Ulla Bisgaard

Bea de Munnik wrote:Hi all,

I ordered the book food forest plants for mediterranean conditions by trevor Pemberton, and wondered of anyone has read it and is willing to give their take?

As I'm in a Mediterranean climate and have dreamed of a food forest, this will hopefully bring me one step closer, although I am having to adapt to a roof terrace container garden situation.

Any words are greatly appreciated!

I have a food forest and we have a Mediterranean climate, though we are on the edge of the desert, so that needs to be counted in.
I have two blogs here, where you can follow the progress of our food forest and our raised bed gardens. The first posts shows how it looked 10 years ago, and if you continue, you will see its progress up until today.
Southern California homestead stories this is my second blog, so read that after the other one.
This is the blog where you can see what we grow and how it progresses Building a food forest on the edge of the desert
If you need it, I can also send you a list of the plants I am growing.
I hope this helps. Happy gardening

You are so lucky, I haven’t been able to get dandelions to grow here. It’s very nutritious. The leaves can be used for making dandelion honey and so much more. The sap from the stems is also a good local anesthetic and antidote for stingy nettle rashes.
We also have bees, but we are just hosting. We don’t get any honey from them, but we also don’t take care of them. Their owner stops by every 6 months to check on them. When we started out, there were no pollinators, so we brought them in by hosting hives.
I am very behind with planting (as you can see in the photo) and food preservation. I really have to finish planting this weekend. At least most of my crops are perennials during the warm and hot season. Most of my annuals grow during the cold season, and others self seed and pop up in the food forest or around the raised beds in the back yard.
During the warm and hot season, I grow a lot of herbs. Plus it’s the time when we get a lot of fruits and berries, but except for strawberries and citrus, they won’t be ready until June. Right now I am also gathering and drying seeds, for next year’s crops, and like you processing large amounts of eggs.
After planting, I need to harvest the last of our green cabbages, so I can seed my corn and sorghum. Once that’s all done, I will start harvesting lemon balm, rosemary, sage and mint. I usually also harvest celery but I am going to try not to, since they grow pretty much all year round. We should be getting asparagus now, but we didn’t put enough straw down, so they are reluctant to come up. It’s an easy fix so I will get it done.
My birthday was April 16th, and Peter gave me a large griddle for the outdoor stove he gave me for Christmas. I am very excited about trying it out. Having it, means I can start making videos on food preservation.
Btw. Have you tried salt curing egg yolks yet? Salt cured eggs are so amazing. We use them as a substitute for cheese, grated over omelettes and as a topping for rice. It’s also very easy to do.
You cover a large baking dish or cookie sheet with 2” of salt. Then use the bottom of an egg to make indents in the salt. Carefully split the eggs and place a yolk in each indentation. Cover the eggs with another 2” of salt. Then put a lid on the container and put it in the fridge for 7 to 14 days. They are done, when they are firm enough that you can wash the salt off the yolks. Rinse and remove the salt, and gently dry them. Then put them in the dehydrator or oven at 160 to 270f for 1 hour. This will pasteurize them. You can then either freeze dry them or turn the temperature in the dehydrator down to 120F and dry them there. If you use a dehydrator, they have to be stored in the fridge, since they won’t be shelf stable. I put mine in the freeze dryer, since that will make them self stable.

I bought the pdc, but when I click the link, it says that I don’t have sufficient privilege to access it.

Sophie Sacca wrote:How does one balance growing food and keeping wild areas safe from unhelpful nonnative plants?

Some plants mentioned in this thread can act invasively and crowd out much-needed native plants. It might not be a problem in our vegetable patches but if birds and wildlife spread seeds to other areas it can contribute to loss of habitat elsewhere.

So how do we balance our human needs with the needs of other organisms and ecosystems?

And if we limit ourselves to only food that is native to our locale, could we still survive?

