Resilient food crops for the future – 7pm
Tuesday 15th November - 7pm
October 12, 2022 11:03 am
Leave your thoughts
- Online pre –recorded Webinar with Klaus Laitenberger
- 7pm
- Public event (12+)
There are thousands of edible food crops available to humanity but yet we limit ourselves to just a handful of those.
More than 50 percent of our daily calories come from four staple crops: rice, wheat, maize and potaotes!
These are so highly bred and some of them genetically engineered and also highly dependent on chemical inputs because they are grown on large-scale monocultures.
When the Spanish Conquistadores went to Peru, they took all their gold and also their potato, but left all the other vegetable treasures behind – Yacon, oca, mashua, ulluco, tarwi – just to mention a few. I have grown many of these Lost Crops of the Incas in Ireland.
One of these – yacon, along with a North American cousin – Jerusalem artichokes have a great potential as a new resilient crop in Ireland. They are both high yielding and are already used in some countries as a healthy sugar alternative. Imagine a sugar replacement that is also a prebiotic and healthy for you!
In the talk we will discuss many topics in relation to this and may lead into other areas on climate smart gardening.
My background
Klaus Laitenberger is the author of four gardening books: ‘The Self-Sufficient Garden’, ‘Vegetables for the Irish Garden’, ‘Fruit and Vegetables for the Polytunnel and Greenhouse’ and ‘A Vegetable Grower’s Handbook’. He works as an Organic Inspector for the Organic Trust Ltd and manages a number of private gardens.
Together with his wife, Joanna, they started a seed company, specialising in the most suited vegetable varieties for the Irish climate as well as the most resistant and delicious ones (Green Vegetable Seeds).
He is a regular contributor to the BBC Gardener’s Corner and to various gardening magazines eg. The Irish Garden, Irish Independent and Irish Examiner. Klaus also works as an organic advisor and runs gardening courses throughout the country.
More information on the courses and seeds can be found on www.greenvegetableseeds.com
