Guided tour: Autumn harvest in the teaching and learning garden

Did you know that the low-calorie Jerusalem artichoke contains more minerals and vitamins than any other leafy vegetable, for example, more iron than spinach? And that the parsnip is also used as a medicinal plant? You will learn this and much more on Saturday, October 5 and 12 at 3:30 p.m. during the last garden tours of the year in the Teaching and Learning Garden of the Department of Ecological Agricultural Sciences in Witzenhausen. The garden is located right next to the greenhouse for tropical crops at Steinstraße 19 and features crops from around the world on 1,000sqm of space. The guided tour costs € 2.50 per person and lasts one hour. Registration is not necessary.

Join us on an autumnal "treasure hunt" through the species-rich garden, hear exciting stories from agricultural engineers and gardeners Catherina Merx (Oct. 5) and Sabrina Wanke (Oct. 12), and get tips on cultivation and use of typical autumn vegetables, including especially well-known and lesser-known tubers and root vegetables such as the autumn turnip and black salsify.
As the summer's floral splendor slowly gives way to autumnal colors and vegetables such as tomatoes and beans are harvested, things get all the more exciting below ground: this is where colorful and tasty tubers and beets such as carrots, beet and potatoes are hiding, as well as lesser-known species such as tiger nuts and oat roots. Together with the visitors, we want to bring these treasures to light, sharing our experience of using them in the kitchen and growing them in the garden. As early as the Neolithic Age, our ancestors dug in the earth for edible tubers, including wild forms of parsnip and turnip, which were later cultivated in gardens and fields alongside many other root and tuber vegetables. The Jerusalem artichoke, for example, found its way to us after the conquest of America and was very popular for a long time, especially in France, because it produces three to four times as much edible yield as the potato on the same area, requires little care, is perennial and has fewer demands on the soil. Since the tuber of Jerusalem artichoke is frost-hardy, as, incidentally, parsnips and oat roots, just such tubers and roots promised a valuable and satisfying meal. Tuberous and root vegetables occupy the most important place among the autumn and storage vegetables. Before there was the possibility of buying any vegetable in supermarkets around the year or resorting to frozen goods, they were important staple foods in the winter months for thousands of years, along with cereals, and an important source of minerals and vitamins.

The tour through the garden leads along the typical vegetable cultures of certain eras as if along a time line. Thus, starting in the Neolithic Age, through the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages to modern times, you will learn which autumn vegetables found their way to Central Europe in the respective eras, why the potato has displaced many other root and tuber vegetables and which vegetables are completely new to our gardens.