We love eating colors! Hollyhocks so easy to grow as it re-seads itself as we collect seed. Leaves are delicious cut into ribbons and added to just about any dish. The flower petals taste like lettuce and its kinda funny but refreshing to like the taste of the color pink.
Different varieties of hollyhocks seed are nearly available anywhere.
Trying to add photos…
I really like this idea of multifunctionality, which results in efficiency. I hope to also try breeding flowers for edibility, when I’ve got more experience under my belt. It’s so cool that different colors have their own flavor. Do you still grow lettuce, if you did before? Do the pollen/non-petal flower parts taste bad or have a weird texture?
Does the sandpapery texture of hollyhock leaves go away after you cook them? If so, that may make them a reasonable green to eat. I like the taste and found the texture offputting, but maybe I just need to cook them.
Yes, I still grow lettuce, it grows over our winter season as does some varieties of edible flowers. Some grow over the summer. The focus is to have greens or plants to eat year round. Our growing seasons overlap and cover the entire year.
Yes, after I cut the leaves into ribbons, saute lightly with olive oil and garlic, pepper or any spice you enjoy with cooked greens. We have also added the ribbons to soups that are whizzed up in a blender…or utilize a stick blender.
See, I really like lettuce, but I’d rather grow other species for leaf greens, because – sigh – we have prickly lettuce as a common weed around here, and when I save seeds from my lettuce, there’s always the risk it will cross. It’s a small chance, since I eliminate all the prickly lettuce from my yard before it even comes close to flowering, and lettuce is an inbreeder anyway, but I can’t control whether my neighbors remove it all, and we have plenty of bees.
We have a bunch of hollyhocks that volunteered in our front yard from a neighbor’s ornamental garden. They’re pretty, and they seem to survive with no irrigation at all through our very hot, rainless summers (very impressive!), so we’ve left them. I read that you can eat the leaves, which interested me a great deal, but then I discovered I didn’t like the texture. If that can be overcome by cooking them, though . . . innnnteresting!
Yes!! That’s the key, surviving with little or no inputs, makes no difference to me whether I eat lettuce or flowers, both are delicious. Availability over the summer is my focus. Somewhere on pinterest there were recipes for edible flowers…more for nasturtium leaves.
Hmmmm, and now that I think about it:
The hollyhocks that volunteer in our lawn never get very tall or flower, because they have no water all summer at all.
Meanwhile, the hollyhocks next to our house get rainwater from the roof every so often. (It does rain in the summer – a little – maybe a light sprinkle once a month or so.) They get tall and flower.
That means I always have loads of seeds from the ones near my house, and I know I’ll get leaves – just not flowers – if I plant those seeds somewhere with no water whatsoever. And I don’t need those seeds for anything, since the ones that flower are perennials. And it won’t matter if the totally dry farmed ones won’t flower, because I’ll be eating the leaves.
This sounds like a good lettuce alternative to try totally dry farming next year! 
Another lover of edible flowers here! I’ve found nasturtium to be incredibly versatile, in addition to the leaves the seeds can be pickled and used as a replacement for capers. What edibles do you find able to over winter?
Hi Cynthia,
I do love nasturtium too! I found a giant climbing one at baker creek last year that is particularly easy to harvest for food and gorgeous of course! The capers are « huge » (for nasturtium that is 
)
I have a lot of perennials and add new ones every year. What I found reliable so far :
Ground cover: strawberries both cultivated and alpine
Green: turquish rocket, all sorrels and edible dock, wintercress, arugula, sea kale, kale, perennial celery, lovage, Alexander
Shoots: asparagus, rhubarb
Flowers edible/bulb: camas, milkweed, sochan, blue flag, borage (reseed)
Bulbs: potato onion, Egyptian onion, multiplier onion, shallots
Perennial leeks
Herbs: cilantro, parsley, perilla, hissop, mint
Then there are many types of fruiting bushes that do great like currants, elderberries, gooseberries, juneberries, blueberries, aronia, hawthorn, black haw. Brambles thrive here raspberries all sorts, blackberries.
That’s on top of my head, I’m sure I’m forgetting others…
What about you?
I’m in Arizona where my winter us like the northern summers…so we grow edible chrysanthemum, viola, sweet alyssium, calendula, stocks, radish flowers, broccoli flowers, dianthus all for the cooler part of our winter. Then the hollyhock grow crazy as it warms up to 70 degrees overnight and cosmos, zinnia, okra, squash blossoms, pea flowers and tendrils…just so many to enjoy 
. It can really make for a diverse salad bowl, even one of everything fills the bowl.
Sweet potato greens are also edible.
Yes, we love sweet potato leaves. Sunflowers too, roasted when the seeds are still white. Just inviting a list of other edible flowers. I didn’t include all of the herbs and blossoms. We try everything, some are super easy to grow like Hollyhocks and okra with flowers and leaves edible for a recipe. Moringa too, the tree grows well in warmer climates. Chickens enjoy the leaves too.
I bought Dwarf Moringa from Baker Creek Seeds. I hope it’ll be willing to give me seeds before it dies back in fall. If so, I’m golden; I can grow it as an annual every year.
Moringa is really tough. I’ve tried it three times, seeds and cuttings. Something always happens.
If you can put it in a big pot that you can bring inside in the fall would be your best bet.
Awww. How long did it live for you each of the three times?
I guess I wouldn’t mind having it as a houseplant, since I could snack on the edible leaves all winter long, but I’d rather be able to grow it outside.
Had no idea! Do you cook them, put with mixed greens in salad? Only sweet potatoes or regular potatoes too?
Only sweet potatoes. They can be cooked or used raw as in a salad.
We also love to eat colours!
As an example, I posted a picture of mixed salad with flowers in this post: https://goingtoseed.discourse.group/t/what-are-your-favorite-cover-crops-to-eat/646/20?u=mare.silba
Flowers in that salad are nasturtium, fava beans, collard, peas, borage, malva and calendula (just petals),
mixed with different salad greens (lettuces, brassicas, lamb’s lettuce), wild rocket, dandelion, nasturtium, wild plantain, lemon balm and sage leaves.
One of my favourite flower to snack on while I’m in the garden is nasturtium - I love that particular combination of sweet and spicy
Oh, cool! I was wondering if fava bean flowers were edible!
Of course, if I eat the flowers, they won’t make beans. However, if I have any slowpoke plants that refuse to set pods because they took too long to flower and it got hot, I could plan to eat the flowers from those instead of regretting their slowpokiness.
