The long delayed (by COVID) opening of the Onion Garden Chicago took place at the Ringve Botanical Gardens in Trondheim on Friday. Here we grow over 400 different Alliums including over 100 botanical species and some 60 old (with a history from 60-980 years; yes the oldest history goes back to 1040!) Norwegian onions. To officially open the garden, Elise Moltzau Wanderås from the Norwegian Agricultural Authority (LDir) was given Felco garden shears to clip Allium pskemense flowering stems and our new sign was simultaneously revealed (received the day before)!
Thanks to all that donated onions to the collection in my project (2008-2016) funded by the Norwegian Genetic Resource Centre and LDir, to Vibekke Vange and the staff at Ringve who gave me the chance and support to create this garden and make a dream come true, to volunteer Kim Wallace, daughter Hazel and Meg Anderson for help maintaining the garden! Thanks also to KVANN (kvann.no) for support for purchasing seed and bulbs for the garden and support for sending plant material from the garden to members each autumn!
Notice that we used an Alliophone (Allium microphone) under the event (patented by Søren Holt of Danish Seed Savers some years ago!):
See over 550 pictures from the garden in my big album here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10156846106840860 Talking abour Allium pskemense with alliophone in hand!A good crowd of some 50 had found their way to Ringve on a lovely warm evening
Jeg var veldig fornøyd med resultatet av intervjuet med journalisten Gunn Merete Roll fra Trondheims Gatemagasin Sorgenfri. Artikkelen (vedlagt) kom med i juli-nummeret til Sorgenfri som ikke lenge kan kjøpes bortsett fra på kontoret. Om du leser artikkelen vennligst vurder å støtte selgerne med kr 100, altså prisen av ett magasin, ved å sende SMS erlikgave til 2160. Takk!
The numbers of red admiral butterflies have been building up over the last week and today with my large Buddleja davidii in full flower and warm summer weather, I counted at least 15 of the beauties, no doubt second generation butterflies from the influx we had earlier in the summer. I reported this earlier in our national web-based reporting system. To my surprise this was the largest number reported this year not only in the county but in the whole country! It seems to be a poor year for red admirals in the south of the country. My Buddleja (butterfly bush / sommerfuglbusk) has become large despite cutting it back severely every winter. It was planted here under the balcony so that I could get a good view from above from a self-sowed plant from another bush in the garden in 2010.
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Yesterday, I noticed a small micromoth flapping its wings vigorously on a spear thistle (veitistel) in the garden. It had somehow got caught on one of the spears as you can see in the video and pictures that follow. It’s probably the ground moss grey / barkmosemott (Eudoniatruncicolella). Luckily for it,it shares its habitat with a compassionate and observant individual of Homo sapiens and was soon winging its way to its next destination! The larvae of this species feed on mosses!
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Despite trying green blackcurrants (grønn solbær) from different sources over several years, this is the first time they have fruited for me (others have died)! Green blackcurrant? These are variants of Ribes nigrum (blackcurrant / solbær) that lack the black pigment. This is a variety called Venny which is now commercially available in Scandinavia – mine came from a member of KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers). I can confirm that when they are ripe (soft when pressed) they are delicious and sweet tasting, and are supposedly rich in vitamin C. My bush is still small so can’t yet offer cuttings to folk!
This is what I had for dinner last night: a Mediterranean-diet style green (wholegrain spelt) pasta dish with wild fungi, annual greens, broad beans, weeds, golpar, chili and epazote (see more on the ingredients used under the picture!).
My daughter, Hazel, peeling away the inedible slime layer of slimy spike-cap (sleipsopp):
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We used two mild tasting Russula species (kremler):Broad beans (bondebønner) and swiss chard (mangold) Shallots (Finnish heritage variety) which were harvested in September 2022 are still looking good:Sonchus oleraceus (common sow-thistle / haredylle), probably my most used veg at this time of year, even though most consider it a weed! WEEDS ARE TO FEED! Epazote, wormseed / sitronmelde (Chenopodium ambrosioides), leaves from an 11-year old plant which is overwintered indoors in a cold room down to 3-4C: Even the guest bed is in use for drying seed! Here is the 2023 crop of golpar (Heracleum spp.) seed :) : Otherwise, we used courgette, nettle, chili and Hitra Blue organic cheese!
No, not my son Robin (he arrives tomorrow). Robins (rødstrupe) have over the years I’ve lived here changed from a shy forest bird to the tame inquisitive bird I was familiar with in the UK before movimg to Norway. This morning a young bird joined me at the breakfast table for a preen, stretch and scratch before resuming catching insects…
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To celebrate our good friends’ Jurgen Wegter and Ingvild Haga’s 50th birthdays together with Meg’s 50-year anniversary of arriving in Europe for the first time (in Southampton near where I lived at the time) as well as my 50 year anniversary of leaving school and a memorable holiday with 20-30 school friends in Newton Ferrers in Devon, we made a special gourmet dinner of green mac-cheese. It had masses of veg mixed in – the year’s first broad beans and swiss chard, chicory, common sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus), Allium senescens leaves, shallots and garlic from last year, rehydrated winter chantarelles, golpar – ground seed of hogweed – Heracleum spp., together with ramsons salt, chili, sun dried tomatoes and mustard, all in a wholegrain spelt white sauce with wholegrain spelt pasta; it was topped with alpine bistort bulbils). Not to be left out, the Extreme Salad Man contributed one of his Meditteranean diet inspired multispecies salads commemorating it is now almost 20 years since he put together a salad from home grown ingredients in Malvik comprising 537 ingredients. something the world hasn’t seen before or since (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=18997). The record was set on 24th August 2003. This time there were a mere 106 ingredients….sad to see, but he must be losing it…. Thanks to Jurgen for the salad pictures:
The Extreme Salad Man photographs his latest creation
I don’t often post here about my other two gardens, the community garden at Væres Venner and the Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim. The onion garden is nicely maturing and will be officially opened this summer on 26th August, 6 years since I started work creating a garden to house a national collection of old Norwegian perennial vegetable onions collected throughout the country, some 100 botanical species from around the world and many cultivars too! Here’s a couple of videos showing the garden on 25th June 2023 close to peak flowering, although there will be flowering Alliums all the way from May to the first heavy frosts in October / November! Tasty, beautiful and a great place to study pollinators! Can you smell it? There are now over 500 pictures from the garden in this large Facebook album
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The long delayed (by COVID) opening of the Onion Garden Chicago took place at the Ringve Botanical Gardens in Trondheim on Friday. Here we grow over 400 different Alliums including over 100 botanical species and some 60 old (with a history from 60-980 years; yes the oldest history goes back to 1040!) Norwegian onions. 
(patented by Søren Holt of Danish Seed Savers some years ago!):
Broad beans (bondebønner) and swiss chard (mangold) 
Shallots (Finnish heritage variety) which were harvested in September 2022 are still looking good:
Sonchus oleraceus (common sow-thistle / haredylle), probably my most used veg at this time of year, even though most consider it a weed! WEEDS ARE TO FEED!
