Jeg holdte vedlagt presentasjon denne uken om status med KVANNs første hagene hos Væres Venner like utenfor Trondheim (Ranheim).
Vi trenger flere som har lyst å hjelpe til…ta gjerne kontakt isåfall!
Vi besøker hagen under KVANNs årsmøte helg 5. mai! Alle er velkommen!
English: This is a presentation of the first year’s work and status of KVANN’s (Norwegian Seed Savers) new gardens at the Væres Venner Community Garden in Trondheim. Pictures of both the World Garden and Vegetable Sanctuary are shown.
Great to be home again to nutritious vegetarian food! Presenting this week’s two dishes, each lasting two days: dried broad bean falafels (with golpar spice) and a mixed cellar veggie wholegrain sourdough pizza with masses of forced dandelions and perennial kale shoots!
Broad bean falafels with potato and Begonia heracleifolia flowers
Some pictures of RHS Wisley’s National Rhubarb collection in mid-April 2009. It comprised some 151 plants including a few “ornamental” rhubarbs as well as species.
You will find more about using rhubarb as a perennial vegetable in my book Around the World in 80 plants!
Nearby was a shop selling a myriad of wasabi products! Let me know if you can translate any of the signs in the album! At the bottom are a few pictures from a popular nearby walk, the Kawazu Seven Falls.
Wasabi shop
We did a small hike along the Kawazu Seven Falls trail:
An album of pictures from my visit to RHS Wisley Gardens on 11th March 2019 just outside of London, one of my favourite gardens for edimental spotting which I’ve visited many times over the years. I’ve added comments of edibility to most pictures!
Wisley Gardens
Hylotelephium spectabile “Brilliant” (a good spring salad plant)
Artichokes or cardoon
Gunnera
Gunnera shoots
Stachyurus chinensis “Celina” has longer flowers than the species. S. praecox flowers are reported eaten cooked with oil and salt
Primula hybrid
Erythronium “Pagoda”
The inner bark of Edgeworthias are used for making paper (e.g., in Nepal and China)
Ostrich fern was already almost past the best time for harvesting (2 months ahead of my part of Norway)
Erythroniums are edible
Ligularia stenocephala is one of the species eaten in Japan (I haven’t tried it yet)
Magnolias were emerging…the buds and flowers are eaten in different parts of the world and some I’ve tried have been delicious!
The trial grounds at Wisley are always interesting to the edimentalist!
Trial of Nepetas
Sanguisorba trial…there are about 18 species and most are grown only as ornamentals, but only salad burnet (S. minor) is mentioned as edible. The truth is that this one is probably the least useful as a vegetable /salad crop
Sanguisorba trial bed
Lily trial…it would be interesting also to do a taste trial of the bulbs!
Trial of Echinacea
Trial of Hibiscus syriacus, both leaves and flowers are edible…lucky is he/she who can grow these (I can’t)
The rosemary trial is nearing the end
List of rosemary cultivars being trialled
Raspberry trial
Raspberry trial
Trachycarpus fortunei is best known as a fibre plant and ornamental. I’ve never heard of the fruit being eaten but Cornucopia II states “The young inflorescence is eaten in much the same way as bamboo sprouts. Fresh flowers and the terminal bud are also apparently consumed.”
Red Admiral butterflies are now known to overwinter in mild winters in the UK
A great specimen of Japanese pepper tree (Zanthoxylum piperitum)
A great specimen of Japanese pepper tree (Zanthoxylum piperitum)
Dandelion sculpture by artist Robin Wight
Dandelion sculpture by artist Robin Wight
Dandelion sculpture by artist Robin Wight
Magnolia “Ian’s Red” – the buds and flowers are eaten in different parts of the world and some I’ve tried have been delicious!
Magnolia “Ian’s Red” – the buds and flowers are eaten in different parts of the world and some I’ve tried have been delicious!
Magnolia x loebneri – the buds and flowers are eaten in different parts of the world and some I’ve tried have been delicious!
Magnolia – the buds and flowers are eaten in different parts of the world and some I’ve tried have been delicious!
Not edible Corylopsis spicata
“Ornamental” onion bed
“Ornamental” onion bed
Elephant Garlic (Allium ampeloprasum), a leek relative
Protected (against frost) apricot flowers
Bracken winter protected fig
Black raspberries (Rubus occidentalis) are at last becoming better known in Europe
National Fruit Collections ae administered by the organisation Plant Heritage who I gave a talk to the same night!
The National Rhubarb collection consists of 125 cultivars
The National Rhubarb collection consists of 125 cultivars
A dwarf broad bean was already in flower
The fruit field has over 1,000 different fruit cultivars including 700 apples, planted in 1948!
The fruit field has over 1,000 different fruit cultivars including 700 apples, planted in 1948!
Apple “Pixie”
Typha spp. (bulrush or cattails)
Flower buds on Aloe vera in the glasshouse
Begonia soli-mutata in the glasshouse (many Begonias are edible)
Edgeworthia underplanted with daffodils
An Edgeworthia cultivar
Hamamelis x intermedia “Aphrodite” (medicinal)
Cardiocrinum (Giant Himalayan Lily) has edible bulbs
Cardiocrinum spp. (edible bulbs)
Erythronium tuolumense is edible
Ypsilandra thibetica flowers early (a medicinal plant in its homeland)
I was surprised to see Trilliums in flower!
I was surprised to see Trilliums in flower!
