The Edible Flower

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The Edible Flower

Cook. Nourish. Feast. The Edible Flower is a supper club and event catering company based in the North of Ireland.

We’re inspired by the gorgeous produce grown in this part of the world, by the hedgerows and by our travels in Ireland and beyond. FORK TO FORK EATING IN NORTHERN IRELAND

The Edible Flower is a fork to fork supper club for lovers of good food and craft beer. The food we cook and the beer we brew is inspired by local and seasonal produce, wild food and our travels in Ireland and all over the world

. We create fresh, delicious, surprising and colourful dishes, often using Asian, Middle Eastern or Mexican flavours. Come along to one of our regular supper clubs to try different dishes, meet new people and learn about food, brewing and craft beer. If you are looking for catering for a private event, for a family occasion, a small wedding or a dinner or drinks party we can create the perfect food for you. Like our page or sign up to our mailing list for details on upcoming food and beer events.

23/12/2023

Braised red cabbage recipe - this goes particularly well with goose, duck or ham but it’s a great side dish with turkey too. And you can make it up to 5 days ahead and keep in the fridge. I know there are only two days to go 😬

A couple of people asked for my recipe when I posted it on stories so here it is…

Shout out to the Queen for the idea to add cranberries 🙏 ❤️

1 small red cabbage - core removed and finely sliced
2 apples, grated with skin on
200g fresh cranberries
1 large onion (red or white), halved and finely sliced
50g soft brown sugar
One teaspoon of salt
1 cinnamon stick
6 cardamom pods, cracked open
500ml water

Put everything in a large, heavy-based saucepan (with a lid) pan and give it a stir.
Put on the hob uncovered over a medium/high heat and bring to a simmer. Allow to bubble away for a few minutes.
Then put on the lid and lower the heat. Cook for about 90 minutes until soft, glossy and completely melded together. Check frequently while cooking and add a little more water if it’s getting dry.

Fish out the cinnamon stick and cardamom pods (if you can find them). Taste and add more salt if needed. You can also add a splash of cider or wine vinegar if you want it sharper, but I think the cranberries make it sharp enough. Store in the fridge for up to 5 days or the freezer for much longer. This gets better as it sits.

Reheat in the microwave or over a gentle heat on the hob until piping hot. Serve with Christmas dinner or in a cheese toastie or with sausages and mash.

03/12/2023

A lovely morning starting to explore and talk about the creative and food-growing potential of Belfast alleys. 😊

So excited to be involved in this fab project in 2024 alongside [studio idir, 9ft in common, social farms and gardens and liminal Belfast ]… more on this later… 🤫

01/12/2023

Just two tickets left for our Welcome Feast on Saturday 9th December! 😳

Thank you to everyone who has already decided to join us! 🥰

If you fancy coming along for a five course feast - including festive flatbreads from our wood fired clay oven, welcome cocktails and more, then hit the link in my bio for all the details! 🥂🎄

These beautiful photos were taken by the always amazing

Looking forward to seeing some of you very soon!🍻

Until then!

Jo 🌱

23/11/2023

Recipe of the week: Less-is-more Chermoula Roast Carrots. 🥕 🥕

Super simple. Super delicious. A great way to show off some super tasty carrots. (This recipe would equally work well with Crown Prince squash if you have it). Link to the recipe in my bio.

And also a bonus recipe this week! 🤩

Those of you who regularly volunteer here, will probably know Katie Arup. She is often found among the vegetables on a Wednesday morning. And last week she impressed us all with her variation on the classic soda farl. I don’t know whether it was the fact that we’d just spent 4 hours harvesting and we were starving, or the fact that the sun came out for us to sit around the firepit, or whether these truly are the most delicious things ever! Katie kindly sent me her recipe so we can all give them a go. Let me know the verdict. (Locally grown courgettes are out of season now but you could definitely try without it in the recipe. Though actually we did manage to find the very last one of the season here, that must have been picked weeks ago!).

