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Old 22-05-2012, 07:34 PM
pcbessa pcbessa is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: May 2012
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Hae,

My name is Paulo and I live in Iceland and I am practicing Permaculture.

In Iceland I am aware of the limitation of climate, to grow food.

On the past, Icelandic people were self-sufficient and reliant on birds, fish, sheep and angelica roots. Of course, you dont want to live like that nowadays, but its proof its possible to survive even on the Icelandic highlands, during winter, just on wild foraging (as outlaws stories show us).

There are a few wild herbs you can eat, cooked dandelion (tunfífill) and nettles leaves, some sorrel rumex acetosa (tunsura) leaves. I haven't tried yet to cook northern dock, rumex longifolius (njóli) leaves or chickweed, stellaria media (haugarfi).

Besides this, mjadurt (meadowsweet, filipendula ulmaria), blodberg (iceland thyme) and birch/birki make all excellent teas!

There are other plants I haven't tried but I read somewhere you can eat them, silene acaulis (lambagras) and mertensia maritima (Blálilja) but I have to read more on their edible uses.

Now to Permacultu you can grow some conventional crops. Its easy to grow carrots, turnip tops, oriental cabbages such as pak choi, potatoes and broccoli. If you have good soil you can also try kohl rabi. You must grow these first indoors! Otherwise forget about it. Except carrots and rucula, that you can sow outside.

Perennials you have kale, lovage and rhubarb, all survive very well the Icelandic winter and are tasty. Carrots also overwinter easily, and I guess similar roots like parsnips, rutabagas, salfisy, skirret and scorzonora would also grow well as root crops in Iceland (and some of these are perennial).

Indoors grow tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, bush beans, and you can start squash indoors and transplant outside in late June. It will crop well if you plant it with lots of compost!

Spinach and radish are not possible to grow, because they bolt in response to the 24 hour daylight of the Icelandic summer. Radish can be grown if you sow in late July to reap them in September (when nights are longer). These you can also sow outside.

I was never lucky with lettuce or peas, must try it again.

Very easy are berries. Strawberries, blueberries and currants.

I also grow jerusalem artichokes, easy to grow, but I'm trying them first year. You can buy the roots sometimes even in Bonus!

Also easy is onions (but did not grow large), chives (perennials) and spring onions (overwinter quite easily). But I start first indoors.

Speaking of extra Permaculture species, I guess you can try mulberries, siberian pea, cornus mas, certain hardy bamboos, elaeagnus and hawthorn species, sea buckthorn...

Much easier than food is flowers. You can grow a lot to make your garden colorful and attractive to bees, birds and wildlife. Just plant cornflowers, poppies, marigolds, daddofils, tulips, crocus, anenoma, buttercups. Here I only had luck starting the seeds first inside and then transplanting outside, as weather is so often dry and windy, that even seedlings die sometimes. But poppies also grow wild in Iceland, and self-seed freely, and my poppies survived the winter and are going to flower just now again (they were perennial types).

I dont expect self-sufficiency, even partial in food, yet. Its hard and challenging. But its a hard challenge to try, so I want to see how far we can get in Iceland. It will need several years of learning and trying.

I am getting more and more interested into perennials, as annuals are difficult to grow in Iceland, and once perennials are established they are tough and adapt well. I think they are the key.

Finally the location where I grow the garden is in Grimsnes, 30km north of Selfoss, altitude 100m. So its pretty cold in winter, and frosts more often than in coastal Reykjavik but summer is a bit warmer and drier. Growing season is on average 10th June - 20th August (May and September have often hard frosts)

My email is p c b e s s a (write it without the spaces) at the most common email provider that starts with a "g". This is to avoid spam to catch my email address.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hallur View Post
Hello Oskar and others

I am very interested in permaculture and other forms of agriculture, so I would be very interested to know if there are others out there that live in Iceland and have or are planing a garden or business.

Regards
Hallur