Plants with Pain Relieving Properties

The “Healthy Bodies Healthy Minds Initiative “ offers edible fresh food to anyone who wants to pick it!

A recent article about choosing different food colours for health and for influencing moods certainly got imaginations flowing. I have had a lot of good comments about the benefits of “Eating the Rainbow” and not just sticking to mono colours. One interesting comment I heard was about growing plants that contain pain killing properties. Multinational pharmaceutical companies would probably prefer that we didn’t know anything about such matters as their profits might take a bit of a nosedive. 

We have been using medicinal plants for thousands of years though and there are a lot we can use safely, which might save us a trip to the chemists. There are some instances where we might need something over the counter.  I know when I get toothache it can take over your whole life, as my mother used to say “Any pain above the neck it all consuming”  so cloves don’t always do the trick and something prescribed is more urgent. It is great to have the choice of both though.

Plants with Pain Relieving Properties

There are hundreds of common herbs, flowers, berries and plants that serve all kinds of important medicinal and health purposes. They are used as:  anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, insect repellent, antiseptic, expectorant, antibacterial, detoxification, fever reduction, antihistamine and pain relief.  It’s what we used before the multinational pharmaceutical companies took over!

• Hemp ( Marijuana) was widely used before it was criminalised to treat depression and anxiety and to reduced blood pressure, pain alleviation and glaucoma treatment.
• The Californian poppy is an effective nervine (anxiety reliever)
• Ginger alleviates cramps, migraines and headaches.
• Turmeric has lots of virtues including being a COX-2 selective inhibitor, which is a form of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug.
• Red seaweed is said to ease pain.  The deep oceanic flora contains all the minerals the body needs for cellular rejuvenation
• White willow bark can be taken as a supplement or brewed into a tea to alleviate pain and reduce inflammation.
• Devil's claw and stinging nettle are herbs that act as analgesics to help relieve pain, particularly osteoarthritis pain.
• Boswellia (arnica) , is a herb often used in topical products to reduce muscle and joint pain
• Capsaicin is another natural pain killer that is extracted from chili peppers.
• Diluted eucalyptus oil or lavender are often used as natural pain killers in aromatherapy.

Usual disclaimer . Patients with chronic or severe pain should talk to their doctors about their conditions before using natural pain killers.

Planting food in urban spaces

Edible planting in urban spaces is catching on around cities and towns. Instead of putting bedding plants or shrubs in containers, some places are now seeing attractive vegetables and herbs being grown.  Instead of staring aimlessly at your phone as you wait in the bus station for the number 15 you can help yourself to some salad leaves and a carrot from a planter.  The idea could catch on I hope.  Any urban place could be used to grow all sorts.  Pam Warhurst who co-founded Incredible Edible has helped to transform her home town of Todmorden in Yorkshire from a tradition market town into an area full of fruit, flowers and vegetables by what she calls “Propaganda Gardening”  The railway station, health centre, police station and people’s front gardens have all been transformed into lush edible landscapes. 

Gareth Austin has done something similar on a smaller scale. The Project 'Healthy Bodies Healthy Minds' saw the installation of 15 mixed herb planters at the front door of the Tower Building in Strand Rd.  The herb planters are for both the catering students to become more familiar with the source of fresh produce and also for all students to pick and enjoy. 

Community Garden Network of Ireland meeting in the City of (Horti) Culture!

Gareth is also arranging the next meeting of the Community Garden Network of (All) Ireland  which will be held in Derry/Londonderry on the 9th of March. The meeting will take place in The Playtrail from 12-2pm and then a series of tours will be offered to participants in the afternoon. From 2-3 there will be a guided tour of the Leafair Community Garden and from 3-4 a tour of the Fountain Community Garden - these two gardens recently won a second place in the All-Ireland Pride of Place awards , followed by a tour of the playtrail facility.

YouthAction NI will give a presentation on how best community gardens can engage with young people. This meeting is free to attend and all are welcome, and to allow for numbers please book your place by going to Gareth’s website garethaustin.com. Together we can make this a real cross border initiative.

Turning dog waste into Enegry

 Park Spark in action

It might not be a good idea to read this week’s gardening article if you are eating your mid morning chocolate biscuit and sipping on a cuppa. The reason for this is that I am touching on the subject of dog poo. This particular issue comes about quite regularly, especially when we don’t have any heavy rain for a long period to wash the stuff away from the paths. 

