Tending to the garden

We all know gardening is both a joy and hard work. One thing that I have struggled with lately is getting my garden watered properly while I have been sick with a cold.
My husband will help me water it from time to time, but not always.

Since the hose burst, it has to be done by hand, which means many trips to the spigot. It is a bit harder on my body while I am not feeling well than using a hose would be. Being so close to the end of the season, I had decided not to buy a new hose until next year.

I am still watering my garden, just not as often as I would like. I had hoped the rainy days would continue but of course during this time the temperature decided to heat back up again.

I would have put wine bottles into the ground but the water would have dried up within a day I am sure, and I would not have been able to refill them so easily without the bottom being cut off. Usually it is a battle of spraying the dirt out of the neck before refilling. Seems like more of a hassle to refill bottles that are not cut, than watering the garden by hand.

Sadly I do not have a self watering system in place for my current garden, but I do hope to implement one next year if possible. Doing so with a larger garden would make things a lot easier. Even if only part of it  is self watering through watering wells, pots, etc, it would help take off the load.

I have a sprinkler system in my back yard, though it does not reach the slope. I do not see a drip system being possible for next years plans so I am coming up with other ideas like wicking beds and such.

Some of the tomato plants look a little wilted but are otherwise fine. I see a little acorn squash growing, though no others for pumpkin or butternut yet. The zucchinis are doing great. Most of the beets are growing wonderfully. Peas/beans are flowering.
All in all my garden is doing just fine despite lack of the proper watering.

I have still been able to water my indoor plants. My ginger is really taking off. Lettuce seems a bit hard to grow indoors. I wonder if the temperatures fluctuate too much for the little lettuce heads. Either the heads die off or start to bolt. I think it just gets too warm and our AC unit has problems keeping the place cool even with the fans going.

Watercress has died off but I do believe I was able to get a few seeds that will hopefully germinate later.

I started a mushroom growing experiment. I took the stems of two types of mushrooms, button and the brown topped ones I can never remember the names of, and put them in some moist soil. I have them in my crafting room on the windowsill in 2 liter plastic bottles with a big hole in them.

They appear to be decomposing, which I am not sure if that is part of the re-growing process or if this is a failed experiment. I read somewhere that you could grow them that way but I am not so sure as of yet.
I wanted to try growing shiitake mushrooms but those are hard wood mushrooms I believe, which means they grow on decomposing logs, not in soil.

In any rate if it does not work I will most likely get a mushroom growing kit in the future.

As for the outdoor garden area, I will give it lots of love via coffee, tea, and other yummy things as a thanks for their patience with me while I am ill. I have already put a little coffee out there for the squash.

Whenever I make coffee I make just a little extra that goes into a cup that I put into my garden later. I also save the grounds as well as you already know.

Thankfully even with as bad as I have felt with this cold, I can tell it will not last as long as others have. A testament to what good herbal remedies can do for ones body.

Late season seed haul

So I did not get all the seeds I need for next year but I managed to get in a end of season seed haul. Let me tell you how I got 24 seed packets for $9.34

I started my quest for seeds a little late. I would be kicking myself if I did not find what I had.

So originally I was out to find seeds that you see in the dollar store, winco, walmart, etc… by American Seed, which is actually Plantation Seed, but moving on.. Everyone knows these little plain packets that are around .20-.30ea. Since I do not have a whole lot of money for seeds at the moment I thought this would be great for adding a few varieties, heirloom or not, to the garden.

Now one thing that is a downside about the seeds is they have a limited variety, but it works for creating a small edible garden.

After calling about 8 different stores I found Walgreens still had some seed packets left. When I got there I expected to find the normal american seed company packets but instead I found Burpee seeds on sale for .29-.34 cents! Yes, I pay a few cents more, but I know they are a reputable company.

I could have spent $37 for all of the seeds I got… It is amazing the deals you can find when you are in the right place at the right time. I am happy I can buy seeds out of season for next years planting.

So I snagged up 22 packets of seeds, and then 2 packets of lettuce tape that was normally $6.59ea for $0.98 each.



I have not used seed tape before but it seems really nifty. There is 22ft per pack.