Here is what I do. Any plant that can get invasive, are grown in a raised bed, to keep them under control. If and when they seed, I remove the seeds, so it doesn’t spread all over. It’s one of the reasons I have both a raised bed garden and a food forest garden.
In the food forest I work with nature, to ensure everyone (here I mean not just people and plants, but also critters and insects), get what they need to thrive.  When I planned both gardens, as in how much to plant, I added 20% to that number, so the critters and insects get paid for their work. I still do that with my annuals.
I buy bird feed with chili peppers, so the rats and squirrels don’t eat it all. I also make sure the birds have extra food, when they prepare for migration and when they return. If I don’t leave enough food out, they will take their payment elsewhere, which isn’t good. The birds make sure we don’t get worms in our crops, and they keep the insect population under control. Humming birds does a lot of pollination and predator birds helps with the rodents.
The squirrels do fine, by mainly eating the nuts from our pecan tree, and the rodents find food elsewhere. As for work, they make sure seeds and nuts are seeded not in clumps and clusters, but in a mix so the plants have companions. Experience has showed me, that they often are better than me, when it comes to where the plants thrive.
Rats are the only ones that doesn’t work for their food, so we try to keep that population under control. No free food for rats LOL.
As for gophers, I wrap the things I don’t want them to eat, in metal and plant things they can eat without that. Critters will always go for the most convenient food source.
So, what do they get paid for?
The gophers take care of all of my tilling.
The wild rabbits take care of cutting what grass shows up, so I don’t have to.
Reptiles like snakes also helps with the rodents, while other reptiles helps, so we don’t get overrun with flies and similar insects.
I keep a good eye out for imbalances in the eco system, and if needed I introduce predator insects to help. I also keep track of what insects we have or don’t have, since it also tells me a lot about how healthy the soil and plants have become.
I know it can be hard looking at things this way, but it pays off once the ecosystem is in balance.
As for the native plants, and the spread of unwanted crops. I deal with it, by identifying the toxic/invasive plants and removing them if it’s needed. We have several toxic native plants, that I don’t want in our gardens, but also many that I encourage to thrive. I usually take a walk in the morning or late afternoon, where I look for invasive and toxic plants, and inspect crops to catch problems early. Over the years we see them less, while we see food crops more.
We are stewards of the land, helpers and healers, and if done right there are room and food for everyone. We don’t damage habitats, we encourage nature to make more.

I really love spreadsheets and have one similar to yours. It’s encouraging to see how the production goes up each year. I do track value too. For me it’s important to keep track of how much I spend versus the value of the crops we grow.
I think it’s also important to make sure, that what we produce have enough vitamins and minerals so we won’t get sick. For protein I aim for banana starch, sweet potato starch and tapioca starch. The first one, I will probably be able to make sometime in fall. The second I make every year and the third we don’t make yet, since I use all of my cassava for flour. I also grow arrowroot, to make starch. I planted them last year, so hopefully they will be harvest ready in fall. That said, we also get protein from the eggs and meat we produce.
As for milk, we get that from nuts, and as for oil we get that from our avocado trees. We love cooking with avocado oil, and it’s easy to make.
Here is a copy of my spreadsheets from 2024 and 2025.

We live in a warmer climate than Montana, but here we are also seeing so many people not being able to pay for their food. It has become extremely expensive here.
My focus has been on perennials and self seeding plants, with some annuals added in.
In our food forest garden, the focus has been to make the ground layer, a place to forage. Each year, I collect seeds from our raised bed garden, and toss them out in the food forest garden. We are at the stage now, where I am able to convert raised beds from annuals to perennial plants. I don’t need to grow tomatoes, collards, summer squash, winter squash, pumpkins, arugula, broccoli, mint, onions, mustard greens, fennel, dill, radishes including diakon radishes, sunflowers and so much more. They simply keep showing up in the forest garden, without me seeding or planting them.
I have also noticed, that a lot of what’s coming up now, isn’t from the seeds I spread around, or from self seeding plants. I am always surprised when I see something new growing. This year I am seeing grains like sorghum coming up too. Part of it, is because of the squirrels. I know most people hate them, but I love them. They make stashes of seeds all over, while the birds pick and drop seeds too.
We are at the stage now, where we grow way too much food for us to eat alone. Especially since the kids have or are preparing to move out. I am also learning to toss out the gardening manuals, since they are too restrictive. I keep hearing that you can only grow brassicas and root vegetables during the cold season. That’s not true. I have a broccoli plant, that’s well into its second year. We don’t harvest our sweet potatoes all at once. We leave them in the ground and only harvest when we need them. This way they just keep growing and producing more sweet potatoes, without the need to make slips and start them every year.
I love this type of gardening. It’s a lot less work, and we will be able to do it into our senior years, since the gardens mostly take care of itself. I actually spend more time on food preservation than I do gardening.
To spread out harvesting and food preservation, I also made sure to pick fruit trees that are ready for harvest at different times of the year. This not only spreads out the work, but also gives us fresh fruit and berries all year round.
Another consideration I have done, is to grow the things we spend the most money on. For us those are fruit, berries, herbs, spices, tea, coffee and avocado. The herbs are where we save a lot of money. We also save money, by growing what we feed the chickens, ducks and rabbits, with the bonus of their food being a lot better and healthier than standard feed is. Pigeon peas, pumpkins, squash, corn, sorghum, herbs, collard greens grass etc saves us money that way. I also often trade with others, for the things we don’t grow. Like with my neighbor, I get their pomegranates and they get pomegranate wine and produce in return.

