Garden Pics

Well lookie at that two posts in one day.  This one being pictures.. sorry about the quality I defiantly need to get a new better camera.
  This is one of the flowering strawberry plants we now have by my Elderberry trees.  Who by the way are trying to take over the spot here. It does not bother me that they are trying to take over there as eventually I want them to fill the space in.  Technically Elderberry is a shrub not a tree, however for a shrub it grows very large.
 I believe these strawberries are ever bearing, which would be very nice as I am planning to dry half the total berries, then half of the remainder will be jammed and the rest will be eaten straight.
 My wintergreen that was planted in the same area is trying desperately to come back, I hope it does as I was looking forward to harvesting some of that this year.  Considering only two of the four plants made it to winter, then the two seemed to be doing well all winter then they seem to have just given up once it warmed up.  I do not know why, I can just hope they come back.  Once it drys up out there I need to get into that "bed" and remove the unwanted plants.
  This minor monstrosity is the combined planting of the Thyme,Marjoram,and mint.  As you can see it is just a mass of green right now.  I think the thyme is going to be choked out.  While the mint and Marjoram will be fighting the remaining space out between the two of them.
 In a few hours I have my first batch of Marjoram to take out of my food dryer.  That does mean this picture was taken after I harvested mint and Marjoram from it.  They don't seem to be hurting from the haircut I gave them.  Which is a good thing as I plan on keeping it up.  I have some nice amber glass jars that I need filling and I know about how much it'll take to fill them full.
 I don't think you can see it, but the mint is trying to escape under the tire... My thought is if it does "get away" that's more mint for me.  I do now know that at least these two plants will need to be controlled once I have my herb garden set up.
  I do not know if you can see this one or not, however if you can.  That's not onions.  That would be my first attempt at growing garlic.  They seem to be doing just fine, however they seem to grow slower than my onions.
 I wish I had pictures of potato sprouts, but my potatoes seem to be taking the slow route to the surface this year.  I do know they are growing as one day the chickens escaped and thankfully they were so stuffed all they did was unbury the potatoes.  They all seemed to have roots and little sprouts working their way up.
 We will be ordering some sunchokes in this next month.  We may also be buying some locally as it seems right now Craigslist is full of people trying to sell them off.  I have no problem with growing them, and letting them take over if they taste as good as I have been lead to believe.
 Well that's it on my "good" pictures as the rest did not look good enough for me to be willing to post them.  Have a great afternoon!
 Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be

Cattails

Fyi this is -NOT- my picture... I'm have camera issues again...
  We went out this morning and gathered some cattail shoots to try. I have never eaten them before and neither has Silver. So we went over to the pond across the street, me wearing shorts. To gather some from our neighbor as the ones we have planted do not have enough of a hold in the pond to be worth harvesting from. I am glad it is a not cold morning as the water was definitely cold and let me say unless you have a dry spot, you will be in the water to try and get your shoots. They are almost at the stage of not being small enough to eat. Granted there are tons of “baby” cattails growing there, no bigger than wild onions. From the instructions I received on it the section I want is the white part closest to the “tuber” without cutting up the tuber. I harvested about 8 of them of different sizes. They have a pleasant aroma when they are cut semi-sweet. After cleaning off the outer section that was a little tough and washing them thoroughly we tried them raw. They taste very good raw, slightly sweet. I have discovered that lightly frying them in olive oil ruins their flavor. Silver's estimation of them they would be best serves sliced up on a salad raw or maybe in a stew. If anyone has an “cooking” recommendations for cattail shoots please pass them along. I love the flavor and want to find other uses for them. BE Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Mint Harvest

Well the mint plant I planted last year is trying to take over it's planted... and even grow under it.  So this morning before more rain hit us I went out and gathered a bunch of it to start drying it in my dehydrator.  I have enough to fill 5 trays, and I added one tray to catch any that fall through.  However I placed it right above the tray that I filled with the small pieces.  I only have 2 mesh inserts so I have to make the best use of them that I have for them.  My thought is that the small bits use it and have one empty aside from the mesh goes above that tray to catch any fall throughs during the drying process.

