Harvest festival at Uppsala Botanical Garden

The picture is from the Uppsala University webpages over exhibitions, and can be seen here (link in Swedish - unfortunately there are few links in english about the event).

If you are planning a trip to Uppsala this year I suggest you schedule it for September, or somewhere between the sixth and the sixteenth to be more precise to see the Harvest Festival in the Orangery of Uppsala Botanical Gardens. The university (which owns the garden) doesn't run it every year; I've been told it should be on every other year but if I haven't missed a show it was three year since last time.

The biggest reason to go is of course that the scientist and graduate student are making the most of their hard earned fundings and grows vegetables from all over the world. I saw ulluco for the first time at the Harvest Festival, and it was there I realised that most plants are possible to grow in a container. Of course, the scientists do have more funding than I, most of the stuff were grown in sturdy wooden boxes. Yet they were still in a size that would fit in a normal flat. Inspiration!

The show is pedagogical, at least as far as I could tell last time. You see, the entire room is filled with vegetables, plants, vegetables in pots, plants in pots growing over arches, pumpkins on the tables together withs squashes, eggplants and numerous kinds of cabbages. Only to see the countless varieties of brassica was quite overwhelming. All this greenery made me a bit woozy and I didn't get all the pedagogical stuff.

Another reason for my enthusiasm was (and will be, I hope) that this is a goldmine for anyone who wants to grew plants out of the ordinary.Why buy synthetical suger substitute when you can grow stevia? And the ulluco that give soups a silky feel instead of the powdery from potatos. I want to try it! Most of the stuff were actually possible to order as seeds from Impecta. (Perhaps I'm lucky they don't sell all of it, I would soon overload our flat with plants if they did.)

Last time I did the mistake of not taking down notes. The exhibition catalogue proved to be old, and didn't record all the fun stuff. On the other hand everything was written down on nice cirdboard signs, so it's a small thing copy them. (The texts is copy right of the author, so if you use a digital camere, don't put those picture on your website. One Dickens is enough.)

In short; bring your notebook and come. You won't regret it.

Harvest fetival in the Orangery 2007/09/06 - 2007/09/16*
Uppsala Botanical Garden
Uppsala

*There are numerous ways to write a date. Theses ones are after the model year/month/day.