Tag Archives: World Garden

World Garden November Salad

14th November 2024:  Although the World Garden I’ve created at the Væres Venner Community Garden in Trondheim is mostly perennials, I fill up gaps with some annuals and biennials and some of them continue right up to the first frosts when they become mush. Most of next week is forecast to be sub-zero day and night, so this was the last chance to harvest. See below the pictures for the ingredients list.
All the following were used in the salad and all were harvested in the World Garden!
Perennials:
Rumex acetosa subsp vinealis (wine sorrel / vinsyre)
Rumex acetosa “Abundance” (sorrel / engsyre)
Taraxacum tortilobum (Moss-leaved Dandelion / mosebladet løvetann)
Allium sativum (garlic / hvitløk)
Cirsium canum (Queen Anne’s thistle / Dronning Annes tistel); tubers
Helianthus tuberosus (Jerusalem artichoke / jordskokk); tubers
Annuals/Biennial:
Anthriscus cerefolium (chervil / hagekjørvel)
Petroselinum crispum (parsley / persille)
Fedia cornucopiae (horn of plenty)
Glebionis coronaria (chopsuey greens / kronkrage
Daucus carota (carrot / gulrot)
Brassica rapa “Målselvnepe” (turnip / nepe)
Flowers:
Calendula officinalis (pot marigold / ringblomst)
Malva moschata “Alba” (musk mallow / moskuskattost)
Fedia cornucopiae (horn of plenty)
Raphanus sativus (radish / reddik)

Saint John’s Eve Felafels

Yesterday was St. John’s Eve and many Norwegians (and other Scandinavians) celebrated what is known here as Sankthans or Jonsok with communal bonfires, the big midsummer celebration. Sankt Hans is a short form of Sankt Johannes. There is a special perennial onion which was traditionally harvested on this day in the Netherlands, which I believe to have a much large potential than its current status as a local food crop, as it is so much easier to grow, in particular in areas increasingly suffering from summer droughts and water shortages and avoids common pests of onions and shallots by its early growth and perhaps also resistance. If nothing else, it complements shallots and onions in that it is available much earlier in the year!
There is genetic evidence that St. John’s onion (Johannes-løk) has a unique triparental origin A. × cornutum with three putative parental species, A. cepa, A. pskemense, and A. roylei. Hardiness is probably bestowed by hardy Allium pskemense which has been growing in the Ringve Botanical Gardens in Trondheim for many years. A similar hybrid has been found both in Germany, Croatia and India. It was perhaps more widely cultivated in the past and these are just remnant populations. On 21st June I harvested the Croatian accession from the Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical garden which had been left for two years resulting in hundreds of tightly packed onions and on 22nd June from the World Garden at the Væres Venner Community Garden. I replanted in both gardens single bulbs separated by about 10cm. in a roughly circular patch.
Last night, St. John’s Eve, I started a vegetarian midsummer tradition by making St. John’s Felafels with dried broad beans stored since the autumn and golpar spice (from dried seeds of a mix of Heracleum sp.).
See more about Johannes’ shallot at https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=22601

Dandelions in pink, white and yellow

16th May 2024: Dandelions in white, pink and (self-sowed) yellow in the Asian part of the World Garden at the Væres Venner Community Garden in Trondheim. I planted both Taraxacum albidum, Taraxacum leucanthum and Taraxacum pseudoroseum in this part of the garden and suspect these are albidum and pseudoroseum but am not sure. Will post separate albums below showing detailed studies of the pink and white one in case anyone has a key to these (there are several white flowered dandelion species in Asia).

Botanical details of what I’m growing as Taraxacum pseudoroseum in the World Garden at the Væres Venner community garden in Trondheim:

Botanical details of what I’m growing as Taraxacum albidum in the World Garden at the Væres Venner community garden in Trondheim. Anyone have a key to this species?

A diversity of rat’s tails

I remember years ago ordering seed of a special heirloom heritage radish “rat’s tail” (Raphanus sativus var caudatus) through the Heritage Seed Library in the UK. I remember that it was the gardener at naturalist Gilbert White’s House and Gardens at Selbourne in Hampshire that offered the seed and I remember that we ended up trading seed as they were looking for plants that Gilbert White mentioned; see  https://gilbertwhiteshouse.org.uk/gilberts-gardens 
The resultant plants had long green pods. However, I lost them eventually.  Subsequently I’ve tried seed of rat’s tails several times and the pods have never been as long as those original plants. 
Radishes are difficult to grow here in spring as our long days result in them quickly bolting (still looking for a good day neutral variety). I remember reading that when wild radish Raphanus sativus was originally domesticated in China that it was for the young seed pods rather than the swollen tap roots. 
I therefore decided this winter to source various rat’s tail radishes from commercial sources and also obtained seed of 4 (of 8 available) accessions from the German genebank IPK Gatersleben. There was no available descriptons, so this was a random selection. They were sown in May in the World Garden (Verdenshagen) at the Væres Venner Community Garden (NB! I do grow a few annuals on the world garden if they have an interesting geographical story associated).
Yesterday I harvested a few of each and was blown away by the diversity with long red, thin green and two more stumpy varieties like I had been getting in recent years when ordering rat’s tails. Below is what Cornucopia II says on this interesting vegetable. 
Assuming like me that you will want to grow your radishes to seed for the following year, the land is occupied all season in any case, so rat’s tails produce more than root radishes. The flowers are also also rather pretty bicoloured pink and white and area also attractive to pollinators! I think I will save seed and deveop a mixed grex of these and more varieties from the gene bank next year!
And this gave the opportunity for a unique rat’s tail salad for lunch with radish flowering tops too, also delicious (see the pictures at the bottom) :)

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Mini-glut of runner beans

The climate is such here that starting runner beans / blomsterbønner (Phaseolus coccineus) in mid-May they normally aren’t ready to harvest until September and the first frosts in October usually stop their development. Growing seed to maturity is also a challenge in many years, so it’s difficult to select better and earlier varieties more suited to my climate. Early October and we are only just managing to eat all the runner beans. Only once in the almost 40 years I’ve been growing them here was there such a big harvest that I had to preserve them. Not having a freezer, they were salted for later use. These were used in a fish soup this week, sliced using an English runner bean shredder! I grew two varieties this year, the heirloom Painted Lady with bicoloured red and white flowers and red flowered Firestorm with very long stringless beans. Firestorm was a little later. They were transplanted outside at home and in the Americas part of the World Garden at the Væres Venner Community Garden.



KVANN’s World Garden

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.