Tereza Okava wrote:Ulla, you've got so many good points, especially about taking turns planting things. I grow loofahs every few years (it takes me a while to use them!) and we are still working on pumpkins from last year!
Neighbor and community trade is also super important. I swap with my neighbors because we have different fruit trees, and everyone is happy.

Lastly, many people who don't have a garden feel left out by canning and preserving, but you can also can things you didn't grow!! This year when tomatoes were dirt cheap I bought a huge quantity to make passata and can it for when tomatoes are expensive. I did enough for a year, and it has been marvelous. I did the same making compote and jam when I got a super deal on very ripe peaches and plums, and with the mulberries I foraged. Some of the mulberry jam got swapped for honey, which was a great deal as far as I'm concerned!!

Yes, it’s so nice trading/swapping with your neighbors. One of my neighbors has a lot of pomegranate trees, but isn’t able to pick and use them. Now I pick them all and process some for juice and some for wine. Then I pack a basket with a bottle of pomegranate wine, from the previous year, plus eggs and what I have in my garden. It’s a win win for both of us.

I do buy some things in bulk I can preserve. Especially apples and pears, which we can’t easily grow here, and before the garden started producing, we also bough things like pickling cucumbers, peaches and avocado. We still buy bananas, but only because our banana trees haven’t produced yet, and we still buy some avocados since we don’t produce enough yet.
I don’t mind, since we spend less on groceries every year, as the food forest matures.
One thing I also do, is make sure we produce the vitamins and minerals our body needs, and as for medicinal herbs the inspiration is a first aid kit. This means that on top of the usual immune boosters. I look at it as a first aid kit, I have focused of comfrey for sprains and minor breaks, rock roses to treat infections and chock, mallow, mullein and Elecampane for respiratory health, licorice roots for low blood pressure, pectin from fruits, to stop bleedings, broadleaf plantain and panadol for pain, mint and ginger for stomach cramps and so on. Right now I am concentrating on plants as local anesthetic, like toothache plants.

I have always been hoarding food. When I grew up, we did not always have enough food. Very often I went hungry, but my parents were very good at finding “free” foods. The men would go hunting, during the hunting season, and fishing from a boat, when allowed. We also foraged for food in the Royal owned forests and national parks. My parents also always had a yard. Where we primarily grew food. Because of this, I have always craved food security.
I turn 58 in two days, and we have food security. As things are, 90% of what we eat, are foods we have produced ourselves. If we have a crisis, we can survive by only eating what we produce. It will mean different meals, with less meat, and the other things we buy, but we will survive. I do have a stack of freeze dried meat stored.
When I buy things like rice, pasta, red meat, sugar, salt, oil and nuts, I always buy a year’s supply. I do this, because it’s a lot cheaper and I have the space to store them safely.
Our garden production has also been planned, to feed us year round, which we can do since we live in Growzone 10b.
I picked fruit trees, based on harvest times, so we have fruits and/or berries fresh all year round. We also have 2 types of avocados, that also was picked one covers 6 months, and the other the next 6 months. I grow 8 different kinds of strawberries, which gives us fresh strawberries 7 months out of the year. I grow tree collards, because they too produce all year round. During the few months we don’t have fresh fruits or berries, we rely on surplus preserved fruits instead. I also only grow things we or the livestock, like to eat.
Most of our crops, produce more than we can eat in one go, so we end up canning or freeze drying the rest. It’s the same with most of the  vegetables, herbs, spices, teas, coffee and grains, that we grow, and we often have one or two crops that produce more than what we can eat in a year.
All of those extras we get from the garden, are why I now have a 2 year supply of food, in our pantries and freezers. Those extras also mean that I can have a larger variety of foods stored. If I have an overwhelming amount of something, I am not going to grow that the following year. That way I can use the space to grow other things, which creates the diversity we like to have. For example: in 2024 I grew over 800 pounds of pumpkins and winter squash. So last year I used that space to grow corn. Since we still have a large amount I am not going to grow pumpkins and squash again this year, or so was the plan. Yesterday I found summer squash and pumpkins growing in the food forest garden. Anyway, this year the space are used to grow peas, beans and more corn and sorghum.
As for prepping, we do several things. We try to grow most of what our livestock eats, and I grow a lot of medicinal plants. Right now, I grow over 50 different kinds of culinary herbs, medicinal herbs, spices, tea plants, coffee plants, roots like licorice, mallow, chicory and so much more. I do this, because what we grow is much more fresh, and it’s freeze dried, so it’s a better quality than what you can buy. It’s also where I save the most money.
All in all our gardens are very productive. Since 2024 we have produced around 2000 pounds of produce a year, and around 500 pounds of meat. We also reached 1 million calories and the foods value was over 12 thousand dollars. Over the coming years, these numbers will go up, as the food forest plants matures.
We also store 2500 gallons of drinking water, have a solar battery wall, cook with natural gas or propane, and we have 2 generators.
We also spend much less time in the gardens, since most plants are perennials, and a lot of the annuals are self seeded.
I calculated how much time I spend in the gardens, compared to how much time I spend on food preservation. It turns out, I spend more than double the time on food preservation than I do gardening. I tell this to people who ask about our gardens. Most new gardeners, don’t take this into consideration, get overwhelmed and start given food away instead.
I don’t give food away, unless a friend has an emergency. I also trade with others in the neighborhood. Like lemons for grapefruits. One year, I traded 25 pounds of tomatoes for 2 bottles of homemade wine.
As things are now, I will keep building our food supply, to get diversity in our diet, and to save food for when we need it.

