Rumex acetosa
Common sorrel, garden sorrel, sour dock, dock: its pronounced acidity comes from oxalic acid, the same compound found in rhubarb. It is one of the few vegetable garden plants grown specifically for its acidity — it makes sorrel sauce for shad and salmon, and transforms a simple potato soup.
Characteristics:
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Distinctly tangy flavor: unique in the vegetable garden, it livens up fish, eggs, soups and vegetables.
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Hardy perennial: once established, it produces for years with little care.
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Very early harvest: one of the first leafy vegetables of spring.
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Can be grown anywhere: in a pot, container, window box, on a windowsill, in a flower bed, rock garden or vegetable garden.
Precautions:
- Like rhubarb and spinach, its leaves are rich in oxalates. Consume it occasionally and in moderation rather than in large quantities every day, and prefer young leaves, which are less concentrated. Cooking and combining it with a dairy product — cream or butter — lessen its effect, something traditional cuisine understood long before chemistry did.
- Avoid cast-iron or aluminum cookware, which its acidity attacks and which can give the dish a metallic taste.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: partial shade or light sun — full summer sun makes it bolt and toughens its leaves.
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Soil: heavy, clay-rich, very humus-rich and moist, preferably neutral to acidic. It does not tolerate chalky soil well. It is one of the few plants in this catalog that appreciates heavy soil.
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Method: sow from March to May or in September, directly in the ground or in a seedling pot, 1 cm deep. See how to sow your seeds.
Planting advice:
- Transplant with 30 cm spacing. One clump is more than enough for a household, as its production is continuous.
Care advice:
- Water regularly to keep the soil moist: this is what prevents it from bolting.
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The essential task: cut off the flower stalks as soon as they appear. Otherwise, the plant becomes exhausted, its leaves toughen and harvesting stops.
- Divide the clump every 3 to 4 years to rejuvenate it.
Harvesting advice:
- Pick the outer leaves one at a time, leaving the center intact: the plant continues to regrow from spring through fall.
- Harvest them young: older leaves are more acidic and tougher.
Beneficial combinations:
- Its preference for partial shade and heavy soils makes it a good occupant of cool corners of the garden, where most herbs fail. See our edible perennial plants.
Benefits for biodiversity:
- It is the host plant for the caterpillars of the common copper, the small bright-orange butterfly of wet meadows — letting one clump flower is like providing it with a nursery.
- Its seeds feed small seed-eating birds in autumn.
Uses:
- In a creamy sauce with fish — salmon with sorrel is a classic —, in soup, in an omelet, or with a few finely sliced raw leaves in a salad. Its color turns olive green when cooked; this is normal.
- Traditional medicinal plant. See our medicinal plants to sow.
Harvesting your own seeds:
Let a flower stalk grow and turn completely brown, then shake it over a container: the reddish-brown seeds are abundant. Sorrel also readily self-seeds. See how to save your seeds.
Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose open-pollinated, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, carefully sorted and packaged, with no chemical treatment. Our belief: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
The only acidity grown in the vegetable garden, available from the first days of fine weather.
