Tag Archives: Naturplanteskolen

Around the world in 80 Alliums

Yesterday, I gave my first talk about my (second) love of onions (alternative title All you wanted to know about Alliums but were afraid to ask!)….fittingly in the nursery with I believe the best selection of Alliums being sold as foodplants in Europe if not the world , my friend Aiah Noack’s Naturplanteskolen just outside of Copenhagen. Aiah is the author of an excellent book Fantasilater (fantasy salads), only in Danish so far which also includes several Alliums. My book Around the World in 80 plants mentions some 45 Allium species!
In a little over 2 hours I covered about 66 of the world’s cold hardy onions and over 80 if we include cultivars and subspecies…
Other onion related topics were also covered, such as “grow your own fireworks and Xmas decorations”, “Allium as a dancing partner”, the Allium microphone (Alliomike) and the garlic scape armband to keep “wild” animals, trolls and mosquitos away (Transylvanian Garlic keeps vampires away too)… It was a fun afternoon with yet another great group of edimentals fans! ;) 

The video  is of one of my pictures about drying Persian Shallots with a shot of my drying racks over my wood burning stove. Someone noticed that you could actually see heat rising through the racks!!!! (a wood burning stove was on behind the projector) ;)

The Many Uses of Udo

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

Download (PDF, 216KB)

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!!

Day 1 of Naturplanteskolen’s Malvik visit

Some pictures from Saturday 16th July in my garden and forage on the shoreline below the house!

 

 

Naturplanteskolen at Ringve Botanical Garden

On the final morning of the Naturplanteskolen visit to Norway, we visited the Ringve botaniske hage​ in Trondheim. We started with the Renaissance garden, comprising a collection of 123 useful plants mentioned in Norway’s first gardening book, Horticultura, from 1694! We then wandered through the arboretum where mainly coniferous trees are planted geographically around the central pond, representing the Arctic Ocean! We stopped at the pond to talk about one of the world’s most useful plants,known as Supermarket of the Swamps in North America, Bulrush, cattails or dunkjevle! We passed a glade of Mandchurian walnuts (no nuts to be seen this year), then on to a naturalistic planting of Hosta, marvelled at the collection of old perennials, had a quick look at some interesting useful plants in the systematic garden, before finally walking through the “Parken” to the music museum from where we said our goodbyes :(   See the picture galelry at the bottom of this page!

In 2002 I made a renaissance salad containing 80 of the plants in this garden at the opening ceremony. Here’s a document showing what was included, more information and the Middle Age recipe used:

Download (PDF, 329KB)

Finally, here’s a little video showing the bulrush / dunkjevle pollen!

 

Danish walk down the Homla canyon

On the 2nd day of the Malvik permaveggies course, we walked the Homlastien (path along the mighty Homla river) from the waterfall down to the station at Hommelvik! As always it takes longer than expected and my estimated 4 hours became 6-7 hours with all the stops!
See the pictures here:


http://www.edimentals.com/pictures/index.php?/category/115

Danish invasion of Vennafjellet

On Sunday of the Danish Malvik permaveggies course, we drove to near the top of the closest mountain from home to see the views and the rich flora: Vennafjellet (Faseknippen) and walked over to Baklifjellet
Please feel free to add names to plants and people!

P1080232

 

 

 

 

See the whole album here: http://www.edimentals.com/pictures/index.php?/category/114