Online Beekeeping Community of Practice

November 17, 2020 by Dustin Bajer

A Beekeeping Community for Beekeeping Students

The most rewarding and challenging part about beekeeping is that the learning never ends. I’ve been tending bees for a decade now, and I’m always discovering something new and surprising about these lovely little creatures – and always learning from other beekeepers!

That’s why I’m excited to be setting up a Beekeeping Community of Practice alongside my regular online beekeeping courses so that participants can share their experiences, ask questions, troubleshoot challenges, and learn from each other.

A Home for Beekeeping Course Content

It’s not that online beekeeping communities and forums don’t exist – they absolutely do – a few of my favourites include the Edmonton Urban Beekeepers and Royal Alberta Urban Beekeeping Collective Facebook Groups and the forums over at Beesource Beekeeping. And I encourage you to join them!

And still, I’ve taught hundreds of new beekeepers and hardly a week goes by that I don’t field multiple beekeeping questions from my inbox. And while I’m always happy to respond, a few things occurred to me:

It’s not uncommon to get repeat questions.
Being new to beekeeping can be intimidating.
I want to create a safe space where my past students can ask questions and brush up on their knowledge.
Learning alongside other beekeepers is a powerful tool.

After teaching beekeeping courses online, I realized that it would be helpful to take the course content and break it into a bite-sized, searchable resource for existing and past students. So, instead of experiencing the content once, students will be able to go back, ask questions, and review videos and resources to improve their beekeeping knowledge. This is why I’m excited to announce that all of my new beekeeping students will have access to the course community for the entire beekeeping season.

From now on, I will add videos and resources to the Beekeeping Community board for ongoing student access. The Community of Practice will grow stronger and become a more useful tool as resources, questions, and answers are added after each beekeeping class.

Crowdsourcing A Hardy Food Forest Plant List

June 28, 2018 by Dustin Bajer

Food Producing Forest Gardens

As the climate continues to warm it will be increasly important to explore regernative forms of agricutlure. A food forest is a food-producing model that seeks to mimic the patterns of a natural forest ecosystem. Ecosystems are incredibly diverse and primarily made up of perennial plants.

The following project is an attempt to crowdsource a list of plants (according to layer) ideal for food forests in cold hardy, zone 4 or colder, climates.

A Quick Acknowledgment

Before we move on, I want to acknowledge that this is a crowdsourced project and that its development and success is made possible by the individuals who are continuously editing it – not the least, The Urban Farmer, Ron Berezan, whose “Edible Plants For The Prairies” list has been the jumping off point of this project.

Layers of a Forest

One way to think about the structure of a forest is by describing it in layers. Each layer of a forest occupies a different space in the system – each plant carving out a niche and contributing to the whole.

1. Overstory/Canopy Layer

The tallest plants in the forest make up the canopy layer. Canopy plants reach for the light and thus shade much of the forest below.

2. Understory and Shrub Layer

While the understory and shrubs are thought of as separate layers, I have brought them together as a single group. This layer is typically made up of small trees, and multi-stemmed woody-shrubs. Shrubs and understory plants that have evolved the ability to live beneath the canopy or at the margins of forests.

3. Herbaceous Plant Layer

Herbaceous plants have non-woody stems and usually die back to the ground each fall. As a result, they tend to be shorter than most woody shrubs.

4. Ground Cover Layer

Ground covers are short, crawling, or clumping plants that may be woody or none-woody. They protect the forest floor from the elements.

5. Root Zone Layer

As is the case above ground, the roots of each plant occupy various depts of the soil. However, when talking about food forests, the root zone is usually taken to mean plants whose roots are edible.

6. Vine Layer

Vines are long, spindly, climbing plants that are capable of occupying the vertical spaces within a forest. They can be herbaceous and die back to the ground each year (hops) or woody (clematis and grapes).

Using the Hardy Food Forest Plant List

The following plant list is an open Google document. As a result, anyone can access and edit its contents. The list is edited by myself and backed up periodically to ensure quality.

Editing The Plant List

Follow this link if you wish to view the plant list in a separate page or edit its contents. Here are a few guidelines when editing the document.

