I am participating in the Erasmus+ Growing Green Communities -project, which is about identifying wild herbs, gardening and learning about a more sustainable lifestyle. Therefore on a warm and sunny Saturday me and 8 other students went to our teacher’s cottage in Suinula to do some gardening.
When we arrived in Suinula we separated into three groups. One group would take care of the cooking, one would collect the needed wild herbs and the last one would make the garden bed and plant new seeds. For the first half of the day I was part of the herbs collecting group. I learned to identify some edible herbs that are very common and easy to find. We gathered wild herbs, things like strawberry leaves, rasberrry leaves, birch leaves, wood sorrel and goatweed. We also discussed the different ways wild herbs can be used in foods, drinks and spices.
In the afternoon we took a break to eat the food a few students had made with the help of our home economics teacher. We ate almost completely vegetarian lasagna with goatweed inside. We ate salad with birch leaves, strawberry leaves and other plants, and to drink we had lemonade with herbs. All in all a very healthy and delicious meal!
After lunch we continued working, though this time more tired than before. A few others and I made the dessert, which was ice cream! We helped the others, talked a lot and finally took another break to eat. For dinner we had homemade bread and pesto, and nettle soup made with freshly picked nettles, of course. And for dessert we had the ice cream, which was almost solid.
I really enjoyed our trip to Suinula! I learned a lot about wild herbs and I discovered how easy it actually is to use them. There are so many different ways of taking advantage of common herbs that are easy to find and cost nothing. Now I can also safely say I can identify a few wild herbs 🙂
-Hannah
Never have I ever started a garden from scratch. Yet this was exactly what I got up to on a sunny Saturday. We visites Sofia’s summerhouse and spent a wonderful day learning about gardening and wild plants. We had Jyrki Santala with us, who taught us about gardening and plants. We will get to enjoy our planted food in the Fall but with the wild plants had then and there we made some delicious food. We made lasagna with added wild plants, herbal ice tea and nettlesoup among other things.
I realized that wild plants are really versatile and useful. There really is so much “free food” available if you just take the time to get to know your surroundings. Wild plants can make your diet more versatile and add alot of important nutrients. In the evening we enjoyed some fresh baked rye bread, ice cream and rhubarb compote. The whole day it was incredibly hot and sunny so the ice cream really hit the spot even though it hardly set because of the heat.
Huge thanks to our guests Jyrki, Sorina and Anniina that helped us with the gathering and gardening, to Elina for planing such a good menu and especially to Sofia for allowing us to visit her summerhouse.
-Kaari
Source: Growing Green Communities: Sew, pick & taste! (wordpress.com)