Newsletter 3: Summer 2013

Available now: our third newsletter !

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Forget me Nots

Myosotis arvensis

M. sylvatica  / M. scorpioides / M. alpestris

NL: Vergeet-mij-nietje / F: Myosotis

The blue-pinkish flowers of this plant look great in our garden, blooming for up to 5 weeks long. 

Its flowers can be added to decorate salads, but as the plant contain varying levels of pyrrolizidine alkaloids, it should be used in small amounts only. 

The whole plant is astringent and it has been used in herbal medicine as an effective remedy for several eye conditions, including conjunctivitis. It is also a handy first aid herb to help stop bleeds when applied externally, fresh or in powder (dried). 

Garlic Mustard

Alliaria petiolata

NL: Look-zonder-look / F: Herbe à ail

Despite of its name, garlic mustard is not from the family of garlics, but from the mustards (Brassicaceae / Cruciferae). It is a popular edible, used widely in pestos, salad dressings and as a salad ingredient too. Leaves, flowers and seeds are all edible. The leaves are best eaten in early spring, as it may get bitter when the weather turns warmer. Roots can also be eaten, prepared as horseradish, having a similar taste. 

the younger the leaves, the tastier

It contains a lot of advantages from its more known family members, such as being rich in vitamins A, C, magnesium, calcium, omega 3 fatty acids, flavonoids and isothiocyanates - which are thought to help protect our body against various types of cancer. 

In traditional herbalism garlic mustard is used as antiseptic (for wounds, ulcers, cuts...), vulnerary, antiasthmatic, diaphoretic and antiscorbutic. The roots can be processed into a purée or cooked in oil (over low fire in bain-marie) and applied as poultice (or oil) into the chest to help relieve bronchitis. 

Garlic mustard is considered as highly invasive, especially due to its allelochemicals, that keep other plants in the surroundings from germinating. The solution is pretty simple: harvest it and consume it. It can be preserved as pesto, jarred in sterile pots or dried for further culinary or medicinal use. 

This plant is apparently food for more than 60 species of insects and 7 types of fungus, so it surely has an important role to play in nature.

Here is a nice video with several handy tips to use garlic mustard:

Edible Plants: Garlic Mustard 

Goosegrass

a.k.a. Cleavers or Bedstraw

Galium aparine

NL: Kleefkruid / F: Gaillet gratteron

Goosegrass is known in the herbalist’s world as a blood purifier, an essential ingredient of any good herbal detox mix, or spring cleanser formula. Due to its detoxifying as well as diuretic properties, it is employed to treat a series of ailments such as wounds, skin inflammations, ulcers, eczema and even psoriasis. 

The detoxifying work of goosegrass seems to be partly linked to its ability to the cleanse lymphatic system. In popular medicine it is said to help to heal various glandular disorders, including tonsillitis, hepatitis and even some thyroid disorders.

Its aerial parts are also astringent, tonic, depurative, vulnerary. It is also antiphlogistic and febrifuge, making it a helpful herb to include in conditions that involve fevers.

Some herbalists claim that goosegrass is more effective when its fresh juice is used.

In principle the plant is edible, preferably its young shoot tops, collected in spring time. Its seeds lightly roasted seem to make a good coffee substitute. 

Attention: The sap of the plant can cause severe skin irritation in sensitive people.

More on this herb:

Galium aparine - PFAF

Bedstraw / Cleavers - Maria Treben Herbs

Flora of the Netherlands: Cleavers - video to help you identify this plant

Wild Pansy

Viola tricolor

A.k.a. Heartsease   
NL: Driekleurig viooltje / F: Pensée sauvage

Another spontaneous plant that can beautifully decorate our gardens as well as take part in original salad creations. It is rich in beta carotene and vitamin C.

This plant has been used in traditional herbalism for a long list of conditions, including:

• bronchitis, asthma and other respiratory conditions, for its expectorant properties.
• skin irritations, psoriasis, acne and eczema - as a blood purifying herb.
• rheumatism and cystitis, due to its diuretic properties and salicylic acids.

There is no scientific data on toxicity or risks of overconsumption, even though some herbalists warn that nausea and skin irritation can appear as a result of using too much of it.

Hairy Bittercress

NL: kleine veldkers / F: cardamine hérissée

Cardamine hirsuta

This cute plant from the family of the mustard remains green through the winter months. 

As other plants from this family (Brassicacea), this one is also loaded with vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, beta carotene, antioxidants and sulfur-containing compounds that boost immunity and help in cancer prevention. 

You can find this plant in flower now in most places, particularly in shadowy corners.

