Butterflies and moths

Fleet of Admirals

Leave a comment

The numbers of red admiral butterflies have been building up over the last week and today with my large Buddleja davidii in full flower and warm summer weather, I counted at least 15 of the beauties, no doubt second generation butterflies from the influx we had earlier in the summer. I reported this earlier in our national web-based reporting system. To my surprise this was the largest number reported this year not only in the county but in the whole country! It seems to be a poor year for red admirals in the south of the country. 
My Buddleja (butterfly bush / sommerfuglbusk) has become large despite cutting it back severely every winter. It was planted here under the balcony so that I could get a good view from above from a self-sowed plant from another bush in the garden in 2010.

Butterflies and moths

Impaled moth?

Leave a comment

Yesterday, I noticed a small micromoth flapping its wings vigorously on a spear thistle (veitistel) in the garden. It had somehow got caught on one of the spears as you can see in the video and pictures that follow. It’s probably the ground moss grey / barkmosemott (Eudonia truncicolella). Luckily for it,it shares its habitat with a compassionate and observant individual of Homo sapiens and was soon winging its way to its next destination! The larvae of this species feed on mosses!

Uncategorized

Green blackcurrant

Leave a comment

Despite trying green blackcurrants (grønn solbær) from different sources over several years, this is the first time they have fruited for me (others have died)! Green blackcurrant? These are variants of Ribes nigrum (blackcurrant / solbær) that lack the black pigment. This is a variety called Venny which is now commercially available in Scandinavia – mine came from a member of KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers). I can confirm that when they are ripe (soft when pressed) they are delicious and sweet tasting, and are supposedly rich in vitamin C. My bush is still small so can’t yet offer cuttings to folk!


Food

Green pasta

Leave a comment

This is what I had for dinner last night: a Mediterranean-diet style green (wholegrain spelt) pasta dish with wild fungi, annual greens, broad beans, weeds, golpar, chili and epazote (see more on the ingredients used under the picture!).

My daughter, Hazel, peeling away the inedible slime layer of slimy spike-cap (sleipsopp):

We used two mild tasting Russula species (kremler): Broad beans (bondebønner) and swiss chard (mangold) 
Shallots (Finnish heritage variety) which were harvested in September 2022 are still looking good: Sonchus oleraceus (common sow-thistle / haredylle), probably my most used veg at this time of year, even though most consider it a weed! WEEDS ARE TO FEED!


Epazote, wormseed / sitronmelde (Chenopodium ambrosioides), leaves from an 11-year old plant which is overwintered indoors in a cold room down to 3-4C:

Even the guest bed is in use for drying seed! Here is the 2023 crop of golpar (Heracleum spp.) seed :) :
Otherwise, we used courgette, nettle, chili and Hitra Blue organic cheese!

Birds

Robin joined me for breakfast

Leave a comment

No, not my son Robin (he arrives tomorrow).
Robins (rødstrupe) have over the years I’ve lived here changed from a shy forest bird to the tame inquisitive bird I was familiar with in the UK before movimg to Norway. This morning a young bird joined me at the breakfast table for a preen, stretch and scratch before resuming catching insects…



Food, Salad

50 and 20 year celebrations

Leave a comment

To celebrate our good friends’ Jurgen Wegter and Ingvild Haga’s 50th birthdays together with Meg’s 50-year anniversary of arriving in Europe for the first time (in Southampton near where I lived at the time) as well as my 50 year anniversary of leaving school and a memorable holiday with 20-30 school friends in Newton Ferrers in Devon, we made a special gourmet dinner of green mac-cheese. It had masses of veg mixed in – the year’s first broad beans and swiss chard, chicory, common sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus), Allium senescens leaves, shallots and garlic from last year, rehydrated winter chantarelles, golpar – ground seed of hogweed – Heracleum spp., together with ramsons salt, chili, sun dried tomatoes and mustard, all in a wholegrain spelt white sauce with wholegrain spelt pasta; it was  topped with alpine bistort bulbils). 
Not to be left out, the Extreme Salad Man contributed one of his Meditteranean diet inspired multispecies salads commemorating it is now almost 20 years since he put together a salad from home grown ingredients in Malvik comprising 537 ingredients. something the world hasn’t seen before or since (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=18997). The record was set on 24th August 2003. This time there were a mere 106 ingredients….sad to see, but he must be losing it….
Thanks to Jurgen for the salad pictures:

The Extreme Salad Man photographs his latest creation

Onions, Perennial vegetables

Meanwhile in the Onion Garden Chicago

Leave a comment

I don’t often post here about my other two gardens, the community garden at Væres Venner and the Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim. 
The onion garden is nicely maturing and will be officially opened this summer on 26th August, 6 years since I started work creating a garden to house a national collection of old Norwegian perennial vegetable onions collected throughout the country, some 100 botanical species from around the world and many cultivars too!
Here’s a couple of videos showing the garden on 25th June 2023 close to peak flowering, although there will be flowering Alliums all the way from May to the first heavy frosts in October / November!
Tasty, beautiful and a great place to study pollinators! Can you smell it?
There are now over 500 pictures from the garden in this large Facebook album 

Food, Perennial vegetables

Hablitzia, Laportea and Nettle Gnocchi

Leave a comment

What to do with the very last Sarpo Mira potatoes from the cellar? Last night’s dinner was Gnocchi made with Hablitzia leaf, Laportea canadensis (Canadian wood nettle tops) and stinging nettle tops. I must admit that our first attempt turned into a gnocchi soup, so we had a starter with exactly the same ingredients as the main course :) The second attempt was excellent though!

Hablitzia tamnoides leaves:

Canadian wood nettle (Laportea canadensis); the tops of the stems can also be used:
Making the gnocchi (potato used instead of grain for pasta):

Annuals, Salad, Seed pods

A diversity of rat’s tails

Leave a comment

I remember years ago ordering seed of a special heirloom heritage radish “rat’s tail” (Raphanus sativus var caudatus) through the Heritage Seed Library in the UK. I remember that it was the gardener at naturalist Gilbert White’s House and Gardens at Selbourne in Hampshire that offered the seed and I remember that we ended up trading seed as they were looking for plants that Gilbert White mentioned; see  https://gilbertwhiteshouse.org.uk/gilberts-gardens 
The resultant plants had long green pods. However, I lost them eventually.  Subsequently I’ve tried seed of rat’s tails several times and the pods have never been as long as those original plants. 
Radishes are difficult to grow here in spring as our long days result in them quickly bolting (still looking for a good day neutral variety). I remember reading that when wild radish Raphanus sativus was originally domesticated in China that it was for the young seed pods rather than the swollen tap roots. 
I therefore decided this winter to source various rat’s tail radishes from commercial sources and also obtained seed of 4 (of 8 available) accessions from the German genebank IPK Gatersleben. There was no available descriptons, so this was a random selection. They were sown in May in the World Garden (Verdenshagen) at the Væres Venner Community Garden (NB! I do grow a few annuals on the world garden if they have an interesting geographical story associated).
Yesterday I harvested a few of each and was blown away by the diversity with long red, thin green and two more stumpy varieties like I had been getting in recent years when ordering rat’s tails. Below is what Cornucopia II says on this interesting vegetable. 
Assuming like me that you will want to grow your radishes to seed for the following year, the land is occupied all season in any case, so rat’s tails produce more than root radishes. The flowers are also also rather pretty bicoloured pink and white and area also attractive to pollinators! I think I will save seed and deveop a mixed grex of these and more varieties from the gene bank next year!
And this gave the opportunity for a unique rat’s tail salad for lunch with radish flowering tops too, also delicious (see the pictures at the bottom) :)

cc

Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden