Category Archives: Climbers

Perennials vs. annuals

Picture taken by journalist Heidi Løkken in my garden this week showing my straggling tree climbing Hablitzia together with a French dandelion cultivar “Vert de Montmagny Ameliore”. Before I really discovered perennials, this was a part of my vegetable garden I struggled with as it was so dry under the birch tree during summer. Using perennials, the same area is one of the most productive parts of the garden as it’s damp enough when the perennials are growing strongest to the end of June!

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Hablitzia anno 2001!

I just discovered that Hablitzia was one of the ingredients in my first world record salad in 2001…. I had received both cuttings and seeds from Mona Hellberg in Alunda, Sweden in May 2000 after my first attempt from seed had failed the year before. Therefore, the leaves I used in that salad were from a plant about a year old, possibly the first time I tried them. Interestingly, I wrote in the recipe you’ll find in the link that I used “steamed leaves of Hablitzia tamnoides”, suggesting that I was unaware that they could be eaten raw!
Also, looking at the email correspondence with Mona Hellberg, I see that I’d told her that the Hablitzia seedlings (from my first attempt) had been eaten by a slug! I’ve never had problems with slugs since then….

http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=206

Announcing the First Annual Hardanger Perennialen!

Link added to my list of talks, courses and forages (at http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=262) to a FB event for the Hardanger Perennialen at the beginning of May, what promises to be the most beautiful course on perennial vegetables and wild foraged food EVER! More information to follow!

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Ostrich Fern / Strutseving

 

 

Alys Fowler on ATW in the Guardian

Thank you so much Alys Fowler!!!

She has apparently been “trailing round the house with my copy (of ATW), unable to put it down.”  :-D

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/24/alys-fowler-norwegian-edible-garden

Here’s a few shots from Alys and “hard working” cameraman Simon on assignment in my garden on that wonderful visit in July 2010 when Malvik was showing off its best …I remember Alys saying that this must be paradise….

Alys in Malvik

The garden later featured in Alys’ book The Thrifty Forager:
http://www.permaculture.co.uk/reviews/thrifty-forager

 

The Live in London tapes

While I was in London in  December I met London Permaculture’s Stefan Geyer at St. Athan’s Hotel in London for a chat and it’s now available for all to hear on Stefan’s 21st Century Permaculture radio show live on Shoreditch radio:

www.mixcloud.com/21stcenturypermaculture

Amongst other topics, we talked about the book, how I travelled the globe researching the world of edible plants (both for real and through reading foraging and ethnobotanical literature from all continents), talked about some of the best perennial vegetables like Udo from Japan and Korea (now sold on markets in London), Sea Kale (the most British of all vegetables?), Sea Kale’s giant sister from the Caucasus (Crambe cordifolia), how a popular vegetable was harvested from the chalk cliffs of England  using ropes and was shot down from cliffs by a friend of Charles Darwin  (Death Samphire), and how a famous UK garden may have the most productive food forest (forest garden) in the UK unbeknowns to the owner…

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The Highgrove Food Forest!
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Blanched Crambe cordifolia, the so-called Ornamental Sea Kale is a high-yielding edimental from the Caucasus

 

 

 

 

 

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Foraging Crithmum maritimum (Rock Samphire) from the crumbling chalk cliffs was a dangerous occupation (NB! I did mix this one up in the interview, referring to it as Marsh Samphire, Salicornia….to many a cheap imposter of the real Samphire!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also http://www.permaculture.co.uk/news/2001155978/stephen-barstow-permaculture-radio