Buy Local B.C. Seeds!

Madame Beespeaker is in Victoria for some research and recreation and I am hitting the garden stores to find many seed varieties sold out! Folks, this is the time to buy all the seeds you need and I want to urge you to buy seeds grown by producers here in B.C. Seed saving is incredibly laborious, time consuming and risky work that requires a ton of experience and knowledge. Let's support our local seed producers. There's a list on the Farm Folk/City Folk website here. Ordering seeds online is a breeze and I know from experience that Dan Jason from Salt Spring Seeds sends them to you promptly so you can get growing ASAP!

Celebrating Earth Day at the Richmond Cultural Centre Rooftop Garden

Earth Cookies for Bees and Lady Bugs

We're getting pretty close to Earth Day, so it's a perfect time to work with clay and seeds and petals and pods. We had a wonderful group of curious kids who are going to plant seedy sculptures to grow plants for the pollinators and other beneficial insects.

 Since we were working in the kitchen, we decided these sculptures should be called Earth Cookies.

The teachers had just taken the children on a long walk to study ponds. What a busy day!

When it came time for clean up, I was amazed at how the children  tidied everything up quickly and quietly like little garden gnomes. You're all hired to be Madame Beespeaker's assistants!

Later the same day, at the edible flowers and herbs workshop, we made chocolate chai cookies sprinkled with fennel seeds.

Madame Beespeaker's Shortbread

Shortbread cookies are great for afternoon tea and using this basic recipe you can be creative using the herbs you find in your garden. Let me know what combinations you discover! The combination of lemon and lavender is nice, and if you really like lavender, infuse sugar with lavender buds and use that to make the cookies. Rosemary and lemon go well together too. If you like savoury shortbread, there are lots of recipes out there that you could also add in herbs from your garden.

The recipe is so easy:

2 cups flour,

1 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup icing sugar or 1/3 cup brown or white sugar

1/4 tsp salt

Then you add ingredients depending on your taste:

Lemon verbena: peel of one lemon, 1/2 cup chopped candied ginger, some freshly chopped lemon verbena leaves

or

just a few lavender buds to taste

1/3 cup chopped bittersweet chocolate

or

2 tbs ground chai spice (I use a locally mixed spice that includes the ground tea leaves)

1/3 cup bitterweet chopped chocolate

Cream the butter and sugar, mix in other ingredients until blended. Make dough into logs the diameter you want your cookies. Put them in the freezer or fridge to firm up. Cut them into slices and bake at 400 degrees F until the bottoms start to brown. (We dipped the chocolate chai cookies in sugar and fennel before baking). I bake them on my pizza stone.

Seeds for Kids at Aberthau!

 It's time to get kids planting seeds! The ritual of putting seeds in soil and watching them grow is one of the most beautiful things we can do. I love seeds and I hoard them like a squirrel, hiding little containers of seeds in tubs, boxes, bags and jars all over our house. Safely stored through the winter, it's time to bring the seeds out and share them with you.

Fennel attracts ladybugs and many other benefial insects to your garden, including all kinds of bees. This year I challenge you to taste fennel pollen. It's delicious!

Collecting seeds was my favorite part of gardening as a child. I believe in encouraging children to touch seeds, work with them, and fall in love with the feel of them in their hands.

Make a seedy sculpture to plant in your garden!

 Slow down and celebrate seeds by embellishing the seed packets with stamps and drawings.

Let seeds inspire you! Let them calm your spirit and pull you in to focus on the important tasks in life. Feeling anxious? Try a little seed therapy. Take a bowl of seeds and just pick them up with your hands and study them. Feeling small and insecure? Meditate on the power of seeds.Turn off the big screen tv and tune into the seed channel!

Madame Beespeaker's Seed Starting Tips

One of our Chinese Canadian neighbors has given us a lovely chayote squash to plant. There are three neighbors who grow them around here, with elaborate trellises which hang with the mysterious prickly fruits. My friend Maria says she knows it as Buddha's Hand Squash, because it resembles praying hands. I think it looks like a gnarly baby's bum, but it does have personality, whatever it resembles.

