Category Archives: Winter vegetables

Self-sufficient in Cress

One of the easiest seed to save is cress /karse (Lepidium sativum). You can grow a lot of seed in a small space, it dries well on the plants and is easy to process, rubbing the seed pods between your fingers in a bowl and then blowing the chaff away outside. I sprout the seed inside during winter and also sow it outside in spring to harvest the young plants for salads and lunch. leaving a few to grow big for seed.

Giant Ulleung Celery

In my world, plants that are both perennial, edible, ornamental and popular with pollinating insects are the most valuable (I term this class of plants edi-ento-mentals) and the Giant Ulleung Celery, Dystaenia takesimana, ticks all 3 boxes! That it can provide winter greens at a time of year when little else is available is its biggest advantage as an edible plant! This plant has been a closely guarded secret amongst a selected few for many years, but is now poised for the big(ger) time! The fact that I’ve written the article below about this plant is thanks to one man, plant breeder Professor Elwyn Meader (1910-1996) who collected seed on its small home island of Ulleung-do in the East Sea between the Korean peninsular and Japan in 1953! Without his generosity and enthusiasm 30 or so years ago to share seeds, we wouldn’t know about one of the potentially most useful permaculture plants! Please download the article below and seek out plants and seed!

Download (PDF, 3.1MB)



The photo below of a flowering Giant Ulleung Celery at Eric Toensmeier’s home Paradise Lot in Holyoke, Massachusetts is courtesy of Jonathan Bates, who’s in the picture too.





Winter Tradescantia shoots

I’d potted up some Tradescantia ohiensis shoots in the autumn as I’d planned to offer a few roots to members of the Norwegian Seed Savers’ (KVANN) perennial vegetable guild though our autumn catalogue. Well, I lost them….and relocated them this evening as the shoots had grown quite long in the dark cellar, so I cut them to eat this evening:

They have a pleasant mild taste. 
One of the 80 in my book Around the World in 80 plants:

Dennis’ veggies

As Storm Dennis brought similar temperatures to southern England to Malvik, this was today's harvest from the garden....more like mid-April.
These were used in a stew:
Alliaria petiolata / hedge garlic / løkurt
Hablitzia tamnoides / Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde
Taraxacum officinale / dandelion / løvetann
Allium cernuum / nodding onion / prærieløk
Allium carinatum / keeled garlic / rosenløk
Ficaria verna / lesser celandine / vårkål
Brassica oleracea / perennial kales / flerårige kål (flere)
Dystaenia takesimana / Korean celery / Koreansk selleri
Rumex acetosa / sorrel / engsyre
Rheum x rhabarbarum / rhubarb / rabarbra

Preparing dandelions for forcing

The weather was a bit milder over the last few days, thawing sufficiently so that I could crowbar dandelion roots from the frozen soil and pot them up ready for winter forcing which will give a never ending supply of delicious, nutritious midwinter greens for free later in the winter (just a little effort)!
Just:
1. Dig up the roots

2. Remove (and eat) any green leaves

3. Plant the roots in soil up to the crown and then cover the crowns in a couple of centimetres of clean sand (I use buckets)

4. Store in the coolest place possible to keep them dormant  (it could also be outside if you don’t have a root cellar)

5. Move to a warmer place ( a cool room works well) a couple of weeks before you need the shoots (keep dark if you want delicious blanched shoots)

(This is the same method you can use for forcing chicory, but to my mind dandelions are even tastier and they sow themselves….and all you have to do is NOT to weed and harvest instead!)

 

Snow harvest

It snowed all day yesterday, but it’s unfrozen underneath and spring bulbs like snowdrops (snøklokke), coltsfoot (hestehov), winter aconite (vinterblom), Crocus tommasianus and Hepatica transylvanica are in flower under the snow. Remembering where the edibles are located, I can still harvest food under the snow:

Hablitzia tamnoides, Allium carinatum, Ranunculus ficaria var chrysocephalus (lesser celandine / vårkål), Alliaria petiolata (hedge garlic / løkurt) and (forced inside) dandelions (løvetann) 

The first garden forage of the year!

After 3-4 weeks of snow cover,  the weather this week changed dramatically and we had the second warmest February day over the last 100 years with over 10C! Together with rain and wind, almost all of what was close to 50 cm of snow has disappeared. For plants, this has been a very mild winter and the ground has hardly been frozen. As soon as the snow had disappeared I could dig the soil. Some edibles such as nettles and chickweed haven’t been killed by frost. Here are some pictures of (apart from the snowdrops) edibles in the garden today.

Winter quiche

I’m often asked what I do with all my winter perennial shoots and other stored vegetables! One favourite is a vegetarian quiche (eggepai). Easy to make and it lasts 2-3 days!

H for Hablitzia Extreme Salad

The Less than Extreme Salad Man has been in action with the year’s multi-species salad! A few hours before the polar low storm hit and snow covered the greens, I did a forage around the garden, finding about 15 species, mostly onions, but there were fresh dandelions, perennial kales and the first Hablitzia shoots. These were added to a selection of stored vegetables from the cellar, including blanched dandelion and chicory shoots which had grown in the above average temperatures. About 30 different veggies!