On 30th June 2025, I made ryotto with various perennial vegetables available in the garden. The ryotto is stir-fried veg mixed with wholegrain organic rye with chili and a strong Norwegian organic blue cheese. In the video I talk you through the various greens:Daubenton perennial kaleAllium wallichii (Sherpa onion / Nepal onion)Rudbeckia laciniata (top shoots)Cryptotaenia … Continue reading Late June Ryotto
Please subscribe to my youtube channel!1. Perennial Edge https://youtu.be/qRsQt_U0Ujo The edges of my annual beds in the garden are not so productive as they are drier because of overhanging branches of the hazel,/birch/aspen woodland adjacent to it. I therefore allow perennial vegetables to colonise these areas as they are much less impacted by summer drought … Continue reading Recent Videos on my Youtube Channel
To celebrate that the life-timer clicked over from 69 to 70 yesterday, the Barstow household’s tradition of making an equi-age permaveggie diversity MacCheese for dinner was followed once again, except we were out of macaroni and it was therefore a 70 species FusCheese with whole grain Fusili pasta! Curious as to what was in it, … Continue reading A 70 permaveggie Fus-Cheese!
It started off as scrambled eggs but ended as scrambled “perennial” greens: The ingredients:Allium ursinum (ramsons /ramsløk)Allium sativum (garlic /hvitløk); shoots and bulbsHeracleum sp. (hogweed / bjørnekjeks); 2 speciesDystaenia takesimana (giant Ulleung celery; Ulleung kjempeselleri)Aegopodium podograria (ground elder / skvallerkål)Campanula latifolia (giant bellflower / storklokke)Lamium album (white dead-nettle; døvnesle)Urtica dioica (stinging nettle / brennesle)Taraxacum sp. … Continue reading Scrambled greens
I have some great news to share! My word edimentals, “invented” some 17 years ago to describe those amazing plants that are both edible and ornamental – has just gone mainstream in the UK with an 8 page article written by me and published in the April edition of the RHS magazine The Garden (600,000 … Continue reading Edimentals and Perennial Veg in the RHS The Garden magazine
It was fun putting together my talk “A Virtual Edimentals Walk Around Burnley Gardens” today 6th March, although I’m not used to talking at 9 am! To explain, it was a climate friendly zoom talk from home with the good folks of The Herb Society of Victoria at Burnley in Melbourne, Australia. During 2014 when … Continue reading A Virtual Edimentals Walk Around Burnley Gardens
I’ve shared my list of plants that I’ve planted in Trondheim’s World Garden to a few people who’ve asked and now it’s available to anyone who is curious (follow the link). The World Garden (Verdenshagen) is a garden I’ve created, starting in 2017, to show off the diversity of perennial vegetables, essentially my book Around … Continue reading Plant list for The World Garden
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 focussed during part of my presentation on edimentals in the Asteraceae or Compositae (the aster or daisy family / kurvplantefamilien). These are tbe edible perennial vegetables that … Continue reading Asteraceae: valuable autumn flowering edientomentals!
To celebrate 40 years since I and my then wife Eileen bought Bergstua (literally house on the rock) and the garden that became The Edible (Forest) Garden, I endeavoured during the second of the two garden tours (as part of økouka – organics week) to talk about 40 of the plants in the garden during … Continue reading Around the garden in 40 plants
Lunch today was inspired by the Mediterranean diet – simple with masses of greens, but with an international twist: Cherokee spinach (top shoots of sochan – Rudbeckia laciniata / kyss-meg-over-gjerde), nettles (nesle), shallots (sjalott) harvested and stored since October, greater musk mallow (rosekattost) (Malva alcea), day lilies (dagliljer) flower buds, sand leek (bendelløk) (Allium scorodoprasum) and … Continue reading Sochan and Moly scrambled egg Meditteranean style