All posts by Stephen Barstow

Allium dispersal

Allium dispersal?
Well, this week was the week when vegetatively propagated onions from the Allium Garden Chicago in Trondheim were dispersed to members of the Norwegian Seed Savers organisation (KVANN; kvann.no) across the country for safekeeping (backup) and, hopefully spreading onwards in a year or two to other members! It’s been a very busy week digging up, sorting and packing altogether 271 portions of 62 varieties to 54 members! In case you were curious, below is the list of Alliums and a few other things I had promised folks. There were sent many land races of Allium x proliferum (luftløk / walking onion) and also many sand leek land races (Allium scorodorprasum
It’s too late to order now, but seed will be offered in the new year.
1 Allium “Wietses onion”
2 Allium brevistylum
3 Allium caeruleum (bulbils)
4 Allium carolianum
5 Allium cernuum «Alan Kapuler»
6 Allium cernuum «Dwarf White»
7 Allium cernuum “Tall White”
8 Allium cernuum x stellatum “Hammers Planteskole”
9 Allium douglasii
10 Allium fistulosum «Ex-Salatnyj 35»
11 Allium flavum “Blue Leaf”
12 Allium flavum var minus
13 Allium hookeri var muliense
14 Allium hymenorhizum
15 Allium ledebourianum
16 Allium moly
17 Allium angulosum x nutans “Norrlandsløk fra Lund”
18 Allium nutans
19 Allium nutans “Isabelle”
20 Allium ochotense “Tei, Japan”
21 Allium schoenoprasum subsp boreale Stonglandseidet, Senja (Siberian chioves)
22 Allium scorodoprasum unknown variety
23 Allium scorodoprasum Abrahamsplassen
24 Allium scorodoprasum Bornholm, Danmark
25 Allium scorodoprasum Grums, Sverige
26 Allium scorodoprasum Homborsund Fyr
27 Allium scorodoprasum Kvinnherad /Uppsala
28 Allium scorodoprasum Møvik, Kristiansand
29 Allium scorodoprasum Slovakia
30 Allium scorodoprasum Tjörn i Bohuslän, Sverige
31 Allium tuberosum “Sibbo” (Swedish heirloom)
32 Allium victorialis
33 Allium victorialis “Røst”
34 Allium wallichii
35 Tulbaghia “Cosmic”
36 Luftløk unknown 
37 Luftløk 5-story 
38 Luftløk Amish Spreading
39 Luftløk Beito
40 Luftløk Borøya, Tvedestrand
41 Luftløk Egyptian USA
42 Luftløk Grandma Pfeifer USA
43 Luftløk Labråten, Asker
44 Luftløk Lachmanns vei, Oslo
45 Luftløk Landeskogen Tuberkulose Sanatorium, Agder
46 Luftløk Lindesnes Fyr
47 Luftløk Malvik
48 Luftløk Ottawa Canada
49 Luftløk Sandholmen, Dønna
50 Luftløk Sola
51 Luftløk Sunnfjord
52 Luftløk Øyer, Innlandet
53 Luftløk Udøy, Mandal
54 Luftløk Forsand i Lysefjorden, Sandnes
55 Luftløk Varaldsøy, Kvinnherad
56 Luftløk Volga German
57 Luftløk Vollsveien på Jar, Bærum
58 Luftløk Tungenes Fyr, Randaberg
59 Luftløk Øyvind Erland
60 Tricyrtis sp. (toad lily)
61 Aralia cordata
62 Allium x cornutum “St Jansuien, Nederland”
63 Elaeagnus umbellatus
64 Sagittaria latfolia
65 Papaver somniferum Miks


50 Garden Pea Varieties

Every year I grow 15-20 different garden pea (Lathyrus oleraceus / Pisum sativum) varieties and they’ve now all been dried, I’ve taken seed of those I want to continue with or share with members of KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) and the remainder will become delicious multivariety pea soup in winter:
It turns out that I altogether have exactly 50 varieties in my seed vault (i.e, the cellar), some of which are only grown every 3rd year. Some are modern varieties, others Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish and UK heirlooms.  Today I was sorting the packets and peas in old packets (more than 4 years old) were added to the soup mix! I recycle seed packets, so not many of these packets were originally for peas!


