Grow some Green Beans in your Rasta Garden
By ras | January 24, 2012
Botanical Name: Phaseolus vulgaris
Common name: Green French beans String Beans or Snap Beans, dry beans (many varieties)
There is nothing better than growing your own beans. They are simple to grow, easy to harvest and delicious to eat.
Good companion plants for beans include beetroot, borage, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, marigold, squash, strawberry, sweetcorn and tomato.
Poor companions are chives, fennel, garlic and leeks.
Some beans are grown to be eaten raw or steamed ie Green French beans and some are grown for the dry bean ie kidney, navy, borlotti.
Both the French and the Dry bean have two growing habits dwarf or bush beans and pole or climbing beans. Depending on the variety you are growing prepare the bed accordingly. Some will need a good trellis to climb on.
Plant beans directly where they are to grow as they do not like to be transplanted. Sow at a depth of one and half times the diameter of the seed. Plant into a friable loamy soil with a PH of 6.5. Test your soil PH with a simple test kit from the hardware store.
Beans are one of the easiest plants to save the seeds from, as pollination occurs before the bean flower opens. Collect seeds on a dry day and make sure the seed is very hard.
Freeze the seed for 48 hours to kill off any weevils under the seed coat as they will hatch out destroy your seeds post harvest.
Some varieties of beans are the same colour so label your plants well and separate the varieties so you can identify at seed collecting time.
It is not good to plant beans in the same bed year after year as they are susceptible to many pests and diseases. Rotate your crops and plant them after a flowering crop like broccoli or cauliflower.
Beans are warm season crop and need eight hours of good sunlight per day They are frost sensitive. Plant three to five climbing beans per person every two weeks over the growing season to ensure a constant supply. Their growing period is fifty to seventy five days.
Keeping your beans healthy and strong relies on good soil health, follow organic practices for building up your soil, Make sure you don’t overcrowd them and avoid watering the leaves, drip irrigation, mulching and watering trenches between the rows is ideal. In wetter areas you probably wont have to water them at all as waterlogging causes beans to stunt.
Once they get going liquid fertilise with compost teas made from things like stinging nettle, seaweed and fish emulsion. Worm juice is also great.
Some great climbing bean varieties are
Lazy Housewife Beans
and
Zebra Beans
Topics: Medicinal Plants, Organic Gardening | No Comments »
Cinnamon - Preventative Remedy
By ras | October 20, 2011
Cinnamon
Botanical Name: Cinnamomum verum, synonym C. zeylanicum
Common Name: Ceylonese Cinnamon
Family: Lauraceae
Small evergreen tree 10– 15 metres (32.8–49.2 feet) tall,
Cinnamon is a remarkable preventative remedy that is easy to use in everyday life.
A teaspoon of true Cinnamon Cinnamomum zeylanicum mixed with manuka honey will keep a common cold at bay. This is the very least of what it can do.
Do not confuse true cinnamon with cassia bark that comes from Cinnamomum aromaticum.
Buy Cinnamonum zeylanicum
Buy Manuka Honey
Cinnamon has been known from remote antiquity, and it was so highly prized among ancient nations that it was regarded as a gift fit for monarchs and other great potentates. Cinnamon is native to India. It was imported to Egypt from China as early as 2000 BC. It is mentioned in the Bible in Exodus 30:23, where Moses is commanded to use both sweet cinnamon and cassia; in Proverbs 7:17–18, where the lover’s bed is perfumed with myrrh, aloe and cinnamon; and in Song of Solomon 4:14, a song describing the beauty of his beloved, cinnamon scents her garments like the smell of Lebanon. It is also alluded to by Herodotus and other classical writers. It was commonly used on funeral pyres in Rome and the Emperor Nero is said to have burned a year’s supply of cinnamon at the funeral for his wife Poppaea Sabina in 65 AD.
Up to the Middle Ages, the source of cinnamon was a mystery to the Western world. It is possible that the Arabs established an early monopoly on trading in cinnamon, and kept its origin a secret for hundreds of years. In Herodotus and other authors, Arabia was the source of cinnamon: giant Cinnamon birds collected the cinnamon sticks from an unknown land where the cinnamon trees grew, and used them to construct their nests; the Arabs employed a trick to obtain the sticks. This story was current as late as 1310 inByzantium.
