visit from Stefanie Essaadi - the nettle forager - 8/05/2024

 A few days ago, Stefanie, came to visit us at Shared Grounds as the project was keen to her bachelor research project at the WdKA. We had some coffee in the terrace and introduced her to the endemic plants that are still hanging out in the terrace waiting to be introduced into their new L shaped garden container.

Later on, we went to shared grounds for her to get to know our nettles. It was an interesting conversation since her foraging was heavily influenced by Robin Wall Kimmerer's ethics/rituals when taking from the land and find ourselves struggling with nightshades and nettles overtaking the plot and not allowing the other species to grow. I (Guillem) apologised to her, if in any case, the fact that I was pulling out nettles while we talked was bothering or upseting her. Foraging and gardening and their intricacies entaglements and contradictions, care is but diverse.

Stefanie's design project focuses on the use of nettle's fibers for textile making. She was very generous to share and teach my inicially unsecure hands the technique to get the fibers from the nettles... first, get the shoots with the longest stems... then, lie them on the floor and jump on top of them and then... walk on ki, one step after another, without leaving space between feet, following its way from the ground to the sky... and then strip away the leaves in one fast swift motion from buttom to top, without getting stung!... and then split the stem with the thumbnail... flatten... and snap! and then you pull the fibers trying to get them as looong as possible. 

 

Then, only one more step, let them dry!

Thanks Stefanie for the visit, we hope to see you soon and best of luck with your amazing project!

Workshop day ~ 14/4/24 ~Seed sharing and Plant Propagation Workshop

On Sunday 14th of April, at Rib, we celebrated the end of winter dormancy and celebrated that spring is here with a seed sharing and plant propagation workshop from which we wished, more or less secretly, to add more species to shared grounds garden 🐁🌸🌷🌺🍄 alongside enabling a space to share, be together and support new growth.

We started with  Kate's great seed collection and after we were able to get to know the amazing collections by Danni van Amstel (@dannivanamste) , which focused on Dutch endemic species and Shuang Xu (@shuang.x.u), which contained seeds from Hong Kong. Thanks again for your generosity!

After preparing the potting mix (by sieving soil and mixing it with perlite and water), we sowed some seeds and made cuttings from baby's breath from shared grounds garden and some foraged city mint. We also repurposed some supermarket plastic packaging into lil hothouses for the seedlings and cuttings, keeping them warm and humid in these early stages of spring.

By the time we post this, the seedlings have already sprouted as you can see in the last picture! Thank y'all for coming, see you soon in the green, again!

Shared Grounds in Grote Prijs van Charlois

In January we were honoured to be nominated for the 'Grote Prijs van Charlois’, a prize created by the district council of Charlois in Rotterdam to put initiators who make a valuable contribution to the district in the limelight. There were many amazing projects nominated, with Etienne Tjon-A-Kon taking out the grand prize for their wonderful work with young people from the neighbourhood.

It was a great evening to learn about other social initiatives of the area and toast to everyone's achievements and hard work. Cheers! And thank you to the district council for their nomination!

A list of the nominated projects include:

Etienne Tjon-A-Kon – opent elke zaterdag Huis van de Wijk Clemensstraat voor jongeren

Sido Silvius – ruimt 2x per week oud vuil op rond Charloisse Hoofd

Hans en Carla van der Leer – runnen speeltuin De Waal

Kate Price & Guillem S. Arquer – Shared Grounds rondom Gouwplein

Anouk van Reijen – VVV Oud-Charlois

Zuidhoek Spookstraat 2023 - Halloween

Rest Time - See you in 2024 :)

 

We take a little rest the next while to sleep, recuperate and dream about next attuned movements (brewing/fermenting encouraged!)... Wishing you all a regenerative shift into 2024... BRB <3 K&G singing out from Shared Grounds

Workshop Day :) ~ 1/12/23 ~ Insect Hotel Building Workshop!

We gathered early on Friday, in the below freezing conditions, to try make some warm homes for our insects companions at Shared Grounds. 

