Around the world

It’s early December, and a grey lid of cloud hangs over the Orkney Islands, alternately disgorging rain and sleet. Occasionally the clouds part and the extremely low angle of the sun results in the most beautiful rainbows I have ever seen. Waves break across the Churchill Barriers, driven by sixty-mile-an-hour gusts. We only have daylight for six hours a day. What can you expect at 59 degrees north? In my vegetable garden, most plants have died back for the winter. The slugs have gnawed my Christmas potatoes down to the ground, and only my leeks, watercress and parsley are bravely holding out. Perhaps it’s a good time to visit, in imagination at least, the veggie patches of somewhere warmer and lighter. And I thought of babai, the Giant Swamp Taro, growing in the coral atolls of the Pacific.

When I was a little girl, nurtured on Robert Louis Stevenson* and RM Ballantyne**, I used to imagine living on the classic coral island. The sun always shone: on the equator, there is no winter dark and cold. White sandy beaches were lapped by the brilliant blue waves of the lagoon and fringed by waving green coconut palms. Coconuts dropped from the trees and tasty fish swam into your hands. Around the lagoon lay a reef of shimmering white coral, with a string of tiny low-lying islets rising just above the waves. The beaches on the outside of the reef were open to the vast Pacific Ocean. The only sounds were the rustling of the palm fronds and the breakers crashing and foaming against the reef…

I was recently re-reading an old favourite of mine, ‘A Pattern of Islands’, by Arthur Grimble***, describing his experiences as a colonial officer  in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, in the early 20^th century.  A second book in my personal library about these islands is ‘Atoll Holiday’, written by Nancy Phelan****, after she spent a long holiday in the Gilbert Islands in 1956. These islands were a British Protectorate from 1892 until 1916, and then a British colony until 1976, when they became two separate colonies. In 1978 the Gilbert Islands became independent, as the republic of Kiribati, and the Ellice Islands remained British, now called Tuvalu.

Kiribati lies in the central Pacific Ocean, and consists of 32 tiny atolls and one raised coral island, strung out across the equator. ‘Atoll’ is the name for a roughly circular coral reef, with or without islets, surrounding a central lagoon.  Atolls only occur in the warm tropical and subtropical seas where coral can grow. There are various theories about how they develop their characteristic shape, but the most popular seems to be that the coral formed around an extinct volcano which subsequently eroded away.

Daydreams apart, these islands are not the best place for growing vegetables. They are made of coral and have no stone. They also have very little, very poor, soil. Grimble, writing of his arrival in the Gilbert Islands in 1914, describes in heartrending detail how attempts to make compost for growing the sort of vegetables he was used to were foiled by the speed at which it eroded away. He wanted beans and tomatoes. He got coconuts. The islands are short of water too. Water comes from rainfall which forms a convex ‘freshwater lens’ between the ground surface and the lower layers of coral which are permeated with salt water from the surrounding ocean.  The little islets are usually only a few hundred metres across, from ocean to lagoon, so plants also have to be salt-tolerant. Most of Kiribati is only two metres above sea level.

Between them, Grimble and Phelan described a selection of vegetable foods which came mainly from trees.  There were coconuts: green and ripe, both nuts and milk, and the sweet sap known as toddy which was collected from the palm blossom. It can be drunk fresh, or fermented into an alcoholic drink. Toddy was collected every day by men climbing up the coconut palms, and Phelan explained that it contains many nutrients which complement a diet of mainly fish and coconut.  Pandanus fruit, breadfruit, banana and an occasional pawpaw or pumpkin were also mentioned.

The main vegetable grown by the islanders which wasn’t a tree, apart from occasional pumpkins, was a plant known as ‘babai’.  This is the local name for Cyrtosperma merkusii or giant swamp taro, a plant native to the islands and an important part of their culture. Babai has dark green arrow-shaped leaves, huge succulent stalks and flowers a bit like an arum lily. It can grow up to 6m tall, with leaves up to 2m long by over a metre wide. The starchy corm (the swollen base of the stem) can be nearly a metre in diameter and weigh 80-100kg. It can be stored for long periods in the ground, or sun-dried and stored, so it is a useful resource for times of shortage.

