Weekend Spring Welcome: Plan an Edible Flower Garden

Have you ever experimented with edible flowers? From salads to ice cubes for Summer cocktails, we have lots of things coming up you can do with them – but now’s the time to order your seeds! My ode to Spring (we wondered, would you ever come?)! And pretty much the best weekend activity we can think of: planning your edible flower garden.

Have you ever experimented with edible flowers? From salads to ice cubes for Summer cocktails, we have lots of things coming up you can do with them – but now’s the time to order your seeds! My ode to Spring (we wondered, would you ever come?)! And pretty much the best weekend activity we can think of: planning your edible flower garden.

Perhaps my favorite trip to the nursery is that one in late winter/early spring to purchase a small packet of native wildflower seed. I come home excited and eager to sprinkle little pinches of them in and around the garden. I may score the surface of the soil gently afterward to integrate them into the soil. Then… the wait. What a joy to marvel at such a vigorous burst of life over the following months!

A good portion of the flowers that are to bloom are edible and all are beautiful, unique, vibrant… Among some of my favorite edible flowers are calendula, nasturtium, California poppy, viola, BORAGE!, rosemary, sunflower, alyssum, echinacea, chive, rose and so very much more… (It is important to identify your flowers before consuming them, as the toxic families are also visually alluring.) Remember, you can also eat any vegetable or herb flower that has perhaps already bolted. I love radish and broccoli flowers! Leave some flowers on each plant to encourage pollination and allow the plant to go to seed. This way, you’ll have the same self seeded selection the following spring.

Happy flowering 🙂

-Benjamin Gould

• The Star: Ben Gould happened upon his passion for gardening when trying to find the most inexpensive way to travel the world through the WWOOF program in Belize and India. It has since transformed his life in beautiful and unexpected ways. He now educates children on gardening at several elementary schools in Los Angeles, has recently started his own edible garden installation business and continues to seek knowledge and learn life lessons through all of the gifts that the garden offers. He is also one of my favorite Instagrammers around.

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Links and Related Posts:
• Introducing Ben Gould!
• One Minute Tip: How to Use a Coconut to Plant a Seed
• One Minute Tip: How to Grow Your Tomatoes into Trees
• One Minute Tip: How to Kill Your Weed Seeds