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”
On 2nd May 2016 I finally got to visit Camilla Plum and Fuglebjerggaard. Camilla is one of Scandinavia’s best known authors and broadcasters on edible gardening and cooking. It was such a beautiful day that the formal talk was abandoned in favour of an edible tour of the organic nursery and farm lead by myself and Camilla. A great crowd of knowledgeable folk, some of whom had travelled quite a long way including one couple from Norway! Thanks for inviting me Camilla!! A great place and many must-have plants :)
Camilla in front of a large bed of emerging Ostrich Ferns which were obviously thriving in this open location as shoots were popping up in the grass around the bed!
Wool mulchPerennial kalesOne of the 80 in my book is Allium obliquum, twistedleaf garlic from Siberia! I’d never seen it growing on this scale before.This form of Allium obliquum had beautiful purple stems and was also on sale on the nursery.NurseryEdible perennialsWhat was happening here? Camilla had asked staff to go down into this swampy pit to collect rhizomes and young shoots of a plant known in North America as the Supermarket of the swamps… Harvesting salad ingredients :)Large selection of chilis!Large selection of chilis!Yellow flowered Allium moly is a great edible onion for partiual shade in the forest garden! Not often you see this one on sale, although supermarket chain Lidl were selling bulbs this autumn!Hop clones after Danish breeder Øyvind Winge, now made available in the nursery. I remember seeing these in the hop collection at Årslev…DAHLIAS!Hop-Asparagus!Perennial kales…and Lathyrus tuberosusScorzoneraTulbaghia or Society Garlic from South AfricaWonderful lunch with ostrich fern, fried dandelion flower buds with salt and a lovely salad with tulip petals!Mushroom plant, Rungia klossii from Papua New Guinea is a novel salad plant
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
(As it looks like the garden will be known as Chicago-hagen due to the fact that the native american name Chicago means onion)!!