So two delicious tasty Winter bites to try!

Let me know what you think!

Love Jo 🌱

PS: Pictured digging out carrots in her best carrot coloured dungarees! 😍

22/11/2023

At the beginning of the season I thought “what have we done!!!?”. This year, committing to growing veg for 30 weeks of the year (rather than 20 weeks in 2022) seems sensible on paper and absolutely petrifying in reality. But, we’re almost there and I’m delighted with this week’s harvest. 😊 
This week’s veg for our Farm & Feast members includes: salad, carrots, garlic, beetroot, radishes, celery, kale, aloutte potatoes, baby leeks and in your flavour box; brussel sprouts, three-cornered leek, rosemary and parsley. 🥕 🧄 🥬 🥔

Three-cornered leek - I put this into the flavour box this week as a bit of a special garlicy-surprise. I thought it would be lovely in Katie’s soda farl recipe (link in bio) Some people call this plant “wild garlic” and it is, in my mind, a type of wild garlic, but true wild garlic (known as rampsons or ramps in America) is another perennial plant that grows here and has long oval shaped leaves. Ramps die back each year, but three-cornered leek doesn’t die back unless it gets really cold, so it’s looking fab in the garden at the moment. It looks a bit like bluebells but smells very garlicy and has distinctively shaped leaves that are triangular in cross-section. ❄️

Sprouts - We’re slow working our way harvesting up the stalk of our brussel sprout plants and I’m delighted to report that it’s looking very promising for a Christmas box harvest. 🎅

Carrot - Just like the sprouts, today was our penultimate carrot harvest. The final carrots will come out of the ground for the Christmas box. 🥕

Beetroots - The slugs have been bonkers this year (as you will be able to tell from the slug damage on these beetroots). There are hundreds of beets that we’ve abandoned as the damage is so bad, but maybe one day soon we’ll cut out all the damaged bits and turn them into chutney! 🐌

Recipe of the week will be coming soon, so keep an eye out. 👀 And a huge thank you to all who have booked tickets to our Welcome Feast Supper Club, on the 8th & 9th December. 🍷🍴🎄🔥

I really appreciate your amazing support! There are still some tickets left, all the details and the link to book are in my bio! I’d love to see you there! 😊

Love Jo 🌱

21/11/2023

What better way to celebrate the end of the growing season and the launch of Laurelbank Farm than a Welcome Feast! 😊

Claire our amazing cook has designed a delicious seasonal feast (admittedly with some interference from me!), inspired by Mediterranean holidays, and warming spices and the finest local ingredients! (Swipe to see the full menu)

There will be feasting, flatbreads and fires galore! Sharing platters, stories and maybe even a song? But most of all, there will be great food, great people and a great deal of craic!

So grab your nearest and dearest (and a bottle or two!) and join us! I hope to see you soon! (Link in bio to book)

Love Jo 🌱 🍺 🎄

14/11/2023

I am just back from Donegal. I’ve spent the last 3 nights in a friend’s caravan, mainly doing jigsaws and catching up on sleep! It has been good to switch off and go for walks by the sea (I actually only went for one short walk!), and generally take some time out. 🌊

Thank you to everyone to has messaged me since my journal post on Friday. It really means a lot. ❤️

And thank you to my lovely friends who let me use their cosy caravan, and to Cat and the team who kept everything going on the farm in my absence!

Back to work now planning our first event as Laurelbank Farm! 😊

We will be releasing details very soon, so if you haven’t already, sign-up to our Mailing list to be the first to hear all all about it! 📧

Link in my Instagram bio, and I’ll put on stories too! 😊

Love Jo 🌱

09/11/2023

Hello everyone,��Well this is a bit different isn’t it! As you can see, this week we are starting the transition from The Edible Flower to the new name, Laurelbank Farm. 👩‍🌾

This is just the start on a much longer process of moving from being a limited company, owned and run by me, to a social enterprise, owned and run by a much bigger group of people - a bunch of Farm & Feast members, volunteers and my students, brought together by a shared set of values - a group that are working with me right now to make exciting, sustainable and ambitious plans for 2024.

