Daily Sustenance from a Forest Garden?

I know I should probably post this in the cooking section, but I'm specifically seeking the views of temperate food foresters, so I hope this is okay.

I'm currently establishing a new (very small) forest garden, having previously started another and then had to move house. So I have some forest garden experience for the earlier and bleaker years/stages of food production.

What I am not, is a foodie, and this fact about myself disappoints me greatly. I find it really hard to pick five different fruits and berries in twos and threes, plus a fistful of novelty leaves, and work out how to turn that into a meal that my partner and I can enjoy after a hard day at work.

My new garden is now about 2 years old and I've reached the stage (again) of beginning to get small unpredictable harvests of fruit and the odd veg, but I'm struggling with how to weave this bounty into normal kitchen life.

Similarly, when I read or watch videos about established temperate forest gardens, I'm always struck by the huge quantity of apples, mostly, and wonder how they use them all or what else those people get to eat. Do they just quaff cider until they fall asleep? There seems little other than tubers with which to make up the satisfying bulk of a main meal, and there's only so much chutney anyone can handle, surely? What does it go with if not a meat eater? Plus, utilising unusual edible leaves etc. is great (I can really enjoy compiling a weird salad on a weekend), but how can these be incorporated into basic workday meals without being comparatively bitter or fibrous?

In short, can anyone point me to resources about how to actually EAT, in a real way, from a Forest Garden?

E.g. seasonal harvesting tips, simple versatile recipes for viable main meals etc. I bought Martin Crawford's book on this topic a few years ago, and much as I love my other book by him, I found this one disappointingly sparse on the daily work of eating ... It was mostly chutneys and cordials, once again. Nobody seems to tackle the art of combining annual veg, forest harvest, and maybe some shop produce for producing actual *dinner*.

Apologies if this already covered somewhere ... I keep searching for the holy grail of this issue intermittently, but never really seem to find what I'm looking for. A bit worried it's because it's maybe not a viable thing to do.

Thanks

Maybe add some of the veggies used in the automatic backyard food pump. The three 'starter' plants are kale, walking onions and sunchokes.



There's a dedicated thread to the concept here, and a short video to show the idea in use.

Thanks, that video was nice to see, and he made soup, which I guess is an often overlooked catch-all that I should get more into the habit of.

And you're right, I should focus on getting a set of staples together as a priority. Funny story: I have all those three already, but some local cows broke into my garden earlier this year and one of them bit the top off my baby walking onion just as it was about to flower, so I'll need to wait a whole extra year before that will proliferate as intended.

Meanwhile, my kale has been raising two of the most beautiful generations of cabbage whites you ever did see. That one's a me-fail with the netting. Busy year.

It still begs the question though ... I seek a diversity of plants in my FF, but don't know how to make good use of that diversity in my cooking without making some sort of jam or pickle out of everything. My partner gives me funny looks if I try to serve him raw Fuchsia berries with mash and gravy (not that I actually have, but he would).

I feel your pain. The problem I have, even in a garden that is starting to produce is that because I'm not familiar with many perennial vegetables I'm not really sure what to do with them. The season is also quite short for some of them - the Japanese mountain vegetables grow quite well here, but just as I'm thinking 'ooh the Udo looks like it could be ready' and I look up a recipe, the Udo has grown up and away.
I still have several vegetables doing quite well that I need to harvest at the sweet spot and work out ways of using them. They all need to pass the 'husband test' too, or else they're only fit for sale or chutney (Which I eat loads of but he doesn't touch).
I do quite well with vegetables that produce steadily, like kale and small leaved lime. Or ones that stay in the ground till needed like jerusalem artichoke or Erythronium. Unfortunately tree crops don't do well here (I may get three apples this year..!) so a glut of those is to dream of. Soft fruit do well though, so playing to my strengths I can use raspberries instead of pomegranite fruit, and substitute in 'normal recipes'

Salad, soup, stew, stir fry.....

I'm not sure how much land you have - you said 'very small', which suggests to me that you won't have room to grow everything. Which means you'll likely still be buying basic essentials and using the forest garden to supplement. Which to be honest is pretty much what I do...

