The winter is here in sunny South Africa. We have been having nice rainfalls in the Cape region. My fynbos garden is blooming and teeming with life and new growth. This also symbolizes the time for salad greens! Especially, salad rocket (Eruca sativa) and dandelions (Taraxacum officinale). I love this period as it is still mildly warm and a salad for lunch is just perfect. (Not so much in the winter!)

| Dandelion proudly growing for me to eat. |

I have also started to experiment with some microgreens as this is the first time that I have harvested enough seeds to actually do this. Seed saving is so important, and if you have the space to grow ample food that will carry to seed, why not try it! In this post, I will share with you a salad I recently made, muse about the health benefits of dandelions and microgreens, and the mental quietude one might get from harvesting seeds. Please read on and go with me on this journey.

The Dandelions are Coming!

It is funny how in some places dandelions symbolize spring. It seems like in South Africa and the region I live in they prefer the seasons that are mild and have rain in them. The summer and spring might be too hot for them to handle. In any case, my garden is full of tender dandelion leaves ready to be picked for my salads alongside my rocket leaves.

I let them self-seed throughout my garden. It is funny, I have harvested so many seeds but they never grow where I plant them. They always show up in areas where I did not plant them. How funny is nature sometimes when we think we have the upper hand! But let this be a lesson: let them grow where they want to grow! Or something poetic like that. Either way, from my personal experience, things grow best where they want to grow. We can to some extent manage this, but in most cases, it looks like "nature knows best".

| A yellow wild rocket flower lighting up this salad. |

Wild Rocket Taking Over!

Sometimes I buy seeds. It seems so expensive to me but it is less than $1 or just above that price. The reason why it seems so expensive to me is the amount you get. It seems like nothing. (And our local currency, the ZAR or R or Rand, is very weak!) But when you find that one packet of seeds that like your area and growing environment, it feels like your return on investment has grown exponentially. I bought a packet of wild rocket (Diplotaxis tenuifolia) seeds two or so years back. Since then, I have harvested so many seeds I have no idea what to do with them (enter microgreens! See the next section.). But it is just amazing how you can go from having so few to having too much in less than 5 years! If we could make money from this, I would have tried already. (Why capitalism, why!?)

| An overgrown patch of garden with wild rocket flowers everywhere. |

A benefit of having so many plants that just want to go to flower is that you can make your salads pretty. I have harvested so many flowers, and I would reckon they are healthy too! Even though you only get a little from them, I am sure the yellow pigments are healthy. But the main health aspect for me is mental: yellow flowers make me so happy. And if I can eat a "happy salad", I am happy too.

Microgreens (the Future of salads?)

A lovely blog piece (which I linked below) by @buckaroobaby sums it up beautifully:

Microgreens are undoubtedly the food of the future. With such extreme temperatures as many homesteaders experience growing basic salad stuff is challenging.

I concur wholeheartedly! Microgreens are indeed the food (salad) of the future. Not only are they healthy, but they are also so tasty. The taste of the microgreens of salad rocket packs a powerful punch. And because they give so much seed when you grow them for the seeds, you can harvest enough in one growing season to last you a couple of years! Do the math (please do it, I suck at math): If you can harvest enough in one year, you will never run out of seeds, ever! Even if you grow a large portion for microgreens.

| My measly and meager attempts at growing microgreens: A mixture of amaranth, wild rocket, and salad rocket. |

The goal will obviously be to choose microgreens that sprout and grow at the same speed. I did not think this through and mixed amaranth, wild rocket, and salad rocket seeds! It worked out fine in the end. I have clipped from these patches as I need some for salads. It will be interesting to see if some of them grow back. I know amaranth loves to grow back. In fact, I have harvested twice from the seed heads of my amaranth! They died now, but I managed to harvest twice. Guess what happens to those seeds! Microgreens for the winter soups.

Peace of Mind and Mental Natural Medicine whilst Sorting Seeds

There is a reason why the average Joe and Jane do not harvest their own seeds from various plants: it takes time, effort, and planning. I am lucky to have ample free time (please do not tell my Ph.D. supervisor this!). I see it as a kind of natural medicine or therapy to sit for hours and slowly separate the chaff from the seeds. My mind wanders from time to time, but mostly I sit and rid my mind of thoughts. I focus on my hands and what they are doing.

When you let the seeds of any harvested plant dry out nicely, it becomes very easy to rub them between your hands so that the chaff and the seeds separate. The hard part is removing the chaff from the seeds to store them. There are so many tips and tricks out there but I go old school. I wait for a windless day and blow on the seeds as I throw them from one bowl to the next. It takes time, you lose some of the seeds, and it does not remove 100% of the chaff. But I see it as a type of therapy and I mostly use the seeds to grow either new plants or microgreens.

A Wild Autumn Salad Appears

| Green autumn leaves and yellow flowers. |

My salads are usually just a mixture of whatever is growing in the garden. Leaves and flowers make for the best salads. You can add olive oil (and some aged balsamic vinegar for sweetness) and you are ready to go! But sometimes you just want to be fancy. As this post is already too long (!) I am just going to list the ingredients and end with a picture of this fantastic salad. I take no credit for it, nature did all the hard work! I merely took my scissors and cut the plants.

| A white salad symbolising the snow we rarely get in Cape Town South Africa. |

This salad is basically:

• Microgreens (amaranth, rocket, wild rocket),
• Dandelion leaves,
• Salad rocket leaves,
• Lemon basil leaves,
• Cherry tomatoes,
• Feta cheese,
• Sunflower seeds,
• Mixed nuts,
• Wild rocket flowers,
• Olive oil, and
• Aged balsamic vinegar.

Post Scriptum

Growing your own salad is such a rewarding experience. Leaves taste the best when freshly picked. The ones that sit on the shelve for a day or two lack the flavor punch freshly picked leaves have! I hope you try to grow some of your own, it does not take too much space if you grow it in some pots.

All of the photographs are of my own taken with an iPhone. The musings are also my own unless stated otherwise. Please enjoy, stay safe, happy gardening and eat wild greens responsibly! Most of all, take care of yourself.