Monthly Archives: February 2013

20 02, 2013

Community Greenhouse Spring Start Group – March 6th – 10am

By |2018-05-20T18:58:12-07:00February 20th, 2013|Categories: Food Program, Growing (Garlic Co-op, Greenhouse, Gleaning Project)|0 Comments

Everyone is welcome to jump-start the Gardening year in the community greenhouse.

Soil making, seed planting, transplanting, knowledge sharing and general puttering in the warm greenhouse at the school are on the agenda. Ideas currently being explored involve: cuttings, propagation, and medicinals.

Activities for the next Saturday session will be planting early starts and soil testing for PH. Bring some of your own soil samples! Please bring seeds to swap, and any extra seed trays you have.

We are meeting on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10 am at the Greenhouse behind the School.

20 02, 2013

Garlic Co-op – Next Work Party

By |2018-05-20T18:56:25-07:00February 20th, 2013|Categories: Food Program, Growing (Garlic Co-op, Greenhouse, Gleaning Project)|0 Comments

We’ll be sowing the fallow bed in rye and phacelia as cover crops. We’ll also be amending the soil, so please bring any organic material you can contribute: seaweed, compost, nettle stalks, leaves, compost tea, ash, lime, manures, grass clippings, cardboard, newspaper, etc. are all welcome!

[Please remember that cardboard should be large sheets with minimal ink and tape, and no staples. Please also note that ash should be clean – no processed wood products that contain formaldehyde and other toxic glues and preservatives.]

The Trading Post wasn’t able to give us any replacement tarps as they’ve changed the way they order and won’t have any to spare until at least the fall. Since the tarps break down in the summer sun anyway, and we’re getting near to the end of our wet season, I suggest we use cardboard to cover our piles until the fall and tarp then. As our tarps are NOT recyclable (I checked with GIRR) we’ll need to bag up any we remove.

If you have any questions at all, just give me a shout.

20 02, 2013

Nettles by Emma Luna Davis

By |2018-05-20T18:53:18-07:00February 20th, 2013|Categories: Food Program, Nettlefest|0 Comments

The 6th Annual Galiano Nettlefest Community Potluck  will take place on March 30th.

Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is a herbaceous flowering perennial, native to North America, Asia Europe, and northern Africa. The plant has long been used as a medicine and a vitamin-rich food source. It has a pleasant, grassy flavour, with a slightly metallic tang, similar to spinach. In spring, stinging nettle contains up to 25% protein, dry weight, which is high for a leafy green vegetable.

After soaking or heating to remove the sting, the leaves can be dried, puréed, or substituted for spinach in any recipe. Nettle soup is a common use of the plant in northern and eastern Europe.

The plant has hollow hairs on its leaves and stems which act like needles, injecting histamine and other chemicals that sting on contact. If you do get stung, a weed that often grows near stinging nettles, yellow dock (Rumex crispus), can be used as a home remedy. An ancient British charm goes: “Nettle out, dock in, dock remove the nettle sting.”

Nettles grow 3-7 feet tall in the summer and die back in winter. They spread by seeds and  runners. Nettles are considered invasive plants, but that also means they’re easy to find and easy to propagate. The plant grows quickly and attracts beneficial insects such as butterflies. It likes partial to full sun and is drought tolerant.

Nettles contain a lot of nitrogen, so they are used as a compost activator and to make liquid fertilizer. They are one of the few plants that can flourish in soils rich in poultry droppings.

Kathy Benger’s Nettle Beer Recipe

Into a pan holding one and half gallons, pack as many young fresh nettle tops as you can, with three young dandelion plants, leaves and roots alike, but with no flower-buds. Now wash nettles and dandelions thoroughly in salted water and scrub the dandelion roots free of fibres. Then rinse them all free of salt and put them back into the pan with the rind and juice of two lemons, half a pound of rhubarb sliced and bruised and three or four pieces of root-ginger about the size of hazel nuts. Then put in as much cold water as the pan will hold, set it on the stove and bring slowly to the boil. Simmer for half an hour.

Then put into a basin one pound of demerara sugar with an ounce of cream of tartar, and strain on to it the infusion in the pan, pressing the residue lightly to express all the moisture. When, in a few hours, the yeast has multiplied and there is a good ferment working, strain off the beer into strong screw-topped bottles and screw down firmly. The beer will be ready in five days.

Go to Top