In this video you can learn to identify this cress:

Wild Edible Bittercress

Spring time! - Baby Weeds

It’s still too cold to actually celebrate spring, but you have probably already started your seedlings in nurseries or indoors and some baby plants are anxiously waiting to get to the real ground. If only it would get a little warmer. In the meantime you have already spotted lots of little plants coming up spontaneously all over your garden. But you had other plans for your garden than to grant it entirely to these “opportunistic” plants. Wondering what to do with these “weeds”? Perhaps it is a good moment to learn to identify them. Getting to know the true value of each of these plants may help you to make better decisions concerning their “destiny”. 

Many of the plants considered weeds contain in fact higher nutritional value than our cultivated leafy vegetables. Some of these opportunistic plants can also improve the health of the soil where we want to grow our vegetables while others can speed up and enrich composting piles. Some can even be used in natural preparations to strengthen cultivated plants, protecting them from diseases and from plague attacks.

Here are some garden jewels that you might want to keep or use in one or another way (salads, juices, soups, liquid compost, fertilizer or natural plant spray). This is how they look in their early days:
(read more below the pictures...)

Malva sylvestris - Common Mallow

Aegopodium podagaria - Ground Elder

Alliaria petiolata - Garlic Mustard

Hypochoeris radicata - Cat's Ear

Anthriscus sylvestris - Wild Chervil / Cow Parsley

Bellis perennis - Daisy

Stellaria media - Chickweed

Taraxacum officinale - Dandelion

Bellis perennis - Daisy

Equisetum arvense - Horsetail

Cardamine spp - Bittercress

Cardamine spp - Bittercress

Glechoma hederacea - Ground Ivy

Plantago lanceolata - Plantain

Veronica filiformis - Speedwell

Urtica dioica - Nettles

Achillea millefolium - Yarrow

But there are also a few poisonous plants that pop up spontaneously in your garden which you might not want to see growing together with your vegetables, in particular plants that can pass on toxic substances to other plants through their roots. It is thus pretty handy to learn about those too, since many of them are easier to be removed in their early stage.

This site is filled with useful information on the various common weeds that can be found pretty much all over Europe. It offers nature-friendly solutions to deal with any plant that is not “desirable” on your garden:

Organic Weed Management - A-Z listing of weeds

For those living in non-English speaking countries, you may want to search them by their latin names, if you are not familiar with their common name in English:

Organic Weed Management - A-Z listing by latin name

Newsletter 2 - March 2013

Available now: our long awaited second newsletter !
+ Activities updated + new links in the links section !

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Grass

Yes, you are reading correctly: grass! While most people may be familiar with the “healing powers” of wheat grass, others may even know about barley grass, oatstraw and alfalfa grass, many people still do not realize that the grass they throw away after mowing their lawn is actually food! 

Most grasses are not only edible but they are rich additions to our diets, rich in precious minerals and vitamins. They also have detox properties similarly to wheat grass.

The best way to consume it, is to harvest the young grass - now widely available. Normally if it is within 15 cm it will be easily chewable. 

I use my Z-star manual juicer to get the best of grasses and other fiber-rich edibles. If you do not have a manual juicer, you can still chew a bunch of young grass a long time, swallow its juice and then spit out the fiberish pulp. 

Keep in mind the usual recommendations about finding food in the wild, making sure it is not a place that has been polluted or sprayed with hazardous chemicals. Contamination from animal manure can be countered by a good washing session, soaking them in vinegar for 20 minutes, washing again.

If you are up to a spring time detox week, grass is the way to go! It is already sprouting higher than all the other plants, and you can get plenty of it to load your energy back after a long-dragging winter. Try adding apple juice and lemon juice to it to make it a more pleasant detox. ;-)

Here is a great video where Sergei Boutenko mentions how to use grasses as food in the very beginning of the video:

Wild Food Foraging part 4 - Sergei Boutenko

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Hedge Mustard

Sisymbrium officinale

NL: Gewone Raket / F: Herbe au chantre

Hedge mustard is found abundantly in fields and loose soils. Young shoots and seeds can be eaten raw or cooked. It can also be dried and ground into powder to flavour other dishes a little bit like regular mustard. It tastes bitter, acrid and it is not the most popular wild green, but pretty healthy.

In traditional folk medicine, this plant has been used as a mild laxative, diuretic, expectorant and also to heal stomach ailments In the old days in France this plant used to be widely known in herbal medicine as the “Singer’s Plant” (Herbe aux Chantres), for its great properties to treat loss of voice. In Greece it was believed that this plant was an antidote to all poisons. 

