Chilean gardening resources?

Howdy permie peoples,

recently I found out, through my permaculture course, that where I live (seattle, WA) shares many characteristics with Chile in terms of what can grow here.  So now I'm really curious about finding any books that talk about the gardening traditions of chile, edible or beneficial plants of chile, and if anyone has seen good companion planting information?

Any leads on this would be greatly appreciated!  (I saw Rose's post about spanish permaculture resources and saw that there were some references to Chile, so I really hope she can shed some light on this since I can't read spanish well enough to glean what I need from that thread)

Cheers!

Bert, while not a book resource, I was going to post something interesting about my potatoes today. To get away from monoculture potatoes, this year I planted 2 peruvian varieties, the purple and the red, in addition to my regular pontiacs. While we dont have the grasshopper infestation that other places are having right now (Im in Bozeman, MT), we have had quite a few. They seem to love my pontiac potatoes, but have not touched either peruvian variety at all. This made me smile that I have something they wont eat and will probably do well with our climate and elevation. You might want to look into the peruvian potatoe varieties.

it would be interesting to find things that grow in your zones in other countries..even in the southern hemisphere, i suppose you could research the natural resources of the area in some sorth of encyclopedia source..and see what the zone that matches you would contain..chilie is a very very long country and contains several growing zones.

I live in New Zealand, and the West Coast of the South Island (can't accuse us of fancy-shmancy names!)  is supposed to have a similar climate to Seattle...and interestingly, some plants from South American countries thrive there.
Feijoas, tamarillos, banana and black passionfruit all do well.
I think The Coast's warmer than Seattle, but with a similar rainfall.

In high school, one of my teachers described the climate of Chile as resembling that of California. Being natives of CA, we said "that doesn't narrow it down much," and he insisted that this was his point.

Plants that do well in all of Chile, including mountains and coast, desert and rainforest, are probably very adaptable. Similarly, I bet most climates could borrow a plant or two from at least one region.

All that aside, the pre-Colombian methods of geoengineering developed in that part of the world are fascinating. I wish early Spanish explorers hadn't been so literal in their search for a city of gold: they might have brought Spain some treasures of even more-enduring value.

i found this interesting site; http://www.chileflora.com/

I spent 5 weeks in Chile in 1991 and loved it.  Taking the bus from Puerto Mont in the south to Santiago was like traveling from Seattle to San Francisco.  Sadly I was there before permaculture and didn't pay as much attention to the flora as I would today.