MAC 69 ONION CHEESE

Thanks everyone for all the birthday greetings! I spent my 69th by visiting the Onion Garden Chicago that I look after at the Ringve Botanical Garden, worked for an hour and harvested leaves from 69 different Alliums as one does, surprised my daughter by meeting her off the bus from Oslo and then had a lovely evening with Mac 69 Onion Cheese with Hablitzia tamnoides washed down with a few glasses, my first birthday as a Norwegian citizen 🙂

Wietse’s onion (Allium pskemense x fistulosum) is already huge!
Beautiful Allium moly shoots!

One of the Allium victorialis group accessions

The Full Gap

I used to call it the Hungry Gap (Vårknipen), but transitioning to a large proportion of perennials this is the time I now call the Full Gap! The vegetables were quickly stir-fried in olive oil and added to a 100% whole grain rye, emmer and spelt quiche (eggepai).
These were the veggies I harvested for last night’s dinner (names below). Taraxacum sp.  dandelion / løvetann
Hablitzia tamnoides  Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde
Cichorium intybus chicory / sikkori (2 cellar forced Witloof type cultivars, one purple leaved, the other green)
Allium cernuum nodding onion / prærieløk
Allium fistulosum  Welsh onion / pipeløk
Allium x proliferum  walking onion / luftløk
Allium paradoxum One flowered leek
Dystaenia takesimana  Seombadi;  giant Korean celery / Ulleung kjempeselleri
Allium sativum  garlic / hvitløk (shoot from a stand grown as a perennial)
Aegopodium podograria  ground elder / skvallerkål
Hemerocallis middendorfii
Campanula latifolia 
giant bellflower / storklokke
Allium ochotense oriental victory onion / orientalsk seiersløk
Myrrhis odorata  sweet cicely / Spansk kjørvel
Allium hymenorrhizum



Edibles at RHS Wisley

Since my last visit to RHS Wisley 5 years ago there have been large changes, notably the RHS Hilltop building and adjacent World Food Garden. Last Thursday I was fortunate to be invited to visit by head of the RHS Edibles team, Sheila Das, who had attended my talk on home territory in the autumn (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=31687). I was bowled over by the scale of what has already been achieved and the ambitious plans for the future moving away from the “conventional” towards organics, food forests, food diversity, no dig etc. and firmly anchored in improving  biodiversity – pollinators, habitat, the important role of fungi etc (less cutting, more untidy and irregular), sustainability and climate friendly gardening.
After showing me the plans, Sheila took me on to rooftop of Hilltop to get a bird’s eye view of the World Food Garden before walking around. The rigid rectangular growing beds of old are gone, replaced by curved beds in all shapes and sizes and gone also are the straight lines, replaced by irregular intercropping and demonstration of the incredible diversity of food crops available to the UK grower. Edible climbers were being trained up the outside of the perimeter wooden fence. You can already see a number of perennials in the 1 acre World Food Garden (my own Word Garden at 12m diameter now seems tiny in comparison!).  Below can be seen various pictures that I took on a tour of what has become probably the most popular part of RHS Wisley – amazing to witness this transition of the RHS as largely an organisation for ornamental gardeners to an organisation where more than 50% of members today note growing food as their main interest. Of course, edimentals can help bridge the gap between the two gardening camps! See the pictures and captions below for more!

 

Early spring moths and sallow

The end of March this year was mild with little frost.  I was surprised to find the first flowering sallow / selje (Salix caprea) on 19th March and by the end of the month some larger trees were in full flower providing much needed food for a myriad of insects include wild bees, bumble bees and most of the 13 moth species shown below, all of which were photographed in my garden at the end of March, attracted by a moth trap. In turn, birds are attracted to the insect feast and some also feed on the nectar directly.



Sleepless night counting geese flocks

Not much sleep last night as the year’s biggest migration of pinkfooted geese this year (kortnebbgås) went on from 2230 to 0400! Counting flocks of geese doesn’t put you to sleep, it has the opposite effect and I’m not complaining…altogether 30 flocks passed over in this time (will have missed a few as I dosed off occasionally) with somewhere between 3000 and 6000 birds passing eastwards along the fjord before heading north to their pit stop on agricultural land just north of here!
The bright light isn’t my moth trap, it’s the one owned by the workers electrifying the railway :)