A short video of the wonderful Taunton Deane perennial kale at Knighthayes Court in Devon, UK where I visited on May 13th 2016.
See more pictures here: http://www.edimentals.com/pictures/index.php?/category/112
Other pages about Knightshayes:
http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=2505
Taunton Deane’s Perennial Kale at Knightshayes in 2011: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=1147
Some pictures of my beds of perennial kales. I took cuttings of 6 or 7 varieties today in case the mother plants don’t make it through the winter. I’ll do the second bed next weekend!
Benjamin Bro-Jørgensen, who together with Irja Frydenlund have started an edible perennials nursery in Tingvoll, Norway, was profiled in today’s Adresseavisen (Hjem magazine) in an article “Den evige hagen” (the eternal garden). Wow, Permaculture and perennial vegetables in my local paper! Well done! Apparently, it is also published in Bergenstidende :)
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
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!!
Fun day collecting edimentals from the garden’s collections, making a multi-species salad followed by my talk and walk!
Thanks to all who came and to Sabina Knees for helping out!
Some of the plants we collected were: Gunnera manicata, Saxifraga stolonifera, Hemerocallis spp. (daylilies), Hosta (leaves and flowers), Allium wallichii (two forms), Ligularia fischeri, Allium nutans, Allium schoenoprasum sibiricum, Ostrich Fern, Lilium leichtlinii, Lime leaves, Cacalia (Parasenecio) delphiniifolia, Hops, Aralia cordata (Udo), Aralia elata, Angelica gigas and Aster macrophylla. Flowers of Yucca filamentosa were used in the salad!
It was great to have the chance last week in Bergen to harvest and share the Gunnera tinctoria (Nalca) leaf stalk….the verdict was that it was surprisingly good, sweetly acid flavour (see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=6772)! In Edinburgh, I was able to taste G. manicata for the first time. I’ve never seen evidence for its use. My hunch that this was probably due to it being more fibrous than its smaller cousin was confirmed:
Here’s an album of pictures I took of the amazing Nalca food forests of Chiloe Island in Chile (including being shown by a local how to eat it!): http://www.edimentals.com/pictures/index.php?/category/10
See also http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=677
More pictures of edimentals in the botanics can be seen here: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=6796
Finally, thanks to my “old” friends Robin and Gwyn Allan (with an A), Diane Blakeley and Pete Fordham and our hosts Sabina Knees and Martin Gardner for not heckling during the proceedings ;) (we had a great reunion weekend in Edinburgh, not having met for some 35 years or more!)
Mostly annuals and biannuals tonight, but still 1/3 of the 41 ingredients are perennials!
Streptopus amplexifolius is a shade loving woodland plant known, amongst others, as twistedstalk, wild cucumber and watermelon berry and has an extensive wild range including North America, Europe and East Asia. It has been used traditionally by Native Americans for its edible spring cucumber flavoured shoots and the delicious berries are now in season and I’ve been dining on them recently! I’m saving the seed as I eat! Beware that they can be laxative in large quantities, but it’s unlikely you will be able to grow that many in your forest garden!
060916: Added pictures of Streptopus lanceolatus from Eastern North America and a comparison of the berries with amplexifolius!
On FB: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10154221765395860.1073742708.655215859&type=1&l=0866fc78cd
This is my longest dandelion leaf so far at 95cm. Any better?