I buy in rice and beans. I often cook up a big batch of rice and lentils which is then pretty easy to pad out into a full meal with whatever I can pick from the garden.

I have a white mulberry tree, which I bought thinking it was a black mulberry but it turned out not to be. I does, however, grow  like a weed on speed. And the young leaves are very edible. And the more I cut it back, the more young leaves it keeps making for me. I seriously cannot keep up with the amount of greens it attempt to give me, and I grow perennial kale too which makes it even more difficult to eat my way through it all. I'm avowed to never have another goat but the amount of leaves that mulberry gives me I've been very tempted to go back on my word!

I'm experimenting with lovage this year, which is a bit like a hybrid between parsley and celery, only it grows six foot tall and lives for fifteen years. My plants are still babies so it will be another year before I can judge if it lives up to the hype, but so far I'm very impressed. I like something that gives that much from a plant that mostly just sits there looking pretty. Even the seeds are edible!

Most fruit can be turned into a crumble. And I mean, who doesn't love crumble? I like a lot of oats in mine and it makes a substantial addition to a meal. Again, a goat would help so I could add home-grown custard but I did promise Himself that I wouldn't...  I love chutney too, but it's not exactly a staple food. Or sometimes I make up a rice pudding and serve fresh or stewed fruit with that. A hay-box is really good for rice pudding, and for rice-and-lentils too.

Nancy, if that udo is anything like American Spikenard—one of my favorite vegetables!—I would peel the shoots and eat them as is, or add the young leaves and shoots to a green soup.

Hi Stina,
I hear you! After all these years I still struggle with eating "new" foods.
I do love what Burra says: Start small, accept your limitations. Learn one thing at a time.

What works for me:
The national dish of the Netherlands is "stamppot". It is basically mashed potatoes with vegetables in it. There are some varieties. The three most famous are: with carrots and onions, with kale and last but not least with sauerkraut. Normally one adds  something sour on the side, like pickles, or in case of sauerkraut, something sweet. This is always a great base. I can replace any part with something else for variation. I think Burra's sunchokes and kale will mash well together and with pickled walking onions on the side would be close to the original dish! This way I can introduce something new (sunchokes) into something old. Everybody (in the netherlands) recognises this dish and would give it a try. That way they will be introduced to sunchokes. Now I can replace every part of that dish with something else as a whole or partially. For example the pickled onions with apple sauce, and the kale with any leafy green that needs cooking. Just one step at a time. In only three meals, the dish has changed completely. You don't need to be a foody to do this (I am not).

Soup and stirr-fry are another way to add new flavors and textures by the way, and Kale makes great sauerkraut.

Once flavors are familiar, I can prepair them in a different way: like diced sunchokes in a stirr-fry for example. Before I know it, eating sunchokes is normal in my family.

Occasionally, if I have a lot of one vegetable, I try a more unusual recepy for variation, for example Burra's kale: use large leavea as a wrap or find a recipe for delicious kale pie. And once you can cook kale in a different way for every day of the week, replace the kale in the recipy with another leafy green.

One last thing: don't eat only your dinner from the garden. Fruit is easy to include in breakfast, lunch and snacking.

Good luck Sti, and let us know how it works out for you! Happy tasting!

Hello! Another new person here. I would completely agree with using it to supplement what you buy in, and also, as Nancy said, play to your strengths and the strengths of the land you have.

I have a good-sized garden, but am also a renter, so can’t plant much stuff actually in the ground. This means there are a lot of containers, but the yields are somewhat limited. I also have an allotment, but I work almost full time so I can’t spend every day tending to it. I have to take FF elements and slot them in where I can, adapting to my needs and the situation.

The hot weather in SE UK stymied a lot of things this year, too. Good job I still have fruit in the freezer from last year!

You’re right, a lot of jam is involved… Also, I really enjoyed the expression “novelty leaves”!

I’ve subsisted for days at a time on stewed applesauce and enjoyed every bit of it!

One thing you could do is to start planting some nut trees. Oak trees are a lovely source of food, if you have a few minutes in the morning and evening every day for a week to boil a batch. They definitely take a while to cook (leach) but when they are done they are nutritious and healthy.