So, even though the veg is slowing down and the days continue to get shorter, there is plenty going on here at the farm! 😊

If you would like to sign-up to our Laurelbank Farm Mailing list to keep up-to-date with events happening here at the farm the link is in my Instagram bio! (I’ll add it to stories too!) Thank you to for the fantastic photographs of our last Farm & Feast Saturday of the season! 📸

Love Jo 🌱

31/10/2023

It’s hard to believe we are coming to the end of our 2nd season of Farm & Feast - our Community Supported Agriculture Scheme! 👩‍🌾 👨‍🌾 Where did the time go? Where was the sunshine?! 😩

We achieved so much this year! We planted potatoes, we sowed sunflowers, created an amazing Summer Solstice arch, cleared weeds (so many weeds), harvested so many vegetables and even managed to create a pretty impressive walkway and steps from the many hundreds of stones on site! 😅 🥔 🌻 🥕 🍅 🥬🌶️

Saturday night was time to stop - to relax, to celebrate and quite literally enjoy the fruits of our labours. Claire designed a sumptuous feast using the best of the seasons produce.
From warming garlic soup, to juicy beef short ribs and creamy colcannon, our cockles were thoroughly warmed on a very wet rainy night! ☔️ Roasted turnips, beets and squash all featured on the menu, alongside the best of Irish cheeses from Mike’s Fancy Cheese. 🎊 🧄 🎃 🧀

We rounded the night off with a decadent chocolate cake with poached pear and chantilly cream! Then it was time to head out to the fire pit where we will enjoyed lemon verbena tea, and a traditional Halloween soul cake. It was a fabulous night of eating, drinking, singing and craic! 🍐 🔥 🫖 🎶 🍻

Thank you to all our members, and the whole team for putting on such a great night! Claire played a blinder with the menu, and the beautiful decor was thanks to Shannon Definitely a night to remember! ☺️

Here’s to more Farm & Feast adventures next year! 🍺

Love Jo 🌱

Ps: Norah and Michelle were our raffle winners and went home with lots of goodies including a soil blocker! 😊 Thanks to everyone who bought a ticket!

31/10/2023

Mini potato apples - this is one of my favourite Samhain recipes. I’ve made them several times for October supper clubs.

Potato apple is an Ulster Halloween tradition - it’s a potato bread (or farl) dough (made with mashed potato, butter and flour) encasing a filling of stewed apple. They are cooked in a dry frying pan or cast iron griddle (second picture). They are normally much bigger than these teeny ones, but I do like these small ones as a little bite. And are often served for tea (the evening meal) on or around Halloween.

They are widely available in home bakeries in the North of Ireland at this time of year and are served hot with a incision down the middle and butter put I into the cut, which then melts deliciously. It sounds like a strange combination - potato and apple - but it really works - the buttery potato contrasting with the sweet & sharp apple filling.

Click the link in bio for my recipe - mine includes a cube of cheddar in each potato apple - but that’s definitely yummy but optional.

28/10/2023

Erin put this recipe together for Farm and Feast this time last year. 🍂🎃 And it's such a good one. 😊

📖 Recipe of the week is ‘Roasted Pumpkin & Radicchio with beans, Parsley and Chilli! 🎃 🫘 🌶️

All the details on the website!

If you don’t know radicchio or can’t get hold of any, then I’m truly sorry. 😔 Your autumns are not delicous as it might be! They are really hard to find. But maybe you could make 2024 the year you join a local veg box scheme or you learn to grow your own… and of course, the year you fall in love with radicchio! 😊

Love Jo 🌱

28/10/2023

Soul cakes have come up so often in my conversations and reading this Samhain/Halloween season that I felt inspired to make my own version - These are my Rosemary, Orange and Ginger Soul Cakes - perfect with a cup of tea or a little medicinal elderberry brandy this Samhain.

