something which would taste blandly green, but how wrong was I! I ended up trying each flower individually [see photos and taste description further below] and was so impressed by the variety of flavours these plants have.
The flowers come in a transparent plastic box. For this review I tried the ‘Chick bag’ and the ‘Bull bag’.
[The Bull bag]
Before trying the flowers, I drafted a few review questions – and here are my answers:
Smell the flowers don’t have a strong fragrance. Some of them don’t have a scent at all.
Taste Each box contains a variety of different flowers and impressively each flower has three to four different flavours. The flavour changes from when you start eating, to a different flavour while you chew, to yet another flavour that is left as an aftertaste.
Overall impression Great. I can’t believe I waited so long to try this. It was a wonderful experience.
Price £4.50 per box. I think it’s a fair price, given that the box provides enough for two people, if you use the flowers for a side dish. If you only use a few flowers as decoration for a desert or a cake, the box contains enough for several decoration projects. So all in all a very good price. Of course, I wouldn’t eat this all the time, and consider it more as something to eat for a special occasion.
What do you think is the best way to use them I would eat them with meat. The Cornish Food Club has matched the flowers so well to the different types of meat, that I think eating them with a well cooked, good cut of meat is how you get the most out of these flower boxes. As you can see further below, I used the blossoms also in a fruit salad, but it did not taste that nice and I felt the flowers were almost wasted, as their flavour could not develop, as it did with the chicken.
I have taken a picture of each flower contained in the two boxes with a description of the taste for almost all of them:
The Chick bag:
I did not know what these flowers were, but thought they tasted a bit bitter like rocket salad. Later I found out that they are indeed rocket flowers.
Cornshoots these were interesting and I wanted to eat more of them. They have a light, zingy, fresh flavour with a sweet aftertaste.
Rocket leaf this has a more mossy, ‘grown-up’ aroma. It tastes a bit like whisky, compared to beer.
Tagetes leaf is lemony combined with a flavour I had never tried before. It is difficult to describe, but a truly inspiring combination of flavours.
Fine peashoots I don’t know how to describe this. Again, it tastes different from the others and I liked it.
Purple viola [sorry no close-up picture] tastes of violet, which you might remember from bonbons, but less sweet. However, there is not only the taste of the viola – while you eat, you can also smell the flower in your month: the scent moves from inside your mouth internally through your sinuses into your nose. A strange, but wonderful sensation.
Yellow viola is similar to the purple viola, but has a less strong, more suttle aroma.
Pink daisy [no close-up photo] it is beautiful to look at, but has a neutral taste.
Overall, when you eat the whole salad, it matches perfectly with the chicken and the salad has a real gourmet feel to it.
The Bull bag:
Unfortunately I didn’t write down what I thought of each single one of the plants in the bull bag, but I have taken pictures of all of them.
Red amaranth
Dittander
Radish flower
Red mustard
Fennel fronds
Marigold flowers these don’t have a strong flavour. They are more pretty than tasty.
Overall, when you eat the whole bull bag salad, it has a more ‘robust’ flavour than the chick bag and a cumin-like taste comes through as well.
[The Chick bag]
My verdict: Eating the edible flowers has been an all-round good experience for me. I can only recommend it!
If you would like to buy the edible flowers that feature in this post, the Cornish Food Club market stall is open every Saturday on Maltby Street Market, in Bermondsey, London.
They sell five mixed boxes, each picked to match the flavour profiles of different meat. I have asked them what exactly you can find in each flower box:
A package of flowers costs £4.50 and stays fresh for ca. a week in the fridge. The flowers come from Cornwall from The Modern Salad Grower in Looe and also go to some of the country’s top restaurants, including Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck in Bray. So that’s an option to consider if you don’t want to cook the flowers yourself, but fancy a professionally cooked flower-meal.
Red Darter 