Seeds of all pines (Pinus spp.) are edible, but in many species, they are so small that it is not worth the trouble. The pine trees that are worthy of cultivation in Sweden is cembratallen (P. cembra and P. cembra var. sibirica) and Korean pine (P. koraiensis). Cembratallen produces seeds in size 10×8 mm and koreatallens seeds can grow […]
I do not usually able to keep me from taking every trip as an opportunity to collect plant material. Oddly enough was a trip to Jämtland in December just such an occasion. Of an old participants from Östersund I was told that there were viable specimen of the American chestnut (American chestnut) as far up as […]
Walnut Tree (Juglans spp.) includes a number of species that are interesting for our Swedish conditions. Genuine walnut (Juglans regia), which is also the most famous walnut usually do to the cultivation zone 2 in Sweden. The genuine walnut big advantage is that they are tasty nuts are easy to crack and the nuclei remain intact and are easy […]
In the second part of the series on the nuts we'll look at hazelnuts, which seems to be the most famous nuts in Sweden. Hazel occurs naturally all the way up to Umeå, where there are surviving populations from a previous warm period that lasted for about Sweden. 11 500 years ago when hazel formed forest with linden and […]
One of the many problems and risks associated with today's global agriculture is that we have allowed some annual plants such as wheat, maize and rice dominate man's staple food. These stands for 60% of mankind's calorie intake, despite the fact that there are over 50.000 known species of edible plants on Earth [1]. When we grow these […]
A popular topic on our courses in permaculture and forest gardens is the overhaul of perennial vegetables that I have written about some of the blog also. We have a hundred different species in our collections related to permaculture Stjärnsund and often we get the question "How do you learn all these really?”. One of our […]
Forest Garden Year is coming to an end and today we completed preparations for invintringen. What does the work of Putt Myra Forest Garden? Firstly, it is about protecting seedlings against possible pests. There are plenty of elk and deer in the area and sometimes you see hares also. All of these have a penchant for tender […]
We have learned much more about nitrogen fixation since this was published 2014 – Read this first plunge! One of the key roles in the establishment of a forest garden is to provide the conditions for creating and maintaining their own fertility. In a previous post I wrote about the dynamic accumulators which take up […]
A week ago we had the first night frost in the forest garden and it usually means the end of the fruit- and bärsäsongen. The only fruit that lingers now is black and red chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa och A. arbutifolia). Especially black chokeberry is said to be an incredibly healthy fruit, thanks to their dark color. Before the first frost could […]
It may be difficult to imagine how even the forest garden will evolve over time. To get a better sense of how different plants behave and how big they can get, I usually take the opportunity to visit the botanical gardens when I am traveling. Most of these gardens have quite a few trees […]