Edible Gothenburg

On my way back from the Future Heirloom event in Copenhagen, I had a few hours between trains to visit one of my favourite Botanical gardens in Gothenburg, Sweden, Göteborgs botaniska trädgård. Apart from a very short visit on my way to Austria and the UK by train in January 2020, the last time I had visited was on 30th August 2017 when I did an edibles walk and talk with my friend Bosse Blomquist (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=13658). Afterwards, I did two talks (as the first was sold out) and even got to stay the night in the flat in the gardens!
Thanks again to Johan Nilson for showing me around behind the scenes and telling me about the big changes happening at the gardens with new glasshouses being built where the old ones had been!
Below are pictures of edible plants I spotted in the gardens during my latest visit:



 

First Chestnut

I have a 20+ year old sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) tree in my garden. I didn’t really think it would make it here, so it was planted in not the best spot in the garden. To my great surprise, it has only suffered a little frost damage at the tips in the first few years. It even survived the record cold winter in 2011 here when the entire root system would have been frozen solid for up to 4 months. Last year, I noticed both male and female flowers for the first time, but no nuts resulted. Then, I was leading a tour of the garden in September and took the participants into the lane below the garden from where there’s a good view of the chestnut, a mulberry, Chinese walnut, Carya ovata, Cornus kousa and Rhus typhina. My eyes rested on a chestnut at the top of the tree! I cried out in my excitement and did a little dance to the amusement of those present! The 20 year wait to see if chestnuts could ripen up here was perhaps over! With only one tree, I hadn’t expected this and had planted a second tree next to it, but that is also growing slowly and it will be some years before it flowers.
Last week, we had another look and it looked as though it was slightly open and looked mature (darker colour). I therefore decided to knock it down. There is thick vegetation below the tree, and despite searching I could find no chestnut….just the open husk (pictures). It was presumably not pollinated, but it does give me hope that it is possible in this area. This tree came from woodland in southern England. I’ve now planted good varieties at the community garden (Væres Venner Felleshage), so will just have to wait!

Asteraceae: valuable autumn flowering edientomentals!

When giving talks I like to renew myself and talk about something different each time. For my talk in Copenhagen at the Future Heirloom event last weekend I focussed during part of my presentation on edimentals in the Asteraceae or Compositae (the aster or daisy family / kurvplantefamilien). These are tbe edible perennial vegetables that are most obvious in the autumn garden and often underutilised by chefs in the west. Visiting the World Garden a few days before my talk on 17th October, I gathered flowers from all the flowering Asteraceae and here they are with names:Most are used for their tasty spring shoots and leaves, used cooked and raw, and most have a characteristic fragrant taste / aroma loved in the Far East (as also Chrysanthemum tea is popular and a refreshing accompaniment to spicy dishes). Aster scaber and Ligularia fischeri are nowadays both cultivated in a big way as “sannamul” in Korea and even exported to Korean markets around the world. Young shoots of other Aster sp. are  foraged in Asia as is big-leaf Aster, Aster macrophyllus, in North America. Also from North America, cutleaf coneflower Rudbeckia laciniata or sochan was a popular vegetable for the Cherokee first people and in recent years has, maybe not unsurprisingly become a commercial vegetable in Korea. Annual shungiku or chopsuey greens Glebionis coronaria  hails from the Mediterranean but is today an important vegetable in the Far East! Others currently in flower are best known as root crops, including (in the picture) Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) and Dahlia. Yacon (Polymnia sonchifolia) is also autumn flowering but doesn’t manage to flower here (is moved indoors to flower and bulk up). The final flower in the picture is marigold Calendula officinalis, whose culinary use includes decorating and flavouring salads, soups and other dishes.
Late flowering also means that the Asteraceae are also particularly important for a range of insect pollinators like hoverflies, drone flies and bees as can be seen in the pictures below, all taken in the World Garden:




The Big Fungi Haul

It’s ridiculous but it’s been such a busy summer that I hadn’t found time for foraging mushrooms in the forest this year until last Saturday 12th October. We took advantage of our helper Aleksandra Domańska from Sweden / Poland to harvest the ridiculous amounts of winter chanterelles / traktkantarell Craterellus tubaeformis in the forest at the moment. The first we picked were frozen but it became warmer as the day progressed. We returned to our car pool vehicle after several hours with 24kg of fungi, mostly winter chanterelles but also with a good number chantarelles / kantarell. two types of hedgehog fungi / piggsopp, one sheep polypore / sauesopp (Albatrellus ovinus), one cep / steinsopp and a few yellowfoot / gul trompetsopp (Craterellus lutescens). Some of the pictures in the forest were taken by Cathrine Kramer from The Center of Genomic Gastronomy who has been filming my autumn activities for a couple of days.



