On Tuesday 23rd May I spent a great few hours together with Eva Johansson and Annevi Sjöberg from Sweden in my 3 gardens. They were on a fact-finding mission in connection with the project ”Främja fleråriga grönsaker i svensk matförsörjning” (Promoting perennial vegetables in the Swedish food supply). The project Främja fleråriga grönsaker i svensk matförsörjning is financed with funds from the Swedish Agency for Agriculture (Jordbruksverket) within the framework of the Swedish food strategy (den svenska livsmedelsstrategin). The project runs until Dec 2023. The Skillebyholm Foundation manages the project. Jen from Nottingham in the UK was visiting this week to help and learn, thanks to an RHS bursary! She joined us on the trip and can also be seen in the pictures below!
Jen, Eva and Annevi were on an Allium-high after spending time in the Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim :)Me with Eva, Jen and Annevi in the Edible GardenSampling Hablitzia tamnoides shoots in my garden
19th June 2020: Video update from the Allium (Chicago) garden at the NTNU Ringve Botanical Gardens in Trondheim. The heat wave has brought many species into flower and the garden’s looking great! The official opening of the garden, planned for August, has been postponed to 2021. We are working on plant signs which will hopefully be added later in the summer. The garden currently contains some 300 accessions including around 100 Allium species and many old Norwegian onions collected over several years from all over the country and funded by Norsk Genressurssenteret and Landbruksdirektoratet. The signs for the garden are in part funded through a gift from Skjærgaarden (https://www.skjaergaarden.no) to KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) who have decided to use the gift at Ringve (see https://www.facebook.com/skjaergaarden.no/videos/2972781459487864)
Today at the Ringve Botanical Gardens I found the Allium garden was full of little workers eating the masses of birch seeds that had fallen during the winter….saving me a lot of work later. The first summer, there were thousands of birch seedlings in the garden…
The last 3 days I’ve been documenting which Alliums at the Ringve Botanical Garden collection didn’t make it from last autumns plantings, finding replacements and also collecting many more new accessions! Yesterday was the first of two big planting days and as usual I underestimated the amount of time needed to plant and document and got home at 9 pm!
82 varieties were planted and I also improved the soil for ramsons (ramsløk) and victory onion (seiersløk) which both hadn’t grown well (most others had grown very well, so it wasn’t due to lack of nutrients).
Here’s a little video tour during the planting! More will be planted next week :)
The Allium garden at Ringve has grown well as have the so-called weeds (mostly very young birch trees!). I spent the afternoon weeding and documenting the right hand (easternmost bed)….now known as the New Hampshire bed (I’m told the two beds resemble a map of Vermont and New Hampshire) (As it looks like the garden will be known as Chicago-hagen due to the fact that the native american name Chicago means onion)!!
This is the link to the last album I made from 31st May: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10156051646095860.1073743203.655215859&type=1&l=cbacd0612e
The collection of old chives (gressløk) plants (from gardens around Norway) and various reference cultivars are almost finished flowering….apart from a couple of Japanese / Far East varieties which are now in bud: Allium schoenoprasum ssp sibiricum (from Hokkaido in Japan) and Allium schoenoprasum var. yezomonticola
A sea of birch seedlings and a lone opium poppy!
One of the gardeners had told me that someone had harvested the green tops of shallots growing in the Renessanse-hagen and wondered if they had taken anything from the onion garden. Right enough I found that one plant, Allium x cornutum “Croatia” had been clipped down…this is a plant similar to walking onion / luftløk but with different parent species!
The first yellow flowering onion is out – Allium moly from the mountains of Spain and Southern France with additional populations in Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Algeria, and Morocco.
Weeding
I thought I’d lost this onion, the old Norwegian chives (gressløk) from the highest altitude, at the mountain farm belonging to Nina Bakken’s family at Dovre (near Hjerkinn). See also the next two pictures!
The moment I’d sniffed out Allium schoenoprasum “Nina Bakken” on Dovre! Picture by Josan McDermott: As she put it – “No rare antique onion can hide from the expert stealth of celebrity plant-hunter”
Allium schoenoprasum “Nina Bakken” from Dovre
The clipped shallots in the Renaissance garden
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
