Food Workshop

Baked pumpkin with Jerusalem artichoke, pepper, pee shoots and lemongrass
© Randi and Svend Sørensen

Food workshop – Samples and recipes with Danish Seed Savers own varieties. Part of Danish Seed Savers spring course, medio March.

Early in the winter I was asked to do a food workshop in March. Almost all crops was harvested and eaten by then. It was too late to sow new crops. Or so I thought. It turned out that I had time to cultivate pea shoots. And winter was mild, so there were left over small turnips in the garden, though the best was eaten. And while the focus was on seed saver cultivars, wild plants could also be included. And some fellow seed savers offered some of their crops for the day. So even in mid-March it was possible to present a wide range of flavours and cooking methods.

The samples was organised in stations. Clever women helped me set up the stations early in the morning. Each station should present a little harmony, but the order of stations should also guide taste buds through a landscape of sour, salty, bitter, umami and sweet. I had used very little spices, at the cultivars taste should be brought out. I had no intentions, that participants will copy this at home, but I hope the will feel empowered to explore old cultivars and wild edibles at home. Delicious cultivars are easy to preserve for future. Cultivars you don’t like to eat tend to be a pain to keep in culture. But often the difference is in the preparation.
The little old Errindlev pea was only four seeds from extinction. It was presented to the seed savers as an almost inedible, but old cultivar. I had been grown by an old woman in a village. She presented the seeds to younger people, but somehow her knowledge on the cultivar didn’t follow the seeds. Indeed, eaten as a green pea, it is no pleasure at all. But as a snow-pea and as a dry grey pea it is gourmet food. It almost became extinct before proper uses was discovered. Hereafter I listen more carefully to old people when they hand over their unique cultivars.

 

 

Salad of dandelion and turnip
©Randi og Svend Sørensen

Station 1
Salad of dandelion root and leaves, turnip and ramsons, with a pine oil and verjuice dressing
My thought was that it’s good to start with a salad. I have experience with this combination, where dandelion sweetness, nuttyness and bitterness plays well against the turnips sweetness and kale flavour. Ramsons provides an experience in a completely different level and an opportunity to bring your mind off the dandelion bitterness. The salad sets the stage for subsequent stations.

Dandelion: Weed from my own garden, cleaned and cut into suitable pieces. The flavor is both bitter, sweet and nutty.

Turnip: Petrowsky Gulia, Ohlsens Enke strain, Vangede 1948. Originally I got the seeds from the NordGen genebank, has now grown it for two generations. A nice yellow turnip. In autumn, the peel is pretty sharp tasting, like radish. To my surprise, here in March, it’s quite mild and there is no reason to tear off the peel.

Ramsons: Picked in the nearest wood a few years ago, sliced, fermented and stored in sealed glass in the refrigerator. Appearance, aroma and texture quite like freshly fermented ramsons. A strong aroma could be felt throughout the room, although there were only used very small amounts. When it comes to ramsons, fermentation intensifies and improves the garlic-like aroma. It does not take more than 5-10 minutes to pick what I use in a year. Ramsons has a fairly long picking period in April and May. Be sure to identify it properly, as some people get poisoned from mistakenly eating Lily of the Valley or Colchicum.

Oil: Siberian pine nut oil. An oil with a slight hint of resin. Many know the resin taste of Greek retsina wine.

Verjuice: The juice of unripe Rondo grapes from my own garden. To increase shelf life, I vinegar fermented the verjuice with kombucha / vinegar culture. In this way it contains both tartaric acid and acetic acid formed by fermentation and the acidic profile of the salad becomes more balanced. Wine variety Rondo sets far more grapes than it can mature. I have to thin out in the grapes anyway, and then it’s wonderful to use it for a gourmet product like verjuice.

 

 

Chopped cabbage with eggplant, oca leaves and victory onion
©Randi og Svend Sørensen

Station 2
Chopped cabbage with eggplant, oca leaves and victory onion
Danish use of raw cabbage has shocked all Russians I know. That we eat chopped white cabbage, without doing more of it, is totally hardcore for a Russian. They will either squeeze it with a little salt, or ferment it. At this station, we taste the Danish version, to remember it when we later taste the other versions. To balance the raw cabbage, I add acid in various forms: fermented eggplant, oca leaves with oxalic acid and the sour cream with victory onion. It is reminiscent of wild ramsons, and yet, not quite?

Cabbage: Purchased organic import from the Netherlands. The chopped cabbage is a standard winter salad in Denmark. It is included here for comparison of chopped white cabbage in later stations where it is respectively squeezed and fermented.

Eggplant: Grown outdoor in my own garden. Lactic acid fermented with garlic topsets (forgot the variety) and mild chilli, Medina. It is unusual to eat eggplant raw, but it’s fine when it is fermented – it can save a lot of CO2 :-). Fermentation seems like a long marinating, creating its own acidity and allowing flavour of garlic and mild chilli to penetrate the eggplants completely. If you have cold storage, either in a cold pantry or refrigerator, the various pickled vegetables are easy fast food, letting you balance a meal in a hurry.

