For a quick Mediterranean diet inspired scrambled egg, aka scrambled greens, these were the diversity of perennial greens I could quickly forage in my garden in about 5 minutes (names at the bottom): Plus these St. George’s Mushrooms (vårfagerhatt) which are still available: …and the scrambled greens (fast slow food!):
1st June 2025: The view is beautified this week by the amazing floriferousness of my two Aroma apple trees. Every year I say I’ve never seen so many flowers so I’ll say it again: “I’ve never seen so many flowers” 😉
On Sunday 25th May 2025 we celebrated spring at the Væres Venners Community garden in Trondheim with a pot-luck party (kurvfest) and although the wind was strong there was no rain, unlike the days on either side. My contribution as usual was a diversity salad, this time based only on ingredients harvested in the World Garden (Verdenshagen) with roseroot (rosenrot) flowers in the centre and decorated with plants organised geographically as in the garden itself! The list of 89 plants used can be found here. As usual there were a diversity of dishes provided by other members, many with home grown or foraged ingredients. The party started with a talk by my friend Jurgen Wegter of Fagerli Naturgård in Vanvikan (on the other side of the fjord and just visible from Være) on biodiversity and what we can do to help in particular wild bees. Jurgen wrote a report for us Tiltaksplan for biologisk mangfold giving us advice as to what we can do to help and increase the biodiversity of the community garden.
400g of St. George’s Mushroom / VårfagerhattSand leek / Bendelløk, even though smaller, are more productive than leeks / purre here
Two gourmet ingredients (and many more) for tonight’s green pasta sauce are just doing their own thing in my edible garden with little interference from me, apart from the picking. First the patch of St. George’s Mushroom (vårfagerhatt; Calocybe gambosa) growing under a large birch tree next to a large patch of nettles and then sand leeks (bendelløk; Allium scorodoprasum) which self-sow from bulbils on the seakale bed (strandkål; Crambe maritima) in the seaweed mulch. The St George’s mushrooms are growing to the right of the chair The seakale / strandkål bed is full of sandleeks / bendelløk
Please subscribe to my youtube channel! 1. Perennial Edge https://youtu.be/qRsQt_U0Ujo The edges of my annual beds in the garden are not so productive as they are drier because of overhanging branches of the hazel,/birch/aspen woodland adjacent to it. I therefore allow perennial vegetables to colonise these areas as they are much less impacted by summer drought conditions, growing most actively in the spring time. In this video I show garlic (hvitløk) being grown as a perennial together with Hablitzia tamnoides (trained up into the trees), stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), hogweed (bjørnekjeks), dandelion (løvetann) and ground elder (skvallerkål). This area at the same time supports a large biodiversity of, in particular, insects. 2. Hydrophyllum in the World Garden https://youtu.be/gLC7XLYTG5A The genus Hydrophyllum or the waterleaves consists of seven or eight species restricted to North America, half of which are restricted to the east and half at higher elevations in the west. I have best experience with Hydrophyllum virginianum (Eastern waterleaf) and Hydrophyllum tenuipes (Pacific waterlef) and both are growing well as you can see in the World Garden (Verdenshagen). We see both in the video at harvest time and introducing a beginning battle for dominance with fellow Appalachian rhizomatous Rudbeckia laciniata (Cherokee greens or sochan). The young and the tips of stems are best in salads; having a mild sweetest taste, the older leaves usually being cooked (boiled or steamed). I usually use them mixed with other seasonal greens in salads and vegetarian dishes. Indian salad or Shawnee (no, not Pawnee which I say in the video) salad and west coast H. tenuipes is known as squaw lettuce. The name John’s cabbage is also used in the east, vouching for the fact that white settlers also learned to use this spring vegetable. In 1818, William Barton wrote that, ‘The Indian Salad and Shawnee Salad of Kentucky and Ohio are praised by the white settlers’, and, ‘The young shoots are praised by all who eat them’. Please read more in my book Around the World in 80 plants! 3. The Oldest Habby Bed https://youtu.be/_ErX8IcTq04 My oldest Hablitzia tamnoides (Habby) is now 23 years old and rapidly approaching 1/4 of a century and just as vigorous as ever. In this short video I introduce some of its offspring which love the shady sheltered conditions in this plant of the garden. I reckon that blanched Habby shoots would be a winner in gourmet restaurants, a bit like Jet de Houblons (blanched Belgian hop shoots). Also starring probably Smyrnium olusatrum (Alexanders / sorte løpstikke), Allium paradoxum var paradoxum (few-flowered leek) and Viola odorata (sweet violet / marsfiol) 4. Prunus tomentosa at Være https://youtu.be/fbJmv-d9Gug One of the more unusual berry / fruit bushes in the collection at the Væres Venners Conmunity Garden in Trondheim is the very hardy Nanking cherry / kinesisk kirsebær (Prunus tomentosa), a native to northern and western China (including Tibet), Korea and Mongolia. As the video shows, it is already in full flower and is therefore valuable for both wild bees and bumble bees in early spring, but it was a bit too windy when this video was made on 24th April 2025. We see two varieties purchased from Steen and Wormsen, a nursery in northern Norway who imported from a great plant nusery in Finland: Blomqvist’s Planteskola. The variety with snow white flowers is Snøhvit Lumikki. It looks promising for a good crop! 5. The Moss Leaved Dandelion https://youtu.be/m1Y6iKBRuFw The moss leaved dandelion is depicted in Vilmorin’s amazing book The Vegetable Garden from 1920 (I would encourage anyone to access this book which shows the amazing vegetable diversity we had 100 years ago). After much searching I was sent seed and a root by Guy Dirix in Belgium who may have been the last person growing this variety, although it turns out that this is actually the species Taraxacum tortilobum, a relatively common species in Western Europe (https://www.gbif.org/species/5394131). Here’s a short video of it in the World Garden in Væres Venners Community Garden in Trondheim, Norway. 6. An edible self-sustaining perennial community https://youtu.be/ksfo6FoZOyc A shady bed in the garden which has had various uses over the years starting as a little garden where my daughter Hazel grew her strawberries to an area where I grew various seed propagated trees and bushes before planting them out elsewhere in the garden (the lilac is from that time). Although I planted various shade loving perennial edibles in this bed originally, others have moved in from neighbouring beds to form this complex edible perennial community which has become more productive with time. I do little more than harvest, observe and weed out tree seedlings. Polygonatum spp. (purple-leaved solomon’s seal / konvall, perhaps P. biflorum) Hydrophyllum virginianum (Easter waterleaf / vassblad) Campanula latifolia (Giant bellflower / storklokke) Campanula trachelium (nettle-leaved bellflower / nesleklokke) Heracleum sp. (hogweed / bjørnekjeks) Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde) Allium schoenoprasum (chives / gressløk) Parasenecio maximowiczianum Parasenecio hastatus
To celebrate that the life-timer clicked over from 69 to 70 yesterday, the Barstow household’s tradition of making an equi-age permaveggie diversity MacCheese for dinner was followed once again, except we were out of macaroni and it was therefore a 70 species FusCheese with whole grain Fusili pasta! Curious as to what was in it, please see the plant ingredient list below the pictures:
On 17th June 2024 I had a visit from Mihaela Tsarchinsk and Philip Varionov from the Green School Village and Permaculture Association of Bulgaria. We’d met previously at the European Permaculture Convergence in Bulgaria 10 years previously (she was the organizer). The purpose of the visit was to film my Permaculture LAND centre, The Edible Garden in Malvik. as part of a series of films of LAND centres in Norway, to inspire the establishment of a LAND network in Bulgaria. We visited all 3 gardens as they are all connected:We started at the Onion Garden Chicago at the NTNU Ringve Botanical Gardens, the Væres Venners community garden and last but not least The Edible Garden. Elin Tyse of Permaculture Association of Norway joined us. If you’ve got a bit of time to spare please join me on the tour which can now be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcCheUzMddQ WHAT IS LAND? There are now 5 videos available from different LAND centres across Norway made on the same trip: Eirik Lillebøe Wiken and Alvastien Telste; Robin Leeber and Holt Gård; Camilla Fauske and Nordre Holt Gård and Anne-Marit Skogly’s Hvaler Gjestehage at https://pab.greenschoolvillage.org/land-videos
Here are Elin, Mihaela and Philip in Trondheim during the visit:
Those that have read my book and follow my blog will know how much I love the stories that follow edible plants around the world and discovering those ornamental plants that I had never expected could be used in the kitchen, turning them into edimentals! My book Around the World in 80 plants is full of them! The plant known as little vegetable garden fish in Brazil is a case in point and I have to thank Kyle Dougherty for alerting to me to this unlikely edible on my Edimentals and Perennial Vegetables Facebook group. Brazil isn’t a likely place to search for novel edibles that would be hardy enough to grow in my 63.4°N garden. However, I actually grew this plant for many years before removing it to make way for edible plants. It is Stachys byzantina (syn. S. lanata or S. olympica), lamb’s-ear or woolly hedge nettle (lammeøre here in Norway). It is a perennial in the Lamiaceae or mint family which is native to Armenia, Iran, and Turkey but has been cultivated throughout the temperate world as an ornamental plant, and has escaped, naturalising in many locations. Here in Norway, it doesn’t seem to produce seed, so only spreads vegetatively. It is surprisingly very hardy and is said to be worth trying more or less anywhere here.
