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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

Last, please feel free to subscribe for updates of the blog, see the right column!


Thursday 21 October 2010

Interesting Permaculture video and ideas

The authors show the use of animals to eat pests (turkeys to eat grasshopers, ducks and lizards eat slugs and snails, chicken eat the apple larvas)

In this video, found also a tree from himalaias, with lemon tasting fruit that cures cancer, a fern used as compost nitrogen activator, and a perfect edge schrub, with edible fruits and seeds.

Finally, the use of bamboos - fast growth and huge tensile strenght, they withstand the strengh of earthquakes, hurricanes or tsunamis, and provide also lots of others uses (e.g. around dam lakes) or are edible!




Please visit also our new blog on ecovillages http://theecovillagerevolution.blogspot.com


Saturday 9 October 2010

10 October 2010 - a day to take action



Tomorrow it's a day to take action.

All around the world, plenty of people will be taking steps to reduce our impact on the planet which damages the environment.

Go to http://www.350.org to join iniciatives near you!
There will be plenty of them! And funny ones!

Join http://www.1010global.org to start taking action in your house!

1. Use less airplanes
2. Reduce heating in winter, cooling in summer
3. Change to energy-efficiency appliances. Go solar
4. Drive less. Use bike or public transports
5. Eat local, organic and less meat
6. Consume less. Buy second hand
7. Recycle always. Make less trash
8. Save food
9. Save water
10. Did all above? Please feel more happy!

It's a global grassroots movement.