Category Archives: Log

Forest garden plants and seeds 2024/25

I’ve done a last bit of seed cleaning over the holidays, so that’s my seed list finished for seeds collected in 2024. You can find the full, up to date list in the SEEDS section.

Maybe I shouldn’t call it a seed list any more though, as I’ve been experimenting over the years with ways to send other bits of plants through the post and there is now a fair variety of roots, tubers, rhizomes, bulbs, bulbils, runners and whatnot on the list. This is something I want to do even more of in the future.

A few of the plants are of particular interest. I’ve been mucking about trying to improve skirret (Sium sisarum) for many years now and am starting to see some progress. For anyone who doesn’t know it, skirret is a very useful plant in the carrot family which produces a bundle of sweet-tasting roots. To harvest it, you just dig it up, snip off some of the roots and replant. Its main drawback is a fibrous core to some of the roots and I have been trying to eliminate this. I haven’t got rid of it from my entire gene pool yet, but I have an increasing number of clones that I’ve been following for several years and have found to be consistently core-free. The seed I offer comes from these plants. That isn’t a guarantee that the offspring will be the same, but it should definitely increase the odds. I am busy bulking up the best plants and in the future I hope I’ll have enough to send out crowns instead of seed. For now, although I can send crowns they are only the regular, unimproved version.

Then there are the perennial kales. where for reasons of space I’ve had to concentrate on a few of the most promising lines. My favourite, but also currently the most frustrating, is the perennial Nero di Toscana. A successful cross between my most reliably perennial clone (which I christened Purple Kale Tree) and annual Nero di Toscana gave several similar plants with leaves similar to its Italian parent but a much taller growing habit. Unfortunately if anything this has been too successful a perennialisation. After a few years of producing seeds the original clones have now renounced the habit and become fully asexual perennials. I had hoped to back-cross them with annual NdT, but I am now having to do this with their offspring instead. Watch this space.

Another attempt to perennialise an existing kale is going better. Pentland Brig is a favourite of mine and it has been self seeding in the allotment for years, interbreeding with the perennials in the process. I’ve selected fairly hard for staying true to type, which rather selects against perennial genes, but nonetheless my plants have been becoming slowly more long-lived and are starting to reach the balance between flowering and growth that I look for while staying recognisably Brig-ish. Finally there are the variegated kales. I can’t resist selecting for this trait and again it’s slowly becoming more widespread. Of course selection for a purely visual trait reduces the ability to select for anything else, so these aren’t my best kales, but I’d like to keep it in the population so that it can cross with the more culinary ones. Starting in the spring I can send out a limited number of cuttings of my more interesting plants as well as the seeds.

Aside from the plant breeding, I’m still acquiring and trying out new species. Korean celery (Dystaenia takesimana) has impressed me and has also provided plenty of seeds for me to share. A new discovery this year has been pearl onion, which despite the name is actually a leek. that forms an ever-dividing clump of plants with marble-sized bulbs. I’d always thought it would be impossibly fiddly, but having been given a division of a variety called Minogue’s Onion I’ve found it very useful as the plantlets, although small, need minimal preparation and so far they have soldiered on through everything the winter can throw at them. I’ve also managed to propagate a number of new edible Lilium species. For now they are too small to produced seed, but perhaps in the future I’ll add them to the list.

Forest garden seeds 2022/23

FOR THE CURRENT LIST SEE MY SEEDS

Finally, all the seeds I collected in 2022 have been cleaned up and put on my seed list, ready for sowing in 2023. There are all the old favourites, plus a few new things like perennial leek seed, hog peanut/earth bean (Amphicarpaea), crow garlic bulbils, broad beans, zenteika daylily and Nanking cherry – plus a variety of tubers and whole plants or roots cuttings only available in winter.

As usual, everything is open pollinated, meaning that ‘true’ progeny are not guaranteed but excitement is. Everything is offered on an open source basis, meaning that you can do whatever you like with my varieties but you can’t patent or otherwise restrict them. And everything is on a gift economy basis, meaning that the seeds are not free (they cost me a lot of effort), but the prices are up to you.

The full list is at https://www.foodforest.garden/forest-garden-seeds/

Seed list for 2022

With the addition of these Chinese quince seeds, that’s the list of the seeds that I have available for sowing in 2022 pretty much complete. Many forest garden seeds need stratification (winter cold). This seems to be in plentiful supply at present, but sowing of these seeds – unless it’s in the fridge – shouldn’t be put off for too much longer.

