Food preservation season has begun. Every day I have food to harvest in the garden and as much or more free food to forage for in nature. In May, there’s a lot of food you can forage for, and most of it is available in abundance.
Here’s a list of a few plants that you can forage for in May:
Chamomile – Chamomile tea and tinctures have a calming and relaxing effect.
Chickweed – Excellent raw in salads.
Chicory – Another great coffee alternative.
Dandelions – You can make syrup, wine or tea with the flowers. The leaves can be eaten as is or used to make pesto. You can also make dandelion kimchi with the leaves and the stalks. The roots can be washed, dried and used to make a coffee alternative or a tea or tincture that is useful in easing asthma symptoms. I drank a lot of dandelion root tea when I had pneumonia and I drink it often during allergy season and during winter.
Garlic mustard – You can use the roots as a replacement for horseradish. The stalks can be cut and used as a replacement for chives. The leaves can be eaten as a leafy green, turned into pesto or used instead of cabbage in cabbage rolls. The flowers can be dried and turned into a tea. The seeds can replace mustard seeds and can be used to make mustard.
Goutweed – Can be blanched and frozen. It can be used as a leafy green or to make pesto.
Lilac – The flowers can be used to make syrup, lemonade, and soda. You can make candied lilac blossoms, or you can make lilac spongecake or muffins.
Meadowsweet – Good for fevers, headaches and reducing inflammation.
Nettles – You can use nettles to make homemade fertiliser. You can also make nettle tea, nettle soup, nettle tinctures or bake nettle bread. It is a very versatile plant.
Wild garlic – The leaves and flowers can be used in salads, to make pesto or to make a flavoured oil. They have a distinct garlic flavour.
Harvesting and foraging
This week I have harvested green onions, rhubarb, asparagus, parsnips, mint and lemon balm from the garden. I also planted more herbs and potatoes, and I topped off most of the containers with allergy-friendly sawdust.
When I went outside earlier today I heard the sound of something moving away quickly. It was much larger than a cat, so I was curious and stuck around for a bit. Soon after, a teenage dear ran by. I love living so close to nature.
Yesterday I harvested lilac flowers and I made lilac tea and lilac syrup. I also made apple sauce and blended some bananas and froze them in moulds.
Ingredients:
1 litre of lilac flowers
3 litres of filtered water
17.5 dl sugar
13 honeyberries
Instructions:
Remove the flowers from the stems and gather them in a bowl. There mustn’t be any green stems left.
Wash the flowers well in a strainer to make sure there are no bugs or pollen on them.
Add the flowers to a pot and pour over the filtered water.
Bring to a boil, lower the heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes.
Grab a hand blender and blend until you’re sure the water has absorbed as much of the flavour and colour of the ingredients as possible.
Strain it into a bowl and then pour it back into a pot.
Add the sugar and stir until it begins to thicken.
Pour into sterilised bottles or jars, wipe the rims and pull the lids finger tight.
Optional – Waterbath can for 15 minutes.
Next up
I hope to find goutweed in a good enough condition that I can use it to make pesto. If so, then I will probably need about a kilogram of goutweed.
Nettles are growing in abundance, so I will also look into how to safely harvest nettles. I would like to make nettle sourdough bread.
I haven’t found any wild garlic here yet, so finding some would be nice. Many of the dandelions have passed their prime, so it will soon be time to harvest the roots.
If you want to learn more about foraging, take a look at this site.
Do you forage?
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