The Journal

An almanac of forgotten crops.

Notes from the field. The science of crops the modern shelf has never carried. Published slowly, as we build.

Spring 2026

Why the “healthy” aisle runs on just nine crops

How the British plate quietly narrowed — and what it cost us.

Spring 2026

The bean that feeds the soil

Bambara groundnut is drought-tolerant, restores the ground it grows in, and is rich in the amino acid most grains lack. Britain has barely used it.

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Spring 2026

What your gut remembers

Prebiotic fibre, the microbiome, and why tiger nut is having a quiet moment.

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Spring 2026

The tonic they oversold

Noni has been drunk across the Pacific for centuries. It has also been marketed as a cure for almost everything. Both things are worth knowing.

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Spring 2026

The fruit that got turned into a miracle

Soursop is a genuinely lovely tropical fruit with a long culinary history — and one of the most oversold, and least understood, "cures" on the internet. Here is the honest version.

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Spring 2026

The most useful leaf you can grow

Moringa earns its "miracle tree" name on nutrition alone — which is exactly why the viral "twenty-five times the iron of spinach" numbers do it a disservice.

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Spring 2026

Coffee's calmer cousin, made from what we throw away

The world eats millions of tonnes of dates a year and bins the stones. Roasted and ground, those stones make a caffeine-free brew with a surprisingly long history.

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Spring 2026

Not a nut, and older than most of your groceries

Tiger nut is a tiny tuber humans have eaten for thousands of years. It feeds the gut rather than spiking it, and — despite the name — it's completely nut-free.

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