WHAT TO DO IN THE GARDEN THIS WEEK

Grow a foraging garden

For those of us who aren’t too sure about what’s good to gather from the wild and where to go to do it, there’s a simple alternative – grow your own!

A foraging garden in your own backyard is an enjoyable way to include those unusual and reputedly more healthy foods in your diet. And it’s simple to do. Many of the wild foods that excite the foraging fraternity are easy to grow, self-sufficient and casual about the quality of the soil they grow in – in fact you probably have some already in your garden.

A small plot to the side of your regular vegetable or flower plot will serve perfectly as a foraging garden, in it you can grow a half dozen of the popular wild plants.

Wild plants look after their own needs when they’re outside the garden fence, and they’ll do the same thing in your garden. Of course, you can fuss over them if you choose, watering on dry days and feeding with compost or a liquid mix if you want to, but they’ll do just fine with what they can get from the ground.

Try miner’s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata), nasturtiums, wild onions or onion weed (Allium triquetrum), chickweed (Stellaria media), plantain (both broad and narrow-leafed plantain Plantago major and Plantago lanceolata), fat hen, red clover, and native spinach (Tetragonia tetragonioides).

Below Red clover, stinging nettles, common mint and elderflowers – some plants for your foraging garden.