Do not delete or move existing plants
Incomplete information is fine. Don’t know the Latin name? Not a problem.
Perennials. This list is meant to have an emphasis on perennials plants.
Cold Hardy. Please add plants that will survive in Zone 4 or colder.
Link when possible. If you know the botanical name of the plant, feel free to link it to a reputable source such as Plants For A Future Database.

Using The Hardy Food Forest Plant List

At the bottom of the window, you will see tabs corresponding to the various food forest layers mentioned above. Within each layer, you will see a curated list of plants, their common name(s), botanical family, botanical name (Genus species), as well as plant notes.

If you’re looking for a food-producing ground cover, select the ground cover tab at the bottom and browse through the list of suitable plants. If the botanical name is blue than it has been linked to an external page with more information. See the list by clicking here or on the image below.

Cold Hard Food Forest Plant Document

Don’t Wait. Plant Your Garden Early.

March 6, 2018 by Dustin Bajer

Is May Long Weekend The Best Time To Plant A Garden in Edmonton?

Originally written for and publised by Boyle McCauley News

When I was growing up, my parents kept a large vegetable garden in the backyard. Each spring, my Mom would bring out an ice-cream pail of seeds, a bundle of wooden stakes, a garden hoe, and a roll of twine she got from my Uncle – a nearby cattle farmer.

I watched as she paced the distance between rows – carefully placing one foot in front of the other – before pressing a stake into the ground. She repeated the ritual on the other side of the garden and pulled some twine tight between the stakes to mark the row. Tilting the hoe at an angle, she added a shallow trench along either side of the string. We were ready to plant. [Read more…]

School Container Gardening

February 6, 2018 by Dustin Bajer

Create A School Garden With Containers

One of the most significant challenges of urban agriculture in the classroom is finding a large permanent space. But what if there was a solution that means that your area need not be large or permanent? One of the easiest ways to introduce urban agriculture and gardening in the classroom is with containers. Small, attractive, and portable, container gardening might be the perfect way to gets your hands dirty without breaking the bank or going all-in with a fixed garden site.

What to Grow?

What you grow is entirely up to you and your class. With the right container, soil, water, and lighting, you can grow a staggering variety of plants.

Herbs and Leafy Green

When it comes to growing food in containers, herbs and leafy greens like basil, mint, rosemary, lettuce, and spinach are good choices. If possible, choose long-lived perennial varieties that you can harvest on an ongoing basis. Before deciding which plants you want to grow, consider how you might use them as a class or school.

Fruiting Plants

If you have larger containers and lots of light, consider fruiting plants like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, peas, and beans. With even larger containers consider small trees or shrubs like citrus or figs.

Growing Figs in containers – StarkBros.com

Choosing Soil For Your Container Garden

Choosing suitable soil for your container is probably the most critical step. Though, you might be tempted to grab a few shovel scoops of soil from the garden resist the urge. While garden soil works well in the backyard it’s a terrible choice for containers; more often than not it will pack into a tight brick and be utterly unusable.

Technically speaking soil is composed of organic matter, water, air, and inorganic minerals such as sand, clay, or silt. It’s these inorganic minerals that tend to compact and make garden soil a poor potting mix. Instead, choose a soilless potting mix. While soilless potting mixes are chalked full of organic matter, water, and air, they lack the inorganic minerals found in actual soil; hence the term “soilless”. However, with more room for water and air, soilless mixes are lighter, stay fluffy (filled with air), and don’t easily compact.

Watering Your Container Garden

While each variety of plant has its preference for moisture, the key to a healthy container garden is to find a happy medium between soggy soil and bone dry. Generally speaking, your growing medium should be slightly damp to the touch but not wet. If you could grab a handful of soil, squeeze it, and get a single drop of water, you’ve got it right.

How frequently you water will depend on the size of your pot, its location, and the plant you’re growing (some plants, like tomatoes, are thirsty and won’t tolerate drying out).

