Hawthorn, whitethorn, May bush; Crataegus monogyna. You see it all around the Irish countryside, sometimes old rings of the gnarled and spiny trees are left untouched in rings in the middle of fields. For generations they have been treated with respect and superstition, this is where the fairies live. In our garden we have wildContinue reading “Hawthorn Tapanade Recipe”
Category Archives: wild flowers
Wild Carrot Seed Spice Cake – Recipe
We have collected quite a bunch of wild carrot seeds from along the bog road that leads to our house. It is a quiet road which does not have much traffic travelling along it. The concave seed heads make them easy to identify and they are quick to pick. Harvest them when dry and removeContinue reading “Wild Carrot Seed Spice Cake – Recipe”
Wild Carrot Seeds- Spice up your life!
Adventure, variety and spice. Black tomatoes, orange tomatoes, red brussels sprouts, red onions, blue french beans, just some of the variety of vegetable that we grew in the garden this year. We let two fruit develop on our white fruiting red strawberry, admired the pink flowers on another variety, it is always nice to tryContinue reading “Wild Carrot Seeds- Spice up your life!”
Dock Seed Wafers – Finally a reason to have dock leaves in the garden
Rub them on a nettle sting. Apart from that what are dock leaves good for? Well, for a long time I have struggled to find a reason to allow a dock leaf to exist in the garden. Rumex obtusifolius the broadleaf dock is a deep rooted perennial, a thick tap root that is almost impossibleContinue reading “Dock Seed Wafers – Finally a reason to have dock leaves in the garden”
Picking Blackberries and Blackberry Jam Recipe
Shining and black, tightly packed and full of flavour. Each segment a tiny drupe, like a miniature stone fruit, they line the lanes and roadsides of the Irish countryside. Blackberries are abundant, their prickled stems arch over the hedgerows and back to the soil where each stem can take root at its tip and continueContinue reading “Picking Blackberries and Blackberry Jam Recipe”
I fought the root and the root won…. cooking burdock roots
The story goes, George de Mestral took his dog for a walk and then invented Velcro. The Swiss inventor took his canine for a stroll one day sometime in the 1940s and upon arriving home he noticed that his dog has in this fur the spiky seed heads of Actium minus otherwise known as Burdock.Continue reading “I fought the root and the root won…. cooking burdock roots”
Finding our bog
“Samhradh, samradh, bainne na ngamhna, thugamar féin an samhradh linn…” Hanna was singing while walking down the road, she wore her heavy winter coat. It certainly was not the weather that inspired her performance, but more a plea to the gods to bring the summer weather, “summer, summer, the honeysuckle, we brought the summer withContinue reading “Finding our bog”
Ciaran The Gardener 