The garden pea / ert (now Lathyrus oleraceus, was Pisum sativum) is an important source of vegetable protein and can be grown over most of Norway with many heirloom varieties which have been rescued and are maintained across Scandinavia by seed saver organisations such as our own KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers; kvann.no).
Over the years, I’ve grown over 90 different varieties and usually some 20 varieties every year, a mix of Scandinavian and UK heirlooms and modern varieities. There are some favourite varieties such as Golden Sweet, Purple Podded, Salmon Flowered, Sugar Snap and Hurst Green Shaft which I grow each year, whilst others are grown less frequently on a roughly 3 year rotation, so that I am maintaining some 40-50 varieties at any one time! I share a few with members of KVANN each year.
The pea harvest and processing for 2023 was completed yesterday: dried first on window sills, then sorted, saving the best peas for seed for the next grow-out and for sharing. I use the remainder mainly for pea soup, pea fritters/felafel and for sprouting for pea shoots. Here’s this year’s pea diversity shown in the pictures:
Outer ring: Rättviksärt, Mammoth Melting, Big Jumps / Karina, Sugar Magnolia, PI203064 Finsk (gift, rematriated from Seed Savers Exchange), Jærert, Lollandske Rosiner, Herald/Herault, (Middle): Alma, Salmon Flowered, Purple Podded, Golden Sweet, Slikkert fra Våler, Store Holgers Kämpeart, Sugar Snap and Magnum Bonum (Not shown: Brunært fra Nakskov and Svartbjörsbyn).
Norway Maple Fall
With cold nights down to -5C currently, most trees are now shedding their leaves and there’s a carpet of leaves under the Norway maple (spisslønn), a tree that prefers the shallow drier soils in the garden (compared to sycamore / platanlønn). A treecreeper (trekryper) calling can be heard at 0:38! The large leaves are very useful for protecting less hardy plants in winter.
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Havesting frozen winter chantarelles
Spent yesterday afternoon harvesting winter chantarelles (traktkantarell) as much as we could carry out of the woods and almost all were frozen solid making some unusual sounds in the woods as they fell….
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Worcesterberries and Cellary
With a series of -4C nights forecast, I’m harvesting and moving the last vegetables into the house and cellar. There are still many Worcesterberries (Ribes divaricatum) in perfect condition, eating with apples with muesli every morning. Harvested another load this morning as I expect that they will freeze and drop to the ground. 
I also harvested the last celery from the garden this morning, replanted in pots in the depths of the cellar where they will sleep until spring as cellary, ready to harvest whenever I need them. A couple of plants were also moved from the balcony, grown in pots for ease of access, to the kitchen for even easier access, one of them attractiv edimental “Red Stem” celery…
Gunnera-Chinese Yam salad
Delicious Gunnera-Chinese Yam salad with goldenberries (Barbadoslykt), Gunnera tinctoria, Dioscorea polystachya (Chinese yam) “Ichoimo”, carrot, turnip, various tomatoes, nodding onion (prærieløk), chicory (sikori), perennial kale (flerårig kål), Worcesterberries, celery, garlic, frozen Nasturtium flowers, Begonia flowers, ….
Daniil and the Apples
Having survived the wapato harvest last week (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=31597), our helper Daniil Titov was put to another challenging, harvesting the last apples….there are always many apples that we cannot reach with the apple picker, so tree shaking has to be resorted to as it’s too dangerous to use ladders on the steep slope. These will be dried in the near future. We already have enough for eating fresh until April in this year’s bumper harvest of Aroma apples. There are still quite a few at the top of the tree which couldn’t be shaken down, left for the birds.
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Waxwings on apples
Waxwings (sidensvans) have arrived here in numbers with about 70 in the garden today! Most of their favourite berry, rowan (rogn) had gone by the time they arrived due to the large flocks of thrushes that were here a week ago (mainly fieldfares, redwings and blackbirds / gråtrost, rødvingetrost og svarttrost). They had opened up quite a few apples near the tops of the trees before they moved on, and now the waxwings are enjoying them – they luckily don’t try to open other apples, so that there are still many for us! We’ve been harvesting the last few days, but still a lot near the tops of the trees that are difficult to reach even with the apple picker!
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Daniil and the duck potatoes
We like to give our helpers /wwoofers an experience to remember.
Daniil Titov is with us for two weeks and in between the sleet showers we harvested the wapato/duck potato (Sagittaria latifolia), originally from the Mississippi River :)
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October Salad
October salad!
Tim Harland RIP
I was shocked and saddened to hear the other day that Tim Harland from my publishers Permanent Publications (PP) and Permaculture Magazine died unexpectedly on 30th September. He was such a lovely man…and just as they had started their new life…
Although he didn’t suffer, those who knew him and remain on this wonderful planet that he worked so hard for are the ones to suffer………
I remember the last time I met Tim and Maddy when they attended a talk I gave in Alton, Hants, invited by the Curtis Museum, part of the Sea Kale story in my book (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=10962)! Commiserations to Maddy and colleagues.
Tim kindly drove me home to my parents’ in Chandlers Ford afterwards.
Tim kindly drove me home to my parents’ in Chandlers Ford afterwards.
I’ll lift a glass to Tim’s memory…what a lovely person he was!
Picture of Tim with the first books at PP HQ below; he was my main contact at PP during the publishing process.
See also appreciations at https://www.facebook.com/PermacultureMag
See also appreciations at https://www.facebook.com/PermacultureMag