Both Grimble and Phelan talk about babai being grown in deep muddy pits with compost added, each plant wrapped round in a straw cage. The pits are muddy because they are dug into the level of the freshwater lens, and their size varies from a few square metres to over a quarter of a hectare.

Babai has to be properly processed to get rid of toxins but it is very nutritious and in the early 20^th century it was an important part of the local diet. Grimble refers to it being mashed with butter, or steamed. He found it indigestible. Phelan also found it very heavy (page 179), except when it was mixed with other ingredients. She was presented with a pudding called ‘buatoro’ which she thought very pleasant. It was made by grating the babai, mixing it with coconut cream and with a syrup called kamaimai which was rather like golden syrup and was made by boiling down toddy. The pudding was cooked in a leaf wrapper.  It does sound rather nice, if a bit heavy, rather like my father’s golden syrup steamed pudding.

Alas, in the 21^st century, although giant swamp taro is still quite widely grown, islanders have apparently largely switched from their traditional diet to buying wheat bread, rice and sugar with the proceeds from the copra trade. It may be more convenient in the short term, but the resulting health problems are causing serious concern.

And the legendary coral island with its shining sands, coconut palms and babai growing in muddy pits may soon be nothing more than a memory. The rising sea levels associated with global warming are threatening babai cultivation as the fresh water lens is being contaminated by sea water, and extreme high tides lead to salt water spilling over into the pits. Many Pacific island groups are preparing to migrate to other countries, as entire islands are in danger of being submerged. They are, after all, only 2m above sea level.

* ‘Treasure Island’, 1883 Robert Louis Stevenson

**‘The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean’, 1857 R. M. Ballantyne.

***‘A Pattern of Islands’, 1952 Arthur Grimble

****‘Atoll Holiday’, 1958 Nancy Phelan

When I first heard about Hügelkultur, I thought it was the most extraordinary method of growing vegetables I had ever come across, although a useful idea if your problem is not enough depth of soil.  But as I recently scanned idly through many a screen, my eye was caught by a reference to floating vegetable gardens. It brought back a very vague memory of my first-year university studies. Fifty-five years ago, when I was doing my degree in prehistory, we had to start by looking at an overview of the prehistory and (some of) the history of the whole world. I remembered hearing about the floating vegetable gardens of the Aztecs, a useful idea if your problem is growing food for a city surrounded by water.

The Aztec empire flourished in central Mexico during the 14^th, 15^th and early 16^th centuries CE. Their capital city was Tenochtitlan, built on islands in Lake Texcoco, now the site of Mexico City.  They were a warlike people, but their science, art and architecture were also impressive; they had a written language, and an interesting if somewhat bloodthirsty belief system. The Aztecs kept track of the year using two separate calendars, one for ritual and one for agricultural purposes, which together formed a 52-year cycle. The Central American civilizations did not use wheels except for spindle whorls and children’s’ toys. They had neither potter’s wheels nor wheeled vehicles, perhaps because of the terrain or the lack of suitable draft animals.  They also didn’t have guns, so their sophisticated society was brought to an end by the arrival of foreign invaders, the Spanish Conquistadors, who did.

The Aztecs were migrants to the Valley of Mexico from the north. When they arrived there in the early 14^th century the area was already inhabited. Their capital was built on a small island in a swamp because this site was uninhabited and easily defended.  As the population grew, the chinampas were their solution to providing the city with food. Chinampas were not really floating gardens. They were artificial islands, created by building wattle fences on the lake bed to create small square enclosures which were then filled in with dredged-up lake mud, brush and waterweeds from the surrounding waterways, all rich in organic material. Trees, especially willows, were planted around the edges of the islets to increase stability, and the surrounding waterways were kept clear, allowing canoes to pass among the gardens, and maintaining a constant supply of water to the gardens. The fertile soil thus produced was extremely productive.  The Aztec farmers grew, among other vegetables and herbs, maize, beans, squash, tomatoes, chilli peppers and amaranth (a plant which produces tiny nutritious seeds which can be used like cereal grains). 

