As I’ve acknowledged in various other posts from my spring 2016 study tour to Japan I am forever grateful to Aiah Noack of Naturplanteskolen in Denmark for organising […]
Edimentals / Perennial vegetables
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Little Garden Fish: A New Unexpected Edimental
Those that have read my book and follow my blog will know how much I love the stories that follow edible plants around the world and discovering those […]
Edientomental / Edimentals
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Asteraceae: valuable autumn flowering edientomentals!
When giving talks I like to renew myself and talk about something different each time. For my talk in Copenhagen at the Future Heirloom event last weekend I […]
Edible flowers / Edientomental / Perennial vegetables
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Toad lilies: great edientomentals
Toad lilies (Tricyrtis sp.) are great edientomentals from the Far East; i.e. both food for us to eat (the edi bit), eye food (the mental bit ;) […]
Perennial vegetables
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Mountain cultivation of Udo in Nagano
On 9th April 2016 I was staying with my new friend Tei Kobayashi in the mountains in a lovely village, Nogura, above Ueda in Nagano Prefecture. I was […]
Perennial vegetables
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Udo introduction to the US with cultivation instructions (1903)
I stumbled upon this interesting US Department of Agriculture Bulletin from 1903 by David Fairchild, who calls himself Agricultural Explorer, entitled “Three New Plant Introductions from Japan”. There […]
Food / Perennial vegetables
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Seven Vegetable Dishes
In Denmark’s major ethnobotanical work, Brøndegaard’s Folk og Flora (1978-80), ground elder (skvalderkål; Aegopodium podograria) is one of seven different greens used in a once common health-bringing springtime […]
Climbers / Perennial vegetables
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Grape leaves
I love it when edible plants find their own place in my garden! I planted a hardy grape species Vitis coignetiae from the Far East including Japan, Korea […]
Blanching / Cellar vegetables / Food / Perennial vegetable shoots
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Japanese Sansai in March
Almost exactly 5 years ago this week I was on a study tour to Japan to look at Sansai production. I’m doing a webinar talk about the trip […]
Edible flowers / Food / Perennial vegetables
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A Taste of Myoga
After many years trying, I finally had a taste of home grown myoga or Japanese ginger (Zingiber mioga) this week!I think it was in the garden of my […]
Onions / Perennial vegetables
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Earliness and diversity in Victory Onion
Victory onion or seiersløk (Allium victorialis) in Norwegian has one of the most widespread geographic distributions in the Allium genus from the Pyrenees to the Far East. In […]
walks
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Wasabi shop, the Kawazu-Nanadaru Loop Bridge and the Kawazu Seven Falls
Last week, I blogged about a fantastic visit to a wasabi farm on the Izu peninsular in Japan during spring 2016, see A visit to a Wasabi farm […]
Perennial vegetables / Root crops
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A visit to a Wasabi farm on the Izu peninsular in Japan
On 3rd April 2016 I was on an amazing study tour in Japan to witness first hand the cultivation of perennial vegetables. These are wild native species which […]
Root crops
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Balloon flower
Platycodon grandiflorus (balloon flower), an important vegetable in the Far East, is just starting to flower in the garden. In Korea, it is called doraji. Its root, either dried […]
Bulbs / Edible flowers / Edimentals
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Oriental and asiatic hybrid lilies
This is an asiatic hybrid lily growing in the garden of the flat I stayed in in Jondal during the Nordic Permaculture Festival! According to wikipedia, asiatic hybrids […]
Nutrition / Perennial vegetables
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Hosta nutrition
A nutritional analysis of Hosta is reported in the enclosed open access article from Japan (2017): “Analysis of essential macro-micro mineral content of twelve Hosta taxa” by Mehraj, […]
Blanching / Food / Perennial vegetable shoots
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Hosta icicles (yuki urui)
The other day I discovered a long suffering Hosta that I’d covered with a bucket in the spring. Surprisingly the blanched shoots were in good condition despite the […]
Dandelions / Edible flowers
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White-flowered dandelion
The Japanese white-flowered dandelion, Taraxacum albidum showed its beautiful face yesterday :) Post Views: 115
Birds / Flower stalk / Food / Forest Gardening / Root crops
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The many faces of burdock
One of my favourite multi-purpose vegetables and one of my first unusual vegetables that I grew in my garden in the 80s was burdock or borre, more specifically […]
Root crops
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Burdock in Japanese Supermarkets
I’ve grown burdock in my garden, originally mainly as a root vegetable, since the 80s when Japanese varieties such as Takinogawa Long and Watanabe Early began to appear […]
Annuals
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From Malta to Japan and back again
The article below, published in Grobladet in 2006 is the story (in Norwegian) of how one of the commonest spring flowers in the Mediterranean countries became one of […]
Perennial vegetables
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Encounters with Angelica in Japan!
The genus Angelica has about 80 species distributed throughout the Northern hemisphere, of which around 25 are found in Japan. Around the world various Angelica species have been […]
Wild Edibles / wild flowers
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Katakuri at Mt. Iimoriyama
This post documents my visit with Aiah Noack of Naturplanteskolen in Denmark to the historical town of Asuke in Aichi Prefecture near to Toyota, where we’d spent the […]
Uncategorized
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Ken’s field and nature reserve in Sugadaira, Japan
In early April 2016, on my study tour to Japan, I was invited to the mountain home of Ken Takewaki (and Masama) for a short visit. I wrote about […]
Biannuals / Brassica / Edimentals / oil seed / Seed
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The Edible Japanese Bluebell!
When I visited Japan in early spring 2016, I noticed a violet/purple flower growing as an ornamental in some gardens and also escaped as a weed. I finally […]