This week I harvested the beetroots and being more or less 100% self-sufficient in vegetables, seasonal food is the thing! My favourite way to use beetroot (both red, yellow and white cultivars) is to make vegetarian beetroot burgers (patties), known in our household as blood burgers! The beetroot is first steamed (I used the wood stove), then grated and mixed together with fried Egyptian onions (luftløk) bulbs and garlic with Himalayan balsam / kjempespringfrø (Impatiens glandulifera) seed. Chili, salt and pepper and golpar /ground seed of any Heracleum / hogweed species (instead of cumin) are then mixed in with eggs and 100% wholegrain emmer wheat flour (or any other grain) to bind the patties. Finally, we fried the patties in butter! Good wholesome slow harvest food!
From left to right: Boltardy and Rhondda, Albino white and Cylindra!
Allium x proliferum / Egyptian onion (luftløk) bulbs
For a couple of months I’ve heard a bird call locally that reminded me strongly of the rose-ringed parakeets in London. I’ve never seen the bird and finally managed to make a recording of it yesterday (I heard it the day before at dusk down in the bay, probably spending the night there). I’ve now seen pictures from somebody that took pictures of this species just a few kilometres east of here, no doubt the same bird.
Monardas are autumn flowering here and one of the best plant genera for pollinating insects at this time of year, including bumble bees and butterflies. Over the last few days with relatively mild weather there have been at least 10 red admiral butterflies in the garden:
An unusual combination of red skies and a rainbow over Forbordsfjellet as the sun set last night just after the last visitors on the year’s last official garden tour had left…the grand finale!
Chiffchaffs (gransanger) have been flycatching around the Buddleja bush and on the veranda over the last weeks and I guess it was only a matter of time before one explored the rich pickings on the windows of the living room, also known as my indoors forest garden. This is the inviting view from the balcony looking into the living room with the door open:
Sat at my desk in the living room on the 18th September and suddenly a chiffchaff had joined me and was catching insects inside:
20 years ago on 19th August 2001, the Extreme Salad (Man) was born when I made my first (of two) world record salads with 363 different plants and 382 ingredients (i.e., including flowers and leaves from the same variety). During last night’s garden tour, the occasion was marked by a 120 plant salad (1/3 the number of the 2001 salad)….and it was tasted by the participants! Although far from the world record, it was probably the fastest made extreme salad as I only had 30 minutes to collect the ingredients and 30 minutes to put it together before the participants arrived! The second picture below shows the only known picture of the original extreme salad!
Pål Theodorsen with the 2001 salad
5 years ago…on the 15th anniversary, I made this salad with my garden helper Josefine Marie Dichmann:
At last, after the warm summer the porcinis (ceps / steinsopp; Boletus edulis) are coming up in large numbers in the woods, the best year since 2005! I’d read the reports on Facebook, so now is the time to harvest and dry these amazing fungi in as large amounts as possible to last until the next time, hopefully not another 16 years! Almost all were in good condition. They are often infected with a parasitic fungi that makes them inedible! In addition, we found a large patch of yellow foot / gul trompetsopp or gul trompetkantarell (Craterellus lutescens), at a place I’d picked many some years ago. Not a fungi I find every year. There were also some chantarelles (kantarell) and a few puffballs (røyksopp). The walk home with a very heavy load was thankfully mostly downhill! Now for the biggest job of cleaning them before drying!
Alpine bistort or harerug in Norwegian (Bistorta vivipara syn Persicaria vivipara or Polygonum viviparum) is a common plant here in Norway and the only wild plant apart from berries that I forage every year. There are large quantities of this plant in particular in the mountains. It’s also one of the 80 in my book Around the World in 80 plants where you can read more. I enjoy it’s nutty taste on bread and other baked dishes like quiches (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?s=alpine+bistort) However, the local alpine bistort here is a rather small plant, typically up to 20cm tall, and is difficult to cultivated as it competes badly with weeds and requires a lot of weeding. I’ve collected forms that seem to be more vigorous, but nothing as large as I’ve seen elsewhere in botanical gardens. In 2002, I found a plant closely resembling alpine bistort cultivated in the Hilliers Arboretum in Hampshire UK. However, it was significantly bigger than our plants. I planted a bulbil in a garden bed, but it spread quite aggressively, a bit like bistort (Bistorta officinalis) and I removed it again. It spread however into the adjacent grass and is still there (I haven’t noticed our native alpine bistort doing this in my garden). I had wondered if it was a different species at the time. Here’s a picture of it (a larger plant with large and many bulbils):
Returning to Hilliers in 2010, I saw another vigorous plant in 2010 (below), more closely resembling our Norwegian plants:
Then in 2017, I saw another viviparous plant, labelled Polygonum spp., in the Gothenburg Botanical Gardens and was given a few bulbils. I’ve grown that one on in a large pot and here are a few pictures taken today:
Comparison of one of my larger Norwegian accessions with the Gothenburg Polygonum
Comparison of one of my larger Norwegian accessions with the Gothenburg Polygonum
Comparison of one of my larger Norwegian accessions with the Gothenburg Polygonum
According to a paper in 2013: “Viviparous bistorts are represented by 3 species in the world, P. suffultoides An Jen Li (1995: 415), B. vivipara (Linnaeus 1753: 360) Gray (1821: 268) and B. tenuifolia”. Tenuifolia has very narrow leaves and the description of suffultoides doesn’t fit my plant. Among other things it has pubescent leaves (hairs – on both sides). I don’t have the accession data for my plant (I will try to find out from Gothenburg), but it does almost fit the description in Flora of China of one of the larger forms of Bistorta vivipara. My plant reaches 50cm (15-60cm in FOC); leaf blade 13cm long (3-10cm). The bulbils are large, but there are a larer proportion of sterile flowers, so the yield may not actually be much larger. The pink flowers are within the normal range and I have one variety from Norway with pink flowers. It could also be from North America where large forms exist (usually known as Bistorta vivipara subsp. macounii), reaching 45cm according to the Flora of North America; see http://floranorthamerica.org/Bistorta_vivipara) I have today dug up a couple of tubers from the grass so that I can grow it out and complete the comparison. Watch this space.
The first painted lady (tistelsommerfugl) of the year in the garden (2 years since the last one during the 2019 invasion year). On teasle / kardeborre (Dipsacus).
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
