Mi'kmaq Medicines

Just picked up an excellent book at the Campbellton Centennial Library today. It was researched and written by Laurie Lacey and is the revised second edition.

Title: Mi'kmaq Medicines Remedies and Recollections. This book will help me identify wild plants that were used to treat various health conditions by the Mi'kmaq people. This will help me to identify the wild plants that may have been used here in Northern New Brunswick in the late 18th century.

Food Costs: Cauliflower

I like cauliflower but at prices like this will have to grow my own.

Vertical Gardening

If space is limited give some thought to growing up; fences, walls, trellis and many other methods enable the gardener with limited space to grow a wide variety of plants. Vertical gardening is also ideal for anyone who has diffiuclty kneeling down or bending over to work a garden bed. This Friday's article in the Campbellton Tribune explores this in greater detail.

Accessible Gardening

I believe the only barriers to gardening are access to space and imagination. next week in my From The Garden column in the Campbellton Tribune, I begin a series of articles focused on accessible gardening, starting with raised garden beds.

My interest in gardening and accessibility goes back a number of years but this focus was recently sharpened by the reality that I have osteoarthritis in both knees. This will not keep me out of the garden.

Beet- Mangel Wurzel

Mangel wurzel or mangold wurzel, also called mangold, mangel beet, field beet, and fodder beet, is a cultivated root vegetable derived from Beta vulgaris. I am seeking a Canadian seed source.

1760s Garden

The following may be found in a Northern New Brunswick garden' black eye peas, beans, corn, potatoes, turnips and cabbage, plus others. I am seeking the actual varieties grown during that period and seeds. If you have any information about this you want to share, please leave a comment.

My long-term goal is to establish a heritage garden.

Seeds Are Living History

Good day, the rest of this article will appear in this Friday's Campbellton Tribune.

"Seeds, my interest in seeds goes beyond providing myself with good quality seed with which to begin my gardens. The history and heritage of the seeds I collect, share and grow also fascinates me.

What is the connection between gardening, heritage and history? When you plant heritage seeds you are continuing to grow plants that have been planted by gardeners for at least 50 years and in some cases even more.

My attraction to seed history has found another outlet. Last year I began to work with the Living History-Histoire Vivante Restigouche project. I am on their Board of Directors, and more to the point, I will be joining this living history in the summer of 2016 at Sugarloaf Provincial Park.

To that end, I am seeking the seeds varieties that would have been planted during the period represented. What I will be searching for are corn, beans, squash, cabbages and other seeds known to be grown in our area during the period from 1750 to 1800, for example. Eventually, I will be saving and sharing these seeds."

I will be writing about my living history adventure right here, so stay connected.