With most of our forest garden planted last winter we are at the settling in phase, there is much work with no anticipated outputs for this year. Except we had a welcome surprise last week!
An Elder (Sambucus nigra) had self seeded itself on the edge of our forest garden and was smothered in flat heads of small creamy-white flowers. We could not resist such a harvest, so washed out a number of bottles and picked the flower heads to make a batch of elderflower cordial.
This also enabled us to make use of some of the lemons on our lemon tree (not from our temperate forest garden but from our passive solar house where they thrive), and it felt great to include all fruit from within walking distant – result!
Was it nice? There is nothing better than eating food harvested from your own garden. Looking at the lemons still on our tree, and with a party this weekend, we are going to have a go at producing more cordial at the weekend using the pink flowers on our sambucus nigra “black beauty”. Has anyone tried this? Does it turn pink?