Traditional Wapato Harvest

Last year a garden helper, Daniil, helped me to harvest the wapato or duck potatoes (Sagittaria latifolia) which originate from the Mississippi River in Wisconsin. I grow them in a large bucket every year. There was ice on the water when Daniil harvested the tubers with his hands. This year my helper Aleksandra Domańska from Sweden / Poland was up to the task of trying to harvest them in the traditional way with her feet and bravely stepped into the muddy bucket, sinking quickly to the bottom in the only slightly warmer water than last year! She then used her hands to harvest a good crop of tubers. See the bottom of this post for links to other wapato posts. These tubers are one of the tastiest root crops! This was an experience that none of us are likely to forget, not the least Aleksa! It was also filmed by another visitor Cathrine Kramer from the Center for Genomic Gastronomy who is making a film of 4 seasons in my garden (see us all in the last picture!)

LINKS:
Daniil and the duck potatoes
https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=31597
Freezing Wapato and Chinese Arrowhead harvest:  https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=30703
Sam Thayer and Mississippi wapato:
https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=30714

Autumn berries and fruit

As far as possible, I like to eat fresh fruit and berries from the garden, usually with muesli for breakfast. I’ve been self-sufficient for many years, mostly home grown but augmented with wild foraged bilberries / blåbær. From when the cellar stored apples are finished, usually in April to the first haskaps and strawberries are ready, we go over to rehydrated dried fruit. Currently these are the berries and fruit we are eating now in autumn as the first frosts threaten:
1. Elaeagnus umbellata (autumn olive;  Japansk sølvbusk) 
2. Rubus ‘Sonja’ (blackberry; bjørnebær) – the only blackberry cultivar I am aware of that is hardy enough for our climate, not freezing in winter. Productive with tasty berries too!
3. Ribes divaricatum “Worcesterberry” (Worcesterbær)
4. Ribes biebersteinii (Ribes petraeum var. biebersteinii) (black redcurrant; svartrips); isn’t truly black, more dark purple coloured; hang a long time on the bushes and don’t seem to be taken by thrushes (like blackcurrants)
5. Malus domestica (apple; epler) – eating the windfalls that won’t store long.

Future heirloom in Copenhagen

I was chuffed to be asked to be “support act” along with Anders Borgen on the last date of landrace gardener Joseph Lofthouse’s European tour in Copenhagen on 20th October! I therefore broke my decision not to travel outside of Norway to give talks, in particular as I can get there by train 🙂 Looking forward to a great day and meeting old friends again! See you there?
More information:
https://hrs.dk/future-heirloom

Around the garden in 40 plants

To celebrate 40 years since I and my then wife Eileen bought Bergstua (literally house on the rock) and the garden that became The Edible (Forest) Garden, I endeavoured during the second of the two garden tours (as part of økouka – organics week) to talk about 40 of the plants in the garden during the 90 minute tour (see below)…and underway I discovered two firsts for the garden! Next time I must do an Around the Garden in 80 plants tour (it’s soon the 10th anniversary of my book!)….but would anyone come to a 3 hour tour?
Curious about what plants I talked about on this mid-September day, then scroll down as I list and have added notes about all 40!
…and another lovely group of participants took part on this special Saturday garden tour:

Here are the plants and subjects I talked about:
1. Urtica dioica, stinging nettle / brennesle and plant #1 for biodiversity in the garden: 60+ moth and butterfly larvae feed on this plant and various birds like bullfinch and redpoll (dompap og gråsisik) feed on the seeds in winter; I don’t cut down this patch in good view of the kitchen window for winter bird watching:

2. Urtica gracilis, California nettle, slender nettle is considered a subspecies of dioica and reaches over 3m in my garden on dry soil:
3. Salix caprea, goat willow / selje; even though not edible for us, it’s another key species for biodiversity important for wild bees, bumble bees and other insects, including 60 moths feeding on the catkins in mid-April and as a larval food plants and in turn for insectivorous birds, many of which like the chiffchaff (gransanger) arrive as the flowers open. I have several large trees in the garden:4. Vicia faba, broad beans / bondebønner; the authorities recommend that we eat more climate friendly / healthy vegetarian and vegan foods, yet much of this food is imported. Broad (fava) beans were the original hummus / felafel bean and we should be growing them in a big way, even here along the Trondheimsfjord where I live; this is the diverse local grex I’ve developed here, currently drying for seed and winter dishes:5. Phaseolus coccineus, runner beans / løpebønner; I’m also developing a local early land race that produces ripe beans here:6. Cichorium intybus, chicory / sikori; one of my favourite vegetables with bitterness lacking in modern diets. It’s a versatile vegetable and salad crop with hundreds of varieties that I’m trialling; is easy to save seed from and when in flower in late summer is loved by hoverflies – I also have perennial plants that have naturalised here: 
7. Allium cernuum, nodding or Chicago onion / prærieløk is probably my favourite and most used perennial onion; it’s super-hardy, can be harvested all winter, tolerates also heat and drought, is a fast grower and is one of the best edientomentals (edible, pollinator friendly and ornamental):
8. Allium wallichii, Sherpa or Nepal onion / Sherpaløk; see my book and search on this blog for much more about this great Allium; I talked about the pleasure of the Nepalese botanist and his wife who visited my garden and met this onion (Jimmu) for the first time, despite having eaten it all their lives – they had never been to the high elevations where this plant grows and is grown for markets, destined for lentil soup.
9.  Allium stipitatum, Persian shallot is one of the ornamental onions that are commonly sold in garden centres in autumn; they are productive, quickly multiplying here. They are used in the Iranian national dish yogurt and Persian shallot dip (Mast-o Mooseer) and often spiced up with the delicious ground seeds of Tromsø-palm (Heracleum persicum) or golpar! I showed both the spice and seeds of another Heracleum species that we use daily in various dishes, replacing cumin.10. Heracleum sphondylium, hogweed / kystbjørnekjeks: probably the most important plant in the garden for a wide range of pollinators – several rare hoverflies, wasps and wild bees have turned up in the umbels; it also flowers over a very long period and provides me also with golpar (see #9) and delicious spring shoots. It’s flowered this year continuously in the garden from June this year:
11. Allium victorialis, victory onion / seiersløk; see my book and search the web site for more information. Another great edientomental!
12. Hosta sieboldiana “Big Daddy”; the perennial vegetable that really shows the benefits, attractive, tasty plants that can be grown in places like the shady, north side of your house where you wouldn’t dream of growing annuals, never need irrigation, may well outlive you and are, surprisingly, very nutritious and productive. Cultivated as sansai vegetables in a big way in the mountains in Japan. See my book and search this web page for much more. 13. Malva moschata, musk mallow / moskuskattost is my favourite Malvaceae; can be used throughout the summer (flowers and young seed pods can also be eaten).
14.Malva alcea, hollyhock mallow / rosekattost; as Malva moschata
15-16. Aster scaber and Aster yomena are two tall autumn flowering species currently brightening up the garden; the former is a very important cultivated pring vegetable in Korea (see more in my book), the latter is wild foraged in Japan:17. Rudbeckia laciniata, Cherokee spinach, sochan / kyss-meg -over-gjerde, gjerdesolhatt; perhaps the most commonly grown ornamental in Norwegian gardens since 1900 is the most important vegetable for the Cherokee people of the Appalachian mountains; is now being cultivated commercially in Korea.
18. Vitis coignetiae,  crimson glory vine, Japanvin (can be seen in the background of the picture above); the grapes are small and my plant hasn’t produced any – leaves can be used as wraps.
19. Ligularia fischeri; gomchwi, Korea-nøkketunge; an important cultivated vegetable in Korea (king of the sannamul or mountain vegetables). More on my web site.
20. Dahlia, georginer; came to Europe originally as a tuber crop but was outcompeted by potato.