Photo by Derek Ramsey https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2559344
By Jean-Pol GRANDMONT – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21409910
So, how is it that the use of this plant from West Asia and known as “peixinhos da horta”, literally little vegetable garden fish in Brazil, is more or less isolated to that country today? In Brazil, the dish and plant have the same name. Some suggest that the name little garden fish is because the taste is fish-like, but others say that it doesn’t taste of fish at all. It’s more likely that it’s because the fried and battered leaves resemble small fish and maybe the association leads to people experiencing a fishy taste? There are a number of “how to” videos on youtube, with and without egg (à Milanesa) (see, https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=peixinho+da+horta)
It is said that the plant is also used as tea, in omelettes, pasta, steamed and in salads (youngest leaves). Over the last 10 years several studies of non-conventional vegetables including this plant and its preparation have been published addressing also medicinal uses and nutrition; e,g., “Stachys byzantina (Lamiaceae) has a high nutrient content compared with conventional vegetables including vitamin C, carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, high fiber content, minerals (potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, sulfur, copper, iron, manganese, zinc and boron) and high content of phenolic compounds which gives antioxidant activity” (Aguiar et al., 2020). However, the dish of the same name in Portugal is made from cut green bean pods, coated in batter, and fried in oil at high temperatures, but is also prepared with other vegetables, such as pumpkin and green peppers. Intriguingly, these green beans, usually Phaseolus vulgaris, travelled the other way from the Americas to Europe. Was the use of Stachys byzantina in this dish an old way of preparing it which has now died out or did it evolve independently in Brazil based on the basic recipe (there are strong connections of course between Portugal and Brazil). I haven’t been able to find an answer to this question but the fact that the Portuguese name for the plant is peixinho-da-horta , lambari or simply peixinho suggests it was used in the past. The Portuguese wiki page states only that the plant is used in Brazil or was it the other way round and the inspiration came from Brazil? I have only found one reference in the ethnobotanical literature to Stachys byzantina being wild foraged in its native area. Civelek and Balkaya (2013) list some 19 wild vegetables in the Black Sea region of Turkey, providing a nutritional analysis of all and stating only that the leaves are roasted. The table below from this paper lists all 19.
Table of wild foraged species and how they are used in the Black Sea region (Civelek and Balkaya, 2013)
A number of cultivars exist including white flowering and dwarf forms (see https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/search-results?query=stachys%20byzantina): ‘Big Ears’ – leaves very large, up to 25 cm long. ‘Cotton Boll’ – a sterile cultivar that does not produce flowering stems. Asexually propagated. ‘Primrose Heron’ – leaves yellow in spring; flowers pink ‘Sheila Macqueen’ – sterile; low-growing; leaves large. ‘Silky Fleece’ – grows 25 cm tall with lilac-plum flowers, produce smaller white-woolly foliage. Seed propagated. ‘Silver Carpet’ – sterile; leaves grey. Asexually propagated. ‘Striped Phantom’ – leaves variegated. There are other examples of plants that have travelled far before being adopted in another country far from home. Shungiku or chopsuey greens (Glebionis coronaria),is an important supermarket vegetable today in Japan, but there are only sparse records of use in the past in the Mediterranean countries where it originated. See https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=22710 A story says that the dish peixinhos da horta was introduced to Japan by Portuguese sailors Antonio da Mota, Francisco Zeimoto and Antonio Peixoto in the sixteenth century, where it was eventually developed into tempura: I wonder what plants were used at that time. Did our lamb’s ears make another long journey together with the recipe? In Japanese the plant is known as cotton chorogi. Chorogi is another edible in the Stachys genus, S. sieboldii, also known as the Chinese artichoke (see picture gallery of other edibles in the genus Stachys below). I found at least one page Stachys byzantina, a largely ornamental plant also in Japan, is prepared with tempura – see https://ameblo.jp/eruma56/entry-11581777515.html (it notes, however, that this plant arrived in Japan in the early 20th century). Stachys byzantina is also of value to many insects and hummingbirds (the latter in the Americas, of course), but in particular bees. The wool carder bee / storullbie (Anthidium manicatum) even collects the fuzz from the leaves, used in nest making in decayed wood. It has also been documented that bumble bees congregate early in the day to collect the water condensation that has accumulated on the leaves. This is therefore a multi-purpose plant, edible, nature friendly as well as ornamental, what I term an edi-ento-mental!
Anthidium manicatum by Bruce Marlin – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=662209
Here are pictures of a few other plants in the genus Stachys:
Stachys affinis (chorogi or chinese artichoke)
Stachys palustris (marsh woundwort /åkersvinerot)
Stachys palustris and Verbascum thapsus in the Edible Gardeb
Stachys officinalis (betony / legebetonie) in Bulgaria
Seed of Stachys officinalis from the Edible Garden
Stachys sylvatica (hedge woundwort /skogsvinerot)
Civelek, C. and Balkaya, A. 2013. The nutrient content of some wild plant species used as vegetables in Bafra Plain located in the Black Sea Region of Turkey. The European J. Plant Science and Biotechnology. Aguiar, T., Nues, A. and de Souza Damasceno, M., 2020. Unconventional food plants foud in Santa Catarina State: nutritional and therapeutic potential. Revista Eletrônica Científica Ensino Interdisciplinar. Mossoró, v.6, #18 (see http://dx.doi.org/10.21920/recei72020618731753)
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
The St George’s mushrooms are growing to the right of the chair 
The seakale / strandkål bed is full of sandleeks / bendelløk
The ingredients:
The ingredients:
Anthidium manicatum by Bruce Marlin – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=662209
