After 3 years, I’ve finally finished the last cultivated area in the garden on the steep slope below the pond. The soil is very shallow, so I’ve terraced with bare rock showing between the terraces.
I’ve planted mostly fruit and berry bushes here, but also Xanthoxylum piperitum (Japanese pepper), one of which is thornless. There are also 3 types of Jostaberry, two selections of “Green-berried Blackcurrant”, three golden currants (Ribes aureum), three different black raspberries, two Elaeagnus umbellatus, Gooseberry Xenia and a couple of unknown Ribes spp. from Bo Blomqvist and Knut Poulsen!
In the local paper was a report that it was a bad year for bilberries (blåbær) locally. I’m glad we didn’t listen and went anyway as it was pretty good as you can see with several kilos to dry and make bilberry leather with:
It’s been a long wait, but I can finally taste a few mulberries….both my bushes which are about the same age started producing after about 15 years, although neither tree had been looked after and had been more or less left to themselves. Both are in shady parts of the garden. I hadn’t really believed that they would produce berries, hence the neglect! I think they are both white mulberry / hvitmorbær (Morus alba), but one has red berries. I did have a purple-berried white mulberry at one stage so it could be this!
At the weekend at the Permalin Farm summer festival I met an English-German couple Johnny and Anna who were on a long campervan holiday in Norway, doing some wwoofing along the way. They had heard about the festival when they were in Balestrand (Sognefjord) and were recommended that they should try to visit me. They found my web site and discovered I was giving a course at the weekend and signed up!
They asked on Sunday if they could come and see my garden yesterday and said they were happy to help a bit too. We were planning to pick berries, so after the garden tour, we picked saskatoons / søtmispel (Amelanchier spp.).
The berries are now being dried!
For lunch we made an multispecies salad with Linbakst bread (100% linseed bread from the farm where we had the course). More pictures at the bottom.
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Early ripe blackberries (bjørnebær) and plums (sviskeplommer)….will be overripe or rotten by the time I return from my trip to England, Ireland and Hurdal! So, I’ve dried those that are ripe!
On Thursday this week we went for a forage locally as I’d heard reports that chantarelles were appearing after the rain….we didn’t see any edible fungi but there were large quantities of bilberries (blåbær), wild raspberries and even a bog where there were unpicked cloudberries, so we transferred our attentions to picking berries!
We started the walk from Fjølstadtrøa, a restored husmannsplass (croft) (we had met the last husmann and his wife back in the 80s!)
The local historical society has restored the buildings and a local school has made a vegetable garden here!
Nice to see broad beans (bondebønner), here with kale..
Catawissa (walking) onion (etasjeløk)
Beetroot (rødbete)
Herbs
Hops
Admiral
Gul korallsopp? (coral fungus)
Gul korallsopp? (coral fungus)
Creeping twinflower (Linnea)
Cowberry (tyttebær)
Cow-wheat seed (marimjelle)
This hoverfly (blomsterflue) fed on my bilberry stained finger!
The Saskatoons (Amelanchier alnifolia “Thiessen”) ripened early this year and I was too late netting them against the birds….a young fieldfare (gråtrost) was eating the berries yesterday morning, photographed from where I was breakfasting…blue tits (blåmeis) were also joining in the party…
Sambucus nigra “Samyl” is a new Danish variety of elderberry / svarthyll. It is very productive, the earliest elderberry I’ve grown (they are marginal here), hardy and it has large berries and large umbels of flowers…
I’ll be offering hardwood cuttings to members of Norwegian Seed Savers (Kvann) this winter (to be a member go to http://kvann.org and click on “Bli medlem”!
The best October berry here is a berry that I have concluded in the past is Worcesterberry, although I had received it as Jostaberry, see the following blog post from 2015, I http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=2391 (it is thorny which Jostaberry is not).
During the PDC course at the weekend, the students helped harvest these berries in the garden..these are now drying in the oven for fruit leather, together with Aronia berries…
221117: I’ve been eating my Worcesterberries daily with breakfast almost every day….yesterday, I harvested the last ones at -10C!! Added video of the worcestermarbles!
I cooked the Worcesterberries briefly to break down the skin of the fruit a bit before pouring in to an oven tray to dry as fruit leather
The berries on the right are from Aronia melanocarpa “Moskva”. The berries on the left I’m using for the first time this year seed propagated as Aronia x prunifolia, which is a hybrid called purple chokeberry in recognition of its purple berries (although Moskva have more purplish berries in this picture!). It is considered to be a natural hybrid between Aronia melanocarpa and Aronia arbutifolia.
Drying in the oven as the wood stove isn’t on yet!
A PDC’er picks Worcesterberries
..another PDC’er picking Aronia melanocarpa
..and yet another PDC’er picking Aronia melanocarpa
PDC’ers picking Worcesterberries…
Picking Aronia x prunifolia
Dried Worcesterleather
…and dried Aronia berries!
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