I had thought the mint completely took over the planted I have it and two other herbs in it.   I was wrong, it only half takes over the planter.  The other half is filled with Marjoram, the Thyme is trying to survive with both of the other two trying to choke it out.  The mint is even growing under the planter and trying to escape.  This has told me that when I do get my full herb garden growing that I'll need to have any mints growing by themselves... blocked off from the rest.  I knew catnip took over, I just did not realize all mints did.

I imagine that in about two days I'll have a bunch of dried mint that I'll have to put away for later, then I'll be working on the Marjoram.  When that one is done we'll see if the mint has grown back  enough to dry more of it.  I do hope we get our solar dryer done soon so I can use a non-electric dryer for everything.

BE Well, Be Safe, and Blessed be...

Quiet Days

We have been have a few quiet days here, between the rain and the cold.  My mom has flooding up near her in the Chicago area, though where she lives it would take a great deal of water to flood them out.  All of the seeds and plants I have put in seem to be doing well so far.  The one exception is my mini pak choi and edible chrysanthemums, something seems to like eating them;maybe I just need to give up on them.

Our next set of plans on building things is to get either the well house redo, the outdoor kitchen, or the pipe and wire for the new house.  As we sat down and figured we cannot really do any work on the house itself till the kids are fully out of school so they can help as we have at least one spot that needs three people to do the work.  ...and with how the weather has been I can't guarantee we'll have a clear day on the weekends.  So we wait on house construction till they get out and we have them around all the time.  Silly thing is we only need the "extra man" to put up the rebar for the frame the rest we can do two person.

My strawberries are starting to bloom, I'm taking that as a good sign that they like their new home.  We are going to order some huge jalapeno peppers and some sunchokes around the first and a lemon grass plant.  Seems I cannot get lemon grass to sprout at all shrugs oh well we'll just have to do with a started plant.  We are going to have to buy a pot and keep it inside in the cold weather, but I believe it'll be worth it.  I am considering when we get the dome built to get a laurel tree in a big pot.

I hope you are all about to work and get around in all the rain we've had and I alps hope you won't be in the path of any nasty snow melt when it starts up.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Rain,Rain... we need it...

We do, just hopefully not the severe stuff that is moving around.  My new day lilies are coming up and I have seen that the cattails are all sprouting nicely.  I was worried about the cattails, but seems that I did ok on the moving of the plants, a big THANK YOU to Rich and Daina who own the property kitty cornered to us for the cattails.

I got a plant/seed catalog the other day that has pond plants in it and I'm considering some of the irises.  I would not mind a few flowers there in addition to the other plants there.  My lettuce is coming up, and I believe my mini Pak Choi came up as evidenced by the "mowed down" look they have this morning.

I have found a variety of Jalapeno that is almost the size of my hand that we are considering planting this year so we can make our own "poppers".  I had gotten some a year or two ago and we stuffed them with cheese and a beef/rice mix before breading and deep frying and they came out wonderful. I'd like to try it again.

My grape has flowers on it and the red current while it lost it's top leaves, the lower buds are growing.  Also the Pecan tree seems to be holding it's own.  My mother sent me an early (one week early) birthday gift off my Amazon.com wish list, it's a large Ball brand water bath canner.  To see the wish list here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/L8YKMO2HVVP9/ref=cm_wl_act_vv?_encoding=UTF8&reveal=&visitor-view=1

It's so pretty I can't wait to get a chance to use it!  However it'll probably be a few weeks as I need more lids to do more canning.  I am planning to make a "stew mix" to dry can as the year goes on, this will be a simple pour into pot add water and heat meal.  It'll contain:

Jerky

bouillon

dried berries (probably blue and black though if the currents produce them too)

dried potatoes

dried garlic

dried onion

dried day lily buds

dried peppers

dried potato flakes (home made hopefully)

Now why two kinds of potato?  Simple mashed potato flakes make a good thickener.  So it'll make it into a nice thick stew.  I'm going to tinker with it as I make them, and I'll probably not "assemble" them till later in the year when I have everything setup.  So we'll see how it goes.