Chinampas did not compete very well with modern industrial methods of farming and global trade, and gradually almost ceased cultivation. They recently became important again in supplying Mexico City with fresh food during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Suddenly markets were closed, borders were closed and supply chains all over the world were disrupted. Surviving chinampas became the best source of fresh vegetables for the population of Mexico City (now 20 million people). They have been suggested as a good example of sustainable agriculture. And the chinampas of Xochimilco, south of Mexico City, are today recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  

The term ‘floating vegetable garden’ is often used rather loosely to signify a vegetable plot, man-made or otherwise, surrounded by water. The chinampas are not actually floating. The island of Madeira is sometimes referred to as a ‘floating garden’ because of its lush vegetation. In France, the Hortillonages are a labyrinth of tiny islets accessible only by a network of canals, which once supplied the town of Amiens with fruit and vegetables.  However, there are parts of the world today where vegetables are actually grown on floating constructions made of locally-available plant material.

In the Indian sub-continent, there are farmers who cultivate vegetable gardens that are free-floating. The practice was traditional in Bangladesh in areas which are often flooded for long periods during the monsoon. The long thin vegetable beds are constructed on a base of water hyacinth stems, bamboo, and rice stalks, beaten into mats and covered with silt, chopped water hyacinth, manure, and soil. The beds are anchored in place with bamboo poles but can rise and fall with changing water levels. The vegetables best suited to these floating gardens, which are usually around half a metre thick, are shallow-rooted leafy greens such as spinach, amaranth, beans, okra, tomatoes, aubergines, chillies, gourds, and herbs such as mint, ginger and coriander.  They can be up to 55m long, although shorter lengths are commoner; usually 10 – 15m long by 1m wide. Unlike the chinampas, they last for months rather than centuries, and need to be rebuilt every flood season.

The beds are cheap and easy to build, very fertile, and as they gradually decompose, produce excellent compost. They are considered to increase food security in areas prone to disastrous floods, and also something which gives status and economic benefits to women, who often do the cultivation. Furthermore, water hyacinth* is a highly invasive species from South America, which needs to be cleared from waterways anyway, as it interferes with fishing and water transport and allows mosquitos to breed, so this is an added benefit.  Bangladesh is very low-lying and is likely to be seriously affected by climate change and rising sea-levels, so floating vegetable gardens may become even more useful in the future.

Floating vegetable gardens are also used in parts of India, such as Dal Lake. Dal Lake is a large shallow freshwater lake in the city of Srinagar, Kashmir, in India. The lake is a noted tourist attraction, with a beautiful setting in the Himalayas, lined with gardens, parks and boulevards, and dotted with houseboats. Its floating vegetable gardens supply the city with fresh food. Reeds and bulrushes are woven together to make large mats which are dried out for several years before being covered with a layer of mud and planted with vegetables. These gardens can be moved around to various parts of the lake. Another kind is built on the marshy edges of the lake and is not moved, although it still floats. These gardens can be up to 2m in thickness, and can grow root crops such as carrots, turnips and radishes, as well as the same vegetables grown in Bangladesh: tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, aubergines, beans, gourds, chillies, melons and pumpkins and herbs. They can be 45m in length, and 3m wide. Unfortunately, the gardens are currently badly affected by climate change, pollution, tourism, and reduction in the area and depth of the lake. Government policies of resettling the farmers elsewhere, and the reluctance of younger people to work for the low profit margins involved also threaten the survival of this form of cultivation on Dal Lake.

Other countries in Southeast Asia, such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar, which have a tradition of houses built on stilts over a lake, also use floating gardens. Further afield, I have found a reference to floating vegetable patches in Southern Sudan.

All of the floating gardens described above are simple to build and are constructed of locally available materials. They are cultivated using organic methods, basically lake mud and animal dung rather than industrially-produced fertiliser.  They can provide a living for landless farmers, and empower village women, who can do much of the work. They usually supply food to a nearby city, so they are distributed locally and food miles are minimal. But cultivating a garden while up to your waist in water and mud, and the low profit margins involved, are not to the taste of many young people today. Floating gardens are labour-intensive – you can’t use a tractor or a harvesting machine on a raft. Pollution from sewage and industrial waste is becoming a problem in many areas. It takes extreme poverty, or a crisis such as the Covid pandemic or serious flooding to make them an attractive option in the modern world. But one day, we may need to think again.