This is my little seed storage chest. I moved my seeds to this when they were getting too big for their old container. Now having something that is air tight would be best, but this will work for me for now. Not all my seeds are in this chest; mainly the ones I printed out myself and saved.

I did not buy all the seeds they had left though I was very tempted to… And may even go back another time to see if there are any left.

They also had bell peppers, sunflowers, 2 other kinds of flowers, and anything else they were out of by that time.

Here is what I ended up with:

3pks of Peas “Cascadia”
2pks of Carrots “Scarlet Nantes”
2pks of Carrots “Little finger”
1pk of Radish “Crimson Giant”
1pk of Beets “Detroit Dark Red”
1pk of Garden Beans “Green Crop”
3pk of Cucumber “Space Master”
2pk of Watermelon “Sugar Baby”
2pk of Summer Squash “Early golden crookneck”
1pk of Summer Squash “Black Beauty”
1pk of Tomato “Super Beefsteak”
1pk of Tomato ‘'Super Sweet 100 Hybrid”
1pk of Marigold “Sunset Giant Mix”
1pk of Basil “Mammoth”
2pk of Lettuce (Tape) “Black Seeded Simpson”

The great thing about the seeds I got is that I believe all but one or two are open pollinated varieties and I can save seed from them. I am not certain, but at lest I believe they are mostly all able to be used to save seed if I wanted to.

I have not saved seeds from carrots or other root veggies before. I may still have to buy those until I get the hang of it, but the rest I should not have to buy again.

My husband is not sure I can fit everything I want into my garden. I will be using polyculture and intercropping techniques along with permaculture to use every inch of space I can in a way they does not hurt the plants. People waist so much useable gardening space by only growing one crop type in one area. You can improve the plant growth and harvest when you plant the right plants next to each other.

I am so excited to see my little seed bank growing!

13 bean update

So the experiment is going amazingly well.
This was taken just a few days after I put them in my germination station.

This was taken today.

In the first one, the split peas and chickpeas had not sprouted. In the second they are barely starting to show signs of roots.

I will be putting these in the ground shortly, maybe even today.

In my kitchen I have cabinets with side shelves near the kitchen sink window. The one on the right is where I have been doing my tomato seed saving. On the left is where my bok choy and onion experiments have been taking place. On the windowsil itself I have my avocado tree, ginger plants, bok choy, and watercress.

I also included a photo of the hairy little dried tomato seeds from my speckled roma (Also pictured above)

Today I finished the fermentation process for more gardeners delight and my green zebra. I started the process for my orange strawberry tomato.

I also picked a few more common mallow flowers for drying.
As I was picking them and watering my garden, I think I am seeing the first signs of carrot emerging. It gets so dry during the day I was worried the ground may not be staying moist enough even with watering twice a day. I guess I was wrong. I like being wrong on that one.

The picture on the middle right is my new drying rack set up. I don’t know why I had not thought to use a door coat rack for drying herbs. I have mint drying on it right now.

In other news… I my winter tonic is ready and works amazingly well. I tested out this batch when I started to feel a tickle and a few coughs happening, took a little, and have been great since. I will be making another batch of this here in the near future.

I also decided to make my own almond milk recently. I think it came out wonderful and works great for my protein shakes.
It took 1/4lb (1c) of almonds. At $5.88 a lb that put it at $1.47
It is suggested to use two cups of water, though I ended up using 3-4. We will say 3.
So divide that by 3 and it ended up being $0.49 a serving. Divided by 4 it is $0.37
It costs about the same per serving as buying almond breeze from winco but without any added ingredients.
I am going to try it with one of the unsalted nut mixes just because I am curious… I will let you guys know if it is any good.

This is the link to the site I used for making almond milk: How to make almond milk at home

Grocery store gardening experiments

So I like to grow things from fruit stands, and grocery stores in addition to harvesting wild seed, transplanting, and buying seed from nurseries.

One thing I have not gotten around to trying is growing plants from the bulk foods section. From what I read it is sort of a hit or miss thing. I was reading about different beans, since now is a good time to plant them where I am at, when I thought about the fact that I have a bag of 13 bean soup from the bulk foods section of Winco.