21. Secale “Mountaineer”, perennial rye / flerårige rug: we talked about the benefits of perennial grains which can give large savings in fuel, watering and fertiliser as with all perennial crops (both perennial barley and wheat have also been created but developments are slow)22. Solanum lycopersicum, tomato / tomat; we talked about two varieties (shown in the picture) that I’d recently harvested: large German Pink was the first edible to be saved and offered through Seed Savers Exchange in 1973. I was gifted seed through SSE when I visited in 2019 and it is now greenhouse grown by several in KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers); mine were grown indoors. The smaller tomato is probably the best early, cold tolerant variety I’ve grown (starting with 10 varieties 3 years ago, these along with 42 days and Turbo Reaktniy ripened outside in mid-August). 23. Fagopyrum tataricum, tartary buckwheat / vill bokhvete; I collect the seed which are used to produce buckwheat sprouts in winter in the living room; I’m also trying different varieties looking for best varieties for popping!
24. Fagopyrum acutatum, perennial buckwheat / flerårige bokhvete; used as a vegetable rather than a grain plant.
25. Campanula rapunculoides, creeping bellflower / ugressklokke; this is the only flowering bellflower at the moment, but isn’t the best edible bellflower – my favourite is giant bellflower / storklokke Campanula latifolia which has a long history of use in Norway, in particular, the sami people in the south and, historically, also Norwegians in my area harvested leaves to use in springtime soups.
26. Gunnera tinctoria is known as nalca in Chile where the leaf stems are sold on markets, used in the national dish curanto, a fish and meat stew; at this time of year the stems are rather fibrous, but can be used to quench the thirst. We sampled one of the stems and the taste was rather neutral with no sense of sweetness or sourness I’ve tasted before (participants got the quenching the thirst thing!):27. Actinidia deliciosa, kiwi fruit; I germinated some seeds from a supermarket kiwi 30 years ago, accidentally left the resulting young plants outside all winter and they survived and are still alive today on the house wall – no chance of any fruit here as our summers are too cold and you need two compatible plants, but the one surviving plant flowers every summer. 
28.Staphylea pinnata, bladdernut / blærenøtt; it’s 17 years now since I planted this tree and it produces many small nuts that taste a bit like pistachios, but they are really too small to be useful. On the other hand, the young shoots and flowers are very tasty.29. Taraxacum sp., dandelion / løvetann; I showed these boxes which contain 22 dandelion species which I received as seed from a dandelion specialist in the UK, all formally identified  this will allow me to more easily follow and learn the ID key in the Field Handbook to British and Irish Dandelions :) 30. Hablitzia tamnoides, Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde – as usual I told the story of my favourite perennial vegetable, still after 23 years as productive as ever and reaching 3m each summer on this shady wall (more in my book and this web site); I here introduced the role of Fredrik Christian Schübeler botanical garden in Oslo in the late 1800s in our knowledge of this plant as one of the best perennial vegetables today; this also lead to my involvement in recreating Schübelers hager, a network of inspiration gardens in Norway inspired by Schübelers own network of rectory gardens to which all my 3 gardens belong; see https://kvann.no/schubeler/om-schubelers-hager:31. Ribes divaricatum “Worcesterberry”; all participants sampled my Worcesterberries which will hang on the bushes until the first hard frosts:
32. Arctium lappa, greater burdock / storborre is one of the best edi-ento-avi-mentals – edible roots and flower stems, pollinator friendly and bird friendly as well as being an attractive (interesting) plant. The plant in the picture was planted there easily seen from my living room in winter when goldfinches / stillits arrive to feed on the oil-rich seeds:33. Scorzonera hispanica, scorzonera, scorsonerrot; the last flowers on this great long-lived perennial vegetable (much more in my book):34 – 35. Aralia cordata, udo is my largest perennial veg and is seen here at 23 years old with Aroma apples (Malus domestica) in the part of the garden that is most like a mature productive forest garden with all the layers of edible plants – lesser celandine / vårkål; ground elder / strutsevinge; ostrich fern / strutsevinge; giant bellflower / storklokke; Aralia racemosa, cordata and elata; redcurrant and blackcurrant etc. and goat willow / selje towering above. Ironically, I spent a whole summer terracing above this part of the garden, the steepest and now most productive! I talked also about how the first permaculturists visiting the garden in the mid-2000s after an appearance on Norwegian TV and a 3 part article on the Edible Garden in the national gardening magazine Hagetidend, told me that I had a forest garden! The garden is now also part of the permaculture LAND Centre network.
36. Castanea sativa, sweet chestnut / edelkastanje; as I was showing the participants this part of the garden my eyes rested on my first sweet chestnut on a tree I planted, from woodland in Southern England, in May 2008 at 4 years old.37. Received as Juglans cathayensis , Chinese walnut / Kinesisk valnøtt (the tree is laden again this year with the chestnut seen at the far left)38. Corylus colurna, Turkish hazel / Tyrkisk hassel:39. Rhus typhina, staghorn sumac / hjortesumak (we tasted “lemonade” bush)40. Malus fusca,  Oregon crabapple, Pacific crabapple; I don’t think fruits  on this tree had fully ripened before and I thought the taste was quite pleasant:

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