* Incidentally, the sale of water hyacinth is now prohibited in the UK, and although it is not illegal to have some in a garden pond, releasing it into the wild is strictly forbidden. It does not usually grow well here because it does not tolerate winter temperatures below freezing, but has been noticed thriving in a Nottinghamshire park. Shall we think about global warming at this point….?

“From the bank of the Tweed to St Andrews I have never seen a single tree, which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present century. Now and then about a gentleman’s house stands a small plantation, which in Scots is called a policy, but of these there are few, and these few all very young. The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown. There is no tree for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger, and the whole country is extended in uniform nakedness…”

This bleak landscape was described by Samuel Johnson in the 18^th century in his “A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland” 1775 (p.8). At the end of the Ice Age, Scotland was largely covered with temperate forest, but a change to a cooler wetter climate and the effects of agriculture, as well as felling trees for timber, charcoal, etc. deforested much of the country. The same is true for the Orkney Islands. It is believed that most of the woodland in Orkney had been cut down by the end of the Bronze Age to clear land for farming. Grazing by animals and the strong winds for which Orkney is famous prevented regeneration.  By the medieval period, Orkney, and Scotland as a whole, were importing timber for building houses, ships, vehicles etc. from Norway.

In Orkney, a tiny patch of native woodland survives at Berriedale on the island of Hoy, together with a few even tinier scraps in the same part of that island, such as Burn of Quoy, mentioned in Stromness Museum's ‘Woodland Walks'. The main native trees in Orkney are Downy Birch; hazel; aspen; rowan; various willow species: Grey willow, Eared willow, Tea-leaved willow, Dwarf willow, Creeping willow and juniper. Wild rose and wild honeysuckle form part of the understorey.

There are a few small plantations of trees around the gentry houses (early modern onwards) in Orkney, perhaps what Johnson meant by a ‘policy’. They are usually sheltered by stone walls. These trees are mostly sycamores, a native of central, eastern and southern Europe, which is believed to have been introduced into Britain either by the Romans or during the Tudor period. Sycamore does well in Orkney because of its tolerance of the salt-laden winds. Although it’s a real nuisance if your garden is anywhere near a sycamore tree because it produces quantities of winged seeds that germinate vigorously anywhere they land.

Several small areas of conifers were planted by the Forestry Commission on Hoy in 1954, as part of a government program for re-afforestation of suitable areas. This program especially favoured species useful for timber, such as the fast-growing Sitka spruce. According to MTT Philips, one of the foresters who worked on the this project, there were four small plantations at Fea, Lodge, White Glen and Lyrawa. Looking at the OS map, there seems to be a fifth, at the extreme north end of the island, called Hoy Forest. The small plantations are mostly still standing,  although the only one I am able to get close to, at Fea, has suffered quite a lot of wind damage around the edges.

More recently, there have been more efforts to plant small areas of mixed trees in Orkney rather than coniferous plantations. Orkney Islands Council, various community projects, and a number of private individuals have done so. I visited a very good one during the Open Garden Festival this year, Laura’s Wood in South Ronaldsay. Several of my friends, who have large enough gardens, have raised quite successful mini-woods within a few decades, although they don't tend to use all-native species. Usually fast-growing willows are used as a windbreak to start them off. I understand that the tiny saplings may need to have wire netting collars to protect them from rabbits.

In urban areas of the Scottish mainland, ‘Tiny Forests’, or ‘Wee Forests’ as they are now called in Scotland, are being established using the Miyawaki method. Akira Miyawaki was a Japanese botanist and plant ecologist, who developed a method for growing very small areas of forest very rapidly. The Miyawaki method of creating tiny forests involves careful preparation of an area of soil, usually about the size of a tennis court, (approximately 24 x 11 metres) and then planting native species of trees from the normal canopy layer, lower storey and forest floor, all at the same time. The seeds are planted at very high densities. This is supposed to replicate what happens in a natural forest when a canopy tree falls and opens up a clearing. Competition for the light means that the saplings all grow very fast, competing for light, and natural selection thins out the forest. It apparently results in a tiny area of dense woodland, a native forest in miniature, and it only takes decades rather than centuries. It is very important to plant species which are native to the area – even within the UK, there are variations in habitat.

