On the twelth day of Christmas my true love shared with me 12 tips for food growing Heard on the radio, the third most googled item to buy in the UK in 2020 – compost! Woah, the amount of people that must be getting into their own food growing. If there was one way to build a local resilience to climate change, it is most certainly growing your own food. Continuing from the festiveRead More…
Making pesto Edible Campus volunteer Isabelle Low writes: Hooray! The hungry months are over; and we are now starting to have to deal with seasonal gluts instead. I have a little veg now (courgettes and lots of salads), but by no means a glut. But my herb garden needs hard picking to keep it under control. So I’m making lots of different pestos. Although traditional pesto genovese iRead More…
Edible Campus volunteer Isabelle Low writes: Annoying weed or good for the environment? Bumble bees, beetles, birds, butterflies and a host of other beneficial insects all look to the dandelion as a source of nourishment in early spring. It is not a preferred food, but it does help fill the gap when other sources are not available and in spring dandelions exist in abundance. But
itRead More…
Edible Campus volunteer Isabelle Low writes:
Lots of rhubarb in all the Edible Campus gardens at present: fresh and juicy. As well as rhubarb crumble, why not try making rhubarb chutney?
This recipe is not sweet but it is punchy. I also make it later in the year using plums and then apples.
I had about 500g of rhubarb; to which I added a shredded onion and quite a lot of shredded garlic,Read More…
Edible Campus volunteer Isabelle Low writes: Here is a further recipe using seasonal nettles. Thanks to Lindy Maclean for sharing this recipe. Ingredients 200g freshly picked nettle tops 1kg granulated sugar 40g
citric acid (1 tsp of citric acid = 4 tbsp lemon juice). 500ml
water Sterile
glass bottles with tops, either screw or cork Instructions Step
1: Collect, washRead More…
https://youtu.be/U5GyTR5ToLM After the resounding success of our first online gardening workshop on seed sowing last week, we continued today with another one presented by another local veg growing guru, Bob Bilson (@bilsonrobert1 on Twitter). Bob gave us a virtual tour of Strathkinness Community Growing spaces, and followed up with a brief chat on sowing and planting times he’s been usiRead More…
https://youtu.be/jecN7Ha5FmU Above is a recording of an online gardening workshop from Tuesday, 7th of April. The workshop covers basic spring veg seed sowing tips and reusing your recycling for plant pots and trays. We are planning for more of these to help us cope with life under covid-19 lockdown so please let us know if there’s anything you would like us to cover! It was presented by Read More…
It’s March 2020, we’ve all suddenly had a bit of a shock regarding our ability to go and buy food, either through limited access to shops (self isolation) or limited stock in the shops. There are other food supply option which we can access like our very own Tree and local food veg box schemes, but these cannot all ramp up at the same speed as the emergency measures have struck. As a resulRead More…
By Isabelle Low Come spring, the winter crops of cabbage and kale and leeks have bolted and the stores of potatoes, onions and roots are running out. Spring vegetables have only just been sown and won’t be ready to harvest until May and June. Eating in the hungry months in medieval times was both hard and uninspiring – a diet dominated by old potatoes, cabbage and wormy apples. PresRead More…
Today we heard from Climate Change Commission that UK must cut land use emissions by two thirds to meet our goal of zero carbon by 2050. There has been much talk about planting trees to achieve this, but low carbon farming and taking care of our soils is expected to account for as much as 23% of those savings. You can probably imagine what planting more trees would look like, but low carbRead More…
Are you
doing Veganuary? Good for you! A few
suggestions. On a vegan diet, it’s
really important to make sure that you eat a balance of 50% vegetables and
fruit, 25% protein (beans or nuts) and 25% good carbohydrates (wholemeal rice or
wholemeal pasta) plus a bit of oils (olive is best). Please
consider carefully before you buy out of season or exotic plants which have
beRead More…
It goes without saying that the community gardens have the best volunteers! One would think that December is a quiet month in the garden, not with our amazing team. While there is not much photosynthesising, there has been great growth in team building, friendship and good old relaxing (but productive) fun! The Uni Hall and Whitethorn teams have paired up to support each other in the gardensRead More…
