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 can find out this and much more on Saturday, October 12 at 3:30 pm during the last garden tour of the year in the teaching and learning garden of the Department of Organic Agricultural Sciences in Witzenhausen. The garden is located directly next to the greenhouse for tropical crops in Steinstraße 19 and displays crops from all over the world on an area of 1,000 square meters. 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 the agricultural engineers and gardeners Catherina Merx (5.10.) and Sabrina Wanke (12.10.) and get tips on growing and using typical autumn vegetables, including well-known and lesser-known tubers and root vegetables such as the autumn turnip and black salsify.
While the flowers of summer slowly give way to autumnal colors and vegetables such as tomatoes and beans are harvested, things get all the more exciting under the ground: colorful and tasty tubers and turnips such as carrots, beet and potatoes, but also lesser-known species such as tiger nuts and oat roots are hidden here. Together with visitors, we want to bring these treasures to light and pass on our experience of using them in the kitchen and growing them in the garden. As early as the Neolithic Age, our ancestors were digging 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 lower demands on the soil. As the tuber of the Jerusalem artichoke is frost-hardy, as are parsnips and oat roots, such tubers and roots promise a valuable and filling meal. Tubers and root vegetables are the most important autumn and storage vegetables. Before it was possible to buy all vegetables in supermarkets all year round or to resort to frozen goods, they were important staple foods in the winter months for thousands of years alongside cereals and an important source of minerals and vitamins.

The tour through the garden takes you along the typical vegetable cultures of certain eras, as if following a timeline. 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 replaced many other root and tuber vegetables and which vegetables are completely new to our gardens.