The small size (you can make them as small as 5m²) makes them suitable for small areas of waste ground in densely populated urban environments, where they have a noticeable effect on temperatures and air quality. The ‘tiny forests’ also provide opportunities for children and adult volunteers in big cities to learn about forests, while providing free labour for things like watering and weeding while the seedlings grow big enough to fend for themselves. And they attract sponsorship from businesses, who can use them for corporate away-days and bonding sessions and so on. An organisation called Earthwatch is co-ordinating the planting of many of these ‘wee forests’ in Scotland. There is one in our nearest large urban centre, Aberdeen, Woodside Wee Forest.

Lockdown generated a lot of social media advice about how important it is for our mental health to connect regularly with nature, how beneficial ‘forest bathing’ is and so on.  But it’s getting more and more difficult to find any forest to bathe in. This planet is grossly overpopulated. These tiny patches of woodland can never offer the silence and solitude of a real forest, nor the atmosphere which generated folk stories of witches and wolves and beautiful princesses sleeping for centuries in enchanted castles. You cannot be alone in the same way with the silence, the solitude, the sunlight filtering through the leaves of the tall trees far above, the rustling of small animals in the undergrowth. They do not seem to be places where you can just wander; you need a clipboard or an organised project. But perhaps they can cool down our mega-cities and give our grandchildren something to look at instead of concrete. Which can’t be bad.

I first came across the term “hügelkultur” during an internet search on a gardening topic. This time, for once, my interest wasn’t sparked by a book. Basically, it involves growing vegetables on a compost heap with a base formed by a pile of logs. The idea is an interesting one, although I should stress that I have no personal knowledge of how well it works, as I have never seen one in action and it isn’t suitable for my own garden. Although frequently referred to as an ‘ancient technique’ in Europe there seem to be no references to either documentary or archaeological evidence for hugelkultur earlier than 1962. If anybody has any such references, I would be interested to hear them.

The word ‘hügelkultur’ is German for ‘mound cultivation’. It refers to building a raised bed on a base of logs, filled in with small twigs and bark, and covered with layers of straw, compost, grass clippings, dead leaves, chicken bedding etc and finally topsoil, in which you plant your vegetables. You can either build it freestanding i.e. completely above ground level, or sunk in a trench, or partly sunk. Some are gently sloping, some have almost vertical sides. As the logs rot and the various layers of leaves etc. compost down, a rich soil is produced. The porous logs retain moisture efficiently so the bed needs less watering than conventional beds, but it doesn’t become waterlogged. The slowly decomposing organic matter provides a slow release supply of nutrients. It doesn’t need digging over, so the soil structure remains undisturbed and it is expected to be rich in soil bacteria, fungal mycelia etc. It’s a good way to recycle organic waste into compost, and it is very much part of the permaculture movement, in that it is supposed to take care of itself and produce food for years. 

It is generally admitted to have some disadvantages. A certain amount of heavy labour is needed to set up, digging up the turf and moving logs into position, and you need to leave it for a year or so to become established. It doesn’t last forever and needs to be rebuilt entirely after five or six years. The bed slowly subsides as the compost material rots down, so planting fruit trees and bushes on top is not really practical. You need a source of logs (bark chippings alone won’t do) and a good deal of compostable materials to start it off with. Areas like Orkney and Shetland, with very few trees would have a problem. I am not sure that driftwood well-soaked with salt, or conifers full of resin, would really make a good base for a compost heap.  Holes will appear as the underlying logs rot down, which will need to be filled in with small stuff. It is also said to be an attractive habitat for rats. And you need a large enough plot of land. There is something scientific about wood needing extra nitrogen as it starts to rot; I have no idea whether this is really likely to have a significant effect in a garden bed or whether it is of purely academic interest.

Not everybody supports the method. An article written by an urban horticulturist and associate professor at Washington State University argues that ordinary raised beds are a better option and that the logs would be better used on the surface, as ‘nurse logs’ for wildlife, standing around the garden, or made into chippings for mulches.