Oca: I put my oca tubers for sprouting weeks before, to garnish with the fresh acid tasting clover like leaves. As oca is daylength sensitive, is almost impossible to grow big oca tubers in Denmark, but easy to make many small tubers. They store well in a paper bag at room temperature, and can be set to sprout fresh and neat leaves.

Victory onion: Brought from Irkutsk in Siberia. Victory onion, Allium victorialis, is a relative of ramsons. It is harvested from wild populations in the Siberian taiga, fermented and sold in marketplaces. In sour cream (smetana) it acts as a sauce or dip. Have as salted ramson potent aroma, slightly different, but clearly related. In my garden it grows at a slow pace like peonies. It is highly ornamental, a true perennial edimental.

 

 

Cider
©Randi og Svend Sørensen

Station 3
Cider from Filippa apples and seedling apples from the local wood
Time for a little drink to clean the mouth and refresh the taste buds.

Filippa: Fallen apples from my garden fermented into cider. The delicate Filippa taste is evidently in the cider

Apples from seed grown trees: Several places in the local wood are growing apple trees obviously grown from seed. Every one of them are unique. None of them are juicy like Filippa. I have the impression, that they didn’t really do anything for the cider, just being bulk. No problem, as I needed some apple juice to fill the fermentation tank.

The cider was started with a bottle of home made cider, to get fermentation started quickly. When the fermentation was ended, I bottled the cider with a little sugar to a get a light secondary fermentation. This carbonates the cider.

 

 

Grey peas, cabbage, cherry plums and Jerusalem artichoke
©Randi og Svend Sørensen

Station 4
Cooked grey peas, with squeezed white cabbage, fermented cherry plum and Urodny Jerusalem artichoke
Danish Seed Savers doing an EU founded project on rediscovering old peas and beans these years, calls for the use of grey peas. They need some crunch and acid from other elements for contrast.

Gray pea Lollandske rosiner: Old type of field peas grown by some seed savers. Soaked overnight with a teaspoon baking soda in the water. Then boiled two hours in fresh water with ½ teaspoon of baking soda. Since both yellow and grey peas are best second day, they were boiled up again and only this time I added a little salt. The peas do not disintegrate, but look like raisins in its own brown gravy. The taste is wonderful, although it is a very simple and inexpensive dish. Indeed, it’s also a healthy dish.

Squeezed white cabbage: Same cabbage, cut at the same setting on the mandoline. In this version sprinkled with a little salt and squeezed in a bowl. It takes approx. ½ hour, but you do not squeeze the cabbage continuously. Start squeezing it thoroughly for 2-3 minutes so that the cell walls burst. This releases enzymes, which starts a process that cures the cabbage to a gentle salat, even easier to digest. With 5-10 minutes intervals squeeze it again, and gradually it gets very juicy. The finished squeezed cabbage keeps for a week in the fridge. Make a big portion, and have fast healthy salad rest of the week.

Fermented cherry plums: Personally, I have had a slightly strained relationship with cherry plums. My mother was young during World War II. It taught her not to distinguish between plums and cherry plums. My childhood was therefore filled with cherry plums prepared by plum recipes, and it is not always successful. But a cherry plum tree in my garden has challenged me, and when I started fermenting cherry plums, it changed my view on cherry plums. When ripe and sweet, the fermentation will be alcoholic, due to the sugar content. This can probably become something wonderful too. But I pick cherry plums when they are still green but starting to turn yellow, and the sugar content still low. I wash them quickly in cold water, prick them with a fork, cover them in cold water with 5% salt and weigh them under the liquid surface with a plate. Then I store them at room temperature, to kick start the fermentation. After one to two weeks fermentation, I relocate them to a cooler setting (in the bottom of my pantry). Immediately before eating them, I soak them well in water to remove some of the salt. When young they taste very fresh and tangy, you can feel the carbon dioxide bubbles on the tongue. Later, after Christmas, the almond flavour of the kernels become more obvious, giving more depth to the flavour.

Jerusalem artichoke Urodny: This variety of Jerusalem artichoke is at the top in taste tests. And it is a clone everybody like, if they like Jerusalem artichokes at all. Here served sliced ​​raw.

 

 

Baked pumpkin with Jerusalem artichoke, pepper, pea shoots and lemon-grass
©Randi og Svend Sørensen

Station 5
Baked Trombo d’Albenga musk pumpkin with Dwarf Jerusalem artichoke, green pepper, Errindlev and Engelsk Sabel ESA pea shoots and lemon-grass
Baked pumpkin is soft mild carbohydrates. They must be pepped up and meet contrasts. Here in the form of crunchy Jerusalem artichoke and sour peppers. We will discover, if we like this Jerusalem artichoke, and compare it with the taste of Urodny from an earlier station. Do we experience a difference between the two varieties of pea shoots. We will experience the taste of vinegar fermented pepper.

