Thanks to Matthias Brück for preparing cactus pads (nopalitos) from Opuntia ficus-indicus for lunch, a long job by hand to de-spine first, but delicious! Does the old variety developed by Luther Burbank, “Burbank’s Spineless” still exist?
At least one, maybe two blackcaps (munk in Norwegian) were foraging on my apple trees most of today.
What to do with the present glut of courgettes (aka zucchinis / baby marrows)? Once dried, they taste slightly sweet raw!
A productive afternoon in the woods yesterday on the Malvik side of Solemsvåttan with my Swiss helper Julia Albrecht with a good haul of bilberries and the year’s first chantarelles! Yes, I think I live in paradise :)
See last year’s blog on raspberry / bilberry leather here: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=13187
12th August Added pictures of leather made from cloudberries, bilberries and wild raspberries!
English: pictures from Norwegian Seed Savers visit to Njøs, an old fruit research station near Leikanger in Sogn! We saw Stein Harald Hjetnes’ own developed Celina pear as well as collections and trials of fruit including sea buckthorn, haskaps, minikiwi and others!
Norwegian: Tusen takk til Stein Harald Hjeltnes og Dag Røen for et spennende og lærerik besøk i praktfulle omgivelser under KVANNs årsmøtet i Leikanger i April!
I was asked if it is possible to grow papaws (Asimina triloba) in Norway. I don’t think it’s impossible, but I suspect they need warmer summers than most parts of Norway can offer. I have seen good size trees in Malmø (Southern Sweden) with one fruit at the end of July in Åke Truedssons garden and a good size tree in the Gøteborg Botanical, pictures in both sites are from 29th-30th July 2008. I don’t know how these trees are doing today. I’ve tried a couple of times. I’ve managed to germinate seed, but the plants hardly grow in my cold summers! See more about papaw (which is not the same as the better known tropical pawpaw or papaya) on the wiki page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba
1) In Åke Truedsson’s garden in Malmø with a fruit!
2) In the Gothenburg Botanical Garden
At the apple moon coring and cutting apples is a must..processed a couple of hundred apples today, now drying over the wood stove and in the oven. It’s a it more urgent than normal as -8C when I finally managed to harvest them was a bit too much and they won’t be able to be stored long this year (all have brownish blotches on the outside), a bit like the supermoon picture I just took, see below ;)
Part of the biggest flock of waxwings (sidensvans) in the garden today, around 350 birds!….seriously distracted all day by these photogenic arctic “parrots”! Feeding on yew (barlind), hawthorn (hagtorn), elderberries (svarthyll) and guelder rose (krossved) berries…
1. Waxwings in flight
2. Waxwings on the yew tree by the kitchen window
3. Waxwings on yew berries in the neighbour’s garden
4. Waxwings and sunrise
5. In this film you can hear waxwing poop falling to the ground…I thought it was raining!