An interesting side effect of my researches on this particular topic was that it brought my attention to the way my preferred search engine works and its AI summary is produced. My background research this time relied entirely on the internet, since the method doesn’t appear in any of the books I have got hold of. At one point I noticed that the sites that usually appear when I search on gardening topics, such as the RHS, Henry Doubleday, and various sites run by universities or botanic gardens, did not come up this time. Even Wikipedia was only on the second page. Instead, I got hardly anything except blogs from ‘alternative’ groups or individuals. I have no objection to druids and some of them did look practical, but I like to have a more orthodox point of view as well. When I did find Wiki and some of the blogs dealing with the disadvantages of hügelkultur, they stated that there have been no properly-designed scientific studies on whether it actually works.

I asked about how AI works at present, and it turns out that it relies on the sites which come up most frequently and which attract the attention of search engines most efficiently. It has no way at the moment to assess the reliability or the academic standards of its sources. The AI designers are well aware of this, and you can find out about it if you ask, but it is not immediately obvious to the casual user, or at least not to one of my age. In some ways this can be a good way of avoiding censorship on the internet, and it hardly matters if you are building a raised bed on top of a log pile, but it does mean that I would not like to bet on how well this technique works without trying it myself or visiting a garden where it has been used.

So, am I going to try building myself a hügel? No. It sounds as if it might be suitable for some environments, but Orkney has (a) an abundance of fertile agricultural soil and (b) a serious lack of trees. And I only have a small garden. I shall stick to tiny raised beds and containers and composting my kitchen waste. But I would like to see one in action.

I was wandering around Waterstones bookshop on a visit to Cambridge last month when my eye fell on a copy of Martin Crawford’s book “How to Grow Perennial Vegetables” (2012). It was the words “low-maintenance” on the front cover which attracted my attention. Ever one to save effort where possible, I bought it. And developed my latest craze.

Perennial vegetables and fruits can be defined as edible plants that live for at least three years and can be harvested without killing the whole plant. Some plants are perennial in warm climates, but not in cooler ones, therefore do not count as perennials in Europe.  Many perennial vegetables we don’t usually hear of are an important part of diets around the world, for example the ulluco  (Ullucus tuberosus), a root crop apparently second in importance only to the potato in the Andes.

Perennials are said to contain more nutrients on average than annual vegetables, and to be better for the environment since you don’t have to disturb the soil so often, although you do have to get rid of weeds as soon as possible. Since they are usually allowed to flower, they are good for pollinating insects, which are currently under threat. Harvesting tends to extend over a longer period of the year, so they are useful during the traditional ‘hungry gap’ in spring, when you have used up your stored crops but the new ones are not yet producing anything. The root system of perennials is ready to start growing in early spring, so it makes the best use of a short growing season.

They do have some disadvantages, especially for large-scale commercial growers. They are harder to weed around by chemical or mechanized means. Crop yields are lower, since the vegetable has to use some of its energy keeping its root system going for next year, and they take longer to establish. And they are just as prone to diseases like club root as annuals, which is why I am regretfully not going to try any of the perennial cabbages, although they sound great (my main bed is infected with clubroot). The fact that they are not rotated like annual crops, but remain in the same bed for years can make this problem worse. 

The commonest perennial vegetables currently grown in Orkney are rhubarb and globe artichoke, and soft fruits like currants, gooseberries and berries. Most gardeners up here grow rhubarb, and if you don’t, there are often feral rhubarb plants available, like the ones at a beach near me. (It’s a pity that I can’t eat rhubarb any more myself).  I recently visited a garden on Hoy where they have planted asparagus. I have a sorrel plant which is fast becoming established and producing useful quantities of leaves. A local grocer was selling ramsons (wild garlic) in pots this spring, so I bought one.  

Watercress (Nasturtium officinale) is also worth trying. Apparently you do not need a fast-running stream to grow watercress; you can grow it in a container and keep the compost moist by standing it in a saucer full of water. The saucer needs to be emptied and the pot flushed through with clean water periodically to keep it fresh. That's also a good idea from the midge point of view as well. They breed in stagnant water and they don't need much encouragement up here.   You can grow watercress from seed, or you can do what I have done. Next time you buy a bunch, put some sprigs in a jar of water on the windowsill. Hopefully it will grow little roots in a week as mint does, and can then be planted out.   