The squash is in my back porch, which becomes a potting shed-come-greenhouse at this time of the year, with soil, pots, seeds and various art materials all vying for space. I recycle pots and use recycled containers as trays under the pots, so every year I have the daunting task of cleaning the pots. They have been outside all winter and they are dirty, manky, slug-ridden objects of horror. This year, I have taken a tip from my garden mentor, Catherine, and I am going to start a few seeds at a time. This means I wash a few pots at a time, slowing down my life to treat them with the love they deserve.

 I head to the Soap Dispensary on Main Street for advise. How can I make sure there is no fungus on my pots so that all that love and attention does not go to waste? Without hesitation, Linh presents me with the one word solution. Vinegar. That sounds great, but my gut feeling says that washing and scrubbing the pots in soapy water and then dipping them in a vinegar solution is probably the best thing. I will experiment.

 I bought some (extra strong) cleaning vinegar, a scrubbing brush made of rice fiber and some lovely ecologically friendly soap. I turn on my radio, and start the ritual of cleaning the pots.

Once the pots are dry and I've decided what to plant, consulting the charts, the stars, and my heart's desires, I get ready to plant. Some of the little pots have become damaged, so I perform triage with gaffer tape (duct tape). This becomes the best place to label the pots. I really should sift the potting soil, as it has big piece of wood in it, but I have just been picking those pieces out as I go along. Water the seeds with warm water,  cover with plastic wrap (which you can use over and over again if it is cleaned). These go on warm windowsills inside, on top of the fridge, and any warm cosy place you won't forget about them until they sprout, after which the plastic comes off and they go into the porch.

Some new things I've learned are:

1) Put a fan in the seedling room to prevent damping off
2) Pet your seedlings so that they become stronger
3) Turn your seedlings, so the stems dance toward the sun and become stronger on all sides

Do you have any seed-starting tips?

I have to plant many of my seeds indoors because it gives the plants a fighting chance against the slugs. Root vegetables, corn, and some flowers like poppies don't take well to transplanting, so do your research and find out what you should plant indoors. I have seen almost every vegetable available for sale as seedlings in flats (including root vegetables), so if that appeals to you, go for it. I just love starting things from seed. It's magic.

September Seed Sculptures

September is a great time to make art with seeds, pods, and dried petals. The secret to these seedy sculptures is that you can dry them (3-4 days) and then put them in a special place in your garden (or in a pot on your balcony). Over the winter the seeds will get a blast of cold which will help them germinate. Cornflowers, poppies, viola and calendula can be planted at this time of the year. The rain and snow will break down the clay and in the spring the seeds will germinate, grow and the flowers will bloom for our bees. For a list of other seeds you can plant at this time of the year, try to get a hold of the new West Coast Seeds winter gardening guide. They have some online winter gardening resources as well.

We had such creative kids working at the ArtStarts gallery, with all kinds of miniature gardens and islands which were like little worlds in themselves.

 You could even put this little heart in a cellophane bag and give it as a gift.

Here's a sample of some of the supplies I collected over the last three months. Yes, you can also see the containers of the goat's brie we've consumed over the past seven years. I love the little round boxes because they are perfect for storing little organic materials.

It's  a chive blossom forest!

 This one is a little fairy land.

The long chains of seed pods are from the crocosmias, which the hummingbirds love. Kids and adults go crazy for the nigella pods and the silvery seeds of the money plant (Lunaria).

 I love this little seed bowl!

Here you can see three kinds of poppy pods, crocosmia seeds, nigella, lunaria, hops, and columbine pods. Where do the materials come from? They are harvested from my garden, my mom's garden and gifts from the gardens of my friends.

A big thanks to all the volunteers, staff and the families who participated. This workshop is part of an ongoing series that happens the last Saturday of the month at the Artstarts Gallery. Check it out!