Trombo d’Albenga musk pumpkin: Musk Pumpkin is heat-lover, and need a good summer to succeed. This northern Italian cultivar does seem to be among the best adapted. It can be used both as a summer squash and winter pumpkins. Here I cut the long massive neck in slices ​​and baked them in the oven, with a little salt and pepper. All pumpkins (and cucumbers) is high in potassium. This can be balanced with the sodium of salt.

Dwarf Jerusalem artichoke: Served sliced ​​raw. This clone divide people. Either you think it’s the world’s best Jerusalem artichoke or the worst of all! In taste tests, no one find it to be in the middle. Taste it before you grow it. The flavour is intense nutty with dark mineral tones.

Acetic fermented outdoor peppers: Green peppers are really good sliced and put in kombucha with spices and stored in the refrigerator. Here they were spiced with garlic topsets, a little mild chilli Medina, and a little verjuice. Kombucha should not be too young, but have developed a good acidity. In my kitchen, this corresponds to at least 2 weeks fermentation. You can also use kombucha fermented apple juice (apple vinegar). Acetic fermentation in this style differ from traditional pickling in that the acetic culture is alive. I find the method good for vegetables that will not fare well in a lactic fermentation. Typically dark green vegetables. Some will surely love lactic fermented green pepper, I just do not. In contrast, the red pepper is irresistible when lactic fermented.
In this method, the kombucha or vinegar is fermented already, allowing you to use herbs that would otherwise inhibit fermentation.

Errindlev pea: The peas were put to germinate about 14 days before, mostly in the greenhouse, but inside during cold periods. Shoots were served raw. They can also be used on top of a soup, in salads or in a wok. This variety is actually a grey pea, ie. a dry pea. But it works great as snow pea and pea shoots.

Engelsk Sabel ESA: Same treatment and serving as Errindlev pea. This variety is a tall snow pea, a strain developed by Ohlsens Enke, and preserved in Nordgen.

Lemon-grass: A piece of fresh leaf on top, to give a little fresh lemon aroma. People do not eat lemon grass, but chew on it, to enjoy the taste. This clone I once brought home from Thailand. In the summer, put it out in the kitchen garden, in winter, taken in to the house. This clone provides large lemon-grass stalks. When drying lemon-grass flavour is well preserved, as opposed to lemon balm, which lose flavour in drying.

 

 

Fermented cabbage with yacon, hawthorn ketchup and red pepper
©Randi og Svend Sørensen

Station 6
Fermented cabbage with yacon, hawthorn ketchup and red pepper
Here we come to the last cabbage, which is lactic fermented. As a German sauerkraut, without caraway, only slightly fermented, and still alive. We shall try yacon, which many have not yet tasted. In the wild end we taste the hawthorn ketchup. We also see the difference from the fermented vinegar peppers in the station before and this stations lactic fermented red pepper.

Fermented cabbage: Same cabbage and cut at the same setting on mandolin, as the chopped and squeezed cabbage from previous stations. This cabbage was treated like squeezed cabbage, and then immediately pressed into a glass, so the juice covered the cabbage. Close the lid and let ferment for one to two weeks. Every day unscrew and re-screw the lid, to relieve the pressure. It also gives a good feel for the fermentation progress. When you are satisfied with the result, store the fermented cabbage cool. The refrigerator keeps it fresh for a very long time, at higher temperatures the fermentation continues, depending on temperature. But there is plenty of time to use the fermented cabbage, even at not so cold temperatures. The fermentation can be varied endlessly with other vegetables, appropriate condiments and different slicing techniques. For those who do not eat fermented milk products, fermented vegetables provides the beneficial bacteria in your diet.

Yacon Morado: Grown by Kirsten Hedegaard.
Yacon is still a new vegetable in Denmark. Nutritionally, it resembles Jerusalem artichoke, but in terms of taste, one might call it the watermelon of root vegetables. Served raw, as here, it is sweet, juicy and crisp. Used in baked root vegetables it keeps its crispness quite a while before it finally starts to get soft. This variety is Morado, which has proven to be easy to grow in Denmark. It is grown almost as Dahlia. It is frost sensitive, so the tubers should be stored frost-free. They last well into spring by proper storage, and can thus still be used when Jerusalem artichoke season ends.

Hawthorn Ketchup: Hawthorn ketchup for today was made ​​with few spices to give a clearer impression of hawthorn berry taste. It is my experience that you have to taste the berries before you pick them. Pick from the bushes with best tasting berries.

Red open ground pepper: This is breeding material, that in a few more generations can become a new pepper cultivar. I grow it in the open air in each generation to make sure it will be a tough line. These ripe red peppers I have lactic fermented. Lactic fermentation brings out the best in mature red pepper (and maybe the worst in green?). I added garlic and verjuice to intensify the flavor. Verjuice make the pepper taste even more of pepper.