For more of a quick answer, I recommend seeing if you can carve out a little potato patch. I’ve mostly planted potatoes this year, and some squash. With the whole rest of the place being a source of fertility, or especially if you start humanure composting, an annual vegetable garden (hopefully with some polyculture!) can be an integral part of the system. To be honest I haven’t seen much in terms of root vegetables growing in the forest, at least practical ones, except for ramps (similar to your bear garlic or ramsons). So you may want to plant one or both…

Or perhaps chickens would work? Eggs are an easy, filling, tasty meal.

In my climate (and so I hear, many others) parsnips are very wild, so they could be a good option. They like to be dug year after year, like sunchokes. There is also talk of skirret being very delicious, but I haven’t gotten ahold of plants or seeds yet. I do however know of a patch of native water parsnip, their close relative…

One thing I do is make green soup—boil together a few different kinds of greens for ten to twenty minutes, add salt or miso and include some beans or acorns or potatoes, something starchy. It is delicious.

Nancy Reading wrote:The problem I have, even in a garden that is starting to produce is that because I'm not familiar with many perennial vegetables I'm not really sure what to do with them. The season is also quite short for some of them - the Japanese mountain vegetables grow quite well here, but just as I'm thinking 'ooh the Udo looks like it could be ready' and I look up a recipe, the Udo has grown up and away.

Exactly this! So reassured that I'm not alone. I already have a diversity of plants in various stages of establishment - the gardening aspect is comparatively easy for me - but the frequency with which I miss a key moment to try something new is, well, more routine than not.  But also, If I'm to include unusual plant foods in my daily diet, then I need easy ways to incorporate them into standard meals. Then it's much easier to do the quick bit of research about harvest time, parts and prep without the added faff of "now I need to start candying stems" or whatever, when what we actually need is a hot dinner after a long day infront of a computer screen.

Burra Maluca wrote:I'm not sure how much land you have - you said 'very small', which suggests to me that you won't have room to grow everything. Which means you'll likely still be buying basic essentials and using the forest garden to supplement. Which to be honest is pretty much what I do...

Yes, absolutely doing this. We have 0.2 acres *including* the cottage we live in, so space is very tight, and also very awkwardly shaped/situated in places though I do benefit from a range of interesting aspects. I famously overplant everything though, so I already have hundreds of species dotted around, but that means tiny quantities of each thing. I'm trying to change my ways on this, but it's hard. I love plants!

Burra Maluca wrote:I'm experimenting with lovage this year, which is a bit like a hybrid between parsley and celery, only it grows six foot tall and lives for fifteen years. My plants are still babies so it will be another year before I can judge if it lives up to the hype, but so far I'm very impressed. I like something that gives that much from a plant that mostly just sits there looking pretty. Even the seeds are edible!

This is a good example. I assume you mean Levisticum officinale? Although I've never seen one reach six foot in the UK. I adore the smell of lovage (to me, and almost no-one else, it smells like cardamom), but I've never successfully eaten it as a standard vegetable. I've only used it for flavouring. Which parts do you use? When? How? ...I find the leaves become tough quite early in the season so, though I've wanted to use it more, it never seemed all that amenable to it.

M Ljin wrote:if that udo is anything like American Spikenard—one of my favorite vegetables!—I would peel the shoots and eat them as is

*heads off to garden to try nibbling the tiny, long-suffering and already rabbit-chewed Udo baby* ...Omg, that's so palatable even at this time of year (UK autumn). Fibrous, but eatable fibrousness - doesn't get stuck in the teeth!. And a lovely fresh flavour. Maybe I need another one of these🤔

To respond to your other post - not enough space for most of it sadly. I'd love to have ducks one day, but it's dependent on convincing our neighbours to sell us their field AND finding willing duck carers for when we go away. I do have potatoes and annual veg, but all on a very small scale. I also do have a Skirret! It's still in its first year, but I nabbed a little rootlet the other week and it was very tasty. Can't wait for that to settle in and be ready for a proper harvest. Green soup sounds good! Cooking with acorns would definitely be a new one for me.

Nynke Muller wrote:The national dish of the Netherlands is "stamppot". It is basically mashed potatoes with vegetables in it. There are some varieties.

