The team in our Organic Garden, here in the valley are on a mission to win the battle against weeds – and they’ve discovered a delicious way of addressing the problem…

Here in the Organic Garden, weeding is high on our agenda and one way of dealing with the early weeds is to check out which you can eat. Following a talk here by Alys Fowler and studying her book The Thrifty Forager, we’ve started looking at weeds in a different light.

For spring weeding, we have a three-bucket system; compost, salad or the sin-bin (bindweed, couch grass, docks etc.) This week, we’ve added ground elder to the salad bucket, which we found on the long border (definitely not there last year) and the ubiquitous hairy bittercress, which adds a peppery flavour – not unlike rocket – to spring salads.

The third “weed” found growing in the woodland garden is wild garlic – it’s so prevalent here that we even have a recipe for it in our Yeo Valley cookbook – Spinach, Wild Garlic and Filo Pie. Click here to see it online.  

If you don’t fancy these edible ‘weeds’ raw in your salad, why not try making nettle soup or salsa verde? The latter can be made with any of the so-called weeds we’ve mentioned here. Just make sure you identify everything correctly, then tuck in and enjoy!