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Every season, pounds of perfectly edible leaves end up in the compost bin — when they often have more flavour and nutrients than the vegetable itself.
What you can harvest right now:
Carrot tops: fresh and herbaceous — use in pesto, soup, or chimichurri. The slight bitterness mellows when blended with olive oil and garlic.
Radish greens: mildly peppery, excellent in a blended soup or sautéed with garlic and a little butter.
Beet greens: higher in iron than spinach. Sauté in butter or eat young leaves raw in salad. The stems cook like Swiss chard.
Squash leaves: tough when raw but tender once cooked — sauté like spinach with garlic and olive oil. A staple green in West African and Filipino cooking.
Celery leaves: intense concentrated celery flavour — dry them and use as a seasoning, or chop fresh into grain salads and tabbouleh.
Nasturtium leaves and flowers: peppery and vivid — the entire plant is edible. Leaves in salads, flowers as garnish, seeds pickled like capers.
Fennel fronds: light and anise-scented — excellent with fish, in salads, or as a herb garnish anywhere you would use dill.
Kohlrabi leaves: milder than kale or cabbage — bake into chips with olive oil and salt, or sauté as you would collard greens.
Sweet potato leaves: widely eaten across Asia and West Africa — sauté with garlic and soy sauce or add to soup. A nutritious green that most US gardeners discard without knowing it is edible.
Strawberry leaves: brew young leaves as a mild digestive tea. Harvest small tender leaves in spring.
Pea pods: sugar snap and snow pea varieties are eaten whole and raw or stir-fried. Shell pea pods are too fibrous to eat but make an excellent sweet broth base for risotto or soup.
A zero-waste kitchen garden starts with looking differently at what is already growing.
Don't compost it. Cook it.
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