Last night we made a green pea soup and apart from the Hablitzia (Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde), I used perennial vegetables growing in a wild part of the garden. With little or no help from me there’s a bounty of wild edibles in this area under wild hazels (Corylus avellana) and this made for a delicious pea soup with masses of greens. Campanula latifolia is documented as used in spring soups in the 16th century in my area in Norway and Heracleum shoots are also a tradional soup ingredient, in particular Russian borsch now thought of as a beetroot soup was originally made with hogweed shoots.
Campanula latifolia (giant bellflower) and Urtica dioica (stinging nettle)….in a dry shady area under trees, the productivity here is equal to my annual vegetables!
Campanula latifolia (giant bellflower) has almost outcompeted ground elder / skvalelrkål (Aegopodium podograria)
Hablitzia tamnoides in front of the wild greens
Heracleum (hogweed / bjørnekjeks) stems
Ramsons (right) were also used from an increasing patch naturalised in the shade of the north side of the house!
My Taraxacum albidum is looking good at the moment! The seed for this came from the Scottish Rock Gardening Club seed list 2016/17 (SRGC3660) and I planted two plants here. However, they look different in that the leaf shape is different (T. albidum is described as having deeply indented leaves) and only one has hairy scapes (as T. albidum). I suspect some crossing has been going on. T albidum is itself a hybrid between white flowered Taraxacum coreanum and Taraxacum japonicum.
AROUND THE WORLD IN THE EDIBLE GARDEN; Part 2 – Korea Inviting you to the second in a series of dinners from Malvik’s Edible Garden where we “forage” from different parts of the world! We don’t often eat oily food, but now and again its great and this meal was exceptional! From top left and clockwise: Ligularia fischeri Dystaenia takesimana (Giant Ulleung celery, seombadi) Aralia cordata (udo) (blanched for dipping and green for tempura) Phyteuma (should have been japonica, but I used nigra; svartvadderot) Allium victorialis subsp platyphyllum (victory onion; seiersløk) Aralia elata (devil’s walking stick, fandens spaserstokk) Hosta “Frances Williams” Hemerocallis dumortieri (flower shoots) (dayliliy, daglilje) Parasenecio hastatus (also the first time I ate this one and it was delicious, but I wouldn’t advise eating a lot: see here http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=23845) Matteuccia struthiopteris “Jumbo” (ostrich fern; strutseving) Taraxacum albidum and to the right of this: New Zealand spinach and Serratula coronata (also a first for me; the subspecies insularis is eaten in the Far East) Oplopanax horridus (North American species substituting Asian species Oplopanax japonicus or Oplopanax elatus) More information with the pictures!
The closest I got to white flowered Korean dandelion, this is Taraxacum albidum from Japan.
Taraxacum albidum; large up to 7cm flowers!
Taraxacum albidum
Blanched udo (Aralia cordata)
Blanched udo (Aralia cordata)
Blanched Hosta sieboldiana “Frances Williams”
Ligularia fischeri
From top left and clockwise: Ligularia fischeri, Dystaenia takesimana, Aralia cordata (udo) (blanched for dipping and green for tempura), Phyteuma (should have been japonicum, but I used nigra), Allium victorialis, Aralia elata, Hosta “Frances Williams”, Hemerocallis dumortieri (flower shoots), Parasenecio hastatus (also the first time I ate this one and it was delicious, but I wouldn’t advise eating a lot: see here http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=23845), Ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris), Taraxacum albidum and to the right of this: New Zealand spinach and Serratula coronata (also a first for me; the subspecies insularis is eaten in the Far East)
Peeling the blanched udo for dipping
Allium thunbergii from the Far East was used in the dipping sauce
The last group of tempurised veg!
We improvised dinner on the floor (the dining room table is my office!), the only thing missing was the Soju!
Dipping blanched Hosta! DELICIOUS!! The dipping sauce was made with 6T of soy sauce, 3T of water, 1T of apple cider vinegar, 1T of sesame oil, pepper, 1 crushed garlic clove, chili and green onions (Allium thunbergii)
Dipping blanched udo (Aralia cordata)
Last minute addition (there was enough food for two days), I remembered these Oplopanax horridus or devil’s club shoots. Although this is a North American species, there are closely related species in the Far East: Oplopanax japonicus and Oplopanax elatus
Last minute addition (Oplopanax horridus or devil’s club)
AROUND THE WORLD IN THE EDIBLE GARDEN; Part 1 – The Cherokee lands of Eastern North America The first in a series of dinners from Malvik’s Edible Garden where we “forage” from different parts of the world!