Foraging for Brassicas

Foraging for wild foods during winter months brings us in contact with precious plants such as cresses and rocket. They belong to a family of plants that are greatly valued for their medicinal properties and nutritional richness: Brassicaceae, also still known as Cruciferae. It is the family of cabbages, kale, broccoli, mustard, watercress, horseradish, but also plenty of other wild edibles that are less known. Christopher Hope gives us a nice introduction to the world of Brassicas in the article (click on the link below):

Foraging for wild food and medicinal plants - Brassicas

Lady's Thumb

Persicaria maculosa

NL: Perzikkruid / F: Renouée persicaire

Very strong plant, from the family of  buckwheat. Edible parts are leaves and young shoots, which can be eaten raw or cooked.

It is traditionally used in poultices to relieve rheumatic pain, to heal wounds, to arrest bleeding or in infusion to help relieve stomach ache.

There is a variety of persicaria very similar to this one, known as smartweed. It is also edible, but it is very hot in taste, so you might want to try first a tiny small piece before putting it a lot in your mouth.

Another family member of the persicaria family that I love to use in dishes is the Persicaria odorata, also known as Vietnamese coriander. It is very easy to cultivate and makes every dish taste divinely good.

Here are some helpful videos with more information on Persicaria maculosa:

Edible & Medicinal Lady’s Thumb
Lady’s Thumb - LuminEarth

As we are talking about persicarias, in the link below you will find some information on culinary uses of persicaria odorata, which looks pretty similar to Lady's Thumb, but it tastes much better:

Persicaria odorata -Kruidwis

Wild Rocket

Diplotaxis tenuifolia

NL: Grote zandkool / F: Roquette sauvage

Wild rocket is another super food that you can find growing spontaneously on your garden or even on sidewalks. From the family of broccoli and cabbages, it has a great taste and it can perfectly be eaten raw, in salads or pesto. In its raw form it preserves most of its antioxidant phytochemicals which protect the liver, help the body to detox from chemicals and heavy metals and it enhances our immune system and our protection against cancer, Alzheimer and other degenerative diseases.




I’ve always been a big fan of this salad green but what inspired me to post this now was to find a large amount of it growing healthily through a crack on the sidewalk near where I live.




 One could write an entire book about the health benefits of this plant and its nutritional richness. It contains, for instance, a lot of vitamin C, A, K, calcium, magnesium, iron and copper. This is indeed one of the healthiest vegetable one can ever find in nature (or easily grow it yourself).

My favorite recipe with it is to blend a large portion of wild rocket with apple juice, fresh mint and pineapple.

More on arugula:

5 Things you need to know about the health benefits of arugula

Healthy Cooking: Arugula

Green smoothie with wild weeds

This is our favorite way to consume these superfoods, by making delicious green juices and smoothies.

We use the juicer mainly for leaves that contain too much fibers, such as winter kale, old dandelion leaves, (wheat or oat or other type of) grass or plantain. Otherwise we use all the greens with fruits to make smoothies. The best smoothies are made in a high speed blender, such as Vitamix, Magimix or Omniblend.

It is pretty simple and you don't really need a recipe to make delicious smoothies. Just add the greens of your preference together with fruits that are growing in that season. Here are some guidelines.

1. Get a full bowl of some:
- young dandelion leaves
- young fresh tops of stinging nettle
- young leaves of ground ivy
- young plantain leaves
- wild mint or lemon balm
- whatever else green you can find depending on the season

2. Rinse the greens carefully.

3. Put some fruits in your blender and add water or fruit juice

4. Add the wild weeds

5. Blend and enjoy !

You can also make these green smoothies using any cultivated greens if they are more easily available at some point - such as rocket greens, watercress, purslane or young kale.

Sometimes the richest parts of the plant, such as radish, turnip and carrot greens, are thrown away when they could be perfectly used in juices or smoothies. In fact if you have natural, non sprayed grass in your back yard you can just harvest every day a bit of that grass and juice it.

If the greens you are using are very fibrous and you don't have a (good) juicer, you can blend the leaves first with water of fruit juice and strain them in a fine sieve or cheese cloth before drinking.

A very easy and simple combination is to blend your greens with appel juice, sieve it or not, depending on the greens used and on the personal preference, and add some freshly squeezed lemon juice at the end.

Next to vitamins and minerals boost that we get from drinking green juices, the chlorophyll content in it has strong energizing, detoxifying and general healing properties.


Here is a video where Valya Boutenko teaches us how to improve the taste of green smoothies, making it more appealing to those still unfamiliar with high amounts of greens at once:

How to Make a Tasty Green Smoothie