I now add seeds to the list as they become available, so it’s worth checking back every now and again. I’ve been experimenting with sending out roots and cuttings lately and have added more of these to the list. Unfortunately, for plant health reasons, I can only send these within the UK. As usual, everything is offered on a gift economy basis: this does not mean that they are free, but you can pay, swap or pay forward according to your means.

The full list is at www.foodforest.garden/forest-garden-seeds

Seed list 2019/20

That’s pretty much all the seeds I have added to my online seed list now. This is a good time for sowing seeds that need stratification (winter cold) before germination, which in the forest garden is a lot of them.
New seeds this year include angelica, Manchurian spikenard (a continental version of udo), common storksbill, spignel, evening primrose, orpine, fen nettle and Scottish-grown chamnamul (Pimpinella brachycarpa). As usual they are offered for swaps, donations or the love of plants.
One new thing I have done this year is add codes to the plant listings which should save me spending ages hunting for them. Please quote Latin names with the code. The list is at https://foodforest.garden/forest-garden-seeds/

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Common storksbill, Erodium cicutarium

Forest garden courses 2019

I have set dates for a couple of Introduction to Forest Gardening courses in the next few months. These are the only courses that I’ll have time to do this year.
Day courses
The one-day course will cover all the basics that you need to start forest gardening, including designing, planting, looking after, harvesting, cooking and eating from your garden. It should be particularly relevant to those growing in an allotment, small garden or community setting. It will cost £50 and will be on the dates below. I can take a maximum of 8 people on each, so please book in advance. You can book by clicking on the booking link below. If you would like to come but really can’t afford the fee, email me.
Saturday 27th July  11:00 – 17:00 – booking link
Tuesday 8th October 11:00 – 17:00 – booking link
Accommodation
If you need to stay over in Aberdeen for any course I can put one person up in my spare room (two if they are willing to share a small bed). First come, first served!
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Late autumn harvests 2018

The leaves are all off the trees now and autumn is shading gently but firmly into winter, but there is still plenty happening in the forest garden. Low light and wet plants make photography difficult, but a friend with a better camera and better skills than me recently took some shots, which prompted me to write a round-up post.

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Photos by Julian Maunder


It’s counter-intuitive if you are used to an annual garden, but autumn is a major sowing and germination time in both nature and the forest garden. Many seeds require stratification, or a period of cold, to germinate, and the easiest way to achieve this is to sow in autumn and let nature take its course. Other plants are self-sowing and coming up in autumn, taking a punt on managing to survive the winter and seed early. A mild autumn can be a really productive period with such plants: I’ve particularly enjoyed having copious supplies of rocket this November. I wonder if, after many generations of self-sowing, rocket is becoming hardier in my garden? Last winter – by no means a mild one – was the first time a plant survived the whole winter through and managed to seed in the spring. It is the offspring of this plant that are growing so vigorously in the cool weather now.
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I was also very pleased to see miner’s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) self-seeding freely. It has been a bit frustrating watching this species thrive in unexpected places like the nearby university car park while taking a long time to really get established in my allotment. It is a really nice, mild salad crop, so I’m sure the wait will be worth it.
Miner's lettuce
I particularly like getting biennial carrot family members established as self-seeding populations in the garden These are often quite difficult to grow each year from seed, having often short-lived seed with demanding stratification requirements and vulnerability to various diseases that are ingrained in our long-established allotment site. Saving seed, or allowing plants to self seed, is the only way to really guarantee fresh, viable seed. Parsnips, coriander, fennel, celery, angelica, alexanders and turnip-rooted chervil all self-seed this way. Of these, autumn is a particularly productive time for the celery and alexanders. I’m also getting there with Hamburg parsley, a variety of parsley that produces an edible root.
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Seeds of alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) can be put in a pepper grinder and used as a spice


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Angelica (Angelica archangelica) showing a wonderful deep red at the base


Another pair of related plants providing both food and colour at this time of year are the pot marigolds (Calendula officinalis) and chop suey greens or shungiku (Chrysanthemum coronarium). Both are producing cheerful yellow and orange flowers against the gloom, and the flower shoots of both can be used in stir fries. With the marigolds I use them flower bud and all, but the bud of the shungiku is very bitter so I remove it.
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Chrysanthemum coronarium


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Calendula officinalis


The wood mallow is also still going strong, providing edible leaves and flowers, and the little seed-heads known as ‘cheeses’. When you add in the kale, the leeks and the veritable treasury of root crops still to be dug up, winter may be coming but that is no cause for the forest gardener to worry.
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