To prevent overwatering, use containers with drainage holes at their base. While you can get around a lack of drainage holes by adding stones (or some other porous medium) to the bottom of your containers your plants will be better off if excess moisture can freely drain through the bottom. Remember that air is a critical component of healthy soil and that over-watering removed air to the point that the plant’s roots will be unable to breathe.

Lighting Your Container Garden

Like water, each plant has its preference for how much light it wants. While tomatoes and peppers love the sun other crops like lettuce, spinach, and broccoli are more shade tolerant. Depending on the location of your container and what you’re growing, you may get away with a sunny South-facing window or need to supplement your crop with full-spectrum artificial lighting (such as these sunblaster compact fluorescents or T5s.

Choosing The Right Container For The Job

Typical, Off the Shelf, Pots

There’s nothing standard about an off the shelf pot as each pot is sure to vary in height, depth, shape, size, and material. Plastic containers are inexpensive and light but not as durable. In contrast, ceramic pots can be expensive and bulky. The best pot for a school is probably a free pot so talk to colleagues, big-box stores, and nurseries to see if you can take any old containers they might have laying around. Plastic nursery pots inexpensive, pleasant to work with, and a good choice for school; they’re not pretty, but they’re durable and in abundance.

Self-Watering Pots

A self-watering pot is exactly what it sounds like – a pot that waters itself. Though not foolproof, self-watering containers generally have a water reservoir below the soil and a wick to draw water into the container as the soil requires it. Any form or self-watering pot or automatic watering technique is valuable for schools because it answers the existential questions of “who will take care of the plants over the weekend or break?” You can sometimes find self-watering pots at garden supply stores, though, they’re not as common.

Earthboxes Containers

Strawberries growing in an Earthbox container garden.

An Earthbox is a complete gardening kit and commonly used by the Sustinable Food Edmonton’s Little Green Thumbs Program to grow vegetables and herbs in hundreds of school classrooms. The basic Earthbox kit consists of a self-watering grow box, casters (for easy transport), and an organic soil amendment (fertilisers and minerals). You can purchase lights as an accessory.

Earthboxes provide roughly two square feet of growing space on top of a self-watering reservoir; keep the water reservoir topped up, and the innovative Earthbox design wicks up water when needed. I can say from personal experience that growing in Earthboxes is an easy and efficient way to start growing food in the classroom. The only downside of Earthboxes is that they are one of the more expensive options.

Global Buckets

Melons growing in a rooftop global bucket garden.

For the DIY class and teacher, making Global Buckets might be the perfect option. The invention of two high school students looking for an inexpensive way to make Earthboxes, a Global Buckets is simply a bucket inside of another bucket. By adding a wick (cloth or soil filled pot) and a watering tube, you can build an inexpensive self-watering container for a fraction of the price of an Earthbox. Though, not at pretty, a Global Buckets are deep enough to root vegetables like potatoes or grow larger plants like small trees and shrubs.

Scaling Up Your School Container Garden

The great thing about a container garden is that it scales so effortlessly; you can start with one container and scale up (or down) as you see fit and as the school year progresses. However, should that day come that you’d like something more substantial and permanent, raised beds are a logical next step.

Simple raised beds made with 8 inch cedar.

Raised Beds

What is a raised bed if not a large pot? While a raised bed is large to be virtually immobile, they’re a logical next step for a classroom looking to scale up from or consolidate smaller container gardens. The trick to a successful raised bed on school property is finding a suitable site; ideally with plenty of sunlight, access to water, accessible to the students and staff, and relatively permanent (they’re difficult to move).

There are many off-the-shelf raised bed options or kits, though, if your school is fortunate enough to have an industrial arts class it might be possible to turn your raised bed into a fabrication project. A few things to consider; avoid using anything wider than two-arms-lengths or you’ll have to crawl into the garden to access vegetables growing in its centre (note: use your student’s arms as they’ll be the ones planting and harvesting), choose a light and fluffy soil or soilless mix. You don’t have to build it too deep, though, I’d recommend at least a foot. Organic matter helps retain moisture to the more you have in your soil, the better.

Self-Watering (Wicking) Beds

Wicking bed; raised garden bed with water reservoir (hidden) under it.