Station 7
Kombcha, ground ivy, Daubenton kale and Bergenia
Sorry, no photo. Again a little fluid on the palate. This time in the form of kombucha. For the brave, there is a version infused with fresh ground ivy. When you taste something unknown, it can feel reassuring holding something well known in the other hand. For this purpose I served some freshly cut Daubenton kale. The adventurer may also try a Bergenia tea.

Kombucha: Acetic fermented sweetened black tea. For this sample fermented five days, to preserve some of the sweetness. For other uses I ferment it two to four weeks.

Ground Ivy: A lovely spring flower and herb. I pluck it, and let it rest in kombucha some hours before filtering. Then, it can last a long time in a bottle in the refrigerator.
General considerations about kombucha and herbs: Many herbs can slow or change the kombucha fermentation. To prevent this I suggest you first do your kombucha, prepare a new batch, and only then infuse your herbs in kombucha. In this way, your mother culture is never exposed to the herbs antibiotic substances.

Daubenton kale: Small stemshoots served as a snack for kombucha. They were all eaten with eager, except what people took home as cuttings. This summer, there must be many small cabbages in many a seed saver garden derrived from this food workshop 🙂
Daubenton kale is a leafy brassica that never blooms, and therefore do not produce seeds. The are longlived, but can die off in cold winters. After a mild winter like this year, it is fantastic, filled with tiny tasty leaf shoots, which can either be eaten or used for cuttings.

Bergenia cordifolia: This plant I brought as tea leaves from my garden, and a Thermos of the fresh tea. Again I was surprised by the willingness to taste. In Siberia and Mongolia, it is not unusual to drink Bergenia tea. I recognize the taste. I was served this tea on several occasions in Siberia, without being told that this was different from not black tea. A mild black tea appearence, gentle flavour. You harvest this tea by picking the blackened leaves in february or march. Then the bitterness has leached out in winters rain. I washed the leaves in the kitchen sink before I wiped them dry and hanged for completely drying before storing.

 

 

“Cabello de ángel” and garlic cookies
©Randi og Svend Sørensen

Station 8
“Cabello de ángel” and garlic cookies
The end is near, and many wish some real sweet in the mouth now. A reward of jam on bread, which is probably not challenging, and the more challenging cookies with garlic.

“Cabello de ángel”: This was served on a small piece of bread. The jam was made from ​​a Siam seven year melon (Cucurbita ficifolia) by Kirsten Hedegaard, who also grew it in her garden. Siam is a very durable pumpkin that easily holds 1-2 years at room temperature, or maybe even 7 years, as the english name suggest? The flesh is white and stringy, black seeds. The flesh is also used in modern shark fin soup, saving the endangered sharks of the oceans. The seeds are also very tasty. I prefer them to C.pepo seeds.

Garlic Cookie: Oatmeal cookies baked with almonds, garlic and a little salt. There are several kinds of pastries with garlic that has been presented at our danish garlic competitions. It seems that to be good in pastries, the garlic must either be combined with chocolate or salt. Garlic in the sweet kitchen challenge our cultural concept of sweet and onion, but can easily be successful for those who are willing to accept the challenge

Station 9
Green and full ripe fennel seeds
Last station must open our eyes to the importance of harvest timing. And it must be the ending point for all previous stations. Inspiration comes from India, where I often got a little nip of anise seeds, when paing for a meal in a restaurant.

Fennel: At the end of the taste tests were two kinds of fennel seeds. Fully ripe seeds, which are also suitable for sowing. These seeds were harvested 2013. The second kind were harvested green in 2010. It was interesting that although both types taste of fennel, the green harvested, although old, had a finer and stronger flavour. The seeds were harvested in my garden, where I grow fennel as perennials

A big thanks to the talented women who helped me organize this workshop.

 

Free Our Seeds!

Demonstration for free seeds in Brussels

Palm Sunday and the following Monday I was along with other seed savers in Brussel. We took part in Sunday’s and Monday’s demonstration and seed sharing.

The days were arranged in the network www.seed-sovereignty.org

Never have I seen so many seeds being shared in a single day

Sunday was a cornucopia of seeds. There were free seeds to everybody. It was great to experience the warm generosity among people. The event was open to all, being a good opportunity to fill empty seed bags.

Personally, I was so overwhelmed that I hardly didn’t take any seeds. I mostly just got the seeds kind people put in my hand, as they said things like “these will be perfect for you”. Thank you, I’m sure they will.
One interesting portion seeds, however, I rejected. It was a Belgian “Princess” bean, which looked like our old Danish Princess Bean a lot. So much that I’m sure the two would be mixed up if I started sharing the Belgian with Danish seed savers. It could end up with the loss of the old Danish princess bean.
The Belgian did look as a good and exciting bean – I hope my rejection is understood.