I found another blog post from someone who had decent success in growing from these beans. Some of them were a little slow to germinate, but otherwise they seemed to do fine. I had not really thought about growing dry beans until today. I am all about green beans, peas, and sugar snap peas (My favorite) but I do love to cook with beans when I can.

I thought this might be a good way to get some more experiments in this year. I just repurposed a to go container into my new germination station. I think this one is going to work better than the tupperwear one I had, but I will have to see if the little round vents cause it to dry out too quickly or not.

I put two of each bean type in the germination station with the peas having a few more since they are in halves. The peas only have a 50% germination rate from what it would have been due to them being split. I figured it could not hurt to have a few in there rather than just two halves.

Now is a good time to be direct sowing the seeds,  but I would rather them germinate here and I transplant them later, than put them out in the garden, and keep watering a spot that does not grow anything.

My husband of course makes the comment “So do you need salt water to grow Navy beans?” Lol

In addition to my bean experiments, I also packaged up 90% of the seeds I had dried. The packets are really small but perfect since I don’t always get a ton of seeds for one plant. I printed out 4 of them on one sheet of paper.

I consider these seeds to be “experiments” also as I have not tested them out yet.

I picked some mallow cheeses “Seeds” which I almost feel is pointless as they grow all over, but figured it couldn’t hurt to have them anyways.

Mallow is related to the Okra plant and has a similar mucilage to okra when chewed or cooked. The green cheeses (which I did not harvest as of yet, I only harvested the dried brown ones) taste more like mini okras, while the leaves have the mucilage when chewed, it does not have that fleshy texture of okra.

Mallow has a lot of health benefits and I harvested some of the young leaves to dry out for teas later. I have not had them in a tea before and hope that drying them will not make my tea all slimy later haha. Mallow is used to thicken soups if that helps give you any idea on things.

Given the stress all my poor tomato plants went through, I only harvested one speckled roma tomato. It is the first time we have had one of those. I think I like it better than the normal roma tomatoes, either that or I just like the taste of it coming fresh off the vine.

I did save the seeds from that and they will be ready for drying tomorrow. I just scoop the seeds into a container and swirl them once a day. They have to ferment so the “anti sprouting” coating that is naturally on the seed will come off.  I then fill the container with water. The seeds that float are bad and will not sprout. Those I let run off. The ones that sink are good seeds and I keep those for planting later.

I have more tomatoes that I can save seeds from that are ripe and ready to be picked as soon as I get to drying the speckled roma tomorrow.
Next year I am sure they will be much stronger than the ones I moved into the garden.

Gardening really is all about trial and error. I actually enjoy it when I am not freaking out over my plants. Thankfully my tomato plants actually strengthened up without anything but water really. I did add some water to them that I had used to blanch some bok choy, and lambs quarters for freezing.

I like to make my own fertilizers. Basically I use coffee grounds, left over dried tea leaves (which my garden seems to always favor when I had used them in my container garden), left over veggie water, left over water from boiling eggs, egg shells, and things along those lines.

I will eventually start composting once I look into getting some smaller bins for it. That will be a new fun thing to learn. I like knowing exactly what is going into my garden and will not use harsh chemicals in it.

Speaking of the water I used from the bok choy… I forgot to mention that I only used the outer leaves and left a few inner leaves of the two heads I got, so I can regrow it. I also got these from the store.
They are already growing back. One is in only water, the other is in soil. The one pictured below in the water also has some watercress growing next to it that I had separated from the original mother plant I got back in June. They taste like radish greens.

My seed bank progress

I am in the process of drying out a bunch of seeds to add to my growing seed bank.



I have a bunch of seed packets left over from my container garden I plan to utilize next year. Mostly herb seeds with a few exceptions.


A few pages I have printed out for my garden book. Both pages are double sided. My seed bank page is filled halfway on the other side. I am quite happy with how my little seed bank is growing with both garden variety and wild seeds.


I decided to get a new binder for my Garden Gate book. (The art is not my own, though certainly my style. I thought it fit the theme of the book quite nicely.)


I took some time outside in my garden.
The tree is a spruce as I learned today. I had not looked at it very closely until now. I shall be harvesting the sap, spruce tips, pollen, and needles for various things.



