I thought I’d take you for a tour of the lower parts of the garden including the forest garden. No commentary, let’s just listen to the birds and observe. In the first video, I unexpectedly stumble on a willow warbler (løvsanger), my first in the garden this year, foraging on the ground in the cold weather….you can otherwise hear singing redwing (rødvingetrost), great tit (kjøttmeis), fieldfare (gråtrost), meadow pipit (heipiplerke), house sparrow (gråspurv) and blue tit (blåmeis) in one of the two videos.
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I noticed yesterday that the ostrich ferns (strutseving) in the forest garden had put on a spurt despite the cold weather and were almost past the harvesting stage. This is the main disadvantage of this great vegetable. The harvesting window is very narrow. I quickly harvested some, taking care not to take more than 1/3 of the shoots. Together with Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach), a bit of sea kale (strandkål), ramsons (ramsløk) and sand leeks (bendelløk) this made a delicious green pasta sauce. See the video before I picked below!
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To celebrate my 65th we made indian pakora with 65 (or so) different perennial vegetables. Going for a new title, this time EPM (Extreme Pakora Man)! Any better? The whole list is under the pictures! Just wish I’d had broad / fava bean (bondebønner) flour available for the pakoras rather than gram flour (chick peas)…next time I hope :)
I also walked around the outside gardens during my visit to the Gothenburg Botanical Gardens on Saturday 25th January 2020. In the mild weather, there were many people out walking and running in the garden. Here’s an album of pictures of edibles and other interesting plants and a video of the large Actinidia arguta in the Asiatic woodland garden.
Hotell Krypinn: a great insect hotel
Cornus mas flower buds swelling
Hemerocallis shoots
Hemerocallis fulva var littorea
Ficaria verna (Lesser celandine / vårkål)
Yucca filamentosa “Color Guard” is a great edimental! (Edible flowers, shoots and fruits)
Magnolia stellata “Centennial” (the buds may be edible like other Magnolias)
Flowering Hamamelis (witch hazel)
Fertile fronds of ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris)
Crambe cordifolia buds
Eleutherococcus setchuenensis: A family / genus with many edible plants, but no ethnobotanical information on this one
Eleutherococcus nodiflorus: A family / genus with many edible plants, the root is recorded stewed with chicken in China
Serratula coronata var insularis (the young shoots of this species is recorded eaten in China, but the bitterness is first boiled / soaked away)
Claytonia parviflora from North America (I haven’t tried this species)
Smilax rotundifolia (edible shoots)
Cardamine californica (all parts are edible)
January flowering Rhododendron dauricum
Zanthoxylum piperitum (Japanese pepper, sansho)
Acanthopanax koreanum: A family / genus with many edible plants, but no ethnobotanical information on this one
Lonicera caerulea var kamtschatica already in leaf
Polypodium vulgare (sisselrot, sweet fern)
The world famous Gothenburg Rock Garden
Garden art on a dead oak tree which is also beneficial for insects by UK artist Stuart Ian Frost
Garden art on a dead oak tree which is also beneficial for insects by UK artist Stuart Ian Frost
Cyclamen (leaves of some species are eaten)
I also visited the greenhouses for the first time, but that will have to be a separate post
On the way up the mountain at Alvastien Telste I found a particularly fertile ostrich fern with 30 fertile fronds! This is the edible wild plant equivalent of a moose with antlers with many points ;)
These much shorter fronds which carry the spores are one of the most important distinguishing features of ostrich fern (the taller fronds don’t have spores).
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The rate of growth of Udo (Aralia cordata) from Japan is phenomenal in cool spring weather, even outgrowing Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach)!
The first picture was taken by Christian Odberger during my permaveggies course and just two weeks later the plant is taller than me! The view is or less the same and the apple tree at the back is now in full bloom! The fern is ostrich fern.My garden helper Lorna from Belfast!
Ostrich fern pie was the culinary high this week…made with cooked ostrich fern, Allium scorodoprasum, garlic, chili and standard quiche ingredients and a 100% whole grain barley / rye crust and home grown poppy seeds on top! It was delicious :)
As usual, the highlight of these weekends is the incredible walk along the river Homla just 20 minutes from home with large quantities of Ostrich Fern along the way, truly one of Norway’s most beautiful plants and also most delicious!!
Storfossen (literally large waterfall!), the second highest waterfall at 40m in our region (Trøndelag). There’s a total fall of 80m in 3 waterfalls. If you’re lucky you can see salmon trying to climb the lowest of the 3!Participants showering in the drizzle from the waterfall stood in awe of this wonderfull sight, so close to Trondheim, but hardly known! We saw only a handful of other people on the trail in 4 hours!
We found a few fungi. This is Fomitopsis pinicola / rødrandkjuke
Basidioradulum radula (Tannsopp), earlier classified with the Hedgehog fungi!
Christian thinking about going for a swim?
Happy participants, HIGH on nature and wild food!Happy participants, HIGH on nature and wild food!This dandelion was collected as it had a good mild taste!Ostrich fern / StrutsevingOstrich fern / StrutsevingOne of the confusion species that shouldn’t be eaten! With Anemone nemerosa (wood anemone / hvitveis) and Chrysosplenium alternifolium (Golden saxifrage/maigull)Roof garden!
There’s a lot of up and downs along the 4 hour walk (with stops) from Storfossen to Hommelvik!
Everyone stopped in awe again at this beautiful rich stand of ostrich ferns which had come much further than in the cold air by the riverWe found this Swede communing with the ferns…Berit had a go too…next year we will have a group ostrich fern hug I think!
Hidden among the ferns are other edibles like nettle / nesle and giant bellflower (Campanula latifolia)
Fomitopsis pinicola / rødrandkjuke
The field horsetail/ common horsetail / kjerringrokk / (Equisetum arvense) is another sign of spring. The plant is known as sugina (杉菜) in Japanese, literally “cryptomeria vegetable”, possibly from the appearance of the green stems. The fertile stems at the stage shown are known as tsukushi (土筆). The ideograms literally mean “soil brush”, based on their shape. A common foraged vegetable in spring!! DON’T plant it in your garden, it is one of the most invasive plants on open land! BUT, one shouldn’t use large amounts…this is a spring vegetable used in a short period in spring!!Knuskkjuke (Fomes fomentarius) is the tinder fungus used to start a fire!Upon returning home we made a green pasta sauce with ostrich ferns (cooked for 15 minutes), Hablitzia shoots, Norrlands onion (see my book) for all 3), soaked dried chantarelles, organic tomatoes, garlic, chili, seasoned with cuban oregano, bay leaves and served over a choice of hemp pasta and emmer wheat pasta from Etikken in Trondheim!
The Norwegian name for ostrich fern is strutseving (ostrich wing) and fiddleheads are now appearing in my kitchen window, two months before they will be out in the garden. It’s easy to dig up some roots of this spreading species in the autumn. I left them outside in these pots until about a month ago. I’m leaving these first relatively small fiddleheads to grow, so as not to kill the roots (they will be planted back in the garden to recover).
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
