My only post on last weekend’s big news item. This memory came up on my feed this morning. In October 2015 I talked about my book Around the World in 80 plants at the Walled Kitchen Garden Network Forum weekend at the National Trust Property Croome Court in Worcestershire, England. As usual I joked about Prince Charles having the most productive Forest Garden in the UK as he had a national collection of large-leaved Hostas in woodland at Highgrove. Little did I know that the Prince’s head gardener was sat near the front. After the talk, he introduced himself, astonished that Hosta were edible. I thought quickly and presented him with a copy of the book and signed it “To HRH Prince Charles, Good luck with your Hosta eating!”. I had known of the Prince’s good works within the organic gardening movement since the 70s and indeed Highgrove is managed as an organic farm.
I was surprised to receive this letter later that winter and it resulted in a correspondence about Hosta cuisine which lead to me being invited to Highgrove to talk more and see the Hosta collection (sadly, there are no pictures of that day as cameras are strictly forbidden nor was I allowed to see the pictures the staff took). I had a hope that the Prince might turn up, but he had a lame excuse that it was his Mum’s birthday…..and now I’ve had to modify the slide about Hostas and Highgrove (see the comments).
Yesterday, I was preparing my talk for the Finnish Permaculture Association (see https://youtube.com/live/CYBqioWTr6U) and was reminded that I had mentioned in my book that Hablitzia could be used in place of spinach in Finnish spinach pancakes (pinaattiohukaiset). With my Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach; köynnöspinaatit) shoots having grown well recently, I decided to make these Finnish-style habby pancakes for lunch to get in the mood for the talk. I must admit, I didn’t look up a recipe and just improvised (recipes make cooking complicated in my mind!) using ingredients I felt should be in there. Apart from plentiful Hablitzia shoots I mixed in whole grain oat flour, eggs, garlic, chili and pepper and fried them in butter. It was served with a salad which also included Hablitzia! First, the quotation from Around the World in 80 plants (suggested by Jonathan Bates in the US in his article on Hablitzia):
I have a small patch of different forms of alpine bistort / harerug (Bistorta vivipara) in the garden and this year’s harvest is now drying in the living room. See other posts on this plant here: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?s=%22alpine+bistort%22
Many thanks to all who sent birthday wishes as I transitioned to become a bonafide pensioner
As usual, my celebration dinner was a green macaroni cheese (https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?s=macaroni), this year an Around the World in 80 Mac-Cheese with 80 different perennial greens harvested from the garden, some for the first time!
On the 12th June, I gave my first webinar at a mainstream gardening conference in the US, the Southeastern Plant Symposium, hosted by the JC Raulston Arboretum and Juniper Level Botanic Garden in Raleigh, North Carolina. I had thought that the invitation was on the back of a successful talk I gave at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens in September 2019. However, it turned out not to be the case and one of the organizers horticulturist and owner of Plant Delights Nursery, Tony Avent, had read my book, enjoyed it and had suggested to the committee to invite me!
My talk lined up to start on the right screen with Tony Avent on the left screen
I was sandwiched between some great ornamental gardeners and plant breeders including Fergus Garrett of Great Dixter in the UK. I particularly enjoyed Aaron Floden’s talk (from the Missouri Botanical Garden) on unexploited native plants (in an ornamental context) and plant breeder Peter Zale’s talk on Hosta breeding (the market for Hostas in the US is enormous….time for a small segment dedicated to Hostas for food!). Edimental gardeners can, as I have over the years, get a lot of inspiration from ornamental gardeners.
The feedback after the event was very positive. One of the participants, Marty Finkel, wrote an article about the talk which has just been published on page 10 of the Granville Gardeners Gazette (available for all to read!) see http://www.thegranvillegardeners.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Gazette-2021-07.pdf (after an article about human composting!)
