Ground elder does not deal well with poor soil. for planting perennials) or that get a steady supply of leaf mulch left to rot down in place over winter. Good question I have no way of knowing the answer of course. Uses Edible Uses. Will try this one out. You want to cut the whole stand down as soon as it starts to flower, both to encourage new shoot production and to prevent seeding, so you can’t mix it in with anything that won’t take being cut down in late spring. Eventually, they die. Add the linguine and stir. It’s a shame that this puts so many people off, because, picked and prepared properly, ground elder is actually very nice indeed. If you use foraged ingredients then it goes without saying that you should wash them well, make sure they haven’t been sprayed and make sure you have positively identified them. Where it invades a planted area it may be necessary to dig out the desirable plants and clean off their roots to remove rhizome fragments. CAUTION : In North America, deadly Water Hemlocks(Cicuta spp.) All this adds up to a plant that is considered by most gardeners to be one of the worst weeds that there is. Of course they used a plant that knows how to survive in all circumstances, one that cannot be conquered. I’ve only ever foraged it and never had it anywhere I’ve gardened though, which would probably give me a different opinion of it! ‘The Romans favoured ground elder as a pot herb and medicinal plant.’ Photograph: Alamy. Headed out to now pick. The Romans introduced it to Britain and cultivated it as as a salad crop. , Oak – A Foraging Guide to Its Food, Medicine and Other Uses, Fat Hen – A Foraging Guide to Its Food, Medicine and Other Uses. If you have ground elder in your garden, invited or uninvited, it is very important not to put fragments of it into your compost as this will spread it into other areas. One plant is enough to create such complete shade with its densely-packed leaves that no other shoots can grow, but ground elder perhaps also employs chemical warfare against any potential competitors: many plants secrete allelopathic substances which inhibit the growth of other plants. I quite like ground elder, tastewise anyway. I had varigated ground elder and accidentally killed it off. This invasive weed has been the scourge of gardeners for generations. Even in more complicated dishes, frying is a good way of bringing out its flavour – as in this recipe. Thanks for this Alan. ( Log Out /  Many people will have read that ground elder is edible and nibbled a leaf speculatively, perhaps wondering whether they could eat the damn thing into submission. I have ground elder in my garden, did the Romans plant it here? Honestly, chickweed spreads much more easily, and dandelion roots or virginia creeper vines take far longer to die in the compost. I have got a 2 meter by 3 meter shady moist patch. Prevention is far easier than cure. This is an excellent vegetable and eating the leaves is a nice way to keep the ground elder under control in your garden. Cook gently for a couple more minutes and serve. Ground elder is edible but I have to confess, I’ve never tried it. You kill ground elder by either smothering the area for over a year under a black tarp, or steadily weeding ALL the shoots as they come up, thus depriving the roots of photosynthetic nourishment. In sunlit areas that I don’t water, it doesn’t even get big if it grows on compost-rich soil. It is so common that it may well be easier to find a patch near your garden that you can forage from. The complexity of flavor has me preferring it to spinach for cooked dishes most the time! In my garden I remove flowering stems as soon as they appear, mostly because I don’t want them to seed but also because they are excellent to eat while young. The Romans continued their travels, but ground elder stayed. Ground-elder was probably introduced into the UK from continental Europe in Roman times for use as a medicinal and culinary herb; it soon became established as a pernicious weed of gardens, shady areas and cultivated ground. Other Uses. Yes, you can. It needs moist, humous-rich soil, which is why you’ll have more luck looking for it in a park or where the garden of a cloister once was, than in some random meadow. at the moment I am just digging up what I can and burning the results in my husbands garage stove (I don't compost the ash from that). Interesting. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. 5 nettle tops ( Log Out /  dark humor -expecting to make it that far and only can get to where I can walk to for a long time to come. Appreciate all the comments, been trying to get around to cking up on ground elder. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. When I moved into my wife’s place she had a huge plot of ground elder. For the rest, use the biggest frying pan you can find as you want to fry rather than steam the ingredients. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. It is a perennial, so doesn't die over winter and mainly spreads by rhizomes, although it does seed. I’ll try the youngest shoots this year. In existing flowerbeds, the best way to eradicate ground elder is to dig up all the plants and wash their roots to tease out the cream-white roots of ground elder. Love your website B.T.W. The previous owners filled the pond in, and replanted it, and the ground elder seems to be trapped in this area, the brick wall acting as a barrier so it can’t spread to the other beds. Mine is starting to flower…are the flowers or seeds edible? 10 healthy Ground elder-Recipes recipes with fresh and tasty ingredients. Maybe I have that “variegated” variant, but mine really doesn’t spread that badly. Today, I try cooking and eating Ground Elder, an invasive weed that's threatening to overtake my garden. 4. One big question remains though: does it taste any good? The bed has to be bordered on all sides by GE-proof barriers, which is to say short mown grass, paving without lots of cracks or a woodchip path that is hoed regularly. 2. 3. That said, my ground elder looks a bit different than yours, at least compared to the picture in the end. At this stage they have a glossy, translucent green colour that helps you to pick them out. Variegated means having patches of different colours due to a mutation. Ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria) is a perennial vegetable with a bad rep. Its combination of propagation by seed and by masses of spaghetti-like underground runners makes it an almost unstoppable spreader and very difficult to remove from ground once it is established. One corner of my garden is infested with ground elder. Removing the flowers won’t have much effect on the quality of the leaves but cutting the whole lot down around the time they start to flower is a good way to get a flush of new, fresh leaf stems. The soil should be repeatedly dug over and the rhizomes removed and burnt. I’ve never tried cooking it, but will give it a go! Mine doesn’t have white patches on the leaves. Then add the cream and a little water, a teaspoon of bouillon or other stock powder and fresh, finely-chopped herbs such as parsley, wild celery, Scots lovage and sweet cicely. It would be so nice in salads. If foraging isn’t an option, or you’re feeling particularly brave, and you want to give growing it a try, you will have to bring in the big guns in terms of containment. No taste test yet, scrambling on many fronts. Ground Elder has a long history of medicinal use and was cultivated as a food crop and medicinal herb in the Middle Ages. but concentrates for later my usual cough syrup got frozen. At that point, the taste changes and they also start to work as a laxative. Thanks, I’ve been meaning to try ground elder for a vwhile. 10-20 ground elder shoots The area that I harvest, and where the plants actually bloom, has a drainpipe lying alongside it that’s connected to a roof downspout, so it’s almost always well-watered. No excuses now! What did the Romans ever do for us? The ground elder can now be evicted by digging, or by covering the ground with black polythene to starve the weed of light. It is possible to get variegated ground elder, which is not quite such a strong grower. Ah, ground elder. If you have a patch of Ground Elder keep cutting it back and young fresh leaves will grow back in no time. half an onion, finely chopped Whilst Jalopy was being carefully examined in the Volve dealership I visited Waterstone’s in Bury and discovered an answer to The Ground Elder Problem. 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