Making an edible container pond

My little urban garden is full of various pots and containers of all shapes and sizes - they are easy to move around so I can find the best growing positions for the plants, they brighten up nasty patches of concrete and they make it just that little bit harder for slugs and snails to get at my plants. Lots of plants really thrive in containers.

As well as the usual terracotta and plastic plant pots I am using some interesting things as alternative containers; old tyres, a wooden pallet, tetra paks, old storage boxes and even a toaster! But last year here was one container that was bugging me - it was large, cylindrical and fairly deep - and I just couldn’t decide where to put it. Then it came to me, why not make a container pond! This sounded like fun, plus I could do with attracting some frogs to eat all those slugs that were appearing. So I chose a shady corner and dug it into the ground. Next came the decision of what to put in it, so with some help from the fantastic site Plants for a Future I did a little research and decided on four edible (to varying degrees) water loving plants:

Cuckoo flower - the leaves, young shoots and flowers are edible - raw or cooked and apparently taste a bit like water cress. I actually bought 2 varieties accidently as the flowers are so pretty and the leaves are interesting shapes - let’s hope they are tasty too!

Pennywort- the leaves can be eaten cooked and have a carroty flavour, however it does say not to eat too many. It does have the added benefit of helping to oxygenate my pond water so I wouldn’t want to eat it all anyway.

Water mint- yay more mint! I already have about 4 varieties so may have to open a mojito bar, but this one sounded like a great addition to my little pond.

Iris Pseudacorus- not strictly edible although PFAF suggest that the seeds can make an excellent coffee substitute if well roasted. In all honesty I picked this because it’s pretty and who wouldn’t want an elegant tall iris in their pond.

So far I am pretty pleased with the result and happy that I was able to find some unusual edibles for my little garden. If you want to learn more about unusual edibles then come along to our workshop next week, Wednesday 20th June and find out what tasty edibles you could grow in your garden that you won’t find on the supermarket shelves.