Belgian Kokopelli, Ariane

Most of us from Denmark stayed with Ariane, Marc and their 3 boys. They were incredibly hospitable – thank you. It gave an insight into the lives of an ordinary family in Belgium.

Ariane is active in the Belgian branch of Kokopelli, an association with origins in France, which has branches in many countries. Kokopelli challenge EU seeds directive by selling seeds via their website. Nice that some take a stand, breaking a way to make changes to the directive. There must not only be room for the industrial cultivars, but also be room for the wide variety of other cultivars, and room for small players in the market who might just do a little seed in their own fields, to sell through their website. Small sale should be legal. It would undoubtedly be an inexpensive way to preserve the old varieties. Maybe with a remark that they are not included in EU variety list, so we as consumers know what we are buying and not buying. Some consumers will no doubt see it as a sign of quality, if a variety is not listed in the catalog – personally I will not go that far. But I can not see how the variety list meet the need of ordinary gardeners. We private gardeners have different needs from farmers and commercial vegetable growers, and there is nothing wrong in this. We prefer a long harvest period, and many old varieties meet our needs.

Steph and Patrick, Amsterdam

It was a wonderful mixture of people present. Activists, mountain farmers, seed savers, garden bloggers, scientists, and … well, I can not remember all. There were mainly people I did not know, but I also met people I know from the blogosphaere, like Steph and Patrick from Bifurcated Carrots, people I have swapped seeds with like Lieven David from de lusthofin Belgium.

Demonstration for free seeds

The demonstration was colorful and happy. Click on the image, you can see more pictures on my Flickr photo page.

Banner in Portuguese

It was a pleasure to hear (and read) many languages.

Support the free seeds (click), sign the petition

Read what Patrick writes

 

How to Plant a Garden in the Snow, Video Tutorial

Youtube is full of wonderful tutorials. The is the one you need right now, if your garden like mine is covered in deep snow. Please notice the accuracy in sowing depth!

Thanks a lot to KitchenGardeners.org (and go visit them!)

 

Peas in the lab – results

Principal coordinate analysis of old Danish peas
(Click on picture to see more clearly)

Finally I finished writing a small report (in danish) about the old peas in the laboratory.
The report is located here: 2010 Resultat af ærteforsøg (DNA)
I had google translate this version, with a bit of my help: 2010 Pea results

When reading the results, so it is vital to understand that this investigation can determine whether some of the peas are genetically different, but can not determine whether they are genetically identical! We have investigated only some small bits of the total DNA.
The peas that look similar, are either identical or different, we do not know!

At the top is shown the principal coordinate analysis. It gives a good visual picture of the distance between our varieties. Some old Swedish varieties was blended in, as they have been studied previously. It gives some reference points to past studies.

The principal coordinate analysis is based of course, on some very concrete data, namely the length of the micro-satellites we tested.

Table. Displays length of each micro-satellite.

Micro-satellites we have measured have letter names. A9 – D21 – AC58 – C20 – AA5 – AC75.
We investigated 6 different, but one would not work, the second was identical in all varieties, and therefore uninteresting. The last four showed differences. Each micro-satellite was measured twice.

I end up concluding:

So there are varieties that we now know is different from all others in this sample.
There are also groups of varieties we should check for phenotype differences. It is a great advantage that it is now clearly delineated the varieties to be compared by cultivation experiments. There is probably also varieties that are identical with each other. It is not something that can be resolved by this trial, which is only suitable to detect differences in the 4 areas (micro-satellites), we got useful results from. Whether they are identical in many other micro-satellites, we can not know before we make a new attempt!

Read in the google translated report: 2010 Pea results

If you can take a bit more, this is the excel file we were sent after the course: Diversity analysis Pisum

 

Heirloom peas in the laboratory

Pee shoots of heirloom varieties in the laboratory at Department of Agriculture and Ecology, Copenhagen University (Copyright Ingrid Nolde)

Last weekend I joined the Danish seed savers at the laboratory at the Department of Agriculture and Ecology (Copenhagen University). Gunter Backes and Jihad Orabi led us through a study of our heirloom pea collection. It was a fantastic and educational weekend!

In preparation, we had grown peas for 3-4 weeks, so they were ready for analysis. We had to use leaves that had not been given too much light. Chlorophyll can make it difficult to extract DNA material from the rest of the leaf tissue. For safety’s sake, we were two cultivating the same peas. It went well and we only used one set.

Test tubes on ice (Copyright Ingrid Nolde)

We were divided into four groups. That way we could manage to work with all the varieties we had brought. After a brief introduction to laboratory work, to use gloves and gowns – take them off when you leave the lab, we started slicing the pea leafes.
Once cut, the natural enzymes in the leaves activates. To inhibit them, we set all tubes in a tray of ice. Millimetre small pieces were placed in the tubes, a solution of caustic soda were added and the tubes were boiled for 1 minute to denature the proteins. Then we blended the boiled leaves with the tip of a plastic stick and added a resolution that brought the pH down to a desired level. To separate DNA from the rest of the leaf broth, test tubes were centrifuged.

