All posts by Stephen Barstow

Jorge’s edible water garden

I’ll always be grateful to my friend Jorge Carona as without him I would never have been invited to Portugal. The story of how we met is told here:

Sintra Foraging with Fernanda Botelho

He was also instrumental in suggesting that the Ecoaldeia de Janas should invite me to give a course! Added to that, he did almost all the driving on my trip. I also spent two nights at his house on the hills in Calhandriz above Alverca near Lisbon and was able to see his edible water gardens for the first time! So here are a few pictures of the garden, sadly neglected as Jorge wasn’t living here for some time! He has a large water tank under an outhouse to supply the water for this project! The pond is an oasis for wildlife in the dry countryside which has been suffering from drought for several years! Many thanks, Jorge!
Other edible water plants in the pond: Bacopa, Acorus, Oenanthe, Houttuynia, Aponogeton and watercress. Elsewhere in the garden, Jorge has planted apples, pears, orange, plums,fig and edible bamboos! A great little garden!

Tour de Portugal links

Perennials Resistence in Mertola, Portugal (video and interview)  http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=20370

Herdade do Freixo do Meia http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=20042

Freixo de Cima http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=20133

In search of the wild asparagus at Bombeira do Guadiana http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=19856

Cactus pads for my last lunch in Mértola  http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=19658

The Holy Grail Kale and the Janas Ecovillage gardens! http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=19949

Edible plants of the Sintra Natural Park  http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=19746

Mostly edibles at Majoito  http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=19685

The Ecoaldeias Janas extreme salad  http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=19669

Bombycilla garrulus and Coccothraustes coccothraustes

How DO they make up those scientific names? A small group of waxwings (sidensvans) in the garden with 4 hawfinches (kjernebiter) provided entertainment (distraction) this afternoon….waxwings are berry eaters (e.g. the flesh of rowans / rogn) and hawfinches eat hard tree and fruit seeds (also rowan, eating what the waxwings disgard!)

I try to “grow” as much food for birds as possible in my garden. This includes leaving some fruit, planting various species of rowan (Sorbus), not tidying the garden until late winter, so that, for example, seed of nettles and burdock is available for finches. I also don’t feed the birds with bought in sunflower seeds until it gets properly cold, until then there’s plenty of natural food available. There’s nowadays a large acreage put down to non-organic production of bird seed in other countries which is certainly detrimental to birdlife in those countries and there is evidence that providing bird seed during the breeding season can have a negative effect on some species! So, is feeding birds a good thing or just for our entertainment? A bit of both I think!

  1. Hawfinch and waxwings towards the end…taken from the living room /office!

2. Waxwing on apple. It was a bad rowan berry year and there are unusually few waxwings around (perhaps good news for an invasion further south, e.g., in the UK?). This is one of the apples I left for the birds…the video was taken from the living room!

Freixo de Cima

On the afternoon of my arrival at Freixo do Meio (see previous posts and also http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=20042), Jorge Carona and I were loaned an electric vehicle to explore the farm. Jorge proposed we go over to a property within the main farm practicing regenerative agriculture using keyline design.
Catarina Joaquim and Carlos Simões have designed and established this impressive garden (see
http://dias-nas-arvores.blogspot.com/p/quem-somos.html)
and we were lucky to find them at home and they gave us a quick tour of this productive green lung despite the dry and hot summer.
Carlos is also involved in the Portugese seed saver organisation Colher Para Semear (Harvest to Sow); see

Dandelion harvest

Dandelions are one of my favourite winter perennial vegetables. During the summer, wild dandelions sow themselves on my cultivated beds….one of the advantages of having too much open soil! I deliberately let them grow on until late autumn when I dig up some of the roots, others left to grow on to the next year, and plant them in large pots ready to force later in the winter like witloof chicory. I usually force them by moving from storage in my cellar to a cool room in the house where I force them in the dark!

Herdade do Freixo do Meio

Many thanks to my friend Alfredo Sendim for inviting me to hold a course at his amazingly diverse Herdade do Freixo do Meio farm. It is run as a cooperative using many innovative agricultural methods, inspired in particular by Ernst Goetsch and Syntropic Farming! I was very happy that Fernanda Botelho also joined us to share her knowledge on local edible plants!
The 3 videos at the end show Agroforestry methods on the farm at Freixo do Meio, olives intercropped with a wide diversity of edibles and other useful plants!

Clouded yellow butterfly on lucerne:

 Agroforestry methods on the farm at Freixo do Meio, olives intercropped with a wide diversity of edibles and other useful plants: