Edible Plants Weekly Update including page of the week, Edible Trees and Edible Shrubs
Page of the Week
The Urban Garden
An urban garden can range in size from a window box to an area of several hundred square yards and, no matter what the size, permaculture techniques can be utilized in growing plants for food and other purposes. This article is going to look at some of the possibilities of growing food crops in urban gardens and will mention a few alternative plants for you to try, but that does not mean that you should not grow many of the more conventional crops that can fit very well into the concept of permaculture. Indeed, we would recommend that anyone setting up a permaculture system in their garden or allotment starts off with a backbone of plants they are already familiar with, introducing alternative plants a few at a time to see how they like them More
Top Edible Shrubs No 11: Darwin's Barberry
Fruit - raw or cooked and used in preserves. An acid but very pleasant flavour, children seem particularly fond of the fruit. When fully ripe, the fruit loses most of its acidity and makes very pleasant eating. Unfortunately there is a lot of seed compared to the amount of flesh and this does detract somewhat from the pleasure of eating it. The fruit goes very well raw in a muesli or cooked in a porridge. The fruits are about 7mm long. More
Top Edible Trees No 12: Arnold hawthorn
Fruit - raw or cooked. Sub-acid. A delicious flavour, it is sweet with a soft juicy flesh and makes an excellent dessert fruit. It can also be cooked and used in pies, preserves etc and can be dried for later use. The fruit ripens in early September in southern Britain. The fruit is about 2cm in diameter. There are up to five fairly large seeds in the centre of the fruit, these often stick together and so the effect is of eating a cherry-like fruit with a single seed.
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