We received a message from SPIN Farming, a web site that aims to show people how to make a living from what is essentially urban agriculture. The site is basically a shop front, but as the method does make very good use of agricultural biodiversity, I decided it would be worth linking to. The bias is very North American but the methods and techniques are much more widely applicable.
New (urban) Agriculturist
New New Agriculturist out: urban agriculture in spotlight.
Eat weeds
A weed is just a plant in the wrong place. Round here, alas, three of my favourite weeds — purslane (Portulaca oleracea), amaranth (Amaranthus sp.) and fat hen (Chenopodium album) — are very much in the wrong places; on the streets and by the tips where they are the object of far too many dogs’ attention. If they weren’t, I’d hurry over to Vindu’s blog to print out her recipe for Thotakura pappu, dal with amaranth leaves.
Come rainy season, our backyard used to be so full of these plants almost like weeds that the only dishes on the table would be thotakura stir fry or thotakura pappu (actually it still is like that back home)
Perfection, really. Eat the weeds and do yourself some dietary good at the same time. But it does raise the whole thorny question of what to call those species. Neglected? Underutilized? Only by scientists and the mainstream. For local people who depend on diversity, they’re neither.
African veggies
Papers on African leafy vegetables online.
Growing grains
Blogger Mustard Plaster has decided to delve into the magic of growing cereal grains with hull-less oats and hull-less barley. She complains that there isn’t much advice on gardening books, and she’s right. As one who has been there and done that, I can recommend only one book: “Small-Scale Grain Raising” by Gene Logsdon. And to tell the truth, even that is not much use for the gardener, although it is a fun read. Freshly ground, home grown cereals; that would take a lot of beating at breakfast time.