When Covid limited my travelling, I decided to spend my time investigating what other creatures I was sharing my “habitat” (edible forest garden) with. I knew quite a lot about the obvious things like butterflies and birds but little about, for example, insects. I set about in particular recording moths using a light trap and other techniques. That I recently registered my 300th species on my 2,200 sq.m. plot would never have occurred to me was possible when I started on this inward journey! My mind is blown away by the fact that growing food in a diverse forest garden like mine can contribute to such a large biodiversity and this only one relatively small but important part of the insect world present here. I’ve also registered many wild bees, bumble bees, hoverflies and others. Learning which larval food plants the moths are using has also taught me much, as has the important role of moths in pollination. After winter hibernation as adults or pupae, the incredible importance of Salix caprea (goat willow / sallow) in providing food in early spring has become even more important in my mind. The newly arrived insectivorous migratory birds attracted to the willow when they arrive here mid-April suddenly makes more sense as the migration of some species is naturally timed perfectly for the mass-emergence of willow-attracted insects!
THIS THEN IS THE 300th MOTH SPECIES REGISTERED IN THE EDIBLE GARDEN AND ITS ANOTHER BEAUTY! This is the treble-bar moth / stor perikummåler (Aplocera plagiata). Its larvae are dependent on perforate st John’s-wort / prikkperikum (Hypericum perforatum) a species I’ve grown in the garden for years. It was also my 200th new species for Malvik municipality and 8 of the 300 were also new species for my county Trøndelag! So, 2/3 of the species I’ve recorded on my rocky edible hillside have actually never been recorded in my municipality, Malvik, before! Actually, only a little over 400 moths have been recorded in Malvik over the years! See pictures of all 300 species on my blog post (link below). This is added to as new species are recorded! Many are equally as beautiful as the butterflies most off us love: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=27297
We’ve opened the garden many times over the last 25 years as part of Økouka (organics week) and before that as part of Økologisk Hagebrukskampanjen (the organic gardening campaign). Last night (18th September 2024) was the first of two garden tours in my Edible (Forest) Garden this week and once again a great group of folk had signed up. In addition, Beatrice from NIBIO took part to make a short film with focus on soil as part of the EU project Prepsoil. There’s still a few places left on the second tour on Saturday at 11 and there will also be a garden tour at my main focus at the moment, the Væres Venners Felleshagen (community garden) at Ranheim on Sunday at 1400 (just come along if interested). All tours are in Norwegian with English plant names if necessary.
This red admiral butterfly flew over us whilst I talked about biodiversity in the garden!
Plant sale, perennial vegetables including many Alliums!
KVANNs stand på Ringve 2024KVANNs stand på Ringve 2024Verdenshagen, Væres Venners Felleshagen sommeren 2023Hagevandring i Den Spiselige Hagen under Økouka 2022
In connection with my daughter Hazel’s birthday yesterday, she wanted me to make a salad for her and her friends she’d invited for dinner, so no birthday cake, it was a birthday salad with candle, and 78 ingredients was the plan! 78? Well, it was a double celebration as this week was also 40 years since the titles to my house were signed over to us by the previous owner Ragnhild Austvik. I told Hazel it would be a 78th birthday party and didn’t reveal all until we were at the dinner table! She didn’t guess why, believing I’d miscalculated as the combined age with her brother (his birthday is on Monday) would be 79, although on her birthday it was still 78, so it could have been that! So, here’s the over-the-top flowery salad I put together with ingredients list below the pictures (yes, I miscalculated and it turned out to be more than 78…40 more in fact ;))
Back from the UK and the first night I put out the moth trap on 15th / 16th August (they are released again) I was surprised to find that scarce silver Y moths / skogmetallfly (Syngrapha interrogationis) were everywhere and a count yielded 53 moths of this species. My previous highest count was 22 in August 2022, so I wondered how unusual this was. A quick check on our national species reporting database artsobservasjoner.no and it turns out this was the highest number ever recorded in Norway – next highest was 50 in 1997 in southern Norway and then 25 in Namsos, north of here. This is a moorland species and the larvae live on heather, bilberry and bog bilberry (røsslyng, blåbær og blokkebær) although a Swedish page mentions that they can also live on birch; see https://vilkenart.se/Art.aspx?Namn=Syngrapha%20interrogationis This is a regular visitor in my garden in small numbers and both the high counts were made with the moth trap very close to a large Buddleja davidii in full flower. I haven’t yet seen them on the Buddleja, but I found at least one picture of this species on Buddleja, see https://www.lepidoptera.no/omrade/?a_id=1018865, so I guess this is what is attracting them as my garden is a few kilometres away from its moorland habitat, unless they have adopted birch in the garden. At the same time there are less than normal numbers of its cousin silver y (gammafly) and large yellow underwing (hagebåndfly) both of which frequent the Buddleja, sometimes in large numbers! Scarce silver Y is largely a night flyer as is large yellow underwing whereas silver Y flies both night and day!
