harvesting chamomile
Hello!
Where on earth have I been? Summer has flown by, and for the herb garden it’s been a good one, though a little wet.
One Thursday saw me stubbornly gardening alone in a downpour, not wise at all. Currently coming up with a list of indoor activites for the rainy days of the future, whilst I’m happy enough gardening in the rain, it seems not most people aren’t, and I’ll have few friends if I try and make them!
In general we’ve had some good gardening days and so far this year we’ve picked for harvest: lime blossom (particularly fun), chamomile, lavender, hyssop, calendula, comfrey, lovage, peppermint, sage, chives, rosemary, lemon balm, milk thistle, southernwood, rue, marigolds, mullein, hops, chickweed, and dandlilion! Many are still coming.
We’ve sucessfully dried most of them, an have been infusing others in oils. Now we’ve just got to work out what to to with them!
Filed under: Random musing / rants
Hello, it’s been a while, so will probably go backwards whist I remember what’s actually been going on. Just got back from a wee break on Eigg and Muck. A nice pause for reflection. There’s more on this at Josiah’s blog if you want to know about these lovely wee Isles. It was interesting to visit a community that you know where it begins and ends, like the 26 people that live on that Island. Living in a city like Edinburgh it’s so difficult to know what your community is, if you have one, I often wonder if I do. Are you my community? Whilst away we were reading a book by Alastair McIntosh called Rekindling Community. It has a check list for building community, these include:
- Turn of your tv
- Look up when you’re walking
- Garden together
- Have pot lucks
- Start a tradition
- Learn from new and uncomfortable angles
- Share your skills
The list is way longer but you get the idea. Start a tradition is my favourite, but I’m still trying to think of a tradition worth making. They are all things that are good to do, the idea that these days we need a checklist is a little depressing, but it comes from the fact that we no longer have a common understanding of what community is and how we should behave in one.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this so I’ll stop, I’m a little scared that I’m supposed to be a community gardener and I’m pretty much a community virgin. We try to build community at GMM, and me particularly at the herb garden, doing a lot of the sort of things found on Ali Mac’s check list. Sometimes I think I see glimpes of it, but it feels far away still.
I also learnt a new skill whilst on Muck, to make a rug on a peg loom. Mine was made from mainly wool from a black sheep and two stripes of a white sheep. It’s very easy but looks pretty good, you don’t need to card or spin the wool, just tease it straight from the sheep. When I find the relevant cable I’ll put a picture on here but it’s still in a box! I’m ready to share this skill if any of you want to make such a rug, all we need is a peg loom and a sheep fleece!
I also went around to a complete strangers house and was invited in for tea, the first time this has happened to me in Scotland I think. The lady who ran our b and b told me to go around as she was interested in herbs, we sat chatting for about an hour in her kitchen, towards the end of this I remembered to talk about herbs…
Filed under: Uncategorized
In the off chance anyone cares: I’ve discovered that softer leaves like geranium, mint etc don’t dry well by this method. It’s better to put them in a low oven for a while so they dry faster. Woodier things like rosemary, lavender do fine. Elderflower dries very well this way and elderflower tea is lovely!
I’m going to try and make lip balm, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Filed under: Environmental Stuff In Edinburgh, Random musing / rants, compost
So what adventures have I been up to since the last post?
Hmm well lets start with my first ever gardening show, my loving husband bought us two tickets and nice lunch at ‘Gardening Scotland’, this is Scotland’s answer to shows like Chelsea Flower Show. They have show gardens, floral exhibits, speakers about gardening stuff and lots of stalls! They have a competition for school children called pallet gardens, which is a garden in a metre square space. Some were very impressive, some less so. The best one was a city garden, the kids had made some sky scraper buildings from polystyrene, and given each building window boxes, roof gardens and backgreens, brilliant!
There was an eco-friendly bit sponsored by Earthy Foods. It had lots of recycled garden materials, different groups encouraging people to grow their own fruit and veg, community gardens, native plants etc. I chatted to lots of people about this, bought a few plants we were missing in the herb garden, and learned about bee keeping, this is my new dream for the herb garden. First we need to join Edinburgh beekeepers association (done), then spend the winter going to lectures on beekeeping, then classes in the summer.
Anyway I digress, dwarfing this lovely little ecofriendly but was a huge area with shops, urging us all to buy unneccessary stuff for out garden (usually plastic), special clothes to garden in, stuff for out house. Even my beloved composters were at it, giving me an superfluous plastic stick to stir my compost with, eek! At leat it was free though.
I’ve set us up with a herb drying cupboard. I moved the towels etc out of their coveted place above the boiler and put down some newspaper. Voila! A herb drying cupboard.In Scotland it is not sunny enough to sun dry herbs, and apparently most dry better in a dark, dry and warm place.
Here I am trying out two methods of drying – hanging in bunches and spread out on a wire rack. I have two herbs found in my garden, geranium leaf and rosemary. Both will make a tasty and refreshing tea and have reputed medicinal benefits. Geranium is soothing and good for PMS (I’m drinking it right now and will let you know if it works). Rosemary is stimulating and and good for the digestion.
They should be done in around a week, I expect the rosemary will take longer than the geranium as the leaf is more rubust. They must be completely dry before storing or they might go moldy. You know if a herb is dry when it is brittle and breaks up in your fingers.
Filed under: Environmental Stuff In Edinburgh, Guerrilla Gardening, Random musing / rants
Recently I’ve been getting into guerrilla gardening. There is a plot in Morningside, belonging to the railways, that started as a garden a few months ago. I try to go every couple of weeks.
Guerrilla Gardening is when an individual or group of people starts to work a piece of common land, with or without (and usually without) permission from the land owner. I find it very exciting, as I think that regaining common land is very important. Council land, for instance, is owned by all of us, and the council of that town is paid to look after it for us. Sometimes this is done well and sometimes it isn’t but its important to remember that they are not the land owner.
So anyways, one of the things I like best about this plot is that in a place that people walk past all the time. As the gardening is done most often on a Saturday afternoon, there is the opportunity for people to stop t ask us what we’re doing, and often ask if they can join. When it started most of those there were not local to the area, now most of them are, which is quite a good example of local people taking ownership of a project started by outsiders.
Guerrilla Gardening is not a long term solution, but is an interesting method of protesting, of pushing the council and other relevant bodies towards including the community in the use and maintenance of common land.