If you built a raised bed on top of a source of water you’d have a wicking-bed. Wicking beds are large self-watering pots. While there are a lot of ways to achieve this, most wicking beds rely on creating a watertight reservoir, filling it with gravel, covering the gravel with landscape fabric, and building a typical raised bed on top. Like self-watering pots, wicking beds use the soil’s natural water-wicking action to soak up water as needed.

Installation of a wicking bed in a residential yard. In this example, perforated weeping tile pipe brings water from the roof to the raised beds where it can be absorbed by organic matter in the soil.

As a less technical alternative, I have used 4″ perforated pipe to bring water from the downspout of a building directly under your garden. I prefer this technique as it doesn’t require building a water-tight reservoir or moving heavy gravel.

There are some excellent online resources for both of these wicking bed techniques.

To Sum Up

However you decide to do it, containers gardening is an excellent way to start growing food in the classroom. Use a light, soilless growing medium in inexpensive (or free) container, and you’ll be on your way! Start with a single pot and scale up as you find success.

Northlands Youth Beekeeping Club

December 12, 2017 by Dustin Bajer

Now Taking Registrations for 2018

The Prince’s Charities’ Northlands Youth Bee Club

From Spring until Fall, students from across the City gather at the Southernmost edge of Northlands to learn about and keep honeybees. Sponsored by the Prince’s Charities, the club has eight beehives on site and enough protective gear to keep stings to a minimum. Each week – weather permitted – we cover important beekeeping topics and perform our routine hive inspections.

The following is an account written by Jacob Tombs – one of our Youth Beekeepers.

Hi, my name is Jacob Tombs, I’m 14 years old and this year was my first year beekeeping. When I started bee club in May, I had no idea how to keep bees and now I feel confident that I could maintain some hives all by myself. What I must thank for this is the Northlands Bee Club. The Northlands Bee Club is a group of young beekeepers that meets every Thursday from early May to early November (roughly one beekeeping season). Some people are completely new to the club (like me) and for others it was their second year, as Bee Club was only founded in 2016. Under the guidance of Dustin Bajer, we learned the basics of how to keep bees and some other interesting information on bees.

Northlands beekeeping club members removing the frames and inspection two hives.

There are several reasons why bee club was very fun, useful and interesting. First, it is completely unique. As far as I know, there is no other group in the city of Edmonton that teaches young people how to keep bees. One of the things I really enjoyed, was how over the summer the bees built up. The hives started out small, only one or two boxes, and then by the fall some hives were up to six boxes high. I found it very satisfying to see the bees grow in number and in strength. Another thing that was awesome was the taste of the honey. Most of the honey you buy in the grocery store has a bland plain taste but, our honey had a lighter more interesting taste that comes from all the different species of flower in people’s gardens and in the river valley.

Northlands Youth Beekeeping Club members learn about making nucs.

Another one of my favorite things about bee club was the field trips, we went on three throughout the time that bee club met. The first one was a trip to Beary Berry honey to see what a commercial beekeeping operation was like and to Alberta Nukes which makes nukes (mini hives that you get in the spring to create new hives) to learn about nuc hives.

Our second field trip was a walking tour of some of the hives in the downtown Edmonton area, we visited a hives at the Edmonton Event Centre and the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald and a protected tree because, Dustin happens to also be studying protected trees in Edmonton.

Beekeeper Patty Milligan leads a walking tour of some downtown Edmonton beehives at the Shaw Conference Centre and the Hotel Macdonald.

The last field trip, which was my favorite, was a trip to one of the NAIT labs where we studied bees under a microscope and dissected them.

Two Bee Club members dissect a honeybees under a microscope at the NAIT Biological Science Technology Lab.

Finally, I met a lot of new people that had the same interests as me and I learned a lot of things that had absolutely nothing to do with beekeeping but, that were interesting all the same. For example, did you know that carrots flower on the second year after they are planted?

In conclusion, bee club is interesting, fun and useful if you ever want to keep bees and the club is (amazingly!) completely free!

