Organic Plant Breeding in Denmark

After visiting organic farm Mørdrupgård, and growing naked barley in my garden, I want to bring Anders Borgens video on YouTube to your attention. He gives a tour in his organic breeding projects, mostly grains. Language english. 9 min. Enjoy 🙂

 

An Evening in the Fields

Anders Borgen led half of the participants in the fields

This year I had the opportunity to participate in an evening in the fields of Mørdrupgård, an ecological farm where Per Grupe grow organic grains. He cultivates over 300 old varieties of grains. When he gets a variety from the Nordic Gene Bank (NordGen), it’s just a small portion. It has to be grown several years, before he has grain enough of a variety to perform baking or malting tests. In the process some varieties are discarded, as they simply perform poorly, but most grow well in an ecologic field.

Per Grupe welcoming the visitors at Mørdrupgård

It was a pleasure that so many participated, and understandable that one had to sign up in advance. We were so many visitors, that they used a speaker, enabling everybody to hear Per Grupes welcome speech. He has operated the farm since sometime in the 80’s.

Lentils and oats

We saw a lot of wheat varieties, both the oldest einkorn wheat and emmer (farro), but also the adorable compact wheat and other varieties that would be celebrated by florists. Many a gardener would enjoy a row of these beautiful old varieties in the flower garden, to dry them at harvest time as everlasting flowers. Unfortunately I did not stop with the camera – I wanted to hear every word from those wise professionals.
The biggest surprise to me was, when we passed a parcel with lentils. In order to increase yields there were sown oats in rows for the lentils to lean at. There are many varieties of lentils that can thrive in Denmark. It is not a crop, I immediately think of growing in my garden. On the other hand, it could be a fine crop in combination with some vegetables, as it fix nitrogen.

Crowding around the bread samples

Crops on the field must have a value. In these fields it is for human consumption. We had samples of bread and beer made by some of the old varieties from the fields of Mørdrupgård. There was plenty of flavour in the good bread.
My favourites were Aurion Svedjerug rye bread and Meyers barley bread, others had their favorites.
The beer was good, but as I was driving, I only had a small cup. Enough to experience the taste of good beer.
Then there was naked barley and rye kernels. Germinated for three days and then boiled a few minutes. Served on vine leaves with sauce verte. Imagine, you can boil the whole kernel in 2-3 minutes as long as they have sprouted a few days. Healthy fast food! When the corn is in the germination process, they are probably good for several days. I guess we are a lot of people, who can use this method in our modern lifestyle, where food sometimes has to be fastfood.

After a good walk over the fields, most of us felt thirsty

It was a beautiful midsummer evening

 

Danish Seed Savers annual meeting

Locals was invited for the coffee in the garden

The annual meeting was this year on the island Samsø. Ingrid, Lila and others had planned a wonderfull week-end. We have a tradition for visiting a lot of interesting places during our annual meetings.

Brian Krause has a post in danish on the meeting.
I mostly post pictures.

Annette Mørch tells us about her Dexter cattle and the sheeps. She run an ecologic farm

Ingrid has a passion for tomatoes, here German Striped and Brandywine

Ingrid presents the museumgarden she tends

I was surprised to find Virginia tobacco and hemp in the museum garden – it’s a hemp for rope, no use trying to smoke it! Both are old culture plants on Samsø island

Homestead Fredensdal is part of Samsø Ecomuseum

“Den jydske hest” called Herkules is an old danish breed

Fredensdal is one of a very few places to meet the old danish breed “sortbroget dansk landrace svin”. Wonderfull pet pigs

Gute sheeps are the most important employees in the islands department for environment

The sheeps takes care of a beautiful landscape

Both ducks and people live in cosy houses in village Nordby, who would guess they have a solar heat plant?

Nordby’s solar heat plant

After a long week-end with long walks, legs had grown somewhat long. Nice to spend hours on the ferry home remembering the good time

 

Harvest festival

Anne and I at the danish seed savers Frøsamlernes tables

At Fuglebjerggårds harvest festival Anne, Kirsten and I represented the danish seed savers Frøsamlernes. Most of the activities were ecological/biological. We showed products from our own gardens, telling the stories of old and rare varieties. We also sold books and seeds. Particularly the seeds were popular, as the are not sold in ordinary trade. There was a lot of interest among visitors. We had a job explaining, that one cannot just buy all the seeds of our seedlist, first you must join (not expensive), then you recieved the exchangelist and can start having seeds. We just brought some seeds to let people remember us. Due to the huge demand for seeds, Anne spend part of sunday paketing seeds in small envelopes. In the end, all interested in seeds had a chance to buy one or more packets, allthough some varieties finished during the sunday.

We had a chance to stand under the open shed, and are grateful 🙂
Wether forecast had promised a lot of rain

Photografer of the day Kirsten H. – Thanks for lending the photos!

 

Ørestad Urban Gardens

Ørestad Urban Gardens

In an ealier post I also wrote on Ørestad Urban Gardens

Summary: The gardens probably need to move in august to another area in Ørestad. For that reason the gardens are moving from small plots to plantboxes, which kan be moved by a fork-truck. Everything is done ecological if possible.

Plantboxes has now been assembled, filled with expanded clay pellets and earth, sowed or planted. They can be seen from the road and the metro, a remarkable sight.

Plantboxes need watering

The two young women are in a group of eight who grow 10 boxes in commen. Plantboxes need regular watering, but when sharing the watering, they don’t need to take the tour for watering as often.

The water tap

Areadevelopment company allow the use of the land and install a watertap, making watering a job one can face.

Two winebottles in a plantbox

Others solve the watering problem by poking waterfilled winebottles neck down into the soil. In this way water is released slowly, and the plantbox need less frequent watering.

This plantbox is already filled up.

Some have had a ground plot last year, and can now move overwintered plants into their plantboxes. Some of the plantboxes are already filled up with herbs and flowers, soon to be picked. Other plantboxes stand with seedlings of radish and lettuce.

Adonis

Handsome adonis have found his way to Ørestad Urban Gardens.