Soul cakes (generally biscuits flavoured with dried fruit and mixed spice - often with currants to mark the cross on top) were handed out to visitors & beggars who came ‘souling’ (knocking on doors) on All Hallows Eve (Halloween/Samhain) and the nights around this time of year. The distribution of soul cakes was said to save lost souls who were trapped in purgatory, as well as being a way of distributing alms to the less well off. Monasteries and large estates would have distributed hundreds of soul cakes, but smaller farms (with some flour & sugar to spare) would have baked soul cakes to hand out too. There is evidence of the handing out of soul cakes as early as 1000 AD - but the tradition is linked to much earlier pre-Christian practices of honouring ancestors and spirits with food at this time of year. And of course, comes full circle to more modern traditions of ‘trick or treating’.

The cakes are traditionally round with a cross marked on top, but of course, you could make them any shape.

Here’s my recipe:

🌿 Rosemary for remembrance and love
🍊 Oranges for prosperity and luck
🔥 Ginger for warmth and energy

175g butter, softened
150g sugar (100g caster sugar, 50g soft, dark brown sugar)
Zest of one orange
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 stem ginger, finely chopped
350g plain flour, sifted
1 tsp baking powder
A generous spring of rosemary, very finely chopped (about 1tbsp)

Cream together the butter & sugars.

Add the orange zest and beat again. Then gradually add the beaten eggs, beating well between each addition.

Stir in the stem ginger. Sift the flower and baking powder together and stir in the chopped rosemary.

Continued in comments 🎃👻🖤 and I’ll also pop it up on the website in the next day or two 👻🎃🖤

27/10/2023

Samhain Feast Supper Club continued…

1. & I plating up the main course
2. Roasted cabbage with a chilli & herb drizzle and a hazelnut & rye crumb. A surprise hit - I love roasted cabbage. On gorgeous plates 💙
3. Baked sausages with apples and a maple & mustard dressing - a totally fab recipe. Amazing fairytale apples 🍎 from my Mum’s garden
4. salad with an elderberry vinegar dressing - also in bowls with nasturtium petals
5. Autumnal spiced root vegetable filo pie with preserved lemon & parsley
6. plum & cardamom sorbets with the cutest little shortbread stars embedded with dried cornflower petals made by
7. Serving the caramelised apple & pear pithivier - homemade buttery puff, sweet geranium frangipane and glorious brandy caramelised apples & pears 🍎 🍐
8. Those tarts again - genuinely one of my fave desserts to make
9. An ancestors offering - Samhain was traditionally considered a time to remember and honour those who have gone before. It has many parallels with the more widely known Mexican Dia de los Mu***os (Day of the Dead) which is celebrated on 2nd November. We have the equivalent of All Souls Day on 2nd November here in Ireland. Food would have been left outside or an extra space set at the table for the ancestors and/or the spirits. A tradition which partly morphed into ‘souling’ and then trick or treating. More on that in my next post.
10. After wild weather (thanks storm Babet) on Saturday night the skies cleared, I lit the fire pit and we were treated to a magical, crisp, clear, starlit night - we served rosemary tea (for remembrance and cute little meringue ghosts 👻

Thanks to & for some of the snaps 🧡

26/10/2023

Last weekend’s Samhain Feast - 94 guests over Thursday, Friday & Saturday night - so delightful to celebrate the delicious abundance and spookiness of the season. Samhain is the festival that marks the end of the harvest, a time to eat, drink, be thankful and merry and get together with friends and family before the long Winter sets in. And of course a nod to the other realm and all the people and plants and animals that were here on these lands before us 👻 🪦🖤
A wee round up in photos
1. The gallery looking beautiful - design & decoration by - particularly love the wee purple pumkins
2. Golden 🥨 with our famous honey mustard dip - made by recipe from and served beautifully by
3. Thyme roasted grape, labneh, pickled fennel crostini with dandelion honey
4. Cute menu vibes
5. The first course - pumpkin, sage & blue cheese pierogi with sage brown butter, chilli sauce & sour cream 🎃🥟 - this course was inspired by amazing Pierogi book
6. Second starter - A classic - crispy duck pancakes with cuke, scallions & a
fab homemade, spiced plum sauce
7. Serving the pretzels in the cow byre with some brilliant guests - we served warm apple juice, mulled with lots of spices and a wee shot of rum
8. All the guests enjoying themselves 🖤
9. Amazing team - I’m very lucky to get to work with these brilliant women (& - not in this photo).

