As some of you will know, chicories (sikkori) are just about my favourite veggies, in part due to their flexibility providing edible cooked greens, salad greens in an incredible array of colours and forms, coffee surrogate, edible flowers, winter forced chicons and some are even perennial. A big advantage is that they are easy to grow here organically. This is an old picture from four years ago of the Edible rooted chicory “Di Soncino”! It is also easy to grow your own seed and they mature even up here! I never cook this root cultivar on its own as a side vegetable, but add them to many fried dishes and soups…
Every winter for the last 10 years I’ve been sprouting the bulbils of the Scandinavian heirloom garlic Aleksandra. I sow them in soil and cut down about 3 times over a couple of months giving me garlic sprouts most days for my lunch.
Today’s garlic sprout photo shoot in the snowy garden :)A picture from 2005 showing the diversity of hard neck garlic topsets. Aleksandra (2nd from left at the top) has medium size bulbils and each plant produces maybe 30-40.
I have two large pot grown bay trees (Laurus nobilis) which are moved into my porch for the winter. In the summer, they are outside quite near to my oldest Hablitzia. A couple of seeds found their way into the pot a couple of years ago and the resultant plants seem quite happy there, clearly not bothered by not experiencing sub-zero tempreatures (it’s mostly between +5C and +10C) where it’s growing with little light. Last summer it climbed into the Bay in the spring, but died back earlier than my other plants presumably due to the drier conditions in competition with the Bay! Time for a snack soon!!
A collection of pictures of greens now available in my house (15th February 2016), mainly shoots of perennial vegetables!
Garlic bulbil (hvitløk-toppløk) shoots – I eat garlic bulbil shoots for most of the winter, Bulbils (topsets) form instead of flowers on hardneck garlic and are ideal for winter forcing indoors. I’m clipping them every day now to go with my lunch. The sprouts in the bucket on the left have been clipped down twice already and will try one more time before giving up. The bulbils were planted in the bucket on the right about two weeks ago.Seed sprouts from an oriental brassica that produced masses of seed…Madeira vine, Anredera cordifolia, is mainly known as a marginal root crop that’s not to everybody’s taste. It’s in the Basellaceae, related to both Basella (Ceylon spinach) and Ulluco (Ullucus tuberosus). All have edible shoots and greens. I had lots of small tubers last autumn, so why not use them for winter sprouts!Madeira vine, Anredera cordifolia
This is Japanese chives (japan-gressløk), received as Allium schoenoprasum var yezomonticola years ago, now apparently a synonym of Allium maximowicziiThis is Japanese chives (japan-gressløk), received as Allium schoenoprasum var yezomonticola years ago, now apparently a synonym of Allium maximowiczii, which is closely related to chives. It’s a more robust and productive plant than most chives. I replanted my oldest clump this autumn and had lots left over, so why not force them inside for winter onions! I’ll use this one again!This is Japanese chives (japan-gressløk), received as Allium schoenoprasum var yezomonticola years ago, now apparently a synonym of Allium maximowiczii, which is closely related to chives. It’s a more robust and productive plant than most chives. I replanted my oldest clump this autumn and had lots left over, so why not force them inside for winter onions! I’ll use this one again!Oca (Oxalis tuberosa) can also be winter forced for the greens!
Allium cernuum (Nodding onion / prærieløk) dug in the autumn and now providing winter onions from the living room….Egyptian/ walkabout /topset onion (luftløk) aerial onions can be sprouted indoors for winter greens
