Trialling and collecting (mostly food) plants which grow well in Irish conditions or might be otherwise interesting. Producing seed from them to increase the choice of varieties available to growers and gardeners.
  • Spiced Pumpkin & Apple Chutney

    Spiced Pumpkin & Apple Chutney

    My first attempt to ‘collaborate with chefs’ involved begging my friend Yola, who is very handy in the kitchen, to help me deal with more squash than I knew what to do with. I had quite a few kilos which needed using up as I had just screened my squash harvest. After being inside for…


  • Beanbasket

    Beanbasket

    Growing Broad Beans for Drying Recent archaeological digs have shown that fava beans (Vicia faba) were first cultivated in the Levant more than 10,000 years ago. This places them in close company with the domestication and early farming of cereals. They must have provided early farmers with the much needed protein which is lacking from…


  • Cultivating Sea Beet

    Cultivating Sea Beet

    Sea beet (Beta maritima) is the wild crop relative to which all beet crops owe their lineage – beetroot, sugar beet, fodder beet and chard/leaf beet. As well as being the progenitor of these cultivated food plants, sea beet is one of the most widely gathered wild foods wherever it is found, a region stretching…