A good crowd of students at today’s class from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, from permaculturists to nursery owners! Worn out and “empty” after 7 hours talking inside and outside collecting the salad ingredients :-)
Thank you Aiah Noack for organising this weekend at Grennessminde yesterday and at Naturplanteskolen near Copenhagen today ;-)
Monthly Archives: August 2016
0530am
…is now sunrise here…
Jimmu
This is what my new friends from Nepal called Allium wallichii, also known as Jimbu, Dunda, Yang, Himalayan onion, Nepal onion or Sherpa onion! They had actually never seen it live before as it grows at high altitudes :)
This is a little album showing off the wide range of forms I’m growing.. one of my favourite edimentals (edible ornamentals).
I wonder if a white form exists?
Nepalese meet their onion in Malvik
A lovely visit this evening from botanist Kamal Acharya and his wife Sharmila Phuyal and daughter. They taught me several new uses for my old plants!
For instance, we started indoors as it was pouring with rain outside and they noticed I was growing Andean vegetable Cyclanthera pedata (Achocha) in my living room and to my surprise told me it was commonly grown in Nepal and they not only used the small green fruits, but the top shoots and the black seeds. The latter are roasted, ground and mixed with salt, chili and perhaps lemon. The powder is also used as a flavouring in chutney :)
I enjoyed your visit! Welcome back another time when it’s not pouring with rain :)
This is what I grew as Cyclanthera brachystachya “Fat Baby” in my old cold greenhouse in 2008. The picture was taken on 28th September.Swallows in cold weather
A large flock of some 200 swallows / låvesvaler feeding very low over a barley field this morning. The air temperature was only +5C…..
Hegra bygdekvinnelag garden visit
Pleasant visit from Hegra bygdekvinnelag* this evening, so distracted I forgot to take any pictures! However, as they left, this view opened up with a “rainbow over Skatval”….a topic that had actually been mentioned during their visit ;)
*Bygdekvinnelag means literally ” farming district women’s club”
Fasciated Martagon Lily
From Wikipedia : “Fasciation (pronounced /ˌfæʃiˈeɪʃən/, from the Latin root meaning “band” or “stripe”), also known as cresting, is a relatively rare condition of abnormal growth in vascular plants in which the apical meristem (growing tip), which normally is concentrated around a single point and produces approximately cylindrical tissue, instead becomes elongated perpendicularly to the direction of growth, thus, producing flattened, ribbon-like, crested, or elaborately contorted tissue”
This deviant martagon lily (Lilium martagon) turned up in my garden in 2014. Martagon lily have one of the best tasting lily bulbs, and is a good edible for the forest garden as they are shade tolerant :)
Korean Aster on Edimentals
Two years ago, I posted this picture of Aster scaber, commonly wild foraged in Korea and nowadays cultivated for markets in Korea and exported dried to Koreans in North America :)
The following is a collection of pages here giving more information on this great perennial vegetable, or read the account in my book Around the World in 80 plants :)
1. Aster scaber and introducing Misoni: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=3103
2. Pakora hasn’t met this selection of vegetables before:http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=5250
3. The wild greens of Korea: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=3635
4. Perennial vegetable tempura: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=2382
5. My first Korean aster flower: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=2008
6. Alexandra Berkutenko and the giant Edimentals of the Russian Far East:http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=208
The tallest skirret challenge
So, is this a world record, Guinness? Oh, sorry you can’t even ID a dandelion can you, so no point asking you ;)
My claim is at 2.3m. Any better?
I had no idea skirret/sukkerot/Sium sisarum could get this high….
Central Park with Leda Meredith
I’ve “known” forager Leda Meredith since 1999 on the Edible Wild email list run by Melana Hiatt! I was very happy when I was passing through New York headed for Vermont and Ottawa early in September 2014 that she agreed to meet me early on a Friday morning in Central Park to show me her foraging grounds!
I sadly only had about an hour in Leda’s company, but we managed to cram in a lot of edible plants in a short time….here’s some of them :)
This album was earlier shown on Facebook and was re-erected more permanently here for two reasons – my Norwegian FB friend Stein Tofte showed a picture of pokeweed, Phytolacca americana, growing in his garden at Randaberg near Stavanger – his plant came from seed collected in Central Park :) It’s also Leda’s birthday today….so this is for you, HAPPY FORAGING BIRTHDAY!!
