Countryfile came down to film me again a couple of weeks ago. It was aired last Sunday 8th May.
Follow this link for BBC I player to see the programme. It’ll be on i player for another week and is about 20 minutes into the hour long episode:
They ran a story about Japanese knotweed, how it’s such a problem down here in Cornwall, and how people are treating it to get rid of it. Then the story concluded with them saying that there’s a third way of treating it and that’s to EAT IT. They came to my house and filmed Julia Bradbury helping me make some japanese knotweed and custard tarts and we took the tarts along with some japanese knotweed ripple ice cream to Sennen Beach to find brave volunteers to blind taste the tarts. They all loved it, thought it was rhubarb and were surprised to know it was Japanese knotweed (as expected).
If anyone is going to eat Japanese knotweed they must be armed with the knowledge of the law. It’s an offence to grow knotweed or cause it to spread in the wild. You must not drop any pieces of knotweed for fear of it spreading and you must find out if the knotweed you want to pick has been sprayed or not. The season for knotweed is now over. You must pick it when it’s small and looks the size of asparagus.