Followers of our adventures at The Secret Acre will know that we go wild for Wild Garlic.

It’s usually one of our first big forages of spring, and one of the easiest for beginners, growing profusely in woodlands over a long period, and not easily misidentified, smelling and tasting of, well, garlic.

For many years now, we have picked a good few good bags full of the leaves each spring, to turn into a year’s supply of Wild Garlic Pesto, which has become a versatile staple in our kitchen year round. It’s very simple to make. Here’s a basic recipe.

Last year, we decided to expand our Wild Garlic foraging to include a jam jar full of the flower buds, picked just before they start opening, in order to pickle them.

We were inspired to try this by this blog from The Seasonal Table in Somerset, which tells you how to do it, again ridiculously simple. Their blog also gives an equally easy recipe for a diced potato dish made using your pickled wild garlic flower buds. This dish proved to be so addictive that this year we’ve upgraded to three jars of pickled wild garlic flower buds!

Finally this year, we have ended up with Wild Garlic three ways, by adding Wild Garlic Flower Tempura into the mix too, after a friend, who was admiring our latest pickling efforts, recommended it. Here’s a recipe for that too.

So now when you see some Wild Garlic on a walk, whether leaves, buds or flowers, there is no excuse not to pick some for your kitchen. Unless of course, like Sid James in Carry on Henry, you don’t actually like garlic!