A tour of my garden on 2nd April 2019 talking about one of my favourite perennial vegetables, Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach). It’s extremely early yielding, productive, tasty, can be grown in complete shade, is very hardy and is nutritionally great too. I have currently about 11 different plants, 6 from old gardens in Scandinavia where people have been using Hablitzia as a spinach and salad crop for over 130 years and three wild accessions from the Caucasus. My oldest plant that you will see in this video was planted in 2002 and I’ve been harvesting since January this year, the reason the shoots are not very long! Nutritionally, Hablitzia is also definitely worth eating and contains particularly plenty of carotenoids, folates, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and zinc. Also many other nutritional components were larger in Hablitzia than in spinach and New Zealand spinach (from a Finnish study). See http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=8606
Tag Archives: Caucasian spinach
Old Growth Hablitzia today!
My oldest Hablitzia (Caucasian spinach) planted here in 2001 is the right of these two plants, the one on the left is self-sowed!
Variegated Hablitzia on Nesodden
I visited my son today on Nesodden (Oslo) and was impressed by how much growth his Hablitzia had put on and then I noticed that one of the stems had variegated leaves…I’m not sure if this is the same plant as the stems with normal leaves…will try to check on my next visit!
Happy Habby Pizza
Last night’s dinner was a 100% wholegrain sourdough pizza with Hablitzia, four cheese and poppy seed topping…
The dough was made from a selection of whole grain organic flours including: coarse rye, emmer, barley, coarse spelt, svedjerug and a few barley and svedjerug grains added.
It was accompanied by a blanched salad – sea kale, dandelion “Vert de Montmagny Ameliore” and Allium tuberosum!
Sooooo tasty….
The Hablitzia once again impresses with its incredible productivity and early growth in one of the driest, shadiest places in the garden!
Mass Hablitzia germination
Hablitzia’s attempt to take over the temperate world continues with this mass germination after 10 days in the fridge! Plenty of plants will be finding new homes this summer.
In its 18th year
My oldest Hablitzia is finally growing after the cold winter and in response to higher daytime temperatures over +5C!
Verdenshage and Væres Venner
It was the first time I cycled to my office at the Ringve Botanical Garden today and I took the opportunity to see how the new Væres Venner community garden was looking (starting this year east of Ranheim at Være) . The snow had gone! At the entrance to the garden (Væres Venner) we will plant our World Edible Garden (Verdenshage) – large circular bed with the centre representing the north pole and mainly edible perennials distributed according to where they grow or are used in the Northern Hemisphere (see the first video below, where you can see an inner circle where we planted temporarily some 60 different plants in the autumn…and some are still ALIVE)!!
We have also purchased a couple of hardy walnuts and various hazel cultivars which will be planted along with many other fruit and berry bushes! I’m helping to design and develop the garden with a great group of enthusiasts and I hope that it will be formally adopted as one of KVANNs Vegetable Sanctuaries (KVANN=Norwegian Seed Savers)
Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasus!) has survived!
Moon garden?
Hardy Habby
Hablitzia tamnoides (stjernemelde) is a pretty tough plant! These plants in a bucket have been like this exposed to this colder than average winter, totally frozen for probably 3 months and exposed to the swings in temperature as not buried in the insulating soil. Now waterlogged as the temperature has increased, frozen still lower down. I’m impressed that it has still managed to sprout.
I love my Habbies
Hablitzia forest garden
A little video of my Habitzia jungle today…
I usually train the plants up into the trees , but I’ve let them do their own thing this year. One plant has climbed up a hogweed (bjørnekjeks) and then on up high into the birch tree, others have just clambered around on the ground…