Cherokee Pizza is of course better known as Cherokizza…go on, look it up :). This is the classic Native American Italian dish and it was made in Norway today! All you need is a good selection of Cherokee wild vegetables: Appalachian greens / kyss-meg-over-gjerde (Rudbeckia laciniata); see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=22018 Nodding onion / prærieløk (Allium cernuum) Stinging nettle / brennesle (Urtica dioica) Virginia waterleaf / Indian salad (Hydrophyllum virginianum) Dandelion / løvetann (Taraxacum spp.) (a giant individual, as you will see from the pictures, growing on seaweed on the sea kale bed) Cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum)
I used a thick 100% whole grain rye sourdough base for the pizza, so a bit of Denmark in there too!
It’s that time of year that Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde) goes all floppy and needs help to go upwards rather than sideways! The floppiness you see here has nothing to do with the weather which habby loves although it’s never expereienced being snowed on for 5 days in a row in the middle of May in its short 18 year lifetime!
I thought I’d take you for a tour of the lower parts of the garden including the forest garden. No commentary, let’s just listen to the birds and observe. In the first video, I unexpectedly stumble on a willow warbler (løvsanger), my first in the garden this year, foraging on the ground in the cold weather….you can otherwise hear singing redwing (rødvingetrost), great tit (kjøttmeis), fieldfare (gråtrost), meadow pipit (heipiplerke), house sparrow (gråspurv) and blue tit (blåmeis) in one of the two videos.
I noticed yesterday that the ostrich ferns (strutseving) in the forest garden had put on a spurt despite the cold weather and were almost past the harvesting stage. This is the main disadvantage of this great vegetable. The harvesting window is very narrow. I quickly harvested some, taking care not to take more than 1/3 of the shoots. Together with Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach), a bit of sea kale (strandkål), ramsons (ramsløk) and sand leeks (bendelløk) this made a delicious green pasta sauce. See the video before I picked below!
It was forecast several days ago but it was uncertain if the snow would lie down here at sea level. Nevertheless it was a shock to wake to a bright light this morning! I’m not at all worried for my plants as I haven’t planted out any annuals yet and perennials are well adapted to late frosts and won’t be affected….just slowed down…which is an advantage for me as it extends the spring harvest! I’m one of the few that love cool weather in May! Long May it remain cool!
Morning view
Lovage and sweet cicely (løpstikke og spansk kjørvel)
Primula elatior / P.vulgaris hybrids
Primula elatior / P.vulgaris hybrids
Day lilies (daglilje)
Primula denticulata
Day lilies (daglilje)
Ground elder and giant bellflower (skvallerkål og storklokke)
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere I eat more Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde) than any other spring vegetable and have eaten it every day now since the beginning of March (70 days). A friend mentioned on Instagram that she would love to see my plant! Well, I’ve just counted them and I have 36 harvestable plants and many different accessions now and more on the way…spread around the garden. About time then for an overview. They grow back so quickly even though we’ve hardly had a single day above 10C this spring that you wouldn’t have guessed that I’ve cut most of them right back! They regularly self-seed but they only see to succeed in naked soil where there is little competition. All the plants I tried in the forest garden area didn’t make it (in competition with ground elder, Aegopodium).
Bed 2: This is where I planted my second Hablitzia which was a seedling of my oldest plant and my first wild accession from Sergey Banketov in the Russian Caucasus, both planted in 2008. They’ve thrived and self-seeded on this bed which was too dry to grow annual vegetables under the shade of a large birch tree
Bed 2: This self-seeded plant has an exposed root.
Bed 1: Nearby under the same birch tree is where I planted (in 2009) the only Norwegian accession from Hadsel vicarage and a plant derived from seedlings I received from Jonathan Bates in the US. He received his plants from the botanical garden in Rostock, Germany
A few plants have self-seeded in a neighbouring bed from Beds 1 and 2
My oldest plant is approaching 20 years old and is still yielding well!
A second view of my oldest plant is approaching 20 years old and is still yielding well!
A self-seeded plant from my oldest plant
A self-seeded plant from my oldest plant
This one has also self-seeded in gravel in the middle of what was where we parked the car, now where I keep plants waiting for a place in the garden.
This one self-seeded in a wooden barrel where I was growing Alliums
This one self-seeded in a pot with a large bay tree which died. It now climbs into the dead bay!
Norwegian accession originating at Hadsel vicarage
Wild accession from Sergey Banketov in the Caucasus
Bed 7: Self-seeded and growing happily together with nettle (Urtica dioica)
Bed 8: From Tampere, Finland
Bed 10 (unknown accession)
Bed 10a/11: In front is a plant originating from the Uppsala Botanical Garden (probably originally wild collected); behind is Tycho and Karolines wild accession from Georgia (via Andrew Hahn in the US as I lost my original plants received directly)
Bed 11: Unknown
Bed 13a/14: This derives from a self-seeded plant that was variegated, but the variegation disappeared-
Hedge bed N: Accession received from Arche Noah in Austria in 2018, unknown origin
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
