Edible Blossoms

 Miss Nine came over and we spent a lovely time together investigating the garden - specifically which flowers you could eat. I love to grow edibles and so the vast majority of plants in my garden, even those in the flower garden are edible and even at this time of the year we could find some flowers to try.

We began with borage flowers (proper name Borage officinalis).

I grow these mainly for the bees and they are actually pretty small as you can see from the bit of finger visible on the left of the flower. Miss Nine loved these when she was a toddler insisting on going out to pick some as soon as she arrived. They are supposed to taste slightly of cucumber - we weren't convinced of this - but they do make a lovely addition to summer drinks. We decided they weren't all that exciting, though.

Then we moved onto the heartsease, also called Johnny Jump Ups from their propensity to appear all over the garden (proper name Viola tricolor), also small but pretty flowers the bees love. 

We nibbled and decided they were pretty bland but would look lovely in a salad.

Next stop was the nasturtium bed (properly Tropaeolum majus). They are also known as Italian cress I'm told.

These were much more interesting with a mild mustardy taste and a slight and pleasant peppery aftertaste. We would both happily eat these.

The calendulas (proper name Calendula officinalis) are looking lovely. They have a lot of names - pot marigold and common marigold (from Mary's gold) the most common.

They, too, had a pleasan flavour which we would try again.

We decided to leave the sweet alyssum - also called Sweet Alice or Sweet Alison (properly called Lobularia maritima) to the multitude of bees although I'm told they are good eating, too, and add a sweet and peppery note to a salad. 

Although she wanted to we couldn't try any roses because they're not in bloom right now. Next visit perhaps.

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