Explore the beautiful world of edible wildflowers. Grow bush tucker and add nutritious decorations to your dishes.
Narelle Happ returns after her popular workshop last March. Narelle, of ‘a garden for life’ will walk us through how to grow and eat beautiful bush foods of our region.
Bush tucker, also called bush food, is food native to Australia. Aboriginal Australians have used indigenous plants for food and medicine for millennia. In this two-hour work shop, you will experience the diversity of Australian Aboriginal culture and food.
- Cultural significance of bush tucker
- Identify bush tucker species
- Edible and medicinal uses, of a range of species
- Bush tucker taste testing eg;
- Detailed notes on each bush tucker species
- Bush tucker recipes
See many of the Illawarra bush tucker plants being grown here at Silk Farm in Mt Kembla.
See Our Top Bush Tuckers
- Finger Lime – Many of our friends hunger for this fruit. It performs well on the edge of a forest where it can get a little direct sunlight to form fruits.
- Macadamia – the visiting children have learnt when they are ready to eat. They have a devoted smashing station made with two rocks. They look for slight blemishes on the shells. The pattern is mottled like a leopard skin. This develops when the fruit has fallen away and the nut has matured.
- Native Raspberry – we select to grow the less seedy fruits. They deliciously tart and fruit nearly all year around but most importantly they are fruit over winter.
- Dianella – Wollongong Uni Innovation Campus has the best we have ever tasted. And hardly anyone knows to eat them. These look stunning and taste great.
- Walking-Stick Palm – small but delightful and easy to pick.
- Anniseed Myrtle – Fantastic leaves for herb tea.
- Sandpaper Fig (the skin is tough like a kiwifruit and the flesh is sweet). This grows to be a huge tree – so make sure it is not going to block the sun coming to your home or over your neighbours t also helps to hold the bank of a local creeks or an area too steep for other uses. Why mow an area when something like a giant local will happily grow there.
- Native Rosella – the flowers are like a soft lettuce. This is a short-lived delicate shrub. Shrubs and understorey plants that are edible are hard to find in a permaculture system – so this is a must in our food jungle.
- Davidson Plum – strong bitter flavour, spectacular plant, erect and ferny with fine pastel pink flowers. It is also an understorey plant until it reaches maturity. The fruits fall when they are ready so keep a layer of soft mulch underneath to pillow their fall.
- Sea grape – small fleshy fruits. Commonly grown in large areas like a steep bank.
- Native Orange – the skin is bitter but the flesh is perfumed and sweet. There is variation in the fruits on the single tree. This plant deserves to be cultivated and developed.
- Lilly Pilly – The best Lilly Pilly my family has tasted are ones that were growing in the carpark of MacArthur Square Shopping
Brown sandpaper figs, blue davidson plums resting on limes and malay apples. Mt Kembla Centre. It grows happily here too. Search for varieties with big purple fruits
Lemon Myrtle – good for herb tea and as a perfume. We were very happy for years with this Myrtle until we discover the Anniseed Myrtle. (Just personal taste).- Blueberry Ash – These fruits look pretty but a bit skinny in comparison with Dianella. A bonus is it fruits late in summer when other plants are having a rest.
For Hybrid Permaculture Design Course Participants this session can count toward your homework for one topic such as ‘forests’ or ‘Cultivated Ecology’ or ‘Wildlife Management’ in the Permaculture Design Course. See here all the topics in a Permaculture Design Course.