Indonesian rafts transported cinnamon (known in Indonesia as kayu manis- literally “sweet wood”) on a “cinnamon route” directly from the Moluccas to East Africa, where local traders then carried it north to the Roman market.
Arab traders brought the spice via overland trade routes to Alexandria in Egypt, where it was bought by Venetian traders from Italy who held a monopoly on the spice trade in Europe. The disruption of this trade by the rise of other Mediterranean powers, such as theMamluk Sultans and the Ottoman Empire, was one of many factors that led Europeans to search more widely for other routes to Asia.
Portuguese traders finally discovered Ceylon at the beginning of the sixteenth century and restructured the traditional production of cinnamon by the Salagama caste. The Portuguese established a fort on the island in 1518 and protected their own monopoly for over a hundred years.
Dutch traders finally dislodged the Portuguese by allying with the inland Kingdom of Kandy. They established a trading post in 1638, took control of the factories by 1640, and expelled all remaining Portuguese by 1658. “The shores of the island are full of it”, a Dutch captain reported, “and it is the best in all the Orient: when one is downwind of the island, one can still smell cinnamon eight leagues out to sea.”
The Dutch East India Company continued to overhaul the methods of harvesting in the wild, and eventually began to cultivate its own trees. The British took control of the island from the Dutch in 1796. However, the importance of the monopoly of Ceylon was already declining, as cultivation of the cinnamon tree spread to other areas, the more common cassia bark became more acceptable to consumers, and coffee, tea, sugar and chocolate began to outstrip the popularity of traditional spices.
Cinnamon is harvested by growing the tree for two years and then coppicing it. The next year, about a dozen shoots will form from the roots. These shoots are then stripped of their bark, which is left to dry, only the thin (0.5 mm) inner bark is used; the outer woody portion is removed, leaving metre-long cinnamon strips that curl into rolls (”quills”) on drying; each dried quill comprises strips from numerous shoots packed together. These quills are then cut into 5–10 cm lengths for sale. Cinnamon has been cultivated from time immemorial in Sri Lanka and the tree is also grown commercially at Tellicherry in southern India. Bangladesh, Java, Sumatra, the West Indies, Brazil, Vietnam, Madagascar, Zanzibar and Egypt. Sri Lanka cinnamon has a very thin, smooth bark with a light-yellowish brown color and a highly fragrant aroma.
According to the International Herald Tribune in 2006 Sri Lanka produced 90% of the world’s cinnamon, followed by China, India, and Vietnam. and Indonesia produces 40% of the world’s Cassia genus of cinnamon.
Some Uses
Cinnamon bark is widely used as a spice. It is principally employed in cookery as a condiment and flavouring material. It used in the preparation of chocolate, especially in Mexico, which is the main importer of true cinnamon. It is also used in the preparation of some kinds of desserts, such as apple pie and cinnamon buns as well as spicy candles, tea, hot cocoa and liqueurs. True cinnamon, rather than cassia, is more suitable for use in sweet dishes. In the Middle East it is often used in savoury dishes of chicken and lamb. Cinnamon can also be used in pickling. Cinnamon bark is one of the few spices that can be consumed directly. Cinnamon powder has long been an important spice in Persian cuisine used in a variety of thick soups, drinks, and sweets. It is often mixed with rosewater or other spices to make a cinnamon-based curry powder for stews or just sprinkled on sweet treats
In medicine it acts like other volatile oils and once had a reputation as a cure for colds. It has also been used to treat diarrhoea and other problems of the digestive system Cinnamon is high in antioxidant activity. The essential oil of cinnamon also has antimicrobial properties, which can aid in the preservation of certain foods. Rastas use Cinnamon as a main ingredient in traditional Jerk Sauce that originated in Long Bay Portland Jamaica. Rastafarian herbal tea will contain a myriad of barks, roots and leaves of which cinnamon is most popular.
Cinnamon has been reported to have remarkable pharmacological effects in the treatment of type II diabetes and insulin resistance. However, the plant material used in the study was mostly from cassia and only few of them are truly from Cinnamomum zeylanicum. Recent advancement in phytochemistry has shown that it is a cinnamtannin B1 isolated from C. zeylanicum which is of therapeutic effect on type II diabetes with the exception for the postmenopausal patients studied on C. cassia cinnamon has traditionally been used to treat toothache and fight bad breath and its regular use is believed to stave off common cold and aid digestion.