For more information about the Northlands Youth, Beekeeping Club, visit Northlands.com.

Click Here To Register For The 2018 Beekeeping Season

Urban Agriculture as a Response to Climate Change

December 7, 2017 by Dustin Bajer

Urban Agricultural Systems Inspired By Nature Can Mitigate Climate Change

As climate changes and extremes become more common (floods, drought, storms, etc.) growing food – especially in monoculture – will become more challenging. Monocultures rely heavily on external inputs.

Forests aren’t immune to climate change, but they’re less susceptible because of the connections they contain – forests are diverse, and the end of every process is the beginning of another. Forests cycle water, nutrients, and create microclimates conducive to life.

Cities are like forests. Layers of a city.

Cities are like forests. Cities are places for maximizing connections, and they’re filled with opportunity. Whereas a forest might cycle water, nutrients, and energy, cities cycle ideas, information, culture, and resources.

Biophilic cities bring nature into cities.

Ecologists describe the border between two ecosystems as an ecotone – a special place where the diversity of both systems some meet. If we could bring nature into the city, we could create a system with all the variety and potential of each separate systems – while creating unique opportunities for these systems to interact in beneficial ways that solve problems.

Here’s a secret – nature loves cities. Nature will colonize even the most inhospitable urban environments. And as it does, it will hold onto water, cycle nutrients, and create microclimates. We often fight the parts of nature best adapted at doing this.

Drink your problems away. Root-beer from invasive plants.

The key to blending nature and cities is to link them in creative ways – in ways that turn problems into solutions. (Drink your problems away. Root-beer from invasive plants).

The drain monster is eating your potential.

In cities, we tend to collect and move water away from our landscapes. Forests, in contract, capture excess water when it’s wet and put it to use when it’s dry. Forests cycle their resources – using water twice is the same as having twice as much water.

Swales on counter collect water for a downhill food forest.

In the face of climate change, we can take inspiration from nature and integrate passive water harvesting and storage into cities – especially when combined with the potential to grow food. Small changes in topography can direct water to the soil where it can be accessed.

Parkallen Community Garden water harvesting swale.

Here’s a water harvesting feature (swale) going into the Parkallen Community Garden. It’s built on contour and is designed to spread and soak water along the length of the garden.

Vegetables growing on a water harvesting swale. Parkallen community garden.

Once planted, fruits and vegetables can access free water stored in the soil. This simple technique stores excess water during wet periods and makes it available when it’s dry – mitigating floods and drought.

They're called leaves for a reason. Don't bag your leaves.

Ecosystems don’t create waste – they cycle it. Though, we tend to bag ours and send it to the landfill. When we throw out our organics, we’re robbing our landscapes of essential nutrients. They’re called leaves for a reason.

Watering non-food producing monoculture designed to shed water then bagging and throwing away the result is insanity. This landscape could capture and process the water that lands on it. It should cycle and accumulate its nutrients. It could be producing food.

Water harvesting and food producing bed between two houses.

This patch of lawn has been converted into a raspberry garden. Beneath the ground, water harvesting features collect water from the roofs and spread it across the length of the yard. Covered with mulch the beds soak up excess water like living sponges and make it available to the plants. These simple techniques reduce flooding, reduce drought, cycle waste, and grow food.

Plant your water before you plant your garden.

This vegetable garden is growing on top of a series of water harvesting features that take water from the roof of the house. A bed of organic much is added on top and planted with vegetables and perennial food plants.

Storing water in healthy soil has the potential to mitigate climate.

When I first started working in this yard it was unbearably hot – south facing and void of vegetation – the soil baked. After adding ten cubic yards of mulch, dozens of bags of leaves, and 24 straw bales the earth is coming back to life and the microclimate of the yard has transformed – it’s humid now and doesn’t get as hot or cold. This yard now captures all the water that lands on it and converts it to food.

Apple tree and pear tree espaliered against a south facing wall.

Urban environments are exceptional places for creating and taking advantage of microclimates – especially for food production. These fruit trees are planted against a south facing fence to increase the length of the growing season. Water harvesting features below the ground bring water from the roof to the base of the trees.

