Foraging For Wild Garlic

This is the first of what we hope will become a series of ongoing posts about wild food. We are really interested in learning more about foraging and using all the local resources that nature offers us. There’s nothing better than free food that you have picked yourself and its an area we can learn more about as a family.

We tasted a delicious wild garlic pesto at our favourite veggie burger place and decided to find out if there were any good spots wild garlic grew near us. We came across a Sussex based blog that recommended Barcombe Mills, just a couple of minutes down the road from our house. Having thought we may have needed to do a bit of searching we literally stepped onto the main riverside path and it was growing in abundance! Luckily its a very easy plant to identify with long green leaves, pom pom like white flowers and a very distinctive garlic smell..

We picked several large bags full, some of which we washed and froze and the rest we made into pesto for dinner. Smashed up with olive oil, parsley, toasted hazelnuts, lemon juice and salt it was absolutely delicious and enjoyed by all the kids too. This time next year we plan to be far more organised and pick plenty to make and sell pesto from a stall outside the house along with other home-made wares.

Now I just need to do some research as to what to do with all the dandelions in the garden!