Urban Foraging with Nance Klehm

September 8, 2008

...re not talking gardens or dumpster diving. This is a discussion of the riches that grow in our highway medians, city planters, backyards and rail lines. Expert forager, Nance Klehm, sheds light on the city’s bounty, from medicinal plants to tasty greens. Getting to know the foraging landscape takes some time and energy, but gives back in complex flavors and a better appreciation of plants, and it’s free. “ Listen to the podcast here....

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Native Plant Workshop

Mr. Homegrown

February 4, 2009

Events, Native Plants

3 Comments

...opriate plantings. 2. Natives aren’t edible. Many natives yield edible and medicinal crops. In North America the best way to delve into this topic is to figure out the plants that Native Americans in your area used. 3. Southern California is a desert and native plants are desert plants. Coastal Southern California has a Mediterranean climate not a desert climate and native plants adapted to this region do not look like desert plants. Coastal nativ...

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Borage (Borago officinalis)

Mr. Homegrown

March 30, 2009

Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, Vegetable Gardening

9 Comments

...borage spiked salad on a recent Greyhound bus trip to Las Vegas we took for a book appearance. Thankfully for our fellow passengers, we did not break out into a borage induced sweat. For more on the medicinal qualities of borage, including “dispelling melancholy” (useful for bus layovers in Barstow, incidentally) see the borage entry in the Plants for a Future database....

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How to Cook Broadleaf Plantain

Mrs. Homegrown

November 19, 2012

Food, Foraging, Preparedness, Recipes

1 Comment

...ious, it is also bitter and heavily veined, so I prefer to collect it as a medicinal herb. I infuse it into oil that I put into salves and creams and I use it as a fresh poultice on itchy bites and hives. But eating it? Meh. I’ll put baby leaves in a salad. Erik has sprinkled the leaves on pizzas--and I’ll eat anything on a pizza. The seeds can be collected and used in seedy applications. But all in all, the flavor and tough texture of plantain le...

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Garden Design Trends: Interplanting and Plant Communities

Mr. Homegrown

January 23, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening

4 Comments

...demonstrated, this same interplanting strategy can be used with edible and medicinal plants. Another related design strategy are gardens inspired by wild plant communities. The example Rainer cites is the Daily Telegraph garden seen in the picture above. You can watch a video about that garden here. Now how do I get Sarah Price to redo our backyard? Have you seen a new garden you really like in the past year? If so, tell us about it in the comment...

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