Tag Archives: Trondheim

Community Garden

KVANN treff Day 1 at Væres Venner and Presthus Gård

Leave a comment
The first evening of KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) weekend event in Trondheim and Malvik, we visited KVANN’s first “nyttevekstreservat” (inspired by Lawrence Hills’ proposal for vegetable sanctuaries across Europe as a reaction to the loss of our vegetable diverity in 1979!) at Væres Venner Felleshage (a new communiy garden in Trondheim). KVANN have already started work on a Verdenshage (World Garden) and another area currently being used as a holding bed for a future diversity garden, including walnut, hazel, sea buckthorn and other fruit trees to be planted elsewhere..
Afterwards, Sølvi Kvam took us to nearby Presthus Gård, a farm which has until recently been threatened by nearby housing developments. It will now be developed with many activities and KVANN are also welcome to make suggestions!
 
See also
Exhibitor, Walk and talk

KVANN meet in Trondheim and Malvik; Ringve Open Day

Leave a comment

Day 3 of the KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) meet was at the Ringve Botanical Garden Open Day in Trondheim. The day started early as I drove one of the participants to the station in Trondheim and then spent a couple of hours collecting some of the ingredients for a multi-species salad. Including plants collected on a walk, talk and forage for KVANN members, we managed 111 ingredients in the salad! Thanks to all who helped make it a very successful and fun weekend!

Community Garden

Verdenshage and Væres Venner

1 Comment

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)

Video Player

Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasus!) has survived!

Video Player

Moon garden?

Video Player
Herbarium

Opening of the new Trondheim Herbarium TRH

1 Comment
It seems as though it’s a good life being a botanist. It was my second day at work today and it ended at 2:30 in the afternoon with bubbly and double helix clipping ;)
Accessions go back as far as Bishop Gunnerus in the 1760s.
See also this video interview with Tommy Prestø:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkSsx-du3xso


Garden tour, Permaculture, Salad

Annual meeting of Norwegian Permaculture Association in Trondheim

Leave a comment

Pictures from the Norwegian Permaculture Association’s Annual Meeting in Trondheim in June 2011 including design of the new Permabed at Svartlamoen and visit to the Edible Garden in Malvik!

House plants

Horseradish Tree

1 Comment

Horseradish tree (Moringa oleifera) is one of 13 species in the genus Moringa from Africa.  The genus name is derived from the Tamil word for drumstick, one of the alternative names in English, referring to the long immature pods which are used as a vegetable (I first came across it as an Indian vegetable on a market in Fiji in the early 90s where it was called horseradish tree). However, it has multiple uses also including leaves (as a protein rich vegetable), for its flowers, immature seeds, roasted or fried mature seeds (an oil is also extracted), roots (tastes like horseradish) and also seed sprouts! Different cultivars have been developed for different uses. There are other species which are also used, including Moringa stenopetala and M. ovalifolia.

Although it’s a tree that can grow to 12m tall, it can also be grown as a cut-and-come-again house plant, which is the way I’ve grown it (for the leaves) in my old office in Trondheim (see the album of pictures below)! In fact, it is also grown commercially as an annual.

Food

Kosmorama Film (and Food) Festival

Leave a comment
Join me at Trondheim’s Kosmorama Film Festival’s Gourmet Cinema on Thursday March 9th at 1600! You will see a special screening of Michael Pollan’s  documentary “In Defense of Food”, experience among other things a multi-species dish showing off the incredible abundance of food available to us in Trøndelag, even early in March. The food will be a collaboration between myself, gourmet restaurant Credo in Trondheim (Heidi Bjerkan) and the organic farm they work with, Skjølberg Søndre (Carl Erik Nielsen Østlund and Elin Östlund). There will also be a Food Talk after the film between us 3 (Heidi, Carl Erik and myself) together with producer and director Michael Schwarz! This will be a fun evening (English)…
In addition, I’m taking part in the so-called Kulinarisk Kino which is the screening of the film NOMA – My Perfect Storm followed by dinner at Credo, which I hope will include a very special Nodic perennial vegetable served for the first time in a restaurant in Norway :)
Plant sale, Radio/TV

Edibles for Anno

Leave a comment
P1610294
In mid-June 2016, I provided a number of perennial edibles and herbs for the set of the filming of a Norwegian reality series, Anno, set in the year 1537 in the Erkebispegården (Archbishop’s palace and courtyard) next to the Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim (see
http://e6guiden.no/2016/08/01/innspillingen-av-anno-2017-starter-i-trondheim ). Sadly, I don’t think they were used in the end as it wasn’t the best time to move these plants and they would, in any case, not have been at their best during the late summer filming  :(
The program is very popular here and is currently showing on Norwegian TV!
Birds

Norway’s best breakfast…view!

Leave a comment
Scandic Nidelven hotel (background in these pictures) Trondheim has won an award for Norway’s best breakfast 10 years in a row…no wonder when the guests have this bird’s eye view at breakfast over the river ;)

P1680414
14th November, view from Scandic Nidelven hotel and a flock of around 520 Eider duck
P1680423
14th November 2016: Scandic Nidelven in the background with a smaller flock of 380 eider!
P1680421
14th November 2016: Scandic Nidelven in the background with a smaller flock of 380 eider!
Seed, Spice

Harvesting golpar

Leave a comment

Heracleum persicum is a giant umbellifer, very closely related to Giant Hogweed another very closely related invasive of more southerly latitudes. We call it Tromsøpalme here as these giant plants might resemble palm trees from afar where they grow in large quantities in the arctic city of Tromsø. I today harvested seed of one last plant remaining after the kommune had strimmed a small coastline stand of this plant, presumably spreading seed everywhere….
The seed is used as an important spice in Iran, something I learned from my friend Saideh Salamati who I credited in my book (she also made an excellent dish of the young shoots at a gathering of foragers here in June). I nowadays use more golpar in my cooking than any other spice…delicious and free!