On Sunday 26th May we organized a potluck party in Væres Venners Community Garden in Trondheim for the first time! It was a fantastically successful event in glorious summer weather close to 30C (and a record for May) and with 40 participants, both members of the community garden (and supporters) and KVANN Trøndelag members. The participants brought a large variety of food dishes as we had hoped! The highlight was Anders (and Barbro) Nordrum’s introductory lecture on food preparedness! Thanks to everyone, we will be doing this again! My contribution was naturally a salad and I had to apologise as there were only 50 plants in it ;) The white flowers: ramsons (ramsløk), sweet cicely (Spansk kjørvel), Allium zebdanense and sea kale (strandkål). General pictures by Dan Smith!
Despite the record warm May here at 63.4N with temperatures up to 30C and drought like conditions (forest fire warnings on the news every day), my now 23 year old udo (Aralia cordata) has grown away well, but perhaps not as vigorous as normal in cooler damper conditions which are the norm for May. Sadly, my California-udo (Aralia californica) which was in a much drier location seems to have died, although I have a clone in the World Garden at the Væres Venner Community Garden. Thanks to KVANN member Nina Sandli who took the picture on a visit on 25th May! More about my super vegetable in many blog posts, see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?s=udo or read about it in my book Around the World in 80 plants!
The St. George’s mushrooms (vårfagerhatt) come up every year under the old birch tree next to my sitting place in the garden. They weren’t really growing much more in the heat and drought, so they were harvested for a little lunch stir-fry with fresh asparagus and the last of the heirloom shallots (Finland) from storage.
I’ve changed full circle from the days when I fought against the dandelions to nowadays actively encouraging them in my perennial beds as they will be my most important veg all winter when we eat them every day (digging the roots for forcing like chicory before the first hard frosts). They fill all the gaps between my perennial edibles on the beds in the video and provide food for a range of insects and birds (directly feeding on the seeds and indirectly picking off the insects). At the same time I’ve become a much happier person looking at the seed heads, representing hope rather than disASTER (get it? Dandelions are in the Asteraceae)!
I love when my gardening activities attract wildlife and contributes to the biodiversity of this wonderful place! I’m once again growing wapato (Sagittaria latifolia) in addition to Chinese arrowhead (probably Sagittaria trifolia) in large containers (sorry for the plastic!). I can see these containers from my sitting place in the garden behind the Amelanchier hedge and in the heat wave and drought we’ve been experiencing with record high May temperatures (over 30C not far from here), I’ve seen several bird species drinking. Today, I found a batman hoverfly (dødningehodeblomsterflue; Myathropa florea) in one of the buckets:
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?
I’ve been making a little blanched Hosta salad for lunch this week. Just cover your plant before the shoots appear in spring, cut and serve with a Japanese dipping sauce – roasted sesame oil mixed with soy sauce. I also used Japanese Oenanthe javanica (seri) this way one day too and both were delicious!
This week’s perennial veg stir-fry with soba (buckwheat noodles), Japanese style contained the following (roughly left to right in the picture): Nettles / stornesle (Urtica dioica) Burdock / storborre roots (Arctium lappa); stored in the cellar Wapato tubers (Sagittaria latifolia); stored in the cellar in water Ramsons / ramsløk (Allium ursinum) Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde (Hablitzia tamnoides) Giant bellflower / storklokke (Campanula latifolia) Himalayan water creeper (Houttuynia cordata) – reddish shoots Sand leek / bendelløk (Allium scorodoprasum) Garlic / hvitløk (Allium sativum)
After yesterday’s video post about the snow onion (Allium humile) I had to make a snow onion lunchtime salad, so here it is; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mOcQ4aUQVI Ingredients below the pictures.
A new video on my youtube channel, the wonderfully exclusive SNOW ONION from the China and the Himalaya https://youtu.be/5mOcQ4aUQVI We’re back in the Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim, Norway on 10th May and the first Allium is in flower. It’s Allium humile, known as the snow onion (snøløk) and one of my favourites and one of the world’s most exclusive foods, known from the ethnobotanical literature to be wild collected both in Kashmir, where it has also been domesticated in kitchen gardens and sold in markets, and in the northernmost Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Before you ask, I have no idea where you can get hold of seed or plants – my plants are sterile (no seed) – an exceptionally rare edimental (the garden website is here https://www.ntnu.edu/museum/the-onion-garden)
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
