The first harvest at the KVANN vegetable sanctuary garden at Væres Venner was broad beans (bondebønner) from a mixed grex and this was turned into delicious falafels that almost melt in the mouth! The year’s first falafels or hummus is a real highlight of my gardening year…and did you know that the original falafels and hummus were made using broad (fava) beans, sadly replaced by inferior (in my opinion) chick peas….and we can experience this dish fresh even in cold areas where other beans won’t grow!
AND the colour is a natural beautiful green inside….they are often made with some leafy green vegetable added to supply the greeness of the “real” falafel!
NB! Falafel doesn’t have to be ball shaped and deep fried…these are pattie shaped and shallow fried..
Ready to harvest at Være
The first harvest!
Cooked and mixed with onion, garlic, cjhili, cumin (should have been golpar!), coriander, salt and pepper, with a little egg and einkorn flour!
Fava falafel: tastewise, it doesn’t get much better than this!
(Norsk tekst finner du nederst: We spent 3 hours this afternoon weeding and starting to extend the KVANN garden at the Væres Venner Community Garden at Ranheim today!
We need more people to help, so please let me know if you’d like to be added to an email list to get a warning if we are planning to work on the garden! It was great to see how the field is now full of pollinators and other benefiicial insects like ladybirds. The pollinators (bees and hoverflies were on wild thistles and hoverflies were very interested in the quinoa which is now in flower (see the video below)
(Norsk: Vi tilbrakte 3 timer i ettermiddag med luking og jeg begynte å utvide KVANNs hage hos Væres Venner Felleshagen på Ranheim i dag!
Vi trenger flere folk til å hjelpe, så vær så snill å gi meg beskjed hvis du vil bli lagt til i en e-postliste for å få en advarsel hvis vi planlegger å jobbe i hagen!)
The KVANN garden is a nursery at the moment and many of the plants such a walnuts, Hazels etc will be planted in different parts of the garden next year!
Quinoa “Stephe” and broad beans
Too little space for all the plants….time to extend…but it was hard work with the dry soil in the heat, so this is as far as I got!
Spent the day with assorted Væres Venner (Friends of Være) weeding the KVANN (Norwegian Seed Saver) gardens. The good news is that almost all the couch grass has been removed from the world garden (using bastard digging and weeding the few that came up again!)
Weeding finished on the temporary bed that will be expanded to become KVANNs Verdenshage (World garden), a circular bed where the straw is with some 80 edible mostly perennials from around the world planted geographically with the centre representing the North Pole!
KVANN’s plant nursery has a number of trees and shrubs, to be eventually spread around the garden, but a few vegetables too
Quinoa “Stephe” with a number of different broad bean (fava) or bondebønner cultivars
Old Norwegian potatoes
Another group (Marina Bakhtina) are working on an insect friendly garden and a so-called Benje’s Hedge (Benjes hekk) has been erected; see https://giy.ie/archive/growing-a-natural-hedge-without-even-planting-it.html
There’s still plenty of space for other folks and projects!
The first evening of KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) weekend event in Trondheim and Malvik, we visited KVANN’s first “nyttevekstreservat” (inspired by Lawrence Hills’ proposal for vegetable sanctuaries across Europe as a reaction to the loss of our vegetable diverity in 1979!) at Væres Venner Felleshage (a new communiy garden in Trondheim). KVANN have already started work on a Verdenshage (World Garden) and another area currently being used as a holding bed for a future diversity garden, including walnut, hazel, sea buckthorn and other fruit trees to be planted elsewhere..
Afterwards, Sølvi Kvam took us to nearby Presthus Gård, a farm which has until recently been threatened by nearby housing developments. It will now be developed with many activities and KVANN are also welcome to make suggestions!
