Yesterday, I was preparing my talk for the Finnish Permaculture Association (see https://youtube.com/live/CYBqioWTr6U) and was reminded that I had mentioned in my book that Hablitzia could be used in place of spinach in Finnish spinach pancakes (pinaattiohukaiset). With my Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach; köynnöspinaatit) shoots having grown well recently, I decided to make these Finnish-style habby pancakes for lunch to get in the mood for the talk. I must admit, I didn’t look up a recipe and just improvised (recipes make cooking complicated in my mind!) using ingredients I felt should be in there. Apart from plentiful Hablitzia shoots I mixed in whole grain oat flour, eggs, garlic, chili and pepper and fried them in butter. It was served with a salad which also included Hablitzia! First, the quotation from Around the World in 80 plants (suggested by Jonathan Bates in the US in his article on Hablitzia):
Category Archives: Talks
Edimentals Goes Mainstream
On the 12th June, I gave my first webinar at a mainstream gardening conference in the US, the Southeastern Plant Symposium, hosted by the JC Raulston Arboretum and Juniper Level Botanic Garden in Raleigh, North Carolina. I had thought that the invitation was on the back of a successful talk I gave at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens in September 2019. However, it turned out not to be the case and one of the organizers horticulturist and owner of Plant Delights Nursery, Tony Avent, had read my book, enjoyed it and had suggested to the committee to invite me!

I was sandwiched between some great ornamental gardeners and plant breeders including Fergus Garrett of Great Dixter in the UK. I particularly enjoyed Aaron Floden’s talk (from the Missouri Botanical Garden) on unexploited native plants (in an ornamental context) and plant breeder Peter Zale’s talk on Hosta breeding (the market for Hostas in the US is enormous….time for a small segment dedicated to Hostas for food!). Edimental gardeners can, as I have over the years, get a lot of inspiration from ornamental gardeners.
The feedback after the event was very positive. One of the participants, Marty Finkel, wrote an article about the talk which has just been published on page 10 of the Granville Gardeners Gazette (available for all to read!)
see http://www.thegranvillegardeners.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Gazette-2021-07.pdf (after an article about human composting!)
Edimentals at the Southeastern Plant Symposium
Edimentals and other useful plants in the Atlanta Botanical Garden
A year ago I was scheduled to give the Alston lecture at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Before the lecture, my host Cornelia Cho showed me round the botanical gardens. I’ve collected a series of pictures of the useful plants we saw (with captions). There’s a large Japanese garden which had many familiar Japanese edimentals and perennial vegetables and the main theme of teh glasshouses was ethnobotany! More can be read about the lecture here:
https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=23467
Perennial vegetables webinar on Youtube
https://youtu.be/DO_BdCXqaE0
The webinar was part of the course “Ett år i Omställning” (one year in transition) organised by Eskilstunas folkhögskola (folk school), Omställningsnätverket (Swedish transition network) and with support of Hela Sverige ska Leva.
A special thanks to the coordinator Emilia Rekestad who also organised my first webinar on Winter Vegetables: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=16704
Please share!
Back home
I got home this morning after my train trip around Europe. A very good experience apart from last night sitting up on the train from Oslo -Trondheim (the sleeper was sold out). I did 22 longer train journeys and all apart from one were on time. The one that wasn’t on time was only 10 minutes delayed and it turned out that the connection was the same train, so it had no consequence! I didn’t once think it was a drag and used the time productively—-or sleeping!
I visited my parents in England (Chandlers Ford) and did 4 talks in Austria for the University of Graz, Langenloiser Staudentage (over 200 landscape architects, nursery owners and gardeners on perennial vegetables), Langenloiser Gehölztage (on woody edibles…aka wedibles!) and Arche Noah in Schiltern, also on woody edibles as they are planning to plant a forest garden! On the way home I gave a talk on edimentals to Nesodden gardening club…in the same building as my grandson goes to kindergarten…and also gave a talk at NIBIO in Ås on Alliums.



Visit to Seed Savers Exchange and the Vesterheim
I toured eastern and mid-west USA for 3 weeks in September / October 2019, on the back of being invited to the Mid-West Wild Harvest Festival in Wisconsin where I gave the keynote speech as well as a couple of classes. One of many highlights was a visit to Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) on September 26, just outside the small town of Decorah, IA, just an hour’s drive from the festival.
