Dandelion

As a gardener I have been guilty of throwing thousands of dandelions on to the compost heap. Not any more. Since I discovered the delight of dandelion coffee, I save every one, even going so far as to replant any that are too small.

This picture shows some dandelion roots freshly washed. They can be make into a dandelion coffee at this stage. Also shown are some roots that have been cut into short lengths and dehydrated (not roasted) and stored in jars. If properly dried they will last for a very long time. I also dry and store couch grass roots in the same way and add to the blender at this stage for their health giving properties. 

To make a warm frothy healthy vegan drink, I put a small amount of roots into a blender. Dried roots can be powdered before hot water is added, while fresh roots can just be blended hot water. Allow plenty of time to pass for the roots to brew. You might want to strain out the coffee at this stage, but fresh roots work well unstrained.Then various things can be added and re-blended, I have used from the following list; coconut oil, carrob, cacco, nettle seeds, macca powder, tiny pinch of quality salt and quality honey.The trick is to be creative. I tend to add there ingredients after the brew has cooled a little as some of the ingredients are heat sensitive. Finally fast blend froths it all up. Delicious.

THE BEAUTY OF HERITAGE VEGETABLES

                                                                   

  THE BEAUTY OF HERITAGE VEGETABLES

Leeks and lettuce in their budding stage

This page is to introduce you to the joy of working with heritage plants. One of the pleasures of this pursuit is that you get to work with every stage of your plant's life cycle. The picture above shows some heritage leeks and lettuce, which have been allowed to grow onto the budding stage. What has happened so far is that we had a mixed bed of lettuce and leek which we harvested as a food crop. However, as we were  harvesting we were careful to leave the best specimens in terms of their type to go on to the next stage. 

The picture above shows the budding stage. The next phase (flowering) is very enjoyable, as the whole bed attracted so many pollinators; bees, butterfly, hoverflies, moths and beetles.

The second picture is of the final stage of the leeks life. It had grown so tall that I had to cut the head off to get it into the picture. So what you see here is the seed head and the roots. The seed head is still a little green, but I was running into very wet and windy weather so cut them a little early. They ripened up very well in a dry shed. Only when the seed heads have gone papery dry, and turned a whitish brown can you begin to rub out the seeds. It is surprising how abundantly just a few plants will provide seeds. However when you consider that leek seeds remain viable for a number of years, it is worth growing a good supply to meet your ongoing gardening needs. Furthermore, I like to have a surplus to swap or give away to my gardening associates, and have a few more again to be able to use some as a spice, where they work as onion seeds. Moreover, you need to have a minimum number to provide a viable genetic population. We saved about fifteen plants to twenty plants, which satisfied the above requirements as well as being a visually pleasing stand. It is nice to realise we wont have to bother saving seeds from this variety for a few years so we can save another variety of leek with out risk of cross pollination .Maybe we wont save any leek seeds at all for a year or two and have time and space for other things.

Another point of interest is that this variety of leek (Blu de Sol) was very willing to produce bulblets a couple of which can be seen as white balls amongst the roots in the above picture. I collected all of these bulblets up and have planted them, that was in he beginning of October. They are already very promising young leeks in the beginning of January.

These bulblets, and the abundance and vigour of the seeds speak to me of the determination of these plants to live. It speaks to me of the partnership between plants and our gardening ancestors,year after year, generation after generation, and that is the beauty of heritage vegetables.

Overcoming addictive behaviour part 2

St. John's Wort

Following my last somewhat negative page on addictive behavior, in which I characterized it as a number of very undesirable mind sets, and pointed out its huge drain on planetary resources, here is the good news.

Addictive behaviors can be over come.In my opinion a broad range of approaches can be of use here, and I would like to suggest a selection with out going into any great detail at this stage.
 1. Work on your mind, Catch, analyse and Reject all negative, selfish and generally unhelpful thoughts and communications.
2. Selecting your company can also be very helpful here.
3. In place of negative thinking, cultivate positive thoughts. For example think of things you are grateful for,  celebrate progress you are making, be grateful  for support from your friends and allies, and encourage them in their progress. Be clean, tidy and efficient. Be optimistic.
4. Engage in a challenging but worthwhile project.
5. Get help , remember you cant do it alone ,but only you can do it. Get a support group appropriate to your stage of development, and what you are trying to do. I'm thinking initially of twelve step groups. Sometimes, you might have to form your own group. For instance recently I pulled together a seed swap group,  which I am proud of.

6.There are various herbs which can help to calm down an addiction, or an addictive restless mind. Sage, Thyme, St Johns Wort, Chamomile, Calendula, Spearmint and Centurion are common and available ones. Get professional advice,read books or do internet research.which leads on to another useful practice learn how to study give yourself time every day , or at least a couple of set timed during the week dedicated to study and learning.

Then there are the simple things of life. 