Pea leaf broth bottom, DNA located at the top in the clear part of the liquid (Copyright Ingrid Nolde)

Now we could move the purified DNA into new tubes, still set in ice.
Then it was time to mix liquids with primer for the DNA fragments we searched for. We looked at 6 different micro satellites. Micro satellites are good to tell the difference between varieties of a species. A primer is the DNA sequence immediately before the micro satellite, leading the DNA strand to be cut at the desired location. We used a primer for each end of the micro satellite, because it must be “cut” at both ends. To the liquid is also added Taq DNA polymerase, an enzyme that replicates DNA at specific temperatures.

We used pipettes for several hours. Even with multi pipettes there was plenty to do (Copyright Ingrid Nolde)

Next the test tubes are undergoing repeated temperature changes between
94 °C, where DNA strand separates
64-55 °C, where the primer binds to the DNA strand, and
72 °C, where Taq DNA polymerase copies the DNA strand from the primer and forward

By the repeated changes in temperature, we multiplied the selected micro satellite exponentially. The first cycle gave very little DNA material, but for each cycle, there was more copies. Just like reproduction of yeast in a bread dough.

Finally, we let an electric field pull micro satellites through a viscous liquid in capillary thin tubes. A dye was coupled to micro satellites, for a photocell at the end of capillaries to detect how quickly they passed by. Small micro satellites migrate faster through capillary tubes than larger.

First presentation results

The photo shows the horizontal bands, each representing a pea variety. The small vertical bands are micro satellites. The red vertical band marks a scale, so we know how long the micro satellite strands are.
Jihad and Gunter did the analysis work Sunday morning, before we all met up – thank you!

It was best to group the peas in 7 groups

The results will soon arrive in my Inbox. I look forward to delve deeper into the results. I might have a more to write about then.

Big thanks to both Gunter and Jihad for a learning and rewarding weekend 🙂

PS: I’m just a happy amateur. Feel free to comment if I’m wrong in some of the techicalities 🙂

 

Garlic Competition2010

Three beautiful garlic braids

Frøsamlernes (Danish Seed Savers) garlic competition took place in August. Luckily some bloggers are more up to date than I am for the time being. ‘Vild med have’ wrote a great post already next day – and I enjoyed it! Now time has come for my version.

Scoreboard for the largest garlic – 1 point each. gram

Four classes in the garlic competition

Biggest garlic won by a “DR Friland”, grown from Merete.

Whitest garlic won by a “Grethes Supermarked” cultivated by Kirsten.

Darkest purple garlic won by a “Bodils Fransk Marked” cultivated by Søren.

Most beautiful garlic braid won by a “Nettos Ekstrahvide” braid by Ejvind and girlfriend.

We compete with a twinkle in our eye, and it is clear when it comes to colors and braids. As the scale was in use, great care was shown. Stems were carefully cut to 4 cm, roots to 1 cm, brushed clean of soil with an old toothbrush, and every single garlic head was discussed. It was not easy to cheat!

Until now, ‘Estonian Red’ was the only variety that could compete in size. This year a new player joined the game, “DR Friland”, and beat the nearest ‘Estonian Red’ with 9 grams. They resemble each other so much that I suspect that it is the same clone. It will be exciting in future to see, if “DR Friland” can keep ahead.

The attentive reader has already discovered it – my ‘Estonian Red’ garlic is on top of the scoreboard, but is the second smallest garlic. Yes, indeed, all others had larger garlics than I (some put up with two garlics). There is a long way to go from 100 grams up to something that can win, here a twinkle in the eye comes in handy 😉

Tasting the garlics

This year we agreed to taste the garlics. The selected varieties were ‘Estonian Red’, ‘Red toch’, “Alexander Tjetanov”, “Nettos Ekstrahvide” and Meretes home pickled garlic. To cleanse the mouth between the different varieties we had bread, olive oil and parsley. The raw garlic was cut into thin slices, so you could spear a slice with a toothpick.

Garlic tastes differently. But so different was a surprise to me. We also experience the taste very individually.

This is my sorting, from mild to strong.
“Nettos Ekstrahvide” – Extremely mild garlic – disappointingly mild.
‘Red toch’ – Mild and nutty, great depth of flavour – some experienced this as a very strong garlic
‘Estonian Red’ – Lovely strong and clean flavour
“Aleksander Tjetanov” – At first strong, followed by a mild break before it burned through with a very strong crystal clean garlic flavour. It almost made me cry 🙂

We were fortunate enough to get the whole range in the bulbs taste!
Personally, I was lucky to get a bulb of ‘Red Toch’ to grow next season.

Big thanks to our hosts, Merete and her husband.

 

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 🙂

 

Relict Plant Excursion 2010

Moat and gatehouse at Borreby near Skelskør in Denmark

Last weekend I attended Danish Seed Savers relict plant excursion with botanist Bernt Løjtnant.