BE Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Bulb Planting Day

Yep I'm going out today to plant some flower bulbs, the ones we ordered months ago showed up early this week.  Due to the rain we were suppose to get (we only got rain 1 day) we decided to wait till today to plant them.  I do not know if they will grow today or in a year.  My cabbages and other planting seem to have taken and this morning I'll have to see if they got too cold last night due to frost.  Which is amazing due to the fact we were in the high 70's the other day.

I have jumped off the "no-poo" bandwagon, Ok not jump I dived head first off of it.  I have discovered that I have one BIG issue with going no-poo.  My hair is very dry and very thick, the issue I'd have is that it would take me a couple hours to comb through my tangled knotted hair after "washing" it.  The first time was not bad, but it got steadily worse.  So a couple days ago while in tears and barely combed through the rat's nest that my hair became I gave up and went and used shampoo and conditioner.

Now I will say if I ever needed to live washing my hair in this manner I could do it... however I'd have to cut my hair VERY short to make it easy to comb through.  Actually I did like how my hair felt while I was off shampoo(s), it felt so much better  I would recommend trying it and seeing if it works for you.  Now trying it means for at least a month.  You may be surprised.

Now I want to mention something about the "school lunch thing".

My local news is still covering how kids are still hungry after coming home from school.  Now I have a few comments in reference to this.  Most kids are not use to eating "healthy" foods.  Also most kids are not use to eating a serving size.  Which is generally much smaller than what you get in a fast food place.  This really is a home problem, however... if the kids are suppose to be properly fed at school. Well, then they need to be satisfied.  i know one BIG issue is kids would rather have chips and candy rather than fruit and cold veggies.  Now my kids will do fruit and cold veggies, however they are still coming home hungry.  Well my son is anyway.  His problem is he is a picky eater, which is his own problem.  If he doesn't want to eat enough to be full it's on him, because he refuses to eat some of the entrees they serve.

Now the reason for the change in the school lunch system is because the First Lady is trying to fight childhood obesity.  Good, however there are other ways to combat this.  The biggest one would be to increase Phys Ed, and making it more physical.  Now I say this because I know when we lived in NY my kids had a few weeks of stacking cups.  Now I know it's now considered a  hand-eye coordination sport, however it's not very physically challenging.  When I was in grammar school... many years ago... the first one I was in make the kids run a track for 10 minutes daily.  Now put that on top of sports.  That would help.  Also saying that recess suffices to exercise kids.  Watch what goes on during recess and I'm sure you'll see a lot of kids just hanging out.

So this in my opinion this is being handled wrong.  I hope someone figures this out and maybe changes something that will work better.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Happy Friday!

Well I'm sitting here waiting for my chicken bones to de-pressure so I figured I'd write something today.  Not as much as yesterday mind you... btw in case you were wondering it came out to about 4 pages on my word prossesor when I converted it over.  Looks back a few words.  I love those spelling mistakes that the "suggestions" have no correction for even when you know you spelled it wrong; but cannot spell it right.

I have watered all of my plants that I put in yesterday and they do seem to be doing rather well except for 1 of the red cabbages.  That poor thing is drooping.  I think I know why too, it got only about 1/2 of the roots available when I had to cut them apart.  So it probably does not have enough roots to make it.

We discovered this morning that the 2 hoses we are using can reach everything but... The pecan tree and the current.  No biggie, we need at least one new hose as one of the 2 like I said has a leaky connector.

I have discovered this morning that we have 1 small frog living near our pond.  I hope there is more but 1 is a start.  My blue berry is looking very promising so far and I hope it produces well this year.  It has buds everywhere, it looks as healthy as the Elderberries do.

Once I get my soup going I get to go out and do some clearing near all of my plantings from yesterday.  Just to ensure no over crowding and plenty of sun for my new plants.  I did notice the Kale seems to have sprouted finally, just when I was ready to give up on them.  I also may have one carrot sprout, we'll see as it grows.

Time to go work on the soup,

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...