I decided to harvest some more lambs quarters. The last small batch I picked I dried for soups later. This batch I decided to rinse and blanch for freezing.

I only selected the good leaves from each plant and left any that had been chewed on by bugs.


I left the blanched leaves to cool before freezing. It is not much, and it takes a lot of leaves, but they are more abundant than spinach, and more nutrient dense.



This is the left over water from blanching bok choy and lambs quarters. I am allowing it to cool and then I will use the nutrient dense broth to water my garden.




My strawberries seem to ripen in fives. I of course find this really amusing. I have been picking them and adding them to a Tupperware container to freeze for later use in smoothies, pies, muffins, and more. Yes, I am not picking more than 5 or so at a time, but since I am freezing them, they will not rot while waiting for the rest to ripen. Did I mention how amazing these are? So very flavorful.

Other than the strawberries I also got a few more tomatoes. We got to try the sweet 100, which were delicious. So far all the tomatoes in the garden have been a win.

On my last foraging adventure where I got a lot of the wild seeds I am drying out, I also got a bunch of wild golden plums. Both perfectly sweet with a bit of tart to them.

I am loving connecting with the land, with my land. It is very nice to be able to call a piece of land your own. I enjoy exploring my land, all .18 of an acre of it. Size doesn’t matter when you can find so many different groups of life growing all around. Seeing how the connect with each other, where they grow best. I like learning about my land. It helps me understand the best ways to aid in its care.

That of course is not to say I do not exploring my friends yards as well. I love teaching and learning as I explore. I usually end up coming home with some tasty finds as well which is always exciting.

I had plans to go out and explore another loved location for wild living things, or dead, I like bones too, but for understandable reasons those plans fell through. The hunt for wild maturing seeds and plants goes on!
I am making the most of this year even with the late start. I will have a wonderful garden filled with lots of garden variety and wild plants. Not only that but I will be able to enjoy the fruit of my harvest all winter if I plan things the right way.
I will be adding wild native plants to my meals. You can’t always find these things in fruit stands, even if they are tasty. They are either too time consuming to harvest, or there are just so many varieties, it is easier to keep to the known basics.
With so many amazing foods nature has to offer it is baffling how much we limit ourselves. As an example, look at how many varieties of amazing tomatoes there are… Almost all the tomatoes in my garden I have never had the pleasure of even hearing of yet alone taste. With how amazing they are, you would be surprised they are not also in the stores. It is just too costly to have such a variety for the stores to carry.

Because of this, a lot of varieties are gone. Without people planting them, the seeds eventually go bad, and that particular variety dies off. At some point I plan on putting some vintage variety fruits and veggies into the garden to help preserve some of our history. 

Tonic brewing

I was off work early today and decided to make good use of my time. I headed straight to the store to grab some missing ingredients for a tonic I wanted to make.

Being that I currently work at a call center, I thought this would be a splendid idea. Call centers tend to be petri dishes. One person gets sick, or is not self aware when they are sick, and the whole call floor can catch it. For those of you who are younger, it is much like High school in that manner.
Being that I get sick fairly easily, I thought this would help when I start to feel that “tickle” or even before.
I have heard some people in the area say that strep has started going around. I thought it might be a good idea to prep this tonic up now, since it takes a couple or more weeks to brew. Well that, and I just generally love making magickal elixirs.

My chopped fresh ingredients (ginger, onion, garlic, chives, jalapeno) minus the thyme and rosemary I added in.


I mixed the ingredients together in apple cider vinegar. I just used a gallon water jug as that is what I had laying around. Normally I would probably use a glass jar.
The mixture smells amazing. I will strain it after shaking it up every day for a few weeks, use the liquid as the tonic remedy, and then puree the rest for an awesome sandwich spread. The boys are actually excited about the last part.

The great thing about this tonic, is that the ingredients in it are anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, increases blood flow and circulation, helps fight off cough and sore throat, and is very warming. I may add honey to it later to help decrease the “sting” factor. Not to mention honey is a great natural antibiotic and a good source of natural energy when you aren’t feeling well.



Onto the garden!

It is hard to see at the moment, but you might be able to spot the corn that is popping up out of the ground.

