Did you know that very many flowers in your kitchen garden are totally edible?

Eat your colours and your greens!

In my latest film: Edible Flowers (11 mins) I take you for a wander through my award-winning permaculture garden to show you what edible flowers are growing this winter including vegetable flowers, herbs flowers, legume flowers, fruit flowers and native flowers.

Flowers add taste, colour and nutrition and many have medicinal qualities too.

Gourmet restaurants offer edible flowers (at quite a price – I heard 30 cents/rocket flower). At home it is easy to grow a garden full of these gourmet ingredients and eat well every day.

Allowing many of your vegetables to go to seed gives you a chance to make the most of each plant – from root to tip, and also to integrate these abundantly flowering plants as a key part of the diversity and pest management strategies of your sustainable garden.

Some of the flowers included in this film are:

• Pick your flowers in the morning when their water content is at its highest.
• Remove the stamens and styles from the flowers before eating. The pollen can detract from the flavor of the flower. In addition, the pollen may cause an allergic reaction in some individuals. 
• Remove the sepals of all flowers like violas and pansies.

• Only the petals of some flowers such as rose, calendula, tulip, chrysanthemum, yucca, and lavender are edible. 
• Flowers such as violet, runner bean and clover can be eaten in their entirety.
• Roses, dianthus, daisies, marigolds and chrysanthemums have a bitter white part at the base of the petal where it was connected to the flower. Cut off the bitter part before using.

Allowing many of your vegetables to go to seed gives you a chance to make the most of each plant – from root to tip, and also to integrate these abundantly flowering plants as a key part of the diversity and pest management strategies of a sustainable garden.