Whitemud retaining wall orchard. Quisnell retaining wall orchard.

Vast microclimates create large potential. The south-west facing retaining wall by the Quinelle bridge would have made an amazing fruit orchard – absorbing the sun’s energy throughout the day and radiating it back at night.

Just outside of Edmonton's growing conditions - the 'resilient' peach.

Just outside of Edmonton’s growing conditions (zone 4a) – the ‘resilient’ peach (zone 5).

Just outside of Edmonton’s growing conditions (zone 4a) – the American persimmon (zone 5).

Just outside of Edmonton’s growing conditions (zone 4a) – the largest fruit native to North America – the Pawpaw (zone 5).

Volunteers planting a food forest in Edmonton's river valley.

We can choose to come together and create innovative food-producing systems that benefit the city and the natural world. Since 2014, I have been partnering with the City’s Roots for Trees program to plant thousands of native edibles in the river valley.

A forest is a community, and a community is a forest. It’s a dense web of connections, ideas, and potential. Working together is probably the single biggest strategy that we can adopt from nature to grow food and mitigate climate change.

Map of Edmonton utility lots for gardening and urban agriculture.

There’s no shortage of places to do this – backyards, front yards, boulevards, vacant lots. The City of Edmonton recently released a list of public utility lots available for gardening.

One of my favorite things to do is reimagine the cityscape as food-producing ecological systems. I used to call this “postapocalyptic Edmonton”, but I’d rather see them in a preapocalyptic reality.

I will admit that some of my drawings are a bit tongue in cheek – but we have so much unused space, and we should be putting it to productive use.

This is a favorite of mine. West Edmonton Mall Community Garden.

How much food could we produce in the city? Probably not all of it – but let’s not underestimate the food producing capacity of many small players. What we need are people who are willing to try and the regulatory and political conditions conducive to doing so.

Wild goji berries growing in Edmonton's river valley.

What I can tell you is that in addition to capturing water, reducing waste, and temperating the local climate these systems will be uniquely Edmontinain – like these, naturalized Goji berries left behind by Chinese market garden community.

Capilano apricots guerrilla planted in an Edmonton scrub bed sometime in the 60s.

Or these – Capilano apricots guerrilla planted in a city scrub bed sometime in the 60s. This is a uniquely Edmonton variety – it exists nowhere else int he world.

Biophilic city street that stores water, nutrients, co2 and produces food.

So let’s take inspiration from nature and create a city that cycles nutrients, tempers climate, and captures water and our imaginations.

Let’s create a forest city.

Creating A Classroom Aquaponics System

August 22, 2017 by Dustin Bajer Leave a Comment

Custom designed classroom aquaponics system by Sea To Sky Aquaponics in Edmonton

Why Set Up A Classroom Aquaponics System?

Lots of classrooms have plants and fish, but not many consider combining the two in a symbiotic aquaponics system. Together, fish-waste provides water and nutrients to the plants while the plants clean the water for the fish. Though aquaponics systems contain a complete nitrogen cycle, symbiotic relationships, cellular respiration, and photosynthesis they are in no way limited to the science curriculum. Addressing issues of food security (social studies), design (design/construction/fabrication/art/math), and food preparation (foods/culinary), aquaponics is an exceptionally effective cross-curricular platform for exploring various programs of studies. Regarding curricular connections, aquaponics is curricular gold mine. [Read more…]

The Long Tail Of Food

June 28, 2017 by Dustin Bajer

Food’s Missing Tail

The long tail of food has the power to transform our entire food system. It’s diverse, local, unique, and sometimes illegal.

The “short head” and “long tail” of food where the area of each represents an equal volume of production.

Imagine that you could line up every conceivable food production activity and arrange them from most to least productive. On one end we’d see highly productive industrial farms, followed by large family farms, large and medium scale market gardens, hobby farms, CSAs, nurseries, urban agriculture projects, community and backyard gardens – all the way down to growing herbs on windowsills. Each produces food – all of it counts. [Read more…]

Edmonton Needs a D&B Beer Scene

June 13, 2017 by Dustin Bajer

Dandelion Problem Or Local Drink Waiting To Happen?