Another post to follow with the mains & desserts soon

If you fancy coming along to my next events then sign up to the mailing list (link below) and you will get first dibs on tickets 🧡

https://www.theedibleflower.com/contact-us

25/10/2023

On my last day teaching my Organic Fruit & Veg course at SERC we had a little vegetable and herb-themed pub quiz. 🤓 🍅 🌿 🧅 🍄 🥬 🥕

One of the questions was, “What were the four herbs in the title of the 1966 studio album by Simon and Garfunkel?". Everyone got it right! 🤔😆🤓

Our Farm & Feast members were invited to help themselves to these four herbs for this week’s “pick-your-own”.

As well as the Simon & Garfunkel favourites, they picked lemon verbena from the polytunnel, and snacked on the last of the tomatoes.

It will be a good wee while before the tomato season starts all over again. But they will taste all the sweeter for the wait. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that! 😆 🍅 🥰

And if you are too young and hip to know… the 1966 album by Simon and Garfunkel was of course: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme! 🤓😆

Do let me know your favourite fruit, veg or herb based pub quiz questions! I’m in the market for fresh material… 😜

Thank-you to Cat for the fab photos, and as always to our amazing volunteers! 😊

Love Jo 🌱

24/10/2023

This week I taught my last Organic Fruit & Veg class of the season at South Eastern Regional College’s Horticulture campus in Holywood(aka SERC) ☹️ 📚 👩‍🌾

It’s been totally fabulous way to spend my Tuesday mornings - I couldn’t have wished for a better bunch of students! Full of questions and chat and chat and questions! It geniunely has been a joy to get to know them and handover some of my veggie growing knowledge this year.😊

Thank you to Susan for the brill photos of the fun we had over the last season growing lots of fruit & veg!

😊Check out the last photo in particular of the totally amazing T-shirt the class made me! They teased me all year for the ridiculous things I said in class and threatened to put some on a t-shirt! And then they did!!
I absolutely love it, and will wear with pride below my jumper over the winter months, before unleashing it in all its glory come Spring! 😆😊

Lots of exciting things happening on the farm between now and then, so stay tuned for more info soon!

Love Jo 🌱.

22/10/2023

We had Klaus Laitenberger at the farm weekend. 😊 If you don't know him, he's the Monty Don of Irish vegetable growing! 👨‍🌾 Sharon 👩‍🌾 one of our farm and feast members (who works for New Leaf Compost) organised some workshops with Klaus - and amazingly the sun shone! ☀️ It was a great two days! 😊

But onto recipe of the week. This season’s carrots are definitely worth celebrating. I might be biased, but they are just so sweet, carroty and tasty! 😍 Roasting them is a great idea, and putting them onto a tart is even better!

Carrot Tarte Tatin is recipe of the week! 🥕

This delicious savoury re-imagining of the the traditional sweet French apple tarte tatin (or upside-down tart) makes the humble carrot the star of the show! 🌟

Thank you to Claire for creating this sumptuously creamy, cheesy delight!

Full recipe on our website! 📖

Let me know what you think!

