Plenty of snow still in the garden..a long time before I start digging ;)
Forced ostrich wings…
The Norwegian name for ostrich fern is strutseving (ostrich wing) and fiddleheads are now appearing in my kitchen window, two months before they will be out in the garden. It’s easy to dig up some roots of this spreading species in the autumn. I left them outside in these pots until about a month ago. I’m leaving these first relatively small fiddleheads to grow, so as not to kill the roots (they will be planted back in the garden to recover). 
Forced Japanese Chives
One of the perennials I’m forcing indoors this winter is Allium schoenoprasum var yezomonticola, which I call Japanese Chives / japansk-gressløk. It’s much more productive than common chives, just look at the volume of salad onion I get from this pot, forced in a cool room at about 10C :)
Hablitzia and the few-flowered leeks
In December’s very mild weather there was mass germination of Hablitzia around my oldest plant next to the house. This has happened before, but none of the seedlings made it through the colder weather afterwards. Therefore, I dug them up and transplanted into pots and have had them in my cool but frost free porch ever since. They haven’t grown much, but it seems I dug up some bulbs of Allium paradoxum with them as they are growing away well, so I will be eating them in tonight’s salad!
Malvik dawn 4th March 2016
Edible rooted chicory
As some of you will know, chicories (sikkori) are just about my favourite veggies, in part due to their flexibility providing edible cooked greens, salad greens in an incredible array of colours and forms, coffee surrogate, edible flowers, winter forced chicons and some are even perennial. A big advantage is that they are easy to grow here organically. This is an old picture from four years ago of the Edible rooted chicory “Di Soncino”! It is also easy to grow your own seed and they mature even up here! I never cook this root cultivar on its own as a side vegetable, but add them to many fried dishes and soups…
Garlic topset shoots
Every winter for the last 10 years I’ve been sprouting the bulbils of the Scandinavian heirloom garlic Aleksandra. I sow them in soil and cut down about 3 times over a couple of months giving me garlic sprouts most days for my lunch.
Bay Hablitzia
I have two large pot grown bay trees (Laurus nobilis) which are moved into my porch for the winter. In the summer, they are outside quite near to my oldest Hablitzia. A couple of seeds found their way into the pot a couple of years ago and the resultant plants seem quite happy there, clearly not bothered by not experiencing sub-zero tempreatures (it’s mostly between +5C and +10C) where it’s growing with little light. Last summer it climbed into the Bay in the spring, but died back earlier than my other plants presumably due to the drier conditions in competition with the Bay! Time for a snack soon!!
House heron
Grey Heron (gråhegre) resting on the house in the bay, below my house!
Pink dandelion: a new edimentaraxacum!
Looking forward to growing this dandelion….seed arrived today from China!
http://www.plantarium.ru/d…/plants/3/376/207376_1271364a.jpg
