Berlin: Seedlings take over kitchen counter

Not all urban plants sprout up uninvited on the mean sidewalks of the city. Indeed, in Berlin, planting the balcony is a spring ritual for many. Those without balconies, like myself, have adopted bits of land in community gardens. It’s still too early for many plants to be planted outdoors, but seedlings are being started [...]

Read Full Post »

Berlin: First spring harvest – chives – and recipes

So many chives! Although we had not cared for, planted or even visited our community garden plot until yesterday, we arrived to find a ridiculous amount of lush chives to harvest. Now in their fifth year, our plants are apparently robust enough to take care of themselves and provide a hands-off first spring crop for [...]

Read Full Post »

Foraging Resources: Herb encyclopedia, purslane and hops

If you like beautiful books as much as I do, maybe you won’t mind that the Foraging Resource I’m sharing today is in German. And out of print. You see, I’d like to continue introducing edible plant resources that I personally use, even if they are specific to Berlin or in German, since those are [...]

Read Full Post »

Berlin: Foraging season opens with edible wild plant walk

Can you feel it? The weather’s getting warmer and wetter. Winter’s on its last legs. Urban gardeners and foragers like myself are  itching to go planting and plucking plants all around the town. Since many readers come to this blog precisely for info on edible plants, a topic we’ve neglected this winter, I’m celebrating March [...]

Read Full Post »

Perpignan, France: More plants from my travels

You may have noticed a lot of foreign plants appearing on this blog, with the location changing almost daily, during the month of August. That’s because I was on a photography road trip through Germany, France, Spain and Portugal, urban plant-spotting along the way. I sent some photos from my cell phone, but I also [...]

Read Full Post »

Lichtenberg: Walnuts, Pumpkins, Corn and a Recipe

Back from a harvest-time weekend in Brandenburg, here’s the full report! As you may have noticed from the last, photo-only post, I was in the small village of Lichtenberg near Neuruppin, about an hour north of Berlin, visiting relatives whose front lawn is currently being showered with walnuts from their neighbor’s black walnut tree, which [...]

Read Full Post »

Berlin: Hazelnuts via New Blog on the Block

Yes, you heard right – there’s a new blog on the urban plant-lined block here in Berlin. It’s written in English by some adventurous urban foragers who have already taught me about several edible plants here, my favorite so far being the Turkish hazelnuts that I found, above. Looking curiously squashed compared to common, round [...]

Read Full Post »

Berlin: Indeed, the elderberries are ripe!

[update: added text] This elder tree is growing on Hildegard-Jadamowitz-Str, right down the street from Weberwiese park, which is where we gathered elderflowers for syrup back in June.

Read Full Post »

Berlin: Elderflower cocktail recipe (Italian Hugo)

I’ve arrived in Berlin… and so has the elderflower-syrup-filled Hugo cocktail! As I observed in my earlier post on foraged elderflower syrup, this bubbly summer treat has been working its way up through Europe from its birthplace in Italy.

Read Full Post »

Berlin: Potato harvest & rainbow roasted vegetables

Let’s take a detour into our community garden, which, by the way, was featured on Deutschland radio on Wednesday morning. More importantly, the evening before, Marko harvested our potatoes! To give you some context, above is one of our baby potato plants back in in May, just starting to sprout out of its hill. Read [...]

Read Full Post »