Herbs blooming in your garden doesn't have to be the end of the world. These flowers have an important place in a garden and they can also be edible. Last year, we planted nasturtium, an edible ornamental flower, in our garden. Not only are the flowers edible, but the leaves are too. We didn't eat the leaves, but we ate the flowers. Just rinse and eat! Nasturtium has a peppery taste. We added the flowers to our salads. Last summer was the first time any of us had eaten a flower.
This year, we decided to try some other flowers and these were our chives and sage blooms. Our chives and sage have beautiful purple flowers. After I modeled how to do it, our boys used a pair of scissors and snipped a few blooms. The sage flowers are small so you can toss the entire flower into a dish. The chive bloom has an onion flavor. We pull the chive blooms apart so we don't get a mouth full of onion flavor.
It's important for our boys to learn what they can do with all parts of a plant even the blooms. In addition to harvesting blooms, we also harvested more spinach. We decided to make a salad - ingredients included below. Since we had some chive blooms left over, we used them the next day for breakfast in scrambled eggs. Our boys have a sense of pride making their own food. By the end of this summer, we hope they will have learned a few recipes that they will be able to share with others.
Spinach Salad with Garden Blooms
spinach leaves
sage blooms
chive blooms pulled apart
pecans
dried cranberries
shredded cheese
vinaigrette
Directions: Add as little or as much of each topping as you like to the spinach leaves. Then, use your favorite vinaigrette or other salad dressing.