The first winter shoots

A nice contrast between the winter’s first shoots on the window sill (sown about 1 week ago) as the storm rages outside :)
These are shoots of bulbils (topsets) of one of my hardneck garlics: either Aleksandra, Estonian Red or Valdres – all produce many medium sized bulbils of perfect size for winter forcing for the shoots which I use mainly with lunch.
This and the edible scapes (flower stems) and good sized garlic cloves make these varieties my favourites. NB! I’ve found in trials that, under my conditions, removing the scapes doesn’t make much impact on the size of the garlic cloves!

Yacon and sunchoke harvest

This week, I harvested both yacon (grown in large pots and brought inside before the first frosts to grow on) and its close relative Jerusalem artichoke (sunchoke), one of our best varieties Dagnøytral (aka Dayneutral , Stampede and Bianca) and the best Canadian variety in trials at Sørbråten farm near Oslo.