The temperature plummeted this morning as a cold front moved in, replacing the unseasonally warm summer weather. But, before it arrived there was a gorgeous summer sunrise at 04:30.
In the video below a pied flycatcher (svarthvit fluesnapper) can be heard singing.
One of the joys of spring is traditional Norwegian Karvekaalsuppe (caraway green soup), last night’s dinner. This was one of the first wild plants I domesticated in my garden for the soup, leaving some for seed later (used on bread, in curry spice mixes, ferments etc.). I simply collected a large bowl full of leaves with the top of the roots attached. I then made a butter and wholegrain Svedjerug (old Norwegian rye flour) roux with garlic, water and caraway greens, adding a hard boiled egg to the soup…
Learn much more about this great multipurpose vegetable in my book Around the World in 80 plants!
I’ve never seen real bread for sale, you can tell from the weight. The loaves I made yesterday weighted in at over 1.5kg! This sourdough was made from a selection of whole grain organic flours (yesterday’s pizza dough was taken from the proving dough) including: coarse rye, emmer, barley, coarse spelt, svedjerug and a few barley and svedjerug grains and fresh ground elder (skvallerkål) mixed in at the end!
At least the ground elder and seed toppings were home grown, from left to right – caraway (karve), opium poppy (opiumvalmue) and greater plantain (groblad) / Plantago major
At the moment there are many of these tiny red so-called velvet mites (probably Trombidium holosericeum) crawling around hunting on open soil and compost in the garden. I knew almost nothing about them, but just discovered that the larvae attach themselves to spiders, harvestmen and insects as in this picture…I’d seen this before in the garden but hadn’t realised before! See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Phalangium_opilio_bl.JPG/1024px-Phalangium_opilio_bl.JPG
Last night’s dinner was a 100% wholegrain sourdough pizza with Hablitzia, four cheese and poppy seed topping…
The dough was made from a selection of whole grain organic flours including: coarse rye, emmer, barley, coarse spelt, svedjerug and a few barley and svedjerug grains added.
It was accompanied by a blanched salad – sea kale, dandelion “Vert de Montmagny Ameliore” and Allium tuberosum!
Sooooo tasty….
The Hablitzia once again impresses with its incredible productivity and early growth in one of the driest, shadiest places in the garden!
Hablitzia tamnoides and blanched dandelion “Vert de Montmagny Ameliore”
Hablitzia tamnoides and blanched dandelion “Vert de Montmagny Ameliore”
Blanched salad ingredients – sea kale, dandelion “Vert de Montmagny Ameliore” and Allium tuberosum!
We’re enjoying record warm days for the first half of May….today is the 5th day above 20C…. enjoying an early breakfast in the garden …..and I can hear new arrivals whitethroat (tornsanger) and lesser whitethroat (møller) singing…
Thanks to Anna who told me she’d heard my name mentioned on BBC Gardener’s Question Time yesterday in connection with my June appearance at the programme’s summer party at Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland :)
Just a random selection of pictures from the garden from the last few days!
130518: Added a few more
160518: Added some Trilliums now at their best
150518: Trillium grandiflorum with Lilium martagon, Uvularia grandiflora…and at top right of centre a self-seeded Hablitzia
150518: Trillium grandiflorum
150518: Trillium erectum
150518: Trillium erectum
150518: Trillium erectum, Trillium grandiflorum and Primula denticulata
Caltha leptosepala (White marsh marigold) flowers earlier than the yellow-flowered native marsh marigold here (Caltha palustris). Both have been eaten in the past, but as Sam Thayer notes in the “Forager’s Harvest”, the taste of Caltha palustris “never becomes truly good” despite lengthy repeated boiling and throwing out the water (he prefers the flower buds, sometimes also pickled to the leaves). The one time I tried this, I didn’t want to give it a second go. Being in the buttercup family, it contains the poisonous protanemonin, destroyed by cooking. Neither I nor Thayer has tried Caltha leptosepala , but maybe it’s milder as Harrington notes in his Edible Native Plants of the Rocky Mountains that he ate the young leaves and buds raw or cooked….maybe I’ll give it a go next year!
Caltha leptosepala (White marsh marigold)
Caltha leptosepala (White marsh marigold)
Allium humile is a Chinese alpine species….I dug a few bulbs for the Allium garden at the botanics in Trondheim
Sad to find the loft room littered with dead bumble bees….I’d left the window open and they don’t seem to have found their way out again…a few were still alive and I gave them sugar water…
I dug up my oldest good king henry (stolt henrik) plants in a bed I need to clear of ground elder that was spreading faster than I could eat it!
I dug up my oldest good king henry (stolt henrik) plants in a bed I need to clear of ground elder that was spreading faster than I could eat it!
Bumble bee on Trillium grandiflorum
Claytonia virginica is looking great and slowly spreading
The local variety of ostrich fern in the garden has already come too far to eat, here in a sea of lesser celandine flowers
The local variety of ostrich fern has already come too far to eat, here in a sea of lesser celandine flowers with buckets over my udo plants!
This ostrich fern cultivar Jumbo is always significantly later!
A swarm of flies to the right of the top of this spruce in the garden!
Rhododendron mucronulatum v. taguettii (Manchurian Azalea; kara-genkai-tsutsuji); Cornucopia II notes: The flowers are eaten raw, made into dumplings and wineor used for decorating Korean rice cakes; I had a taste…nothing special, mild tasting..
Rhododendron mucronulatum v. taguettii (Manchurian Azalea; kara-genkai-tsutsuji); Cornucopia II notes: The flowers are eaten raw, made into dumplings and wineor used for decorating Korean rice cakes; I had a taste…nothing special, mild tasting..
Thanks to Guren Efferus (Efferus Veksthus) for the box of plants which have arrived in good condition….and the box can also be recycled! As the temperature dropped yesterday evening, after a record warm start to May, it was perfect insulation for my afternoon nap after a day of bastard digging at Væres Venner Community Garden so that we could earth in the plants until we find a permanent place at Være and Hurdal! This is the first step for KVANNs (Norwegian Seed Savers first vegetable (useful plant) sanctuaries
…..and I can hear new arrivals whitethroat (tornsanger) and lesser whitethroat (møller) singing…