I planted the carrots between the rows as marked below above the rows.
                      Corn  Carrots       Corn       Carrots  Corn



I picked up a bundle of chives that I figured I could add to my tonic. I chopped off all but about 4-6 inches near the base. I planted 7 chives in my garden near my tomatoes. I could have planted them right near the onions, but I did not want to get confused on which needed cutting, and which needed pulling later, so I left a gap.


My chives                                                                My onions

I also harvested those gold nugget tomatoes and saved the seeds from those. I basically washed the gardeners delight and put them out to dry, then put the gold nugget in the same container for processing.

My new chest freezer went out today, so I scrambled to get everything in the regular freezer as I could before it went bad. I am hoping it is something easily fixed, though I won’t know until I get someone to look at it.

I repotted my ginger plants into a bit bigger of a planter as well. I am not sure if they will ever end up outside. I sort of like them on my kitchen windowsill. At least until they get too big. Ginger is seriously easy to grow. At least in my experience.  I just leave whatever chunk of root I did not use from store bought ginger in the produce bag. Eventually it starts to grow a plant from the little nodes due to moisture in the bag. I just break it off a little below the node (About an inch or so below the growing node.) and then burry it 2/3 of the way in seed starting soil.
You aren’t really going to find ginger “seeds” in a nursery. That is about the only way you can grow them that I know of. At least in my area. Now I believe they can get up to like 5 feet tall, but I guess that also depends on when you harvest the root. Pretty much all roots are best harvested in Autumn, though I would have to double check that with Ginger as it is a tropical plant.
If they do end up outside, it will most likely be in a container garden as it will be easier to dig up the roots from there. I will also be bringing them inside for winter if I do that, as they cannot be outside if the temperatures drop below 50.

Carrots and squash in the garden

Today was a day of planting carnival carrots. For those of you who do not know what those are, aside from obviously being carrots; Carnival carrots are red, purple, orange, and white. Yes, not all carrots are orange.

I planted four rows total. Two rows between each row of my sweet corn that are growing. I planted them 4.5 in apart and 1 foot row spacing. I basically planted approx 80 carrots. Some spots got more than one seed, but I tried to keep it to one seed each hole. 
Normally people plant them 1-2in apart, a few seeds a hole, and then thin them to 1 plant per 4 in… I don’t like thinning. I think it is wasteful. I would rather risk not all the seeds germinating then throw out half my harvest basically.
I tried doing it once with beets. Every single seed germinated. I advise never over planting beets.

In other news. My tomatoes are bouncing back for the most part. I harvested two gardeners delights from my garden and soon will have saved seeds from them. Super tasty by the way as well as very easy to save seeds from.
I have a few more gold nugget tomatoes I need to pick from the vine soon. 


After this photo I added more soil to the tops of the onions as they were pushing out of the ground.


Don’t remember which this one is.                Gold nugget.

Speckled roma.                    Mint julep                           Green Zebra
The above are the close ups. Speckled roma is finally reddening up. There is only one of them on the plant. While the plants are looking better, I am not sure they will produce anything more than what is already ripening.


Above is my yellow squash plant. It is doing great. I am seeing squash forming on it.

Below is my zucchini plant which is also forming squash.


The ones in the containers are doing better than the ones in the ground due to pill bug, ant, box elder bug, and earwigs… We have a lot of these and I will be tackling them early next year.
I am still not sure if the ones in the ground will make it till harvest time, but we will see.

This was right before I trimmed off some of the dying leaves on these ones.

I also have some lambs quarters in the yard I had not gotten to picking and now have seed heads forming. I will try and save seeds from those as well.
Lambs quarters are a good wild edible.

I was in the garden for about an hour and a half or two hours just tilling, planting, watering. I very much enjoy my time spent in the garden.

My husband says for next year we will most likely end up renting a rototiller for the part of the yard that is overgrown with cheat grass right now. We have rocks in our soil, so it will help to break up the soil so we can rake them out.
I will probably pile the rocks up and use them in other garden projects.

I may have lost my container garden during the construction at the old place we were at, then also lost containers during the move, but my garden is well worth any small loss I have made from my