The Many Uses of Udo

For the first time freely available is my article in Permaculture Magazine  about my largest and most exciting vegetable Udo (Aralia cordata)! See the link near the bottom of the page and please subscribe here, they do a great job, but need our support! Go to  https://www.permaculture.co.uk/subscribe…………….

To witness the underground cultivation of Udo in large caverns under Tokyo (mentioned in the article) was one of the reasons for embarking on a study tour of Japan with Naturplanteskolen in Denmark in Spring 2016, and during the visit we discovered that you can have one more layer in a forest garden……..

The Permaculture Magazine article: is an excerpt from my book Around the World in 80 plants (to buy the book please follow this link:   http://www.green-shopping.co.uk/books/pp/around-the-world-in-80-plants.html

Download (PDF, 216KB)

Here’s a FB album by Naturplanteskolen of the underground Udo tour!
https://www.facebook.com/naturplanteskolen.dk/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1517532741605972

Thanks to Tei Kobayashi who acted as interpreter and liasing with the local authorities, to Ken Minatoya in the Netherlands who also initially called the city clerks for me and Joan Bailey for helping out, accompanying us on the visit and also for writing a local article, see here http://metropolisjapan.com/more-than-cherry-blossoms

I will write more about this visit as well as my other encounters with Udo in Japan as soon as I can!!

Apricotberries

Wanted!! I’m pretty sure I’ve lost these really tasty raspberries which I called “Apricot” and spread to various folk back in the days of Sjølbergeren (a self-sufficiency magazine here in Norway).
I originally got these through a visit to the Kvithamar research station in Stjørdal which is quite near here…they were breeding yellow raspberries (one of them that has become popular was eventually called Varnes). We were allowed a taste, a seed trapped in my teeth and when I got home I sowed it ;) The resultant fruit was much more tasty than Varnes (bred for a number of other characters too, not just taste) and I wanted others to experience it…but now I don’t have it any more, so please if you still have it, please can I have a bit back?
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Apricotberries
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Apricotberries with black raspberries (Rubus occidentalis)
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Sitting under my birch tree one day in 2009 and the tree was offering me free nutty tasting birch seed on my apricotberry porridge!

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