Various berries harvested late July at home in the Edible Garden and in the Væres Venner Community Garden. More information in the picture captions. These were either eaten fresh for breakfast with muesli or were made into mixed fruit leather!
Mulberries (morbær) from a tree planted 15 years ago, received as Morus alba “Rubra” – these had started dropping from the tree!
Saskatoons / blåhegg – Amelanchier sp. ;this year the birds left a good number of berries for us – the thrushes and tits only seem to take these early on, until other berries that they prefer become available
Black redcurrants / svartrips (Ribes petraeum var. biebersteinii with assorted other berries
A mix of berries and indoor grown fig to be used in a mixed fruit leather
Redcurrant / rips “Pink Champagne” has a sweeter taste than most
From the community garden (Væres Venner), a sunnier site than my own garden, these super early tomatoes were ripe already on 20th August, something I never dreamed was possible in the past! 42 days to the left and Linda Siberian to the right.
Engelsk tekst nederst I løpet av 17.-19. juli var jeg glad for å kunne returnere gjestfriheten gitt av KVANNs søsterorganisasjon Arche Noah (Austrian Seed Savers) under mine 2 turer dit i 2017 og januar 2020 rett før COVID-en rammet (se https://www.edimentals .com/blog/?s=arche+noah) Dette var i forbindelse med et Erasmus pluss utdanningsprogram der Arche Noah-utdanningen besøker ulike steder i Europa for å lære mer om flerårige grønnsaker og skogshager! Vi besøkte hver av mine 3 hager: The Edible Garden, Væres Venners Felleshagen og Løkhagen Chicago ved NTNU Ringve Botaniske Hagen. Vi fikk selskap av Guri Bugge, Mette Theisen og Judit Fehér fra KVANNs styre (bilde). Ursula Taborsky fra Arche Noah er nest til venstre på bildet fra min spiselige (skogs)hage. English: During 17th-19th July I was happy to be able to return the hospitality given by KVANN’s sister organisation Arche Noah (Austrian Seed Savers) during my 2 trips there in 2017 and January 2020 just before COVID hit (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?s=arche+noah) This was in connection with an Erasmus plus education program in which Arche Noah education are visiting various places in Europe to learn more about perennial vegetables and forest gardening! We visited each of my 3 gardens: The Edible Garden, Væres Venners Community Garden and the Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Garden. We were joined by Guri Bugge, Mette Theisen and Judit Fehér from KVANN’s board (picture). Ursula Taborsky from Arche Noah is second left in the picture from my Edible (Forest) Garden.
Toad lilies (Tricyrtis sp.) are great edientomentals from the Far East; i.e. both food for us to eat (the edi bit), eye food (the mental bit ;) ) and food for the pollinators like bumble bees (the ento bit). I’ve been meaning to try to research this genus properly for many years ever since I ate the young shoots 10 years ago (it tasted mild and good). I’ve tried 10+ species over the years, but only the early flowering species thrive (Tricyrtis latifolia is I think the most successful of the two). Bumble bees love them too as can be seen in the video below! Below the pictures is an overview of how different species Tricyrtis are used in Japan. It indicates that the flowers can also be used at least in moderation for decoration, so I must give it a go!