The various blogs about perennial vegetables which have appeared in recent years also mention wild plants usually regarded as weeds. My garden, like everybody else’s, goes yellow with dandelions in early summer. I have no objection to eating dandelion leaves in salad or young nettle tops in soup. I can’t be bothered with Good King Henry, though. As a young archaeologist, I naturally tried a variety of wild greens such Good King Henry and Fat Hen and found them stringy and just tasting vaguely of greens, while ground elder I found had a positively objectionable tang.

Silverweed (Potentilla anserina) grows prolifically in Orkney and the thin roots were used as a famine food in the past.  The roots are small and spindly in the wild and it takes a lot of effort to collect enough for a meal (Milliken & Bridgewater 2013 pages 47-49).  However, F. Marian McNeill (2010, page 229) quotes Alexander Carmichael (Carmina Gadelica Vol. IV) as recording that before the introduction of potatoes, silverweed was cultivated in the Highlands and Islands and grew quite large. It was sometimes boiled, or sometimes the ground-up roots were made into porridge or bread.  She gives a recipe for Silverweed Bannock which is not a famine recipe. You are supposed to go over a ploughed field in spring to collect the long thin white roots, dry them and grind them up, and then make a bannock by mixing them with oat or barley meal, butter and warm milk and cooking them like a scone or an oatcake. It is said to taste nice but not as if it has much potential as a future staple crop.

What I am going to try next is skirret (Sium sisarum), known as crummock or crumag (Gaelic) in Scotland. I have bought two plants from a fascinating small firm in Devon. Skirret is a root crop with a sweet taste something between a carrot and a parsnip. Various European countries know it under the name of sugar root because of its sweetness.  It seems to be very popular at the moment and it does seem to have interesting possibilities. It doesn’t mind a cold climate and grows well in Britain and Northern Europe; it is resistant to disease, although it grows fibrous if it doesn’t get enough water.

 Skirret originated in China and was introduced to Britain by the Romans. It was cultivated thereafter for centuries. The 14^th  century English recipe collection known as the ‘Forme of Curye’ gives a recipe for fritters made of parsnips (‘pasternakes’), skirrets (the spelling varies wildly)and apples: these are dipped in batter made of flour, eggs, ale, saffron and salt and fried in oil or ‘grece’. They were served with almond milk. (I am going to try that one). Skirrets were a favourite in Tudor and Stuart times, and were planted in the royal kitchen gardens laid out by Queen Anne in 1702 at Hampton Court Palace. According to Geddes (1994, page 37), the recipe book of Katharine Bruce, Lady Saltoun, married to a late 17^th century Scottish laird, has a recipe for boiled chicken stuffed with parsley and surrounded by vegetables such as boiled artichoke hearts or skirrets in a sauce. Skirrets were being grown in Shetland gardens by the end of the 17^th century (Fenton (1978 page 421). But by the late 17^th century, potatoes were being grown in Britain in significant quantities. Potatoes are easier to peel, as skirret roots are long, thin and uneven, and they are easier to harvest industrially. Sugar was more widely available too, so the sweet taste was less important. The skirret gradually fell out of fashion.

Perennial vegetables are not totally labour-free. You still need to weed them, feed them, and keep them well-watered, especially if you are growing them in containers or a restricted space like a small raised bed. I seem to have spent most of my garden time this summer, which has been unusually dry in Orkney, pouring water onto my vegetables. My water butt has run dry twice. And I won't know until next summer whether my artichokes, skirrets and watercress are going to survive and produce an edible crop, whereas this year's potatoes have been great, in spite of the drought. We'll just have to see….

F. Marian McNeill 2010 “The Scots Kitchen. Its Traditions and Lore with Old-Time Recipes”

William Milliken & Sam Bridgewater  2013 “Flora Celtica. Plants and People in Scotland”

Alexander Fenton 1978 “The Northern Isles: Orkney and Shetland”

Olive M. Geddes  1994 “The Laird’s Kitchen. Three hundred Years of Food in Scotland”