Love Jo 🌱

20/10/2023

We had our first ever gig here at the farm last weekend. 😊 Sofar sounds are a brilliant organisation who match up random venues with artists and musisians all over the world. 🌎 🎶 Check them out for interesting Belfast gigs - or check them out when you are next on holiday - they are based all over and there might be an interesting Sofar gig just around the corner. 🏖️☀️🎤

These amazing photos were taken by
I’ve never seen The Gallery look so dreamy! Georgia of course stole the show as always… 🙄😆🐓 There are lots more pics I’ll share soon in a separate post, with all details about the night. It really was magical. 💫 📸 🌚 🎵

But for now, back to regular programming and a little breakdown of what’s in this week’s veg box for Farm & Feast members! 👩‍🌾 👨‍🌾

Garlic, green peppers, kohlrabi, leeks, carrots, salad, kale, celery, mini-brocoli (or a tiny red cabbage) and a flavour box containing baby courgettes, green beans, green chilli, mint and nasturtium flowers.
🧄🫑 🥕 🥬 🥦 🌶️

Carrots - I've been saving them for the end of the season when the peak of the summer crops is over. I love homegrown carrots. They taste of carrot in a way that is shockingly different to shop-bought ones. 🥕

Courgette - It's offcially the end. All the plants will be coming out this week and I'll start to look forward to the next courgette in June or July 2024... 🌞

Broccoli - This was planted for a spring harvest but the warm October has sped things up. Luckily I've got Farm & Feast members to help me out when I have a few mini-heads of broccoli to enjoy! Hopefully we'll get some more side shoots forming before Christmas! 🥦 🎄

Kohlrabi - Its lovely baked, fried or raw. Such a versitile little vegetable. 👩‍🍳

Chillies and green peppers - The spicy ones are in our flavour box this week, and the mild sweet peppers are not. Hopefully they won’t get muddled up… 🤭 🫑 🌶️ 🔥

That’s all for now! Recipe of the week will be coming along shortly. 📖 It’s a real goody this week - Claire completely outdone herself! 🤤😍🥕

Until then,

Love Jo 🌱

Address

5 Prospect Court
Ballygowan
BT236LN

Website

https://theedibleflower.com/

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Merry Shrove Tuesday 🥞 This week two separate people have told me that pancake day is the BEST day of the year 😋. So better make the most of it. I’m planning these fluffy pancakes for breakfast tomorrow and then crepes for dinner. Here’s my recipe for fluffy buttermilk pancakes - it is worth whisking the egg whites separately Dry ingredients: 250g self-raising flour 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) 2 tablespoon caster sugar Pinch of salt 2 tablespoon chia seeds (optional) Wet ingredients: 200ml buttermilk (add a splash more if necessary) 2 eggs, separated into yolk and whites 2 tablespoons butter, melted Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and whisk with to mix the ingredients evenly. Mix together the egg yolks and buttermilk. Separately whisk the egg whites to soft peaks. Combine the buttermilk mixture with the dry ingredients and stir until you have a thick smooth batter. Gently fold in the egg whites and then the melted butter. Add a splash more buttermilk if the mixture is too thick. Heat a frying pan or a griddle pan over a medium heat with the tiniest drop of oil. When hot dollop the mixture (I do a couple of tablespoons per pancake) into the pan and fry for a couple of minutes until bubbles form on top of the batter. And then flip and cook for a minute or two more until golden. Keep warm under a clean tea towel in a low oven. Keep cooking until you used all the batter. This will make about 10 pancakes 🥞 #pancakes #pancakeday #shrovetuesday #pancakedinner #buttermilkpancakes #scotchpancakes

How to make the Blackberry & Sweet Geranium tart I made on @irelandamvmtv yesterday morning. Ingredients: 75g plain flour 265g icing sugar, sifted 150g ground almonds 1 lemon, zest only 3 large sweet geranium leaves, finely chopped 265g egg whites (6 or 7 eggs) 265g melted butter 300g blackberries 2 tbsp apple or redcurrant jelly 20g flaked almonds, toasted Follow the steps in the video and then bake in a preheated oven at 200C for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 180C and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown. Or you can find the full recipe and all the details of how to grow sweet geraniums in our book. This recipe also works gorgeously with raspberries, blueberries, peaches, nectarines or pears. You can use frozen fruit too. Blackberries from the hedgerows of County Down and sweet geranium leaves from @edibleflower_grows #blackberrytart #sweetgeranium #pelargoniumgraveolens #edibleflowercooks #theedibleflower

