Primula veris mutants

Hybrids can also occur in gardens. I’ve several strains in my garden from seed, including “Sunset Shades” and “Red Strain”. I also grow the earlier flowering subspecies macrocalyx with overlarge sepals.
I use small amounts of leaves and flowers to decorate spring salads and other dishes…an undispensable shade loving and hardy edimental!

 

Bellflower-chokes / Storklokkeskokker

I’ve previously introduced the gourmet part of the dandelion, the dandichoke! I write in my book:
My favourite foraging author “(Samuel Thayer’s) favourite dandelion vegetable is what he calls dandelion crowns, as named originally by Euell Gibbons (1961). I prefer to call them dandichokes, as both these and artichoke hearts are located below the flowers. In the early spring, the very young flowers appear at the surface. The dandichoke is just the self-blanched crown between the top of the root, which is a bit below the surface, and the developing flowers. Although small and difficult to clean, they are very tasty”. See the picture below!

The same applies to another of the 80 in my book, Giant Bellflower (storklokke) which also has a delicious (sweet tasting) self-blanched stem between the root and the surface….bellfower-chokes or, even better in Norwegian, storklokkeskokker! I discovered this accidentally last year! I had earlier noted in my book the sweeter tasting spring shoots after blanching (covering to excude light).

Visit from Permalin

Lovely visit and the year’s first picnic last night from Permalin Farm, currently being established in Agdenes Kommune, just south of Lensvik (see permalin.no). Dominika Bučková and Håkon Nilsen estabished a student company producing delicious 100% flax flour bread in Telemark (Linbakst; see the following video in Norwegian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkGsbhMlZrI) using a method to remove cyanide from the flour, so that authority regulations to limit consumption of flax seed can be safely circumnavigated. They are now moving the business to their permaculture inspired farm in Trøndelag. I’ll be doing a workshop at the farm during their Farming in Harmony with Nature Summer Festival on 27th-28th July. See you there :)