Make your own Natural Beverages.

Like a nice sparkling beverage on a summer’s evening? Love the smell of early summer? Well you can bottle that smell, and have it available year round.
Learn to Make Elderflower Cordial, Elderflower Champagne and Ginger Beer this year. The elderflowers are just coming into bloom, so now’s the time. Join me for a series of 3 classes – Tuesday June 8th, Thursday June 10th, and Tuesday June 15th at Mullingar Educate Together NS. Classes begin at 8:00pm, and the cost is €60. For further details, or to book, contact Anna Browne at annambrowne@gmail.com or 087 2222562. Deadline for booking is Thursday 3rd June.

Refreshments

Here are the recipes that I used for making Elderflower Cordial, and Ginger Beer. They are wonderfully simple to make, and use cheap or free ingredients. If you are concerned about the additives in commercial drinks, but are finding water a bit boring, here's a good compromise.

The Elderflower cordial has a myriad of uses - you can mix it with still or sparling water, it adds great flavour to an Apple Crumble or Gooseberry fool.

It's also mentioned as a remedy for hay fever or sinus problems, so the undergardener is drinking it to help with being stuffed up. I usually make a few batches, and freeze them in plastic bottles, so that we can have the taste of summer whenever we like.

Fund raiser success!

Yesterday at Mullingar Educater Together- where I volunteer as a gardening teacher - we had our annual fundraiser. It's called the Big Day Out, and it lived up to it's name.

For the past 3 years, I have been responsible for the Green Stand. In 2007, I had lots of harbs and vegetable plants for sale, but no one was interested. Last year, we gave away flower seedlings, grown by one of the classes. Also, that class was working on the stand for that day, helping kids to pot up their free seedlings.

This year we took it a stage further. We grew all kinds of seedlings, and other gardeners brought their excess seedlings as well. We made Ginger beer and Elderflower cordial, and since it was a really hot day, we almost ran out of stock!

The vegetables and herbs were much more popular than the flowers, and we could have sold a lot more fruit plants if we had them. Fifth class were there to help throughout the day, and we would have been lost without them. We didn't sell out of plants, but we sold a lot more than I would have anticipated, and we can use the left overs in the school garden.

Next year, we'll have to focus on growing the things that sold well, and have pictures of what the plants will look like when mature. But all in all a very successful day.