Years ago, I was at a work meeting in San Francisco with my colleague Harald Krogstad who sadly died in 2020. It’s very easy to put a date on this as we flew back on the day of the September 11 attacks, almost 20 years ago. After the meeting we hired a car and drove up to the Sierra Nevada and walked for a couple of days in the Tuolumne Meadows area. I remember finding a patch of a large Allium that I later found out had to be the tall swamp onion or Pacific onion (Allium validum). A few seeds from those plants later germinated in Malvik and this became one of the 80 plants in my book Around the World in 80 plants. A few years ago I renovated my pond area and associated damp area where I was growing this onion which grows in large clumps in damp meadows at elevations of 1200-3350 m in the Sierra Nevada. It was finally possible to harvest again this year and yesterday I used it in scrambled eggs. The flowers umbels are unusually small for such a large Allium and for that reason has never become popular as an ornamental. See an earlier blog post with pictures that didn’t make it into the book here: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=5994
At the Væres Venner community garden on the outskirts of Trondheim at Ranheim in an area we hope will remain a green belt, I have been working to create what we call Verdenshagen (The World Garden) in collaboration with KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) and Schübelers nettverk. This is a network of gardens throughout Norway which is being launched in June 2021 in honour of Fredrik Christian Schübeler (1815-1892) was a botanist and professor at the University in Christiania (now Oslo) and director of the Botanical Gardens for nearly 30 years from 1863. He established a network of gardens throughout Norway, often in collaboration with prestegård (rectory gardens) to test out new plants of economical importance (both ornamentals and edibles). Our new network is also planned centred around rectory gardens and other gardens to demonstrate and inspire to grow new plants but also to conserve old varieties of food plants and ornamentals. See more at https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&u=https://kvann.no/schubeler The World Garden is basically a 12 m diameter circle where the centre represents the North Pole and houses a garden of Arctic food plants. Largely perennial vegetables are being planted geographically around the circle, currently some 80 plants, many of which can be read about inspired by my own book Around the World in 80 plants (see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=30). The garden is surrounded by over 100 old and new fruit, berry and nut trees and another demonstration garden for annual crops. The intention is to add pictures to the album below throughout the year from the World Garden. Our focus is also in creating and improving the habitat at Være for other wildlife, so there will also be pictures of insects, birds and other creatures.
Drone picture from summer 2020
A new sign was put up in spring 2021!
060621: The king of vegetables Sea kale / strandkål (Crambe maritima)
060621: Sea kale / strandkål (Crambe maritima)
060621: Cusick’s quamash / stjernehyasint (Camassia cusickii “Zwanenburg”). Camassias were important staple food plants for various Native American peoples although this species didn’t have the best tasting bulbs.
060621: Hydrophyllum appendiculatum (Great waterleaf); Indian salad is from North America
060621: The garden pebble / Kålpyralide Evergestis forficalis (the larvae feed on leaves in the cabbage family)
060621: Probably the beetle Oedemera virescens on dandelion
060621: Probably the beetle Oedemera virescens on dandelion
080621: Udo / Japansk asparges (Aralia cordata) in the Ginseng family is my largest vegetable and can reach 2-3m tall in the course of a few weeks in early summer. I’ve planted 4 in the World Garden and they are growing well!
080621:First flowering of Hemerocallis middendorfii (Amur daylily / Amurdaglilje) is one of the species cultivated for its edible flowers.
130621: Hemerocallis dumortiei (en botanisk daglilje)
130621: Hemerocallis middendorfii (en botanisk daglilje)
130621: Mitsuba / Japansk persille (Cryptotaenia japonica “Atropurpurea” er en viktig grønnsak i Japan.
