According to Environment Yukon, there are 1,242 species of plants known to grow in the territory. Many of these produce attractive, colourful flowers. Native forbs are already adapted to Yukon conditions and require less maintenance than commercial species. They have also developed defences to natural pests and can provide habitat and food for local insects. When contemplating which native...
Wild Harvest
Before you venture out to the garden and harvest a bunch of flowers for the dinner table, it’s important to remember that some flowers are poisonous. Make sure you’ve made a positive identification of each variety you’re using. Obviously, you should avoid flowers that may have been sprayed with pesticides or other chemicals, so either grow your own organic flowers, or harvest them from a...
Great article on the concept of food forests...
A week ago in Vancouver I visited the Purple Thistle Community Food Forest. This is a project of the Purple Thistle Community Centre, a collective that focuses a lot of its efforts on guerrilla gardening. The group describes the project as follows:
The Purple Thistle Community Food Forest is ... a huge, oddly shaped...
Agriculture — February 12, 2013 at 1:20 PM
http://norj.ca/2013/02/northern-farm-training-institute-takes-root/
Northern Farm Training Institute takes root
GNWT commits start up funds to new Hay River school
by Renée Francoeur
The...
Tribes are pursuing a hands-on approach to finding and preparing Native foods that give spiritual sustenance, too.
On a clear Puget Sound day, Mount Rainier loomed large, its 14,000-foot snow-capped peak a striking backdrop to the lands that the Muckleshoot Tribe call home. The tribe has long maintained huckleberry meadows on the mountain’s north flank; other tribes...
We only have wonderful things to say about this great resource manual which comes to us from the Yukon. You can purchase from The Book Cellar in Yellowknife or on-line at www.borealherbal.com
The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North is an indispensable guide to identifying and using northern plants for food and...
Food is always most delicious when it is fresh, and what could be fresher than hand picked food? Maybe you don't have a garden, but weeds grow up all around and beg to be tasted! Some of these plants can be difficult to identify (and you should never eat anything you can't identify), but some of them are common to many - like the DANDELION!
The dandelion can be harvested early in the...
In 1997, the Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute in partnership with the Aurora Research Institute (ARI) began work with Gwich’in elders on an ethnobotany project. The results of this research are available in a joint publication called “Gwich’in Ethnobotany: Plants Used by the Gwich’in for Food, Medicine, Shelter and Tools” by Alestine Andre and Alan Fehr (2002)....
Spruce tips are wondrously abundant and ridiculously easy to find and pick in the spring (late May/early June in Yellowknife). The trick is catching them at the right time, when the new bright green tips are soft and bunched closely together like the hairs of a paintbrush, capped with a small brown papery husk. Once you pick them, you can freeze them and they will last all year. They are so...
Taming Wild Flowers
According to Environment Yukon, there are 1,242 species of plants known to grow in the territory. Many of these produce attractive, colourful flowers.