Petals & Roots - Kids Herbal Club finale

We had four great weeks with a group of kids here, exploring the world of herbs, herbal remedy making, and harvesting wild foods as part of our first Petals & Roots Kids Herbal Club.  During this series the kids learned about safely identifying herbs (by using our senses, stalk shape, leaf pattern, flower, etc), how to carefully and respectfully harvest herbs, and how to store and dry them, how to incorporate wild herbs into our meals, and how to make a few basic remedies. 

We packed the days with hands-on activities, including harvesting the particular plants we were talking about.  We made green smoothies with dandelion, cold frescas with mint, steeped sun tea with lemon balm, sketched plants in our journals, transplanted herbs into pots to take home, had a herbal scavenger hunt, built simple plant presses that fit in a backpack, and made an all purpose healing salve with plantain.  Hopefully this series sparked a continuing interest in the wonderful green world for these kids, an understanding that these wise and useful plants are all around us and we simply need to pay attention, learn and practice.  It was amazing how simply sitting with the plants (while sketching, or harvesting) was a special part of each week.  We don't slow down and do that often enough.

Here are a few photos of the creations from our last day together - edible flower cupcakes, topped with an assortment of edible herbs and flowers from the Little City Farm garden (we did a little tour around the garden and found 20 types flowers that were ready for eating today, including: dandelion, sage, lavender, chive, calendula, marigold, thyme, kale, fennel, clover, violets, heartsease, and rose petals!).  What a lot of beautiful creations (and adventurous eaters!), and a nice reminder of the vibrancy, joy and colour that herbs can bring to our life through our food (food as medicine). 

We hope to offer this Petals & Roots Kids herbal series again in the fall, focusing on herbal roots, seed saving, and other fall-related herbal projects.

Local Superfood Sunchokes

It's time for our final harvest of sunchokes.  We can't believe it's mid December and we are still digging in soft garden soil. The ground is not frozen, there is no snow!  The sunchokes benefit from a light frost, as their flavour sweetens, so we were happy to wait.  Our final harvest is now in.

Sunchokes (Helianthus tuberosus) are a locally grown, easy to cultivate superfood.  They are native to eastern North America.  The plant is tall with a yellow sunflower at the top (in fact they are in the sunflower family).  Once they are planted in one spot, the roots will spread quickly and are hard to ever completely dig up (so choose spot wisely).  They are also known as earth apple, sunroot, Jerusalem artichoke, and other common names.  They are incredibly healthy, offering high levels of iron, B vitamins (especially vit B1), fibre, potassium, vitamin C, and are low-medium glycemic so easy on blood sugar.

The down side is that they don't store for very long.  They need to be kept in the ground as long as possible until near the eating time, best dug fresh and eaten that day.  They taste something like mashed potatoes when cooked - they can be steamed, boiled, baked, shredded and fried, and used as you would a potato.  We like them steamed with butter and salt, and some freshly chopped herbs like parsley, chives, dill, sage or basil.  If we don't have fresh herbs, the sunchokes are wonderful with pesto.\

We are happy to share our sunchokes with locals - so if you want sunchokes in your garden next year let us know.  We can share sprouts or roots in the spring.