Though we may struggle sometimes to get certain favourite plants to grow in our garden, I am always surprised (and sometimes frustrated) at the way some plants thrive in difficult locations outside of our carefully tended gardens. Take a look at the pic above. It’s one of our most useful seasonal plants, Chickweed (Stellaria media)…
Category: herbs
Nettles…. Mmmmmm
Nettles… Fresh picked from our front yard and washed… Just delicious! These go in the dryer. Tomorrow’s lot are for compost tea. It’s much easier to pick the fresh, young nettles than it is to pick and process older ones. All you need to do is wash the dirt off of the roots and they’re…
Kangaroo Apple (Solanum aviculare)
Family: Solanaceae Habitat: Forest margins, woodland edges Description and uses: Kangaroo Apple (Solanum aviculare) is one of the amazing Solanum family which gives us so much of our food and lots of our medicines. It’s a bushy plant that grows to around 3 metres tall down this way but may be bigger elsewhere. Kangaroo Apple has deeply lobed…
Time for this one…
I like this time of year, it’s time for my favourite foraging food… Blackberry Nightshade… It’s also the time of year when passers-by tell me ‘don’t eat that! It’s poisonous’! Blackberry Nightshade (Solanum nigrum) is a delicious relative of the humble Tomato. Like tomatoes, the berries are the best bit. Berries are best picked and…
I made a video “A fairly detailed wander”
I’ve been playing around with short videos lately, being kind of behind the times with all this media stuff. Anyway, take a trip around the garden as I rabbit on about the plants therein. I think I cover them all. It’s nearly 20 minutes long, so grab your popcorn…
Keeping herbs fresh
Herbs are best fresh, but that’s not always possible. Drying is most folk’s preferred option, having a long history of success in keeping the qualities of the herbs. One simple way I’ve worked out to keep dried herbs fresh is to make a small modification to Moccona coffee jars. Inside of the lid is a…
Food Underfoot 2018
We’ll its time for the Woodstock of Gawler amateur herbalism, Food Underfoot! On Sept 23rd at 11ish, I’ll be taking a foraging walk through Henry Chenoweth Reserve in Gawler where we will take a look at the seasonal, local, food and medicinal herbs available. Last year, if I remember correctly, we looked at Chickweed, Dandelion,…
Cut Leaf Mint (Prosanthera incisa) in flower
Cut Leaf Mint (Prosanthera incisa) is one of our favourite Native plants. This plant is commonly called Cut Leaf Mint, Native Thyme (not to be confused with Ocimum tenuiflorum or the closely related P. rotundifolia which also have that same common name) or Native Mint (I know, there’s a couple of those too…). We love…
Lemongrass harvest
Today I needed to harvest some of our unruly Lemongrass (one of the many Cymbopogonspecies). We had enough to process, so I thought I’d share it with you in a short post. Leaf showing the two main parts. Lemongrass has long leaves that are essentially in two sections. It is clear where the leaves open…
I’m talking again!
I’m having a little talk at the Australian Plant Society Autumn Plant Sale on Sun 22 April at 1pm. It’ll be at Stirling Angas Hall, Adelaide Showgrounds (enter off Rose Tce). I’ll be doing my usual carry on about foraging for local bushfoods, edible weeds and wild herbs, so come along, buy some plants, listen to some interesting…
