I am a lazy gardener. I want to plant it once and forget about it. When I heard of sorrel, I was captivated. A perennial herb? Grows in Zone 3? What more could a Canadian gardener ask for?
This hardy green, like many things that grow in Zone 3, is sour. No problem, I love sour. Made into a soup with eggs and milk, the sour flavour is mellowed. Mixed into a stir-fry, sorrel can add a zing.
From one package of seeds labelled only in Ukrainian Cyrillic, I have been able to establish a patch of sorrel, in the poorest soil conditions, that has come back year after year. I have come to rely upon this herb for a steady supply of sorrel soups whose sour flavour can be refreshing even on hot sweaty prairie summer days.
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While wandering around the Alberta Center for the Ukrainian Arts In Edmonton, I found a small display of garden seeds, all labelled in Ukrainian, a language I could never master, not for lack of trying.
Lucky for me, some kind soul had provided a secondary label over the original with the helpful word “sorrel” on one packet.
Intrigued, I took one home with me. The seeds sowed in a planter hanging off the fence in my yard, I was soon seeing a nice flush of green sprouting up. The young tender leaves were sharp and sour. I was in love.
I waited patiently for a few weeks until there was enough to harvest for one round of sorrel soup. Easily cut down with a pair of scissors, much like cutting hair, this first harvest only seemed to encourage more vigorous growth in the small planter.
The soup was delicious, creamy with milk and a raw egg dropped in at the end to contribute some protein. This green bowl of garden freshness was just what I needed after a day in the sun that July afternoon. Simply, the sorrel made a sweet and sour soup that made my taste buds pay attention.
Subsequent harvests that first summer became smaller and smaller every few weeks, but that planter just kept on producing. The leaves never got as long as pictured on that Cyrillic-covered seed packet, most likely because of the confines of the planter. During the last days before the freeze, I learned that sorrel was a perennial. I was thrilled. I could save my planter full of good sorrel roots from the compost heap.
I dug up an area in an under-producing spot of my garden and inserted the very root-bound sorrel into the soil, in the hopes that it would over-winter and out-compete the resident chickweed crop.
The next spring the sorrel came back with a vengeance, and now has spread, much to my delight, through and over the chickweed that I had long given up on eradicating.
Sorrel has now become a staple in my rotating kitchen menu. It has made appearances in the usual soup, as greens in stir-fry dishes, a zippy addition to sandwiches and even as an infused oil for salads.
Strong flavours in my leafy greens have long been my jam. Sorrel has now taken its place among the other staples in my summer greens like nasturtium, mustard, dandelion and horseradish leaves. If it can withstand a bit of negligence and the harsh weather the Canadian prairies can dish out, sorrel is welcome to stay, spread and feed my sour soul.
Each spring, I now wait with varying degrees of patience till my tongue can savour the rich, savoury zing of that first crop of sorrel, the memories of which I recall through the cold winter months, and sustains me as I watch for the signs of thaw through frost covered windows. Sorrel, my newfound love, harbinger of warmer times ahead.
