Chrysanthemum - Broad Leaf (Tung Ho/Garland)

DESCRIPTION

This is a variety of chrysanthemum with broad, crunchy, tasty leaves, and large, fragrant, edible flowers. The chrysanthemum, or 'mum, is a long lasting, self seeding, and flexible companion flower, great for attracting bees and other beneficial insects to your garden later in the summer. It's important to maintain at least some flowers and other habitat in the veggie garden all year round, so that the insects remember where you are! Your patch should never be cleared and left empty. Introducing chrysanthemums to your garden makes that job a breeze, because although it dies off in winter, the seeds left in the soil will germinate the following spring, ensuring your Autumn garden will be full of large and fragrant flowers once again.

POT CARE AND PLANTING

The edible chrysanthemum is easy to care for in a pot - transplant into a larger pot or a garden bed within 7 days. Soil level should be up to 5mm below the start of the lowest leaves.

WATERING

Chrysanthemums are average water consumers - water this one an average amount, once per day (early morning or late afternoon is best in summer). More water will cause insane growth, but too much water will cause the roots to rot away.

SUN EXPOSURE

Chrysanthemums only need about half a day of sun in the warmer months. I recommend planting this in an open and sunny area of the garden, but towards the side of your plot, because it'll be a little tall by the end of its life cycle - and you will want to harvest from it frequently. Planting it close to a cucurbit will provide it with some shade for a month or so.

COMPANION PLANTING

This plant can get pretty big - maybe 30cm wide, and up to 80cm tall. It will be most helpful to the pollination of cucurbits, solanums, and strawberries, and will also attract beneficial predatory insects when planted near brassicas. Make sure you leave some space for everything to expand.

HARVESTING AND EATING

This type of chrysanthemum can be harvested from for quite a while - the leaves and stems are thick, crunchy and have a mildly sour, herbaceous flavour, similar to sorrel or bitter lettuce, becoming stronger in flavour as the plant ages. You can harvest the leaves one at a time, or take the whole plant when you have a larger crop next time. They're best eaten raw, or very very lightly blanched, sauteed or stir fried, so as not to ruin the favour and texture. When the chrysanthemum flowers emerge, you can use the petals to garnish and decorate salads, drinks, and desserts, or to make fragrant chrysanthemum syrup or ice cubes. You can batter and fry the whole fresh flowers, or dry them to make your own Chinese chrysanthemum tea blossoms. This variety produces and abundance of flowers and saving at least one for seed will mean you'll soon have endless hand sized flowers to enjoy. The consumption of chrysanthemum flowers is popular in Chinese medicine to help regulate the metabolism and reduce inflammation - but if you're not ready for flowers yet, just keep cutting the buds off until you've had enough of the leaves for a little bit.

SEED SAVING AND PROPAGATION

Chrysanthemums can start to flower quickly when the weather is over 30 degrees, but our mild summers here with cool nights should allow you to sow two crops per year. Each plant produces a number of palm sized, daisy-shaped flowers, with a honey-like fragrance. Tempting as it may be to harvest every single one, leaving one or two on the plant will allow you to collect quite a bit of seed. Just wait for the selected blooms to finish flowering and drop their petals, before slowly dying off - when the back of the flower starts to look brown, cut the blooms off and dry them in a paper bag. Shake and crunch the dry blooms in the bag to release the seeds and discard any larger pieces of material. You can sow some again right away, or save your chrysanthemum seeds over the winter in something airtight - they will last for at least 3 years. They're easy to germinate - simply cover with about 1mm of soil and keep moist, when daytime temperatures are above about 15 degrees.