• Drink at least two liters of  clean water a day.
• look after yourself, by preparing healthy nutritious food.
• Regularly take exercise .
•  Every day practice conscious breathing. That is calmly take ten deep inhalations and exhalations this will be very useful in the inevitable crisis you will have to face in the future.
•  Avoid processed drinks and food like poison.
•  Get into a regular pattern of exercise.walking jogging swimming cycling yoga are all good,
•  Get into a lifestyle where good hard work produces good useful things. For instance take up gardening or foraging, cycle to work. Heat your home with wood you collect cut and chop, take up wood work, it depends partly what your interests are where your talents lie.

All in all its mostly about installing helpful wholesome things in your life and rejecting things that you recognise are no longer useful.there are a lot of suggestions here. there is no point trying to install them into your life all at once.Its a gradual process. As long as you are making progress that's fine.
something else that can be useful,is to get a teacher or councilor or  a life coach for instance Skip Archimedies is an amazing teacher/healer/life coach, and his services can be found at www.skiparchimedes.com/em

That's all for today . Ill just finish with this hope for you . Believe in yourself . You can Do it .

Eddie

Saving vegetable seeds from the wild

Most of our cultivated vegetables have been carefully selected over many generations of plants for the required qualities. This is why they have the appearance texture and flavour that they do,and is the reason why we need to carefully select the best vegetables of there type if we want to grow them on to save there seeds for the next year. However there are exceptions.Salsify and Scortzoa as they are grown on the vegetable plot are very similar to their wild brothers or sisters.There are at this point in time no real varieties , just species,which makes it very easy to save seeds from them from year to year or even just collect them from the hedge rows and field edges where they continue to grow.here is a picture of them growing to seed in my allotment. they are the fluffy , blow away seeds in the foreground the seeds further back are spinage . collecting the seeds couldn't be easier. on a dry day simply grasp the seed head with your hand . If they are ripe they will pull away quite easily .then just put them in your back pocket until you get home to store them properly. by the time you get home they will have separated from the fluff quite effectively.They can be quite abundant June and July.so it is easy to collect your seeds for planting early autumn or next spring.  salsify is reputed to be very rich in assimilable iron and mineral . the green leaves can be added to salads through the summer and autumn the long roots can be harvested through the autumn and winter. Is there a use for the
seeds I don't personally know of one .If you do please enlighten us all Eddie

Changing the Addictive Mind Set
part 1

Have you ever struggled to overcome an addiction or compulsive behaviour?

Have you ever succeeded but still felt anxious that the addiction would come back or be replaced with another?

This is because struggling repeatedly with addictions, we come to realise that there is an addictive mind set which is prone to addiction and other destructive behaviours and events.
This is not difficult to understand as the addictive mind is easy to describe .......lacking self esteem, evasive, manipulative, aggressive, blaming others, refusing to take responsibility,complaining and sympathy seeking.

It is also easy to see how this mind set will lead quickly to addiction, isolation and sorrow. The difficulty comes in recognising that I might have a mind like that or that some part of my mind could be responding in this way. Also one might not know what if anything can be done about it.

What has this you might be asking , got to do with saving the planet? 

Apart from being very destructive in your personal world, addiction when measured across the entire population is hugely depletive of resources, creating a demand above and beyond the simple demands of survival and comfort, apart from the drain on physical resources, is the drain on human creativity and energy, which we are surly going to need if we are to get through the current crisis... also the mind set of addiction is one of greed, which also allows for such things as chemical farming, domination of heavy industry and the arms race and indeed war itself. 

Considering all these things, addictive behaviour measured across the population is a major environmental problem, on par with misuse of human manure, the nuclear arms race, oil pollution etc. By combating your addictive behaviour, you are doing yourself and the planet a huge favour, and for this reason I am going to come back to this issue many times, and I invite you to input any thoughts and suggestions of your own.
By the way ,if you recognise any of these traits, in your self , if you are wondering what you could possibly do about it, firstly i sincerely recognise, and salute your courage. secondly i would encourage you to look at overcoming addictions part two in this blog
 Eddie 

Composting

Heres a thing about composting, I am often asked "are black composting bins any good?"

.My own personal preference is home made bins, made from scrap wood, for general purpose household and gardening organic waste, or even a freestanding heap for larger amounts.

So I wouldn't go out and buy a black bin. However, if you have one and want to use it they have distinct advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that being black they convert sunlight to heat which can accelerate the early stages of composting. On the other hand, being non porous they can cause the whole thing to acidify and to lose nutriment in the form of run off, so be careful to use a good amount of areating bulky material (which will fill your bin very quickly another possible down side).

Here's a picture of a couple of finished bins with an extra spin.

Finished bins with potatoes

Dry Herb Harvest

Dry Herb Harvest

Here`s another use for a trampoline.sun drying herbs for winter use.here we have dandelion greens, Alconet,stinging nettle tops and arch angle. Its easy .

• Dry excess moisture in the sun 
• put into a paper bag, 
• shaking every day until completely dry and crisp.
• then seal in jam jars or reseal bags.

 they can be used as a tea, or blended to a fine powder to be added to juices smoothies or food for a mineral, vitamin rich boost. what's more its locally produced.