I’m appearing at two events at National Trust property Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland this summer. I’ll be doing talks and walks and talks at both events
9th June: BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time Summer Garden Party (see also http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/415rx5ZndyLb1gz3jnQ0SJV/gqt-on-location)
22nd and 23rd September: Planter’s Seminar (with Bob Flowerdew and Ken Cox)
A: Around the World in 80 plants talk in Hurdal, Norway in 3 parts with index to all the plants and topics covered in the film description:
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiMSyt7qqGE
B: Stephen’s salad: a six part series following me around the garden collecting plants for a springtime extreme salad in mid-May, also fully indexed by plant names in the film description:
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvSB5cb_FXI
E: Perennial vegetables webinar organised by Swedish Eskilstunas folkhögskola (folk school), Omställningsnätverket (Swedish transition network) and with support of Hela Sverige ska Leva. https://youtu.be/DO_BdCXqaE0
Thank you Emilia Rekestad for putting last week’s webinar on winter perennial vegetables up more permanently on youtube. Emilia first introduces the webinar and the polyculture project through which it was organised!
I hope you find it useful and please help us by sharing with friends and relevant groups!!
Well, I survived the last 3 intensive days, first travelling from the UK whilst preparing for Wednesday’s talk about my study trip to Japan in spring 2016 at Ringve in Trondheim, followed by last night’s Webinar on edible perennials and winter vegetables. Sometimes I take on a bit too much but it was fun!
You can see the webinar, moderated by Emilia Rekestad from Permaculture Sweden (I start at about 8:20 mins in to the recording and it lasts a little over 2 hours!). ENJOY! https://tinyurl.com/yahgfrgz
It was strange to have so many people in my living room and they were mostly totally quiet and no eye contact was odd also! Anyway, it seems to have worked well technically. See what you think!
A few pictures from my Mum and Dad’s garden in Chandlers Ford, a walk around Old Town, Southampton, my talk on Hungry Gap veg at the Art Centre last night (there is no hungry gap in Southern England) and finally pictures of currently foragable plants!
Dad’s vegetable garden with chard and leeks! I will help with the weeding later! Dad will soon be 93!
At the bus stop in Chandlers Ford and I noticed old man’s beard (Clematis vitalba) growing in this beech hedge. This is a wild indicator species of chalky soil! It is also one of the most foraged spring greens (shoots) in Italy!
Old town, Southampton! Most of Southampton was flattened by the Germans in the second world war!
Tudor House in the Old town, Southampton has a herb garden that I still haven’t seen (always closed!)
The old town walls….originally built in the 1300s after a raid by French forces
The Pig-in-the-wall pub!
The venue for my talk was, as last time, the wonderful Art House, an alternative cafe with vegetarian food and a venue with events on most nights!
They haven’t heard of the hungry gap in Southampton…this was the speaker’s meal!!
Ziggy Woodward does the introduction with a wonderful hat with flashing lights!!
The talk was based around talking about the 140 ingredients that I used in my March 2017 record salad!
Three slides from my talk – pictures taken in England during the days before my talk! Spring is well advanced here and the foraging season is reaching the top! No hungry gap here!
Happy to announce that I’ll be in Switzerland the week after Easter to attend and talk at a symposium on “The Potential of Perennials for Food Resilience” Here’s the symposium announcement: https://www.perennials-resilience.org (more later!).
Excited that I’ll get to meet Mr. Mountain Gardens himself, Joe Hollis, who is also attending. Many of you will know Joe from his youtube videos, like this one on Udo (Aralia cordata): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNzCpfSQWks
Joe has spent 25 years developing Paradise Gardens, a botanical garden of edible plants in the mountains of western N. Carolina!
I will also visit Pro Specie Rara (KVANN – Norwegian Seed Savers’ counterpart in Switzerland!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProSpecieRara
Thanks to Matthias Brück and Katharina Serafimova for doing most of the organising!
I made a presentation about my visit to Austria and Arche Noah in June at the “Seed for the future” seminar in Oslo last week! The presentation can be downloaded below. The seminar was organized by the Network for Plant diversity (Nettverk for Plantemangfold) which comprises the following organisations Oikos – Økologisk Norge, Biologisk-Dynamisk Forening, Solhatt Økologisk Hagebruk, Norsk Senter for Økologisk Landbruk (NORSØK), KVANN / Norwegian Seed Savers, Århus Andelsgård and Økologisk Spesialkorn og Sogn Jord- og Hagebruksskole (SJH). The seminar was supported by Landbruksdirektoratet (The Norwegian Agriculture Agency)
A summary of the seminar and all the presentations can be found here http://www.oikos.no/aktuelt/fro-for-framtida
This week I gave a couple of talks for the first time on the subject of “Perennials: Attractive and climate friendly city vegetables” ….covering everywhere from roof gardens to shady backyards to city farms, including Slottsparken – the park around the Royal Palace in Oslo which is in reality a productive forest garden ;) (full of Hosta and ostrich fern / strutseving)!
3 hour course for Bybondelagon 1st November 2017 (the Norwegian City Agrarian Society)
Short 35 minute talk as part of the “Grønn Helse i Byen” (Green health in the city) symposium arranged by Det Norske Vitenskaps Akademiet (the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters!)
Excellent and enthusiastic talk by city farmer Andreas Capjon from the Losæter farm in the centre of Oslo at the Green health in the city symposium.
The only picture I took during Saturday’s two edible plant tours of Hurdal Ecovillage, the farm, the rectory garden (Prestegårdshagen) and the CSA scheme (andelsbruk)! This was part of Høstivalen (The Ecovillage’s autumn festival). I was particularly pleased by the fact that the daughter of one of my heroes, Ivar Torp (see page 44 of https://okologisklandbruk.nlr.no/media/ring/3550/2014/%C3%98L%20nr%201_2014%20epostfil.pdf ) joined the tour, although I wasn’t aware of it until afterwards! She has now taken over Ivar’s property!
Yesterday, I gave my first talk about my (second) love of onions (alternative title All you wanted to know about Alliums but were afraid to ask!)….fittingly in the nursery with I believe the best selection of Alliums being sold as foodplants in Europe if not the world , my friend Aiah Noack’s Naturplanteskolen just outside of Copenhagen. Aiah is the author of an excellent book Fantasilater (fantasy salads), only in Danish so far which also includes several Alliums. My book Around the World in 80 plants mentions some 45 Allium species!
In a little over 2 hours I covered about 66 of the world’s cold hardy onions and over 80 if we include cultivars and subspecies…
Other onion related topics were also covered, such as “grow your own fireworks and Xmas decorations”, “Allium as a dancing partner”, the Allium microphone (Alliomike) and the garlic scape armband to keep “wild” animals, trolls and mosquitos away (Transylvanian Garlic keeps vampires away too)… It was a fun afternoon with yet another great group of edimentals fans! ;)
The video is of one of my pictures about drying Persian Shallots with a shot of my drying racks over my wood burning stove. Someone noticed that you could actually see heat rising through the racks!!!! (a wood burning stove was on behind the projector) ;)
Aiah with a collection of late flowering Alliums from the nursery on display for the participants…
The day started with a tour of the (smelly) part of the nursery ;)
A large selection of Alliums for sale…
Aiah has constructed an Allium display garden with some 60 species :)
Allium nursery
Alliza for the food break (Allium pizza!)
Somebody pointed out there was an onion inflorescence hanging from the roof, so I stopped to take this shot :)
Not onion related but there were also delicious rolls decorated with seed of this plant, Plantago major “Atropurpurea”!
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