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Blanched perennial veggies eaten on 14th May 2012 were dandelion, Crambe cordifolia , Cicerbita alpina, Lovage, Horseradish, Hosta, Sonchus arvensis, Allium tuberosum, Silene vulgaris, Heracleum maximum and Tricyrtis (latifolia)
Tricyrtis in the kitchen All I have so far is that 6 or 7 species are listed in my comprehensive Japanese foraging book (in Japanese): Wild Food Lexicon (Japan) and this is what it says (there are no warnings of possible toxicity and it encourages the reader to get and grow a couple of the species): Tricyrtis latifolia (Tamagawa hototogisu) Eat young shoots. You can eat other types of Tricyrtis so don’t worry if you make a mistake. Rest assured. You can pick it even if the stems are long, you can pick the soft young shoots until they bloom. Boil in hot water with a pinch of salt, then rinse in cold water. In boiled food, soup, tempura… Tricyrtis macropoda It can be eaten like Tamagawa hototogisu, but the ones with a lot of hairs have an inferior taste. Tricyrtis macrantha Boiled soup. For tempura etc. It has a crisp texture. Boil briefly, soak in cold water, boil, cut into small pieces and season with mustard. The young shoots are the most flavourful amongst the hototogisu. Tricyrtis macranthopsis Seedlings for cultivation are on the market. You can grow it and use it as food. Around May, pick young shoots that grow diagonally. Even those with long stems can be eaten by picking the soft part at the tip of the stem. Tricyrtis perfoliata Young shoots are “hard”? in quality. Floating the flowers in the soup and enclosing them in jelly will make them beautiful. Get it, grow it and taste it!!
Dette var kanskje den 10. gangen Malvik Hagelag hadde vært på hagevandring hos meg, over en snart 40 års periode! Jeg meldte meg inn i hagelaget og var med på møtene fra midten av 80-tallet. Den gangen var jeg den yngste (de fleste medlemmer var pensjonister). Det var derfor interessant å reflektere over at nå hadde jeg kanskje blitt eldst! Det var en flott sommerkveld og 30C og noen meldte avbud pga temperaturen! Men, det var en fin gjeng som var med og hørte på mine bortforklaringer for hvorfor hagen hadde blitt så vill….hadde jeg mistet kontroll i mine gamle dager? Neida…..bare sluppet kontroll bevisst og overført kontrollen til mine to andre hagene på Væres Venners felleshagen og Løkhagen Chicago! Og denne gangen hadde de bestilt en salat, og det ble ca 130 forskjellige spiselige planter. Årets første jordbær og rips ble ofret og blomsterstander av gulblomstret Allium hookeri var muliense, Allium cernuum mfl. Vi avsluttet med plante- og boksalg!
The 5th Permaveggies / Forest Gardening course I’ve held in Malvik took place on Sunday 21st and Monday 22nd May with guest Jen McConachie who gave her forest gardening course at Presthus Farm on the Monday evening. On the Sunday we met at my garden (The Edible Garden) for a garden tour and lunch from the garden with focus this year on growing food while maintaining a high biodiversity. On Monday we visited The Væres Venner Community garden to see the World Garden and also the large collection of edible trees and bushes that have been planted there, followed by a visit to the Onion Garden at the Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim. Previous Permaveggies weekends were held in 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2019 whilst the 2020-weekend had to be cancelled because of Covid. More information on previous courses can be found here: Previous Permaveggies Courses. I didn’t take many pictures this year, so thanks to Meg Anderson, Jen McConachie and Mark Tacker who took the pictures below. Malvik:
With Jen McConachie
Talkijg about Hosta
Talking Hablitzia
The Hablitzia / Heracleum community that has evolved over the years – the Heracleum sowed itself here and the Hablitzia now uses it as a support
Talking about udo (Aralia cordata)
Lunch with many perennial vegetables
Meg tells us about lunch
In the Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Garden:
After Jen’s forest garden course, the participants split into groups to design a forest garden in a field next to the farm which it is planned to be developed as a forest garden (get in touch if you are interested!). Here is one of the groups presenting their plans:
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
Plant sale, perennial vegetables including many Alliums!
At the same time there are less than normal numbers of its cousin silver y (gammafly) and large yellow underwing (hagebåndfly) both of which frequent the Buddleja, sometimes in large numbers! Scarce silver Y is largely a night flyer as is large yellow underwing whereas silver Y flies both night and day!
English: During 17th-19th July I was happy to be able to return the hospitality given by KVANN’s sister organisation Arche Noah (Austrian Seed Savers) during my 2 trips there in 2017 and January 2020 just before COVID hit (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?s=arche+noah)