Father Hegarty’s Rock

There was a bit of a campaign about the shore path near Father Hegarty’s Rock where locals were venting their displeasure at having to keep a constant eye on the ground and dart from one side of the path to another to avoid big lumps of the stuff. Some folk suggested covert cameras and naming and shaming the offenders who allow their dogs to foul the paths without clearing up after their pets.  This would mean either CCTV being installed or a member of the camera club hiding in the undergrowth for hours or even days on end until they catch one of the animals in the act. They would then have to run pretty fast to get away with the photographic evidence and present it to the council.  I can’t see either of them working or being implemented so it will most likely have to be some form of ‘educational programme’ to get dog owners who don’t see this as a problem to repent the error of their ways.  I don’t really see that working either.  There could be a solution though and as daft as it may seem the poo could be used to generate electricity to light up the path by means of street lamps.

Turning Dog Waste into Renewable Energy

Most of us dog owners will pick up the mess with either a specially designed poopa scoopa but more likely you will be like me and use a plastic carrier bag.  This has then either got to be carried to the nearest dog bin, which isn’t always handy, or carried around until you get home. It sounds yukkie but it’s something we get used to. Nothing useful happens to the poo though when it’s put in the bin.

What we could use is an idea from artist Matthew Mazzotta who suggested introducing small digesters into public parks to collect dog waste and transform it into methane, which in turn could produce electricity. The idea called Park Spark is simple, put the poo in the digester, turn a handle to mix it with water which releases the microbes gasses and provide the nearest lamppost with fuel, and earns the local area carbon credits.

It needn’t end there either, cow manure in The Netherlands, has been used to heat water to boil tea at a site of communal tea drinking. There was a time when the Nightsoil men would come to your house and collect the solid and liquid waste; in cities they would take this to local farms for spreading, maybe that would be an idea to reinstate that service. I wouldn’t be in the queue for the job though. That’s me finished about poo so you can get back to the biscuits now.

Oily Way - Toolshed Meditation

Tool shed meditation

There’s always something very meditative about cleaning up the tools in the garden shed.  Unless you have a fully heated, dry and well ventilated place to store tools they do get condensation on them in winter which could cause rust on the metal parts.  Many a time I have gone into the shed to get out the secateurs or loppers to find that they have seized up despite me spraying them liberally with WD40 only a few months previously.  The same fate can befall the throttle cable on the mower.  I try to drip the runny spray oil into the gap between the cable and the other protective cover, but I don’t think it really soaks in.  I used to plunge spades and forks into buckets full of sand with some old engine oil in it, but again this didn’t seem to give enough protection throughout the winter months.  I was also stuck with a rather messy bucket too which has to be taken to the recycling centre as you can’t pour old engine oil onto the garden or down the drains (not that I ever did I might add) So that’s why I periodically pop into the tool shed to do a bit of wiping down of rustable items with an oily rag, that way all of the tools will be ready to go come the warmer weather. 

Buy and Sell

If you are looking for a decent used mower then now might be a good time to start looking on the buy and sell websites. It’s the quiet time of year and prices are low, like if you were trying to sell a convertible car in January, there’s not much interest.  There are some things to look out for though, like most machinery you need to check they have been well looked after and serviced regularly (oil and filters changes and no signs of a cracked case or blades).  If the prices are high initially than you might end up having to pay to do a bit of work on them to get into tip top condition.  This is where maths needs to come into play. It is sometimes cheaper to buy new mowers with a years warranty than to throw money at something that requires a lot of spare parts being bought for it. Although if you get it right you are quids in (or euro in) This goes for most things that we buy now.  I speak from experience as I bought a used iphone recently from someone on Ebay and by the time I had paid to get it unlocked it would have been cheaper to buy a new one. As a wise old salt once said to me “It’s easy to buy something, but not so easy to sell it.”  Buyer Beware! I’ll make do with the old tools I have and enjoy the cleaning process with my oily rag.

Sifting through the junk

There are some great non mechanical products on the market for gardeners, but you do need to sift through the junk.  Cheap tools can be dangerous if they break under pressure so it pays to do a bit of research before you make a decision. This goes from anything to the cheapest trowel to the most expensive ride on mowers.

