Wild garlic, also known as Ramsons, can be harvested roughly from March to May.
Unlike domestic garlic, it's the leaves that you eat rather than the bulbs (which are unimpressively tiny). The leaves are relatively mild, similar to garlic chives, so you can use them in salads or sandwiches. In larger quantities they can be used anywhere you'd use garlic or leeks. The main thing is to add them at the very last moment when cooking as they quickly lose their flavour. The younger leaves are delicate and best for salads. As the leaves grow larger they toughen up a little and resemble the tender parts of leeks in their texture. You'll therefore most likely want to chop the larger leaves into strips.
When harvesting the leaves, snap the stems rather than pulling which rips out the bulbs, diminishing next year's supply and covering your harvest with mud. Locations along the edge of paths popular with dog walkers are best avoided for obvious reasons.
Walks with Wild Garlic
Whenever we're out testing walks during the spring, we make a note of any good patches of wild garlic.
The list of walks that we've found so far with wild garlic foraging potential.
We'll be updating the list above as we get more information. Please let us know if you spot any good patches on walks we haven't recorded it for yet. If you're on twitter then message or tweet to @iwalkc, or on facebook you can message us or post to our page.
Some recipes
We've created a pinboard on Pinterest to collect wild garlic recipes here. Perhaps the most well-known is Wild Garlic Pesto, but there are also a few more unusual ones on there.
 |
| Pizza with wild garlic |