Episode: South Korea

Presenter: Neville Passmore

Neville shows you a range of plants that you can eat leaf by leaf as well as petal by petal. Culinary herbs; everyone understands that they are real flavour boosters to our food, but the flower of all of these varieties can also be added to the pot or to the salad.

Now the flavour isn?t quite as rich as the foliage, however you get the bonus colour as well as that interest.

Basil is a terrific example, normally you would break the flower heads off to concentrate energy into the production of leaves. However, if you go through and pluck the flowers and throw them into a tomato salad, it looks terrific and it tastes great.

The blue flowers of sage have a surprisingly string flavour and they make an ideal edible garnish for cooked meats and casseroles.

The flowers of chives give a mild onion flavour and Neville suggests adding them to a bean salad.

Neville also likes to have a mixed pot of herbs by the back door, with the idea being, you can go out there and pick fresh flowers as well as foliage without having to traipse through the garden.

There is a very good case for when you are planting out herbs like mint that can be put in the garden and then completely take over but if you put it into a pot it is totally constrained.

A hint for potting mixes; don?t muck around with cheap and cheerful ones, go for a top of the line mix like Yates Thrive Premium Potting Mix. These modern mixes are scientifically developed so they drain brilliantly, they have a control release fertiliser in there and there is no other mixing required. You literally just shovel it in around the roots and you are ready to go.

After that there is one thing to do and that is water your plants in and keep them moist on a regular basis.

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