Decorah has become a centre of Norwegian-American culture. This originates from a large number of Norwegian settlements that started in the 1850s. Every July, Decorah also hosts the Nordic Fest, a celebration of Norwegian culture. Decorah is also home to the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, the largest museum in the country devoted to a single immigrant group. Until 1972, one of the largest Norwegian-language newspapers in the nation was published there, the Decorah Posten. I have long been a member of the Seed Savers Exchange, which is KVANN’s biggest inspiration, an organization that started as early as 1975 to take care of heirloom plants. Since then, SSE has published a yearbook every year. In the SSE Yearbook you will find, in 2013, as many as 12500 varieties of vegetables on offer over 500 pages of small print. This is real diversity. SSE was founded by Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy after Diane bequeathed the seeds of two heirloom plants that her great-grandfather had brought to the United States from Bavaria in 1870!
I rented a car from Madison and drove through a dull monotonous landscape of almost exclusively arable land with ripe corn and soyabeans. The contrast was therefore remarkable arriving at Heritage Farm, where Seed Savers Exchange is located, and where one can find perhaps the largest vegetable variety in the world? They grow here over 1000 varieties of seeds each year and at the same time conserve the nature of the wooded river valley conservation area. The farm was larger than I expected, at 390 ha, but it is necessary to be able to isolate the vegetables far enough apart to minimise the danger of crossing in seed production!
I was really made to feel welcome by the staff of the Seed Savers Exchange and especially by the brand new executive director, Emily Rose Haga, who has long experience in vegetable breeding, and especially tomato, pepper and lettuce varieties, at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine since 2012.
In the morning I made a presentation to the staff of about KVANN and a little about my work with perennial vegetables which I talked more about in my evening talk (more below)!
Afterwards, I was given a tour of the facilities with Facilities Manager Jim Edrington who drove me around the farm to see the isolation areas for seed production, nature conservation areas, a collection of historic fruits and pastures with Ancient White Park Cattle (see http: //blog.seedsavers .com / blog / ancient-white park cattle-new-babies). Below is a picture gallery from my visit and at the bottom more about my evening talk in Decorah.
After visiting Seed Savers Exchange, I was given a tour of the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah with the director before my lecture on perennial vegetables co-organized by the Seed Savers Exchange. What is missing from the museum is obviously a collection of Norwegian vegetables!
The lecture was in Vesterheim’s Gathering Room, where the administrative part is located, an amazing room decorated by Sigmund Årseth’s murals (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWNQe3NmDLY) and to my delight it was full of people from Seed Savers Exchange and other interested parties. I even met the founder of Seed Savers Diane Ott Whealy, a great honour (she gave me a copy of her book) and also David Cavagnaro, Heritage Farm’s first “farm manager” and known from the Pepperfield Project (see http://www.pepperfieldproject.org). Sadly I wasn’t aware who I was taking to at the time! Probably the most knowledgeable group I have had the privilege to give a lecture for!
Return to Austria
https://www.gartenbauschule.at/…/040_langenloiser_gehoelzt…/
and the day after at the 29th Langenlois Herbaceous Perennial seminar
https://www.gartenbauschule.at/…/041_langenloiser_staudent…/
..and I’m happy to say that I won’t be flying. It actually only takes two days from Vienna to Trondheim with one night on the Rostock Sweden ferry and the Oslo – Trondheim night train! I’ll be travelling via a family visit in England!
I’m also talking at the University of Graz on 20th January! See
https://alternativ.oehunigraz.at/20-01-2020-edimentals-talk-with-stephen-barstow-in-english/?fbclid=IwAR2UP_AG1lXJErkriUbct–0c5LU-RSf_qx1tR3OD5NpG2Hr8A2hptDvTbY
Seminar on Community Seed Banks in Oslo
Seacoast Permaculture in Portmouth, NH!
Thanks also to Becca Hedlund for the accommodation! Thanks also to Greg Martin (and Aaron Parker) who came to both talks! I sent both of them seed of Hablitzia tamnoides 10 years ago in 2009, only beaten by Jonathan Bates and Eric Toensmeier!
The Urban Forestry Center in Portsmouth, NH:
Amy Antonucci and Aaron Parker did the introduction:
Hablitzia tamnoides thrives at Edgewood Nursery, Aaron Parker’s place!