In June of 2016, the City of Edmonton enacted an Herbicide Ban with the aim to “eliminate non-essential uses of herbicides on city-owned land”. It’s been a year since and despite the fact that some people are losing their shit, I’m proud of my City for sticking with their decision – going so far as piloting a herd of goats in one city park.

I will admit that I’ve noticed and increased in dandelions in City parks, though, as an urban beekeeper I’m not in the least bit bothered. I like dandelions – they are beautiful to look at, good at breaking up poor and hardpan soils, and edible.

There’s an idea in permaculture design that the problem is the solution. Permaculture pioneer Geoff Lawton is famous for saying “you don’t have a grasshopper problem – you have a turkey deficiency”. The problem is the solution.

Young dandelion leaves make a lovely salad green while petals an exceptionally pleasing when steeped to make teas and wine. But for this post, I’d like to turn our attention to the root-cause. What if we don’t have a weed problem? What if we have a root beer deficiency?

Burdock (Arctium lappa, Arctium minus)

Dandelion roots can be used alongside another noxious weed that’s taken up residence in Edmonton – burdock.

If you’re not familiar with burdock it’s a large biennial plant with heart-shaped leaves and purple/pink flower clusters that turn into hooked bracts (burs) when mature (the inspiration for velcro). Like dandelion, burdock has an extensive list of culinary uses. Sidenote: If you go to an Asian grocery store (such as T&T or Lucky 97 here in Edmonton) burdock is referred to as “gobo root”.

Locally, burdock is abundant in the River Valley and some of the older neighborhoods including, Old Strathcona, Riverdale, Rossdale, Boyle, and McCauley.

From the City of Edmonton’s website:

Great burdock originates from the temperate regions in Europe. In the Middle Ages, it was favoured as a vegetable and the roots are still commonly used in Asian cooking. It can also be found in a variety of herbal supplements.

Dandelion and Burdock (D&B) Beer

D&B Beer is thought to have originated in Britain in the middle ages and is made by fermenting a tea made by boiling the roots of dandelions and burdock. The flavour is “mildly bitter and aromatic). You can buy a non-alcoholic version at some local grocery stores, but we’re going to make the real deal.

The clip and recipe below are from RiverCottage.net, though, I would anyone making D&B Beer to experiment. A quick Google search yields various approached to dandelion and burdock beer – here’s one that also uses nettle (another local noxious weed). I’ve made dandelion wine using petals and have an abundance of honey laying around the house so I’d probably incorporate both.

Contact me, if you make a batch! I’d love to hear how it went. There’s a lot of exploration to be had. How might dandelion and burdock integrate into a traditional brew? I’d love to see a local brew-pub make a batch – Situation Brewing’s daily cask comes to mind. How about a distilled version? Strathcona Spirits make a mean gin that already features “rogue-picked Seaberry (Seabuckthorn) from the streets of Edmonton” – is rogue picked dandelion and burdock out of the questions? D&B could be an Edmonton thing – an authentic Edmonton flavour.

Basic D&B Beer Recipe

Dandelion and Burdock Beer (D&B) Recipe from RiverCottage.net

Scrub and finely slice the burdock and dandelion roots.

Put them in a large pan, pour on 2.5 litres boiling water and add the carragheen.

Boil for half an hour; experience the aroma of an unpromising vegetable stew.

Take off the heat, add 2 litres cold water, the sugar, treacle and lemon juice and stir until the sugar has dissolved.

Strain the liquid into a clean fermenting bucket, cover and leave to cool.

When your brew reaches room temperature, pitch the yeast.

Cover and leave to ferment for up to a week, until the specific gravity is down to 1010.

If you want to be safe, carefully siphon into strong swing-top bottles at this point.

The flavour of dandelion and burdock seems to follow a bell curve of: too sweet, horrible, really rather nice, horrible, poisonous – with the ‘quite nice’ occurring at the 3–4 week point and extendable by keeping it in the fridge.

The flavour is mildly bitter and pleasantly aromatic.