Relict plants are plants that once was grown, and which since has survived in the environment surrounding the original growing sites. The plants grow only around human settlements or ruins, as they have not been able to invade the forest or field. Therefore, we searched for them around the old manors Holsteinborg and Borreby, in the old fishing village Bisserup and at port and village on island Agersø.

There is also a time factor in the concept of relict plants. The plants must have survived since medieval times, i.e. before Columbus. Therefore no plant originating in America is recognised as a relict plant. Plants originating in America can have great cultural value, but they are not as old as the true relict plants.

Greater Burdock, Gobo (Arctium lappa)

Relict plants was originally grown for a purpose, typically food or medicine. I was surprised to meet Gobo, an exotic root crop. All commercial varieties are of Japanese origin as far as I’m aware. It is a medieval vegetable that we have forgotten to use. Both roots and leaves were cooked. It is not impossible that we could find better varieties among our relict plants (for our climate) than the ones we find commercially. Some of the burdocks were much higher than I!

White Bryony (Bryonia alba)

Every time we were presented with a medical plant, Bernt Løjtnant had an earnest word to us. They are toxic – very toxic! They contain not one but several poisons. The contents of toxins varies greatly from plant to plant, from leaf to root, from season to season. They are very capricious in use. White Bryony is one of them. We must not use them medically. Those who are not outright dangerous he considers to be ineffective, such as German Chamomile (extensively used in danish households).

I don’t entirely agree, either entirely disagree.
I love to use my Calendula tincture internally, can’t imagine having to do without it. But it might not be effective. I believe in it and that’s enough for me. I prepare it my at home, so it is cheap. If it doesn’t help my health, it brightens my life anyway 🙂

Borreby near Skelskør

More photos at Flickr (click here)

Wolfberry, Goji (Lycium barbarum)

Goji berries have become fashionable as a power food. I knew that it is wolfberry, that grows wild in Denmark, but I thought they were imported as late as in the 1800s. So it was exciting to hear Bernt Løjtnants explanation on the use of wolfberry in eelgrass fences in the countryside in Denmark back in the medieval times.

I captured Bernt Løjtnant explanation on wolfberry and rural fencing in Denmark. Sorry, I didn’t have time to dub the video, language is Danish.

 

Tom Wagner Workshop

Some of Tom Wagners varities of potato
Copyright Anja Egeriis anja.egeriis@gmail.com

Tom Wagner from USA gave a workshop at the organic farm Hegnstrup outside Copenhagen in Denmark.

Tom shared his lifelong fascination in potatoes and tomatoes (tater & mater). For 56 years he has been crossing and selecting on potatoes and tomatoes, and he still has many ideas to improve varieties. Tom is best known for his tomato Green Zebra.

Tom Wagner explains what to watch out for in a tomato flower for breeding
Copyright Anja Egeriis anja.egeriis@gmail.com

It is a pleasure to dive deep in to details with such an experienced breeder as Tom. He showed us how the first flower in a cluster often have a deformed style. The shape makes it more sensitive to later insect pollination, at a point we would think we had control of the pollination. He also recommended looking at the little scar in the flower end of the ripe tomato. Is it a tiny spot, the style was well shaped, a larger irregular brown scar suggest the style was deformed, with an increased risk of unintended crossing.

Tom gently tear off the anthers of the tomato flower
Copyright Anja Egeriis anja.egeriis@gmail.com

Tom gently tear off the anthers of a tomato flower. Then he knock it over his thumb nail to release any pollen, to learn if there is any ripe pollen. There was none, meaning this flower can be crossed. He already had noticed the green shine in the yellow anthers, suggesting they were not releasing pollen yet.

Tom pollinate a tomato flower
Copyright Anja Egeriis anja.egeriis@gmail.com

Then he pick a well developed flower of an other tomato variety, knock it gently over a brown clay tray and we can all see the pollen collected on the tray. With the tip of a brush he transfer the pollen from the tray to the stigma. Then he removes the petals, so insects will not be attracted, and add a tag to remember what he did to the flower (later tomato). Last he pick the older flowers, not letting them take any energy from his pollinated flower.

We gather closely to see every detail
Copyright Anja Egeriis anja.egeriis@gmail.com

Tom Wagner thinks in combining good genes. For both potato and tomato this include resistance to late blight. He also want hairy plants, as insect find the plant fur unattractive. In this way both insect damage and insect transfer of disease by their bites are reduced.

He has developed potato varieties that can stay in ground all winter for eating or replanting in April, without any sprouting. They do need a mulch in case of severe frost.

He has also develop a potato I think of as a CO2-reduced potato. It is tasty, yellow fleshed and only take a 5 minute boil before eating. A 75% reduction of CO2 in the boiling process.

For the tiny garden he developed a series of potatoes with huge flamboyant flowers, the photos made me think of Dahlias, with more usefull tubers.