Thank you Nynke - this is a perfect suggestion to add to my repertoire and exactly the sort of super simple but versatile idea I was hoping for (and shows you how unimaginative I am on the cooking front). We have similar traditional things in the UK, but I never thought of it because I'm a bit divorced from the native food culture. But mashed potato would actually work as a base for many of the things I struggle with. E.g. a small handful of aromatic leaves from various plants, plus a few milder brassica leaves, say, would mean a different flavour combo with every mouthful, and less risk of the fibrousness overpowering the meal. Potentially similar with some of the more savoury berries too. I will need to stock up on normal potatoes (I only grew fancy ones) and eat mash more often - what could be nicer as autumn draws in?!

The timing problem with perennial veg is genuinely frustrating. That window between 'nearly ready' and 'completely past it' feels about three days long sometimes. Soup is probably the answer for everything that gets away from you.

Stina wrote:

I famously overplant everything though, so I already have hundreds of species dotted around, but that means tiny quantities of each thing. I'm trying to change my ways on this, but it's hard. I love plants!

I recall Toby Hemenway (Gaia's Garden author) saying something like - most small gardens will focus on a handful of basic, reliable crops. Your love of plants may be making your job of eating from your land, much harder.

I am currently reading Patrick Whitefield's, How to make a Forest Garden. He's further south than you, but the book would be well worth reading. His Chapter 9 is all about what he calls "the vegetable layer" and he's referring to the ground level understory plants. He spends a whole column on "Good King Henry" Chenopodium bonus-henricus, and recommends a large patch of it. He spends another column on varieties of Chard and its relatives in the Beta vulgaris family. Again, mentioning that you need to plant enough of it, for continuing harvesting. He then moves on to the cabbage family - one of the longer lived members has been mentioned by Burra Maluca and possibly Nancy too. The point is - he's recommending heavy reliance on the ground level, understory plants for everyday eating. I'm not sure that is stressed enough when people wax poetic about 'food forests' which most people equate with "trees and shrubs".

This spring, my friend took 4 large planters and put a sprouting potato in each. I only had space for 1. Mine produced enough for 2 meals in the summer, which I picked from the edges of the pot without disturbing the plant too badly. This fall, I thoroughly searched through and got enough for another 4 meals. This is from a potato I couldn't eat in the first place... and it didn't take up much space. Being in a pot, I didn't have to worry about disturbing the roots of a tree or other plants. It did require that I stay on top of watering it.

Hopefully this helps a bit.

You're absolutely right that I'm making the job harder for myself with the diversity of plants I grow, but I view this a little differently: If I grew only 3 veg types, the task would be comparatively easy (and maybe a bit boring?), but we know that we currently utilise less than 6% of edible vascular plant species as actual foods, yet global food security is low. Consequently a key interest of mine is in discovering all those hidden and underutilised species. Some may legitimately be regarded as famine foods and not really be worth the time unless pushed, but many are amazing and just forgotten, like the Skirret mentioned earlier. Most, for me, are in fact herbaceous perennials as I have very little room for nearly the number of trees or shrubs that I would like, but the downside of that is an abundance of flat (and sometimes fibrous) leaves and very little "bulk".

I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm less seeking 50 different ways I can reliably eat potato on an evening, and more seeking 1  (or more) ways I can reliably prepare 50 different plants in varying combos and quantities.... or something like that.

Namely, a handful of tried and true recipes that can be used to make actual meals from a diversity of bits and bobs found in the garden. Soups, stews and stir fries are obvious choices, and then I really like the mash suggestion above too as it would work better for things that aren't so good as soup (leaves again).

After that I find I lack the traditional kitchen skills needed to deal imaginatively with unpredictable harvests. I feel like purees and pates should be an option, but I'm not sure of the dos and donts of that unless I have a singular and highly prescriptive recipe for a specific plant.

I'd love a recipe that went more like "grab two mixed bunches of mild flavoured leaves, a fistful of aromatic ones, and an apple. Stick them in a blender with x ml water and y cloves garlic. Blend. Hey Presto: gourmet mixed leaf puree that goes with anything". That kind of recipe? Is it a thing? I feel like this is almost how many people cook naturally, but not me 😔.