In the alpine house (under glass), a food plant of the Palestinians, Cyclamen persicum)
There was a nice collection of Hepaticas (not edible)
There was a nice collection of Hepaticas (not edible)
In the alpine house (under glass), a food plant of the Palestinians, Cyclamen persicum)
Tulipa biflora var major
Winter veggies: broad beans and chards
Chitting (sprouting) potatoes in a greenhouse
Overwintered leeks
Trachystemon orientalis (see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=1269)
Trachystemon orientalis (see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=1269)….just a few flowers left
A giant Hippophae sinensis is passed by most visitors to Wisley and is the largest specimen in the UK (Champion Tree) and the only species in the genus (sea buckthorns) that grows into a tree! Impressive!
My second talk in the UK was in Cobham in Surrey for Plant Heritage, an organisation that administers 620 national plant collections (https://www.nccpg.com) including Jackie Currie’s national Allium collection. She is the reason I was asked to give this talk as I visited her a year ago! For the fourth time I gave a talk in a church (St. Andrew’s) as there was a double booking in the church hall (I talked in the church at Todmorden a few years ago and twice in churches in Ottawa!). A well attended evening with a knowledgeable group and several said they would be trying Hosta this spring :)
Thanks to board member Wendy Bentall who picked me up at Wisley and put me up for the night in, naturally, the Priest House flat in her garden which is in another village, Chobham, only 20 minutes away from Cobham!
St. Andrew’s Church in Cobham
St. Andrew’s Church in Cobham
St. Andrew’s Church in Cobham
The speaker is also judge for the flower competition….and it was 3 edibles that won, of course! First prize: a white cultivar of Ribes sanguineum; 2nd: A red-flowered Chaenomeles, part of a national collection of that genus and 3rd: Magnolia!
I stayed the night in the Priest House (of course), originally a garage in Wendy Bentall’s garden :)
Door knocker!
Wendy Bentall and an old Chaenomeles!
Wendy’s garden
Wendy Bentall has some heritage plants including this Rosa watsoniana!
On 3rd April 2016 I was on an amazing study tour in Japan to witness first hand the cultivation of perennial vegetables. These are wild native species which were previously wild foraged in Japan but are now cultivated to meet demands for what is collectively known as sansai (mountain veggies). There’s a whole section of supermarkets devoted to sansai. The one we are most familiar with in the west is wasabi, but for most of us it is in name only as it is almost always horseradish, mustard and food colouring which are the ingredients of wasabi sauce offered in sushi bars, rather than genuine wasabi (Wasabia japonica).
The farm we visited was on the Izu peninsula, a popular tourist area. It was one of the most beautiful and naturalistic farms that I’ve witnessed anywhere and could be categorised as a permaculture forest garden with shade-loving wasabi growing in running water diverted from a river into an intricate series of neatly set out beds and intercropped with trees like loquat and other fruit. Most of the work seems to be done manually.
First, a few videos from the farm and below can be found an album of pictures of wasabi and other plants we saw, including at a shrine and associated vegetable garden adjacent to the farm! Wasabi has very narrower ecological requirements to produce well, including shade and running cool mountain spring water.
17th March 2019: I’m adding three pictures at the bottom of a group of “wild” wasabi plants growing in quite a dry shady environment in the hills near to Toyota in Japan!
Location of the farm
Loquat (Eriobotrya japonica)
Alnus spp. (nitrogen fixing alder)
Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica)
A small area of watercress
Watercress
Near the farm was a shrine with some interesting plants including sansho or Japanese pepper (Zanthoxylum piperitum) which is cultivated on farms
Leaves of Saxifraga stolonifera are eaten in tempura
Leopard plant (Farfugium japonicum)
Fuki (Petasites japonicus) is an important spring vegetable
Tricyrtis (shoots are eaten)
Gardens with peas and broad beans in flower and, probably, Allium chinense
Broad bean (Vicia faba)
Mentha suaveolens?
Orychophragmus violaceus is quite a common spring flowering edimental in Japan
Orychophragmus violaceus
Orychophragmus violaceus
Orychophragmus violaceus
Viola longifolia?
I’m adding below three pictures of a group of wasabi plants growing in quite a dry shady environment in the hills near to Toyota in Japan:
…and a flowering plant in the Kyoto Botanical Gardens:
A multispecies barlemmotto for dinner last night. Barlemmotto? Think risotto made instead with wholegrain BARley and EMMer wheat grains :) The ingredients are shown with the pictures!
Perennial kales, chicories, onions, leeks, turnip shoots, parsnip (root and shoots), swiss chard, lesser celandine, forced dandelion and ostrich fern, forced perennial onion (Allium senescens x nutans), tuberous pea (Lathyrus tuberosus), chorogi (Stachys affinis), Oca (2 varieties), parsley, yacon, skirret, forced and blanched horseradish shoots, garlic, winter chantarelles, chinese yam, chinese wapato (Sagittaria) and Hablitzia
The cooked grain is simply mixed with cooked vegetables and chili and served with a strong cheese like parmesan! Delicious and easy (if you have all the ingredients that is!)
One of the hardiest fungi appears often midwinter in mild winters. It is the velvet shank (vintersopp in Norwegian, meaning winter fungus; Flammulina velutipes). The recent mild weather has brought on a flush of this edible species with many reports on Norwegian fungi groups, and I too found a small group in my garden the other day. It’s difficult to believe that this is the same fungi as Enokitake or Enoki, sometimes offered in supermarkets and one of the most popular cultivated fungi in the Far East (see the last picture below). The cultivated fungi are long and white as they are grown in the dark in an enriched CO2 environment which gives longer stalks .
Enokitake or Enoki is one of the most popular cultivated fungi in the Far East. It’s difficult to believe that this is the same species as Velvet Shank or Flammulina velutipes. They are long and white as they are grown in the dark in an enriched CO2 environment which gives longer stalks
