Cannabis sativa from antiquity to the Middle Ages

I wrote this as a bit of a giggle for my local SCA newsletter. I am not advocating for the use of Cannabis sativa for psychotropic purposes, but I do believe that we should be using the fibre in place of wood. It also makes pretty good shirts.

Seedballs/ Seedbombs- getting into some guerilla gardening for good

I bought a bag of clay from Curry's Art Supplies last year with the intention of making seed bombs, but life, and head trauma, got in the way. Then two weeks ago I was buying groceries, and saw this bag of mixed wildflower seeds in the vegetable section, of all places. It promised being able to cover a huge area with flowers for $20, so I bought it. I mixed a handful of the seed mixture with some composted manure and a light potting soil to spread the seeds out even more, and then made little pockets of clay and filled them with this mixture. Like dirt ravioli.

How to become a little bit more self-sufficient (even if you live in the city)

Being more self-sufficient also means saving a bit of money. This is what's called a 'win-win', I believe! If this is super new for you choose one item off this list, and start from there.

1. Have some herbs in pots in a sunny window.

My kitchen is too dark to keep plants in, so all of my herbs, and my lemon and bay trees have ended up in my daughter's 'study'. She likes being surrounded by plants while she works, and her window faces nearly directly south, so everybody is happy. Between this and my outdoor herb garden I haven't had to buy anything except annual herbs for years, and I have enough to give away as gifts, as well as make my food extra yummy for the whole year. I honestly believe this is why my roast chicken and soups are as good as it is. Fresh, or freshly dried, herbs really do make all the difference.

Fall herb harvest

 Chives and parsley. They're hard to air dry so I'm going to put them into the freezer. I have a dehydrator somewhere... I suspect it got put in the crawl space when we moved in, and I hate going in there. Freezer it is!

How to attract Bumblebees to your garden

According to Hinterland Who's Who Bumblebees are native to North America (unlike honey bees which did not exist here until Colonists brought them over). They are large and fuzzy, and non-aggressive, unless you disturb their nest or swat at them (or step on them). Their stinger isn't barbed, unlike the honey bee, so they can sting multiple times if they need to. The drones (males) do not have a stinger at all. Bumblebees see in UV light so they are more attracted to blue and purple flowers, but they will happily feed off of any flowers they find.

Only 45 species of bumblebees are social, meaning that they live in hives of up to 200 individuals, whereas honeybees have colonies of up to 40,000. Bumblebees make very little honey as all but the new queens die off over the winter. They usually nest underground in abandoned rodent burrows, and they can be found in sub-Arctic to sub-Tropical climates.

Why do my houseplants die? (A tale of unnecessary woe)

Or, humans can't live on bread and water alone, and neither can plants...


I have some friends who swear up and down that they have a brown thumb. Every plant they take in dies a long, slow, horrible death. Sometimes it's because they forget to water enough (and even more rarely, too much). Usually when I ask them what happens, they say they don't know.


tl;dr- Buy a good liquid plant food and add it to your plant water as directed. Sometimes you need to re-pot your plants in new soil. Ask at your local garden centre what they suggest. Sometimes your plant has outgrown its pot and needs a slightly bigger one, but if you don't give food to your plant it will likely never get to this point.


If you actually want to learn something about it, read on...

Birds, feeders and the garden

My Dad loves feeding birds. He spends a lot of money every winter buying enormous bags of bird seed. And the birds love him, too. He has quite a few visiting his feeders for most of the year (he stops feeding them in May and starts up again in September). He loves to look after them, providing cover for them to hide in by planting bushes and native plants, and going out to shovel areas for the ground feeders if the weather is bad. It gives him a sense of purpose.

However.

Garter snakes- a gardener's best friend

Garter snakes are only mildly venomous, and even if they bite you they don't produce enough to harm a human. But they are very effective predators, eating slugs, insects, worms, frogs, minnows, and even rodents if the snake is large enough, all of which (except the worms, minnows and frogs) are generally bad for your garden. They have very distinctive markings- three yellow stripes run their length on a dark or black background. Garter snakes give birth to live young, unlike most reptiles. Adults can range in size from 45cm (18") to over a meter (over 45") at the very top end (but that would be a rare one, and probably wouldn't find enough food to stay in your back garden).

The bees are doing well

And I'm learning so much... There's only so much you can read before trying it for real. Experience is the best teacher.

And it's true what they say- To make a small fortune in beekeeping... start with a large one. Good thing these bees are my only pets right now!

Linden trees are extra-ordinarily useful

This tree is also commonly called basswood and lime wood (possible corruption of the Old English and Proto-Indo-European word lind (flexible). It is not related to citrus trees). The N. American version (Tilia americana) can be found from Mexico to Alaska, and there are two genus in Europe (little leaf- Tilia cordata, and large leaf- Tilia platyphyllos), which can be found in southern Norway and Sweden, down into Italy and as far east as the Black Sea. The little leaf genus is far more widespread, and can be found up into Russia and North-eastern Turkey as well as Spain.

Beekeeping pictures

The set up before adding bees.

My first inspection. I didn't take a picture of the second deep on top after.

I didn't get stung!! Woot!

More advanced topics- Soil pH

As I learned from my daughter's grade 8 science class notes pH stands for potential of Hydrogen, and it's determined by measuring the number of hydrogen ions. Water has a neutral pH with a balanced number of hydronium and hydroxide ions. This pH is measured as 7. Anything less is acidic and anything above is basic (or alkaline). Lemon juice is 2.2 pH, so it is highly acidic. The best range for plants is between 5.5 to 7.5 (so acidic is better than alkaline), although some plants have evolved to survive in soils outside of that range (like Arabian coffee and highbush blueberry).

I haz bees...

Or, I will soon enough. I need to spread some white clover seeds around the fields near where they're going to live. This is pretty darn exciting. I've been thinking and planning this for about three years now. As I said to my husband the other day, some people take up marathon running. It hurts them *all the time* they are running. I'll only get stung every once in a while, and at the end I'll have honey... It's far less crazy than some people!
Sometime in the next three or four weeks I'll have a whole bunch of little lives to steward. I think I'm ready for the responsibility.
Maybe?

Starting a new garden bed

A garden is nothing without a good foundation, and that foundation is the soil. Soil has its own complicated ecosystem from worms and beetles on down to tiny, nearly-microscopic filaments of fungi and bacteria. As with anywhere on earth, a healthy ecosystem is essential for optimal growth and health.

In my backyard the soil is a heavy clay over a base of sand. It barely grows grass in some places. But, if you build it they will come... The raised bed that I put in last summer is nearly overflowing with worms, and centipedes are fairly common, too, much to my husband's chagrin. It started off life as a lasagna garden, with a base layer of cardboard boxes recycled after the move, a couple bags of dirt from the grocery store garden center, and some trench-compost piles. Now there's enough good dirt to grow short-ish carrots, and my herbs are taking off. The bed isn't very large because it takes a fair input of cash to start that way, with the boards and hardware to attach the corners. I used two un-treated cedar deck planks and cut them down to a rectangle.