We started the day out by spreading the wood shaving we had saved from our wood carving workshop, bringing this generative 'waste' back to the garden to feed into the soil. 

Looking back at the information we had gathered about building insect hotels, see earlier blog post here, we wanted to come up with some forms that would enable good air flow (lowering the risk of damp and mould development) and involve sensible materials which we also had available that we could reuse. We first had a walk around SG and thought it would make sense to place one hotel from the green fence on the edge of the park, which was quite open and easily accessible, and to make another one which would be self standing within the more overgrown and dense parts of the garden. 

We had a good look over the different materials we had to hand and decided to make the insect hotels from a combination of wood of old pallets received via our gemeente wijktuin friend Roland, metal chicken wire Guillem had laying around (to help keep smaller pieces in place), bamboo sticks collected about, and dried branches picked up from the trees and shrubs. We wanted to use the material with as little wastage as possible, so decided to use the wood slats length to its benefit, forming a bit of a modular structure. Each of us set about on a task be it screwing the form together or cutting the bamboo and branches into smaller sections. Even with the chilling air it was fun to get down to work, figuring out together along the way the forms and components which we could implement into the finished hotels, such as including a little roof to keep it dry :)

We finished the day by installing one of the hotels along the fence in the radiating sunshine! Before sharing some hot noodles to warm our insides :) Cheers to those that joined, we had a great time, hoping the insects enjoy the new addition :)

Here's a photo recap shot by Silvia and Guillem

About wooden pallets' toxicity

 

how to know if a pallet is safe: 

- no signs of spills or leakage of items

- stamps that can be found: 

IPPC logo, International Plant Protection Convention, prevent spreading of invasive species and plant disease, pallets have to be treated. They regulate so wood products ensure that they meet the specifications for international shipping. They require treatment by one of the following methods: 

1) Heat Treatment [HT] - heated for at least 30 min. at least at 132.8 °F /56° C -> Stamped with [HT]

2) Chemical Fumigation [MB] - fumigated with methyl bromide -> stamped with [MB], since March 2010 it has been banned.

3) Debarked [DB] - debarked under IPPC regulations, and many pallets have this stamp. Wood packaging materials must be debarked prior to being heat treated or fumigated to meet regulations. 

4) Kiln Dried [KD] - dried by steaming in order to bringing all wood products to moisture content levels that will be subject to minimal moisture-related damage.

- other stamps:

Europe:

EUR: EURO pallet this is the logo for the old system, not bad, but EPAL is better.

EPAL: European Pallet Association Logo

EUR + EPAL: EUR logo plus EPAL logo is good. EUROPE DOES NOT ALLOW CHEMICAL TREATMENT OF PALLETS.

International:

GB-FC0843 - Country code + Registration Number+

IPPC logo

+

DB-HT - Treatment code 

- do not use colored pallets, they are often used for chemicals

- what if there is no stamp or marking on the pallet? Most likely for domestic transport, and do not require an IPPC stamp because it is not for international transport. Most likely safe.

SUMMARY: 

To use: DB, HT, KD, EPAL

Not to use: MB, EUR, colored pallets

Working Day 8 ~ 19/11/23 ~ Time for PLANTS!

Today was the day we introduced the new additions generously given to us by the Botanische tuin Afrikaanderwijk <3 !!

We began like usual doing a little clean up job before then moving the plants from their temporary home on the Rib balcony to Shared Grounds. We decided to begin by grouping the plants according to their growing height, small low growers, medium height and tall, before then distributing them over the more open bed and trying to distribute them fairly evenly around the patch. We weeded out the ground a little bit, and were careful whilst opening up the soil to insert the new plants, trying to be as considerate as we could over the disruptions we were implementing. It also gave us a moment to reacquaint ourselves with the different species that we were bringing in, from ground covers, tall growing perennials, and bushy shrubs. 

We hope these new additions will introduce new layers and textures into the garden, bolstering the ecosystem chorus to a grand and complex form :)