As Tom has no land of his own, he is totally dependent of others cooperating with him. Tom sends out a lot of not yet stabilised hybrids to others, for them to select on according to his guidance for some generations. He find that they usually stabilise in the 5th. or 6th. generation.

One of Toms interesting techniques is the preselection. He has gained the capacity to read the phenotype already at the seedling stage, allowing him to sort out most of the unattractive seedlings before transplant. This saves a lot of space in the gardens. In the shape of the young leaves he read the shape of the tubers to come later, round or elongated. When he wish a potato resistant to late frosts, he look for seedlings that will be first in afternoon to gather their leaves on top of the growing tip, thus protecting it from frost. These techniques show how deep he understand these crops.

At transplant of potato seedlings, it is very important to bury 1 or 2 of the normal leaves in the ground, otherwise you won’t get a proper tuber production.

Tom believe we ordinary people should take responsibility to maintain and improve the heritage form our ancestors. He believe we should do the F1 hybrids bottom up (by ourselves), and share them generously, keeping hybrids fertile in future generations and maintain the inherited gene pool. We can afford the longterm investment, whereas the few remaining multinational seed companies breed for the next ten years only, and for shareholders that’s a very long perspective compared to the normal 5 year perspective.

To ease our work on potatoes, he also breed to improve fruit setting in potatoes. Most modern potatoes set no fruits at all. To grow new and better varieties we need the seeds!

Ps. At Bifurcated Carrots you can read the plan for Tom Wagners tour in Europe

 

Danish Seed Savers Annual Meeting 2009

Christina Løjtnant share her knowledge on relict plants in the village Gl. Lejre

Frøsamlernes (Danish Seed Savers) annual meeting started with a visit to an ecological market garden Gartneri Toftegård south of Copenhagen. Lene Tvedegaard explained with great knowledge about their huge number of chili, pepper, tomato and herb varieties. She told us, how often it happens that the chili and peppers cross pollinate in their large greenhouses. We probably should pay more attention to the fact, that some insects might acquire a taste for the nectar in our chili/pepper flowers, thus crossing them. In a row of large greenhouses like here, the insects are of course much more likely start visiting the flower, than in a garden with just a few plants.
We tasted a lot of tomatoes and chilies, though we had a tight schedule, and we like always had hundreds of questions to ask 🙂 We know how to extract a lot of knowledge in no time from the wise people we visit!

Lene Tvedegaard shows a small physalis with pineapple taste, her favorite. Interesting, as people where I stood was very divided in their opinion. Some were enthusiastic about it, others like myself, prefer other types with different taste. This is also a reason for growing a great number of varieties within the different crops.

Chili and tomato tasting in one of the greenhouses

Allotments in Ishøj

From Toftegård we drove to the allotments in Ishøj. It was exciting to see how much can be grown, when 100 sq.m. is exploited intensive. Ishøj is know for its large immigrant community. The allotments is a cultural melting pot, where people with very diverse cultural heritage meet each others gardening culture. Some are faithful to their origin, others are more curious, letting themselves getting inspired to grow new crops and grow in new ways. The joy of gardening prevail, almost every gardener there seems to share it. Almost, because here like every where some people with good intentions are not able to keep the garden from growing in to weed and wild trees. But in this allotment they are willingly helping if allowed. An old man kept his garden very well, but has fallen ill this summer. Those who can keep his garden for the time being. He probably helped others in need at times.
Anna, who grow one of the gardens, showed us around. She has a great knowledge of the individual gardens and the culture they represents, and could point out where inspiration had crossed garden fences and cultural borders. The quiet cultural exchange.

Typical danish potato garden. Ground is now bare after the potato harvest. Note the strawberries, root beet, leek, celeriac and fruit bushes

Garden with, as far as I remember, afghan roots. Note the large bed with coriander, this amount is not yet consumed by any old danish families. Also beds with tiny leek-like plants – could it be tareh? Anna have tried to ask, but have not been able to communicate with the family, as she and they have no language in common. Tareh is a small leek, grown like chives, cut several times above ground.

In some of the gardens, the useful is less important than the romantic

Sunday we had a relict plant excursion with Christina Løjtnant (Top photo). She know her plants, and willingly went in to our discussions on how old history a plant should have before we can call them relicts, and when is it really a relict from former cultivation, not the same species escaped a garden in recent times. She explained, that it is not the individual plant that proves to be a relict, but the pattern in which you find formerly cultivated plants around ancient churches, villages, monasteries and other places with traces of intense human activities. She pointed to the fields and meadows – out there relict plants are very rare, only found as single plants, not in populations like in this old village.
Common Butterbur (Petasites hybridus), formerly a classical relict plant, has for some unknown reason transformed from a relict plant surviving around old castles to an invasive species, no more restricted to specific areas where it was originally introduced.

The relict plant excursion ended at the old kongsgård in Gl. Lejre

More photos from the annual meeting