130621: Allium victorialis is now in full flower
130621: The base of the Voss Angelica (Vossakvann) plants
130621: Musk mallow / moskuskattost (Malva moschata); I love the unopened flower buds in stir-fry dishes
130621: Musk mallow / moskuskattost (Malva moschata); I love the unopened flower buds in stir-fry dishes
130621: Scorzonera / scorsonerrot eller svartrot
130621: Ostrich fern / strutseving symmetry
130621: Noticed this green hairstreak ( grønnstjertvinge resting on the fern
130621: Noticed this green hairstreak ( grønnstjertvinge resting on the fern
130621: Angelica flowers are very popular with insects; here a honey bee / honningbie
130621: White-tailed bumblebee / lys jordhumle (Bombus lucorum) on Angelica
130621: One of the tumbling flower beetles / blomsterbille (Anastis spp.)
130621: Diamond back moth / kålmøll are back
130621: Slugs and snails are naturaland important parts of the ecosystem; here a friendly svartskogsnegl / black slug
130621: I’ve not seen this species in my own garden. I’m pretty sure it’s a Common garden slug / gulsåleskogsnegl (Arion distinctus); it can sometimes be a problem in gardens
130621: I also found a great grey slug or leopard slug / boasnegl eller leopardsnegl (Limax maximus); this species is also generally a helpful slug
Presenting some of this week’s perennial greens and, in the case of the blanched Hosta shoots, perennial whites! Hosta sieboldiana with ramsons / ramsløk (Allium ursinum) and giant bellflower / storklokke (Campanula latifolia)
This bucket was planted in the autumn and stored until now in the cellar. Within a few days of bringing it up into my living room there are usable shoots. Garlic bulbil shoots are seen behind. Nowadays, I LOVE the taste of dandelion although in my youth I found it so bitter that I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to eat it. I think the reason is a combination of giving up eating sugar and getting accustomed to eating bitter plants. In addition, nobody ate a dandelion salad alone. The following box from my book describes various methods og de-bitterizing dandelions if you want to benefit from one of the most nutritious and valuable plants on the planet but find the taste too bitter:
In 2017, I was able to grow Sonchus kirkii, the original perennial sow thistle (puha or rauriki), an important traditional vegetable of the Maori which I’d long wanted to try. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to overwinter it. It grows in coastal New Zealand and isn’t adapted to freezing winter temperatures and no doubt stays green all winter. I had been hoping to overwinter it and try the spring shoots, but I didn’t get the opportunity then. I relocated the original seed packet this spring, and the seed was still viable and the plants started flowering now in October and with unusually mild weather so far this winter with no serious frosts, I finally got round to trying some of the top growth in the tradional way to eat Sonchus oleraceus in Mediterranean countries, fried with garlic and chili in olive oil and added to scrambled eggs. The raw leaf was surprisingly mild, much milder than perennial Sonchus arvensis, which I’ve experienced as unpleasantly bitter in the past (young shoots in spring).
There is an account in my book Around the World in 80 plants of this species and annual super(healthy)weed Sonchus oleraceus which replaced it in Maori kitchens! Variously known as puha, shore puha or New Zealand sow thistle (syn. Sonchus asper var. littoralis), its habitat is described by the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network as http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.aspx?ID=205: “Coastal. Usually on cliff faces in or around damp seepages where it often grows with the blue green alga Nostoc and fern Blechnum blechnoides. This species has a distinct preference for base rich rocks such as basalt, calcareous mudstones, siltstones, limestone or apatite-rich greywacke faces. On some offshore islands this species extends up into coastal scrub and herbfield. It occasionally grows on stabilised sand dunes. Indications are that this species once occupied a wider range of habitats but has retreated to those less suited to other faster growing introduced weeds.” NZPCN states that it is “Easily distinguished from all the other naturalised Sonchus species by the very large, glaucous, non-spinose leaves” (this includes Sonchus arvensis – perennial sow thistle and annuals Sonchus asper and Sonchus oleraceus). The first picture shows a comparison of the autumn leaves of the two growing in my garden:
Comparison of local Sonchus arvensis (left) and Sonchus kirkii
Curious flattened stem
Decorated with late flowers in the garden: chives, musk mallow (Malva moschata) and nasturtium
Popular with late pollinators
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
