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Monday 25 October 2010

Alternative edible vegetables, for Permaculture use!

This is a post intended to show some useful and less well-known plants in Permaculture. These are edible perennial vegetables, that can often produce huge harvests, and are easy to grow, and can be used in a permanent forest garden Permaculture project. I included the links where you can order these. Have fun.

Ordering tropical, fruits, vegetables and seeds:
http://www.tropilab.com/tropicalfruit.html
http://www.seedsofchange.com (lots of seeds, but they don't send to Europe)

Alternative edible tubers
http://www.bbg.org/gar2/topics/kitchen/2003su_tubers.html
http://www.pfaf.org/leaflets/altroots.php PFAF, database on edible plants
http://www.glasshouseworks.com/trop-o.html

These are some edible tubers, grown as crops in South America, in a similar way to potatoes:
Besides these rarities, there are other less-common vegetables, but which are worth to be grown in a vegetable garden, such as parsnips, sweet potatoes, ginger, jerusalem artichokes, swedes, scorzonera, parsley roots (Petroselinum crispum tuberosum), different kinds of radish, kohl-rabi and celeriac. We have grown most of these plants before, if you need advice just email me. You can also watch our pictures in previous posts.

Fantastic carrots!
Another interesting thing to know is that there are plenty of (natural) varieties of carrots. No, they are no hybrids, these are tradicional varieties, which are now rarities, but available through some sellers of heirloom seeds. These include white, yellow, orange, red and purple carrots.


All the cited tubers are of course perfect for vegetarians, vegans and even rawists, wishing to improve their dishes, because most can be eaten raw and fresh!

Yacon

At the PFAF website, which I recommend all of you to visit, there are other interesting suggestions for edible root vegetables:
You might wanna check also these two interesting links:
- Top20 Permaculture plants http://www.pfaf.org/user/top20plants.aspx

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3 comments:

  1. Cattails are native worldwide. There is enough cattail in the Lake Chad basin to eat Africa's famines raw! Not all is fit for human consumption, the plant collects toxins. The equipment to inspect it is expensive, but not compared to food imports. What isn't fit for human consumption is top rated feedstock for biofuels. Harvesting these plants could solve our food and fuel problems. It would solve an enormous number of other problems, too. Aquatic weeds are the underlying cause of our climate troubles.

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  2. If anyone is interested in my experiences in growing and breeding some of these alternative root crops (in the UK) my blog is here: http://radix4roots.blogspot.com/

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  3. Great idea and super cute!
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