A very tame heron hunting in the Copenhagen botanical garden in June:
All posts by Stephen Barstow
Naturplanteskolen Malvik salad
24th July 2015 views
Tonight’s view, 23rd July 2016
Tonight’s view, a few minutes ago at 22:35…it will be a nice day tomorrow!
Soba with stir-fried Golpared veggies
I made soba with stir-fried golpared veggies and wild fungi for tonight’s dinner. Soba is buckwheat noodles. Golpar is the Turkish spice usually made from the ground seed of Heracleum persicum (Tromsøpalme). To me the taste of “golpar” made with different Heracleum species isn’t very different. Tonight I used Heracleum maximum seeds fresh harvested from the garden to spice the stir-fry (instead of cumin which I used to use).
Giant purple throat bellflower
Noticed this rather attractive purple throated Giant Bellflower, reminiscent of Codonopsis! This patch came from AGS (Alpine Garden Society) seed, received as a cultivar “Gloaming” although pictures of that one all seem to show a purple flowered variety…
Campanula latifolia is one of top favourite edimentals as anyone who has read my book will realise!
Alien over Malvik
…and this isn’t the first time!
Persian Cornflower
There are several knapweeds (Centaurea spp.) that have been used as wild vegetables in the Mediterranean countries. I haven’t yet found and evidence of this beauty (Centaurea dealbata “Steenbergii”) having been used but it’s flowering in my garden at the moment!
I’m interested in seed of any of the following, all recorded as food plants (shoot, leaves and stems):
Centaurea aspera
Centaurea calcitrapa
Centaurea dumulosa
Centaurea hyalolepis (syn Centaurea pallescens)
Centaurea nicaeensis
Centaurea nigrescens
Centaurea solstitialis
Scruffy Siberian Nutcracker
There’s always something to distract me here. This morning it’s a Siberian Nutcracker (sibirsk nøttekråke) sitting atop a pine tree in my Hazel woodland (the reason it’s here), checking out the ripeness of the nuts and declaring ownership!
Alys’ Pool
Almost exactly 6 years ago (is it really that long ago?) I was delighted to have a visit from BBC gardening presenter and Guardian writer Alys Fowler. After we finished photographing the garden I took her on a tour to Vennafjellet, the closest mountain to home and we also stopped at Nævrahølet, a local swimming “hole” under a small waterfall! It was a glorious hot day in “paradise”. It’s now known as Alys’ Pool and a picture of her swimming here features in her book the Thrifty Forager!
6 years on I did the same trip with the group of Danes who have been learning about permaveggies in my garden! It was a much colder day, but two of us did venture into the water. It wasn’t as bad as feared! One thing I hadn’t noticed on Alys’ visit was that there were several plants of Mountain Queen (Saxifraga cotyledon) hanging in full flower around the waterfall!
See the video of Ostrich Fern Island below:
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