Victor Bonjour

Laura Sweany wrote:Hey Victor - I know it's been a while since you posted this, but I was very interested in your thread. I'm gluten-free and don't usually make bread (haven't found a good recipe) and these are the things I'd do with it:

Add to soups, stews, cream-style sauces (bet it would be awesome in a stroganoff), scrambled eggs, scrambled egg muffins, (any egg dishes, really), herb pancakes (I usually make mine with coconut flour), salsas, mix with cottage cheese or cream cheese, add to pesto...I do all these things with my dried greens (collards, chickweed, kale, nettles) and they add an extra boost of texture, flavor and nutrition. Good luck!

p.s. how did you grind yours?

Hi Laura! I must say I had long since given up any hope of answer. What a pleasant surprise!

I'll give you the full recipe.

1/ I sawed a branch off the tree (that was actually to collect the flowers in order to make jelly. Were it only for the leaves, I could very well have picked them from a low tree.)
2/ I laid some sub-branches on my paved backyard and let them there for 1-2 week to dry. I suppose drying the leaves until they get really crispy is essential.
3/ Picked each leaf. I'm not sure whether I did let them dry some more at this point.
4/ Ground the leaves in an old cast iron hand-cranked grinder (such as that one). Moving the crank was really hard and it was all pretty messy. The veins tended to stand out at this point and removing the big bits was fairly easy. I also think they tended to rise whenever I shook the bowl.
5/ Re-ground the already ground leaves in a blender. This made the flour fairly fine.

I think that's about all I know.


Food-wise you do seem to be much more imaginative than I am. I did not know about scrambled egg muffins, these do look mighty, hah.
As it happens I still have most of the stuff, sitting quietly on a shelf. I might give the herb pancakes a try.
I'm not sure what it would be like in a sauce or soup. I feel that it would be weird. Well maybe not, I guess I should just give it a go.

Thanks for the reminder!

It seems that I had forgotten this thread. Sorry guys. I had health issues and had to give up the experiment.

In conclusion, the slugs were still doing well after 3 weeks, when I stopped feeding them. So either the local slugs are particularly healthy, the incubation time was too short or my container was too big (ie. not disguting enough). Either way it didn't work for me.

I did not try spreading the (now dead, thankfully) slugs around the garden. Maybe I should.

My slug-ghetto is smelly too, but still very much alive. Do your dying slugs show any particular symptom? You can find interesting images if you search for "Phasmarhabditis hermaphrodita".

I'm witnessing what you describe on my sunchokes too. My reasonning is that once a plant gets munched on, it's going to send out new leaves. And we all know that slugs love fresh, new, delicious leaves.
Once younger sunchokes emerge, the slugs move on to them and start bullying them in turn, forgetting about the older ones.
Well that's my theory. Thankfully sunchokes can cope with a lot of bullying.

Well after 16 days the slugs still look plenty healthy. They eat a lot. I don't think I'm going to release them yet.

Hey folks,

I made some basswood (tilla or linden or lime tree) flour last year. About 450g (16 oz) worth (1.6l). Before chopping, the compressed leaves filled a paper grocery bag.




The stuff has a slight smell of basswood flower, but mostly smells grassy. Maybe a bit like nettle.

I tried incorporating a little of it into bread (I make sourdough whole spelt/rye bread) and the bread turned green and got a grassy taste. I don't mind my bread being green, but with all the nettles I'm eating I cannot stand having another thing taste like grass.



As you can see the flour is quite coarse. I couldn't really feel it in the bread though.

So have you ever used basswood flour? do you mind the grassy taste? what would you do with it?

I just came across this method and must say it fascinates me. Experimental biology AND slug control at the same time? Count me in!

First, let me describe my situation.

My main garden is about 5x15m (15x45 ft). I have a couple other experimental patches around the house. Mostly, I grow edible perennial bushes, a few vegetables, cereals and pulses. I have a 3x9m (9x27 ft) woodchip zone, a hügel bed, a straw-mulched flatbed and a woodchip-mulched half-hügel bed.

And I have big slug problems. They are in all garden beds and decimate squashes, sunflowers, amaranth. Rye (newly planted) and lentils also suffer considerably. Only favas and runner beans seem to survive, thought even runner beans have been wiped out of one of the experimental patches (nothing remains in that particular spot). The slugs mostly keep out of the big woodchip zone, thought it might be because I mostly grow sunchokes there.

I do have 3 tiny ponds sheltering tadpoles in the main garden area, but I expect they're too young to be effective yet. Indeed, the oldest one is barely a year old.
I have set up beer traps, and they do catch slugs, but it doesn't seem to be making a difference.
I have made tiny greenhouses out of PET bottles by removing the bottom and placing it on some amaranth plantings, but about half of them still got eaten.
I occasionally did go out at night with a pair of scissor, but it gets old fast.


(click to enlarge)
Main garden area. Greenhouse is south facing. The area is very close to both pasture and forest, which may or may not encourage slugs.


Now to the main point. I'm going to try that nematode-culture thing (by the way, they're named Phasmarhabditis hermaphrodita) and see how it affects my situation.
I just gathered 40 slugs (didn't mean to catch this many but I couldn't stop) and have put them in a 4l (1 gal) can, along with a bit of water and buttercups. I'm going to wait 2 weeks and feed them as I go. I'll post back results.
As much as I love science, I can't really be bothered to set up a control area, so that'll still be anecdotal.


(click to enlarge)
Slug ghetto, one hour after harvest. Container was moved in the sunlight for the picture. I dare not remove the glass now.

Could it be a stingless nettle?

I've never seen one though, all of my nettles sting from the day they get out of the ground.