Chervil

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Chervil - a herb for gourmets - is still a rare green plant in our gardens, used as a seasoning, as well as in salads, omelets, sauces and in folk medicine.

Now, when the vegetable gardens are covered with a thin layer of snow, it has become difficult to find something green and vitamin-rich there. Yesterday, having rummaged in the garden bed, I found openwork green leaves under the snow. It was chervil - a great addition to vinaigrette.

Chervil (Anthriscus cerefolium) is an annual plant of the celery or umbrella family. It is popularly known as a carrot, wild parsley, buteny, snack, zhurnitsa, couper or kupyr. And still there are many different names for him, in each area - its own.

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This elegant soft herb has a delicate aroma that combines the smells of anise and parsley. Not everyone likes the smell of anise, but if you try chervil in salads, especially with cucumbers, in soups, including mushrooms, in pickles, in additions to side dishes, to fish, beans, vegetable and egg dishes, then you start to like it, and even highly. They are flavored with cottage cheese, cheese, butter, mayonnaise. It goes well with boiled potatoes, pilaf, pork, poultry. The ancient Greeks were very fond of ostrich meat under a cap of green chervil, and when barley began to come into fashion with them, they also added chervil to dishes from it.

Russian peasants once drank kupir wine, were treated with kupir tinctures, and ate its stems. They didn’t have to sow it in the garden, because the kupyr in the wild has mastered ravines, wet meadows and forests, where it is still found.

This herb does not grow wild in our region. Yes, and in our gardens, it is not widespread, because few know it. But the one who knows does not part with her. Because this is an amazing herb. Its leaves contain vitamin C, carotene, rutin, mineral salts, proteins, essential oil. In folk medicine, chervil is used for indigestion, for stimulating the digestive system, for bruises, rashes. It is recommended in dietary meals for liver and kidney diseases.

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Chervil is able to decorate the most festive table. Its delicate openwork leaves are very beautiful and elegant. There is one peculiarity of its consumption: it is cut and served on the table just before its use, so that the delicate aroma does not disappear - this is for true gourmets. Chervil is especially good in a company of several herbs, for example, savory, thyme, lovage. Chervil is not harvested for future use. It is not dried, boiled, or fried because it loses its flavor. Only fresh!

Chervil, having cultivated, began to give much more greenery, and these greens became softer and the aroma softer. From wild ancestors, he inherited great endurance and cold resistance. Despite the relatively recent wild past, he is very sensitive to agricultural technology, loves care. In vegetable gardens, he prefers warm, lighted places. Grows well in partial shade, even almost in the shade. Dislikes cold lowlands, waterlogged and dense soils. With an excess of moisture in the soil, it turns yellow, it may even die.

Soil

Chervil grows on any non-acidic soils, but on light fertile soils it gives much larger yields of the most delicate greenery. The bushes look like green balls with a diameter of more than 20 cm. Soil for sowing chervil must be dug onto a shovel bayonet, a bucket of compost must be added to each square meter of the garden bed and full mineral fertilizer in accordance with the instructions for this fertilizer.

Sowing

The first sowing is done in early spring, as soon as the snow melts. You can sow in open ground, or you can sow in a greenhouse. The seeds are buried in the soil to a depth of 1–1.5 cm, but you can not cover them with soil at all, just roll them in. For greater convenience when leaving, it is better to sow in rows with a distance of 30–40 cm between them. To begin with, it is enough to sow a few plants for a test: suddenly you don't like it. Seedlings appear in 10-15 days. When the plants reach a height of 5 cm, they are thinned out, leaving 15–20 cm gaps between the plants.

Care

Chervil is very responsive to taking care of him. He loves it when the weeds around him are pulled out, the soil is loosened and watered, especially in dry weather. Without watering, the greens are dry and tough. Juicy and tender greens are obtained only with a sufficient amount of moisture.

Harvesting

Chervil grows and develops rapidly. Already after a month and a half, well-developed leaves can be plucked from the plants, two months after sowing, you can completely cut them off at the root. They won't grow up again. Uncut plants quickly bloom with white umbrellas, their leaves turn yellow and coarse. They need to be left for seeds. They ripen well in chervil in the Leningrad region. They are oblong, when ripe they are black. They remain viable for 3-4 years.

Repeated crops

To always have fresh chervil greens on the table, sowing should be repeated every 20-30 days. At the same time, summer crops - June and July - should be done in more shaded places so that the plants do not bloom longer and retain all the charm of tenderness. If some of the early sowing plants are left with seeds in the soil, they will multiply by self-sowing. The specimens that have risen in the fall often manage to overwinter. Some of the seeds usually emerge in early spring. The last two years, when autumn is very prolonged, all the seeds germinate in the fall. Last year, a huge hat of bright greenery grew in my garden - right for the New Year's table.