My favourite September berry here is Rubus occidentalis (black raspberry or blackcaps / svartbringebær)…this plant was seed propagated from North American cultivar “Black Hawk”, perfectly complementing red raspberry (bringebær)…gives a tremendous yield in a very shady, dry place in the garden!
Participants of this week’s PDC course here in Malvik eagerly devouring the berries, and encouraged to take seeds home and sow!
I visited Bo “Bosse” Blomquist last year outside of Gothenburg and despite it being a bit late in the day and almost dark at the end, I was really impressed by his collection of edible trees, shrubs and bushes! He works in Gothenburg and is a regular visitor to the gardens! We agreed to meet before my talk and a group of friends also joined us!! It was great to walk in the garden with Bosse as he knew all the interesting edible woody plants! Thanks!! Here are a selection of pictures!
Proof one more time that north is best for growing a diversity of tasty salad greens ;) Presenting (and claiming) my new world winter salad diversity record, a salad with over 140 ingredients all harvested locally without using any additional energy than is available in my house and cellar (no greenhouse; no freezer; no fermenting involved and only dried fruit and seed used apart from fresh vegetables!). Despite the snow cover I was able to harvest some 20-30 edibles outside. More on how this can be done will be the subject of a separate post!
The salad was presented and eagerly devoured by those who had bought tickets for the Gourmet Cinema event on 9th March 2017 as part of the Trondheim Kosmorama Film Festival! It went so quickly, I didn’t even get a taste myself!
The film was followed by a Food talk with a panel including the film’s director Michael Schwarz, the head chef at Credo Heidi Bjerkan, myself and Carl Erik Nielsen Østlund, the owner of the biodynamic organic farm that supplies much of the food to Credo, moderated by Yoshi!
http://kosmorama.no/en/2016/12/gourmet-cinema-in-defense-of-food
As Michael Pollan concludes in the film:
Eat Food, Not too much and (as many as possible) mostly vegetables!
The day before, I had prepared a 105 ingredient salad for the festival dinner at Credo restaurant (http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=10184). While preparing that salad, I made a second salad with the same 105 ingredients…and then added almost 40 additional ingredients that I hadn’t had time to harvest the day before!
…well with the temperature at -8C this morning, I harvested these Worcesterberries, as hard as marbles, and after thawing they are still good :)
This is the only freezer you will find at my place :)
Despite many frost nights, I’m still harvesting berries of this mystery berry in my garden….I think it’s a form of Worcesterberry (a selection of Ribes divaricatum) which has thorns!
10 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible to harvest elderberries here, but with the new Danish cultivars which are both early, hardy and with large berries this album shows the result…The cultivars shown are Samyl and Samnor!
They are now drying above my wood stove..
A few pictures taken on my train journey yesterday to Inderøya to talk at the Nord Trøndelag regional gardening club meeting!
Why is it that black raspberries (Rubus occidentalis) aren’t more grown in Europe? They started ripening two weeks earlier than last year, see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=2368
During the garden tour at the weekend everyone was offered a taste and all seemed to be impressed…I told them not to swallow but save the seed and stratify, so perhaps they will start becoming more popular…
Added a picture at the bottom of the almost thorn free stems, unlike the very thorny wild species!