Rebekah Harmon wrote:More amazing eggsthis week! My ducks are so good to me. I'm going to try freeze drying them next. The eggs, not the ducks 😆

My daughter and I have been exploring ways to eat our wonderful, sourdough, whole wheat waffles without syrup. Blood sugar balance, you know. She and I both like almond/hazelnut butter with un-frozen raspberries on top!

We are also getting a lot of eggs right now. We freeze dry whole eggs, egg whites and egg yolks separately. My freeze dryer can take 60 eggs with 12 eggs pr tray.
I also made mini egg muffins. Each one has 1 egg with cream whisked in the bottom, then I added squash, leeks and mushrooms to each cup. Then dairy free ricotta, chives and thyme. I finished it up with another egg, but not scrambled like the one in the bottom.
Tomorrow I am going to make egg heavy bread puddings, since I also have some pears I need to use.

Rebekah Harmon wrote: what a gorgeous stockpile of fermented foods! 😍 I LOVE your caskets! Where do you get such lovely barrels?

I really grateful for your pickled food ideas, because my hisband was recently diagnosed with a fructose malabsorbtion, and now he wants to avoid cabbage and tomatoes (all my sauerkraut and pasta sauces!) Its been hard on him. So I would really like to try pickled beets and lemons! What recipes do you use?

You can make some batches of nomato sauce, and use that as a substitute in recipes that call for tomato sauce. It’s easy to use, healthy and contains no cabbage or tomatoes. These are not for canning. They are frozen or freeze dry only. Here is a link to where I got the recipe from. Note though, that I use the double amount of beets, compared to what is in the recipe: Nomato sauce recipe
As for pickled beets, it has been so long, that I can’t remember which recipe I used, but if was probably from one of the ball books. As for the barrels I use for wine and vanilla extract they were from Adventures in home brewing.

Here is the link to the blog: Building a food forest on the edge of the desert

Sun and wind conditions will help you identify your micro climates. Those micro climates will enable you to grow things you normally wouldn’t be able to.
As for the vegetables. While I do grown avocado and pigeon peas, most of the herbs and vegetables come from chaos gardening.
I have a mason jar, where I drop in expired seeds, and seeds I don’t want to grow. I also add in any herbal seeds I have left or collected. Then in February when temperatures go up and we get rain, I shake the jar and toss them all over the floor of the forest garden. I do this every year. I don’t just do it, because it’s easy and convenient, but also to create a forest floor where you can practice foraging. This year, we got a lot of arugula, Amaranth, sorghum, radishes, dill, fennel, radishes, diakon radishes, tomatoes, lettuce, a pumpkin, summer squash, mint, borage, chamomile, mallow, dead nettles, calendula, mustard and many more. Many are ones that self seeded last year. For example, I haven’t cultivated any tomatoes in three years, because they grow wild year round in the food forest garden. Another you should check out, are tree collards. They are perennial collards, that grows into something, that looks like trees. They can be tricky to get established and propagate though cuttings.
Be careful with the comfrey though. It can get invasive and are impossible to remove due to the roots. For that reason I grow my comfrey in a raised bed.
They all self seed, so each year I see more herbs and vegetables. I also toss out native wild flower mixes.
As for the squirrels, they hate capsicum, so when I have something growing, that I don’t want them to take, I spray the plant with hot sauce. I have to do this regularly, as it washes off, but it works really well.
Critters are pretty easy to manage. All you have to do, is provide them with plants they can eat, and make it difficult for them to get the ones you want to keep. Critters will always go for the easiest food source.