I’ve wanted to talk about this for the longest time and now the time is here it’s hard to know what to say except - eeeekkk - we have written a book!!!! It’s called The Edible Flower: A Modern Guide to Growing, Cooking & Eating Edible Flowers and will be published by @laurencekingpub - It will be released on 9 March 2023 - but in this crazy world you can already preorder from booksellers including @bookshop_org_uk - don’t worry I will remind you again! Probably many, many times! Jo and I wrote it together and because it is so so seasonally linked to when the flowers were in bloom in our garden we did the food styling and photoshoots as we wrote it. The amazing photography is by our brilliant friend and food photographer extraordinaire @sharoncosgrovephotography I’m so proud of it - it’s full of recipes that are delicious, seasonal and filled with flowers, plus amazing advice on creating a garden that is both beautiful and productive. If you want to read the full press release I’ve linked to it in my bio. We’ve both learnt so much through this process - we knew nothing! A million thanks to the fabulous Juliet Pickering @blakefriedmannliteraryagency for keeping us right always and to everyone at @laurencekingpub - especially Katherine Pitt and Elen Jones for guiding us first time authors through the process, mostly painlessly. And for correcting our spelling mistakes and making sure the book looked fabulous! #theedibleflower #edibleflowercooks #edibleflowergrows #laurencekingpublishing #blakefriedmannagency #wewroteabook #howcoolisthat

Today I made LOTS of rhubarb gin for our Summer Solstice supper club - recipe as follows: Makes 1 litre (ish) - I made 6 litres!!! 400-500g rhubarb 100g sugar A couple of sweet geranium leaves (optional) A couple of dried hibiscus flowers (again optional, but will make it more pink) 1 litre gin (I use a supermarket own brand as don’t want anything too fancy or too flavoured) Trim the rhubarb and chop into chunks. Put in a large clean jar. Add sugar and sweet geranium and hibiscus if using. Top up with gin and give it a good stir. Leave in a dark place for a couple of weeks. Give it a shake every so often to encourage the sugar to dissolve. After a few weeks strain out the rhubarb and other flavourings and drink. Good with tonic for a rhubarb G&T or make a rhubarb martini. I’ll post a picture of the finished product but wanted to share the method now while the outside rhubarb is perfectly in season! #rhubarbgin #rhubarb #growyourown #edibleflowergrows #edibleflowercooks #theedibleflower

Not long to wait now... . . . . https://theedibleflower.com/portfolio/compost-may21/ #onewomansjourney #todiscoverthesecretsof #compost

A windy grey day here at The Edible Flower, but a productive morning. I took all the fleece and mesh covers off the main vegetable bed and did some serious weeding (mainly fat-hen brought it with horse manure, some grass, and the odd cheeky hairy bittercress). Quick run down of what is in each of the 18 beds right now... 1. Lettuce (first sowing) 2. Broad beans, carrot, parsnip, borage 3. Peas 4. Shallots 5. Onions & scallions 6. Garlic 7. Overwintered kale (to be replaced with main crop of beetroot soon) 8. Nothing much - soon to be lettuce (2nd sowing) 9. Mouli and radish 10. Early beetroot and turnips 11. Swede and kohlrabi 12. A few random lettuces - soon to be kale and other big brassicas 13. Dill & coriander. Courgettes & squash will be interplanted when the time comes 14. Pink fir apple potatoes (with dill and coriander between the rows 15. Lettuce (first sowing) 16. A few overwintered scallions and salad rocket. Soon to be lettuce (2nd sowing) 17. Early potatoes (Colleen) with spinach down the middle 18. A wee bit of overwintered coriander - soon to be replaced with courgettes. #growyourown #weeding #weedingtime #vegetablegarden #kitchengarden #edibleflowergrows #theedibleflower