Wise Investing in plants

This is the time of year that garden centres are stocking up on early spring flowering plants. If you have any money left over after Christmas and the New Year sales it might be an idea to invest a few euro in a bit of winter/spring colour. I still have a few summer flowering containers on the garage wall, I have been meaning to empty them for a couple of months now as they are in a real state with soggy looking geraniums and bits of dead twigs hanging from them. This week I’m definitely going to get around to it. I thought I’d put some pansies in them to brighten them up. The old soil from the containers will have to be taken out and composted, as the summer plants will have taken all of the nutrients. You never know what horrors lie in the soil either. Vine weevil love container compost and once those start munching the roots it’s not long before your prized pansies topple over and die. 

More Jobs to do

The thought of going outside to do a bit of gardening might appear to be a crazy one, but it’s not that bad when you are out there. It’s a good time to go around and have a look at your deciduous trees and shrubs now. Prune trees that are getting to be a nuisance by growing over paths, near telephone wires, or too close to the house. You will probably find a lot of old leaves under the shrubs too, these can be left on the soil but if they are on a path you could sweep them up and put in the compost  bin. Plant pare rooted trees now too if you have any but do it on a frost free day.

Leave flowering shrubs such as forsythia, spirea and quince as they are spring flowering and you don’t want to chop off all of the flower buds. Leave them until after they have flowered in late spring before you trim them.

Carpet Gardening

Carpet gardening

We’ve been laying carpet this week.  As you might guess with this being a gardening page, the carpet isn’t being laid in the house.  The large squares of carpet we have are going onto the soil in the vegetable patch to keep the weeds down.  The pieces seemed large when we were dragging them up the pathway to the plot but when they were laid out they don’t cover as much ground as we had hoped.  The garden has a lot of weeds and they do tend to spread quickly.  So we can add to the mosaic of coloured squares as and when we get them.  Each year more than 500,000 tonnes of carpet waste is buried in UK and Irish landfills. Fortunately the garden can benefit from an old carpet but it’s wise to put only natural woollen pieces with felt backing down on the plots. Check that there isn’t nylon running through the weave too as it’s a pain to get out of the ground when the wool has rotted down; it makes the ground very difficult to work.  Interestingly this use of weed suppression is forbidden on some local allotments due to potential chemicals in the weave.  The aforementioned allotment don’t discourage the over used and widely-banned weedkiller roundup. 

Let’s have a look at what a good piece of carpet can do for the garden.

Weeds be gone

If you lay old carpet over bare soil it will help suppress weeds. You can leave it over a plot of land throughout the winter before removing and digging over the following spring.

Compost

A hot compost heap is a happy compost heap. If you cover the compost heap, it helps to insulate it and keep the compost working throughout cold months.

Pond lining

Use an old carpet to line a hole for a garden pond. This helps prevent the pond liner being damaged by small stones.

Protect your knees

Place small squares of carpet where you are working to kneel on, especially on concrete paths.  They can be very cold.

Under mulch

Use old carpet under mulches and paths.

Other great uses for carpet

Use carpet for lining garden boots or wellingtons with an inner sole cut out of good short nap, use an existing sole as a template, insert the carpet upside down, this creates a durable comfort pad and keeps feet dry and insulated.

Furniture accessory

Small carpet pieces make fine outdoor furniture pads; indoor/outdoor washable carpeting may be cut to fit under a table for outdoor picnics.

Raised beds of course

We can’t forget to use carpets on raised beds.  They can be laid on top of course to keep the weeds down but also underneath the soil when making raised beds for vegetables or herbs.  First lay down a carpet, upside down and build a raised bed on top of the carpet, the carpet offers a weed barrier and soil holder for sand and soil in box.               

Barrow protector

When hauling metal and thorny material in a wheel-barrow, throw a piece of carpet as liner on top for protection.

Carpet squares

Carpet squares with thick backs make an ideal siding for the dog house or the doll house, the garden shed or tree house. This type of carpet drains fast and insulates, can be sprayed off and keeps looking neat.  Even the roof of dog kennels can be covered in this way.

In the house too

Small pieces of carpet under the wheels of a washing machine can stop it from moving around on laminate floors and also deadens the noise.

If your car is very tight fit in the garage put carpet on the wall where the car door opens. Put some on the part where the front bumper would touch.