Cinnamon is used in the system of Thelemic Magick for Solar invocations, according to the correspondences listed in Aleister Crowley’s work Liber 777. In Hoodoo it is a multipurpose ingredient used for purification, luck, love, and money
Cinnamon has been proposed for use as an insect repellant although it remains untested. Cinnamon leaf oil has been found to be very effective in killing mosquito larvae. The compounds cinnamaldehyde, cinnamyl acetate, eugenol and anethole. that are contained in cinnamon leaf oil, were found to have the highest effectiveness against mosquito larvae
It is reported that regularly drinking of Cinnamomum zeylanicum tea made from the bark could be beneficial to oxidative stress related illness in humans, as the plant part contains significant antioxidant potential
An urban legend holds that it is impossible to eat a tablespoon of powdered cinnamon without choking or vomiting. This has prompted the circulation of a large number of daredevil videos on the internet. Cinnamon is a strong desiccant which resists swallowing, instead causing an irritating dry layer to form on the tongue, pharynx and esophagus. The excess cinnamon remains in fine powder form and is usually inhaled into the lungs, where it causes irritation and choking.
Side Effects
Excessive use of cinnamon bark may cause inflamed taste buds, tender gums, and mouth ulcers. Large quantities can change breathing, dilate blood vessels, and cause sleepiness, depression, or even convulsions.
Topics: Medicinal Plants | Comments Off
Cinderella Pumpkin - Grow your own
By ras | August 27, 2011
Buy Pumpkin Seeds in the USA
Buy Pumpkin Seeds in Australia
Pumpkin is one of the staple vegetables that you can grow in your garden. It seems everywhere I go someone is cooking pumpkin soup. It is cheap, readily available and the recipe can be varied. Add some coconut cream and a kaffir lime leaf and you have an interesting variation. You can also roast the pumpkin first to get some extra flavour into the soup.
Growing pumpkins is relatively easy, but if you want the really tasty original varieties then you had better read on. Pumpkins or Cucurbita maxima can be identified by the cellophane coating around the seed. They will cross pollinate with each other so resulting in the original pumpkin variety being lost.
Follow these basic rules. Only grow one Cucubita maxima species in your garden.
This way it is isolated from other pumpkins. If you are in a suburban area check that your neighbours aren’t growing other varieties of pumpkin nearby to avoid cross-pollination.
Of course in the city it is more difficult to grow pumpkins as they require a fair bit of room, but if you have a community garden nearby see if you can liaise with the rest of people to grow one Cucurbita maxima species per year in the garden thereby keeping some fantastic old varieties alive.
This Cinderella Pumpkin is a beauty. It is probably an old variety like Jarrahdale and is very tasty, firm and great for roasting. If you cook it it holds it’s shape and doesn’t melt into a gooey mess.
Do not confuse Pumpkins with Grammas or Cucurbita moschata. Butternut pumpkin is a gramma and will not cross with pumpkins but will cross with other Grammas. These can be identified by the fact that they have a raised ridge around the edge of the seed and don’t have a cellophane coating.
In times of escalating food costs and chronic lack of good wholesome unadulterated food the humble pumpkin is a great vegetable to grow. Spring is the time to plant the seed. So make a nice fertile mound of compost in the full sun and plant three or four seeds in the mound. A nice rainy day when the moon is waxing is best. Give them plenty of room to spread unhindered by lawn mowers and whipper snippers.
You won’t know if your pumpkin seed has cross pollinated until you grow it out the first time. So source of seed is very important. Once you have a variety that is true to type, keep it pure and then save the seeds. If you pass it on to your friends make sure they know about this so they keep their seed pure too.
Oh and remember, never put pumpkin seed in the compost. You will have all sorts of rogue pumpkins coming up and you wont know which ones are the good ones. Save the seed instead and roast it off. Pumpkin seed is an excellent snack food for the kids. Good pumpkin varieties will keep for up to six months, so if you have a bumper crop you’ll be eating pumpkins most of the year. Happy Gardening. Let’s cut out the middle man.
Topics: Organic Gardening, Rasta Food | Comments Off
One Love - The Awakening
By ras | August 22, 2011
Preparation for the great changes that are upon us. Surrender to, faith in, and love for the benevolence of the universal creator and the realisation that there is no separation. We are one with every living thing. The continual evolution.
The Quickening from keith wyatt on Vimeo.
Topics: Activism | Comments Off