Tag Archives: The Edible Garden

Edible flowers, Edientomental, Perennial vegetables

Toad lilies: great edientomentals

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Toad lilies (Tricyrtis sp.) are great edientomentals from the Far East; i.e. both food for us to eat (the edi bit), eye food (the mental bit ;) ) and food for the pollinators like bumble bees (the ento bit).
I’ve been meaning to try to research this genus properly for many years ever since I ate the young shoots 10 years ago (it tasted mild and good).  I’ve tried 10+ species over the years, but only the early flowering species thrive (Tricyrtis latifolia is I think the most successful of the two). Bumble bees love them too as can be seen in the video below!
Below the pictures is an overview of how different species Tricyrtis are used in Japan. It indicates that the flowers can also be used at least in moderation for decoration, so I must give it a go!

Blanched perennial veggies eaten on 14th May 2012 were dandelion, Crambe cordifolia , Cicerbita alpina, Lovage, Horseradish, Hosta, Sonchus arvensis, Allium tuberosum, Silene vulgaris, Heracleum maximum and Tricyrtis (latifolia)

Tricyrtis in the kitchen
All I have so far is that 6 or 7 species are listed in my comprehensive Japanese foraging book (in Japanese): Wild Food Lexicon (Japan) and this is what it says (there are no warnings of possible toxicity and it encourages the reader to get and grow a couple of the species):
Tricyrtis latifolia (Tamagawa hototogisu)
Eat young shoots. You can eat other types of Tricyrtis so don’t worry if you make a mistake. Rest assured. You can pick it even if the stems are long, you can pick the soft young shoots until they bloom.
Boil in hot water with a pinch of salt, then rinse in cold water. In boiled food, soup, tempura…
Tricyrtis macropoda
It can be eaten like Tamagawa hototogisu, but the ones with a lot of hairs have an inferior taste.
Tricyrtis macrantha
Boiled soup. For tempura etc. It has a crisp texture. Boil briefly, soak in cold water, boil, cut into small pieces and season with mustard. The young shoots are the most flavourful amongst the hototogisu.
Tricyrtis macranthopsis
Seedlings for cultivation are on the market. You can grow it and use it as food.
Around May, pick young shoots that grow diagonally. Even those with long stems can be eaten by picking the soft part at the tip of the stem.
Tricyrtis perfoliata
Young shoots are “hard”? in quality. Floating the flowers in the soup and enclosing them in jelly will make them beautiful. Get it, grow it and taste it!!

Garden tour, Hagevandring

Hagevandring med Malvik Hagelag

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Dette var kanskje den 10. gangen Malvik Hagelag hadde vært på hagevandring hos meg, over en snart 40 års periode! Jeg meldte meg inn i hagelaget og var med på møtene fra midten av 80-tallet. Den gangen var jeg den yngste (de fleste medlemmer var pensjonister). Det var derfor interessant å reflektere over at nå hadde jeg kanskje blitt eldst!
Det var en flott sommerkveld og 30C og noen meldte avbud pga temperaturen! Men, det var en fin gjeng som var med og hørte på mine bortforklaringer for hvorfor hagen hadde blitt så vill….hadde jeg mistet kontroll i mine gamle dager? Neida…..bare sluppet kontroll bevisst og overført kontrollen til mine to andre hagene på Væres Venners felleshagen og Løkhagen Chicago!
Og denne gangen hadde de bestilt en salat, og det ble ca 130 forskjellige spiselige planter. Årets første jordbær og rips ble ofret og blomsterstander av gulblomstret Allium hookeri var muliense, Allium cernuum mfl. Vi avsluttet med plante- og boksalg!

Course, Garden tour, Talks

The 2023 Permaveggies / Forest Gardening course

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The 5th Permaveggies / Forest Gardening course I’ve held in Malvik took place on Sunday 21st and Monday 22nd May with guest Jen McConachie who gave her forest gardening course at Presthus Farm on the Monday evening. On the Sunday we met at my garden (The Edible Garden) for a garden tour and lunch from the garden with focus this year on growing food while maintaining a high biodiversity. On Monday we visited The Væres Venner Community garden to see the World Garden and also the large collection of edible trees and bushes that have been planted there, followed by a visit to the Onion Garden at the Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim.
Previous Permaveggies weekends were held in 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2019 whilst the 2020-weekend had to be cancelled because of Covid. More information on previous courses can be found here: Previous Permaveggies Courses.
I didn’t take many pictures this year, so thanks to Meg Anderson, Jen McConachie and Mark Tacker who took the pictures below.

Malvik:

In the Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Garden:

After Jen’s forest garden course, the participants split into groups to design a forest garden in a field next to the farm which it is planned to be developed as a forest garden (get in touch if you are interested!). Here is one of the groups presenting their plans:


Birds, Magazine article

Fuglevennlige planter

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English: A series of 3 articles written for Birdlife Norway’s magazine “Vår Fuglefauna”

Jeg har bestandig vært opptatt av å dyrke mat på en naturvennlig måte. Som unge vegetarianere i Norge tidlig på 1980-tallet var det livsnødvendig å kunne dyrke egen mat. Men, et av hovedgrunnene til at vi kjøpte nettopp dette stedet i Malvik var at det vokste vill hassel (Corylus avellana) her, et sikkert tegn til et rikt fuglemangfold (det var også 20-30 fuglekasser hengt opp i trærne og bygningene)! Siden starten av Corona-epidemien fikk jeg mye mer tid hjemme og den tiden har jeg brukt til å dokumentere det enorme mangfoldet av andre livsformer som finnes her (har god oversikt over fuglelivet), særlig insekter, som jeg lever sammen med i Den Spiselige Hagen hvor jeg har samlet et tilsvarende mangfold av spiselige planter fra hele verden i en skyggefull skoghage.
Det at jeg hadde blogget en god del om alternativ mat for fuglene som vi kan lett dyrke selv var utgangspunktet for at jeg ble spurt om å skrive en serie artikler om dette til medlemsbladet til Birdlife Norge (tidligere Norsk Ornitologisk Forening). Artiklene ble publisert i 2021/2022 og kan lastes ned nedenfor.
For å lære mer om fuglevennlige planter bli gjerne KVANN medlem (https://kvann.no/bli-med) og meld deg inn i lauget for Insekt- og fuglevennlige planter (gratis for medlemmene) – det blir tilbud på frø av noen av plantene som nevnes i artikkelen!
Jeg har så langt registrert 108 fugle- og 446 virvelløse dyrearter fra og i Den Spiselige Hagen (Naustanbergan i Artsobservasjoner), samt 11 pattedyr…og siden jeg er en integrert del av dette økosystemet et av dem er Homo sapiens😊

Download (PDF, 5.16MB)


Download (PDF, 312KB)


Download (PDF, 3.33MB)

Perennial vegetables, Tubers, water plants

Daniil and the duck potatoes

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We like to give our helpers /wwoofers an experience to remember.
Daniil Titov is with us for two weeks and in between the sleet showers we harvested the wapato/duck potato (Sagittaria latifolia), originally from the Mississippi River :)

Garden tour, Talks, Walk and talk

Organic week in Trøndelag / Økouka i Trøndelag

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Last week was National Organic Week (Økouka), a busy week for me as I had two garden tours in my Edible Garden in Malvik (the rain stopped both days just before we started), a walk and talk in the community garden at Væres Venner and a talk at Stammen Cafe & Bar in Trondheim on “Perennial Climate-friendly Food Plants for Urban Areas” talking about 15 advantages of growing perennials! Below you can see pictures from each of the events which were all well attended. I’ve credited the various photographers below. Thanks to all that came along!

1. Garden tour on Wednesday 27th September 

Making the Ø letter for Økouka (picture: Margaret Anderson)

2. Talk at Stammen 

Picture by Margaret Anderson
 

2. Garden tour on Sunday 1st October

Picture by Margaret Anderson

Pictures by Markus Tacker (click on the album pictures for more information):


Pictures by Marit By (click on the album pictures for more information)::

4. Walk and talk in the Væres Venner Community Garden
Pictures by Marit By (the World Garden looking good in its autumn colours with the backdrop of the old ash trees):


 

 

Butterflies and moths

Fleet of Admirals

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The numbers of red admiral butterflies have been building up over the last week and today with my large Buddleja davidii in full flower and warm summer weather, I counted at least 15 of the beauties, no doubt second generation butterflies from the influx we had earlier in the summer. I reported this earlier in our national web-based reporting system. To my surprise this was the largest number reported this year not only in the county but in the whole country! It seems to be a poor year for red admirals in the south of the country. 
My Buddleja (butterfly bush / sommerfuglbusk) has become large despite cutting it back severely every winter. It was planted here under the balcony so that I could get a good view from above from a self-sowed plant from another bush in the garden in 2010.

Food, Salad

50 and 20 year celebrations

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To celebrate our good friends’ Jurgen Wegter and Ingvild Haga’s 50th birthdays together with Meg’s 50-year anniversary of arriving in Europe for the first time (in Southampton near where I lived at the time) as well as my 50 year anniversary of leaving school and a memorable holiday with 20-30 school friends in Newton Ferrers in Devon, we made a special gourmet dinner of green mac-cheese. It had masses of veg mixed in – the year’s first broad beans and swiss chard, chicory, common sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus), Allium senescens leaves, shallots and garlic from last year, rehydrated winter chantarelles, golpar – ground seed of hogweed – Heracleum spp., together with ramsons salt, chili, sun dried tomatoes and mustard, all in a wholegrain spelt white sauce with wholegrain spelt pasta; it was  topped with alpine bistort bulbils). 
Not to be left out, the Extreme Salad Man contributed one of his Meditteranean diet inspired multispecies salads commemorating it is now almost 20 years since he put together a salad from home grown ingredients in Malvik comprising 537 ingredients. something the world hasn’t seen before or since (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=18997). The record was set on 24th August 2003. This time there were a mere 106 ingredients….sad to see, but he must be losing it….
Thanks to Jurgen for the salad pictures:

The Extreme Salad Man photographs his latest creation

Art, Perennial vegetables

Artist in Residence Elin Eriksen

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We’ve had a lovely 3 day visit this last weekend from artist Elin Eriksen from Nesodden starting a project based on my perennial vegetables. She sketched and photographed candidate plants in all 3 of my gardens, The Edible Garden, Ringve Botanical Gardens Onion Garden and the World Garden at Væres Venner! We look forward to seeing the results!
Elin has earlier created a poster of birds for Birdlife Norway (also for kids) and recently lead a course in botanical drawing for Sopp og Nyttevekstforbund at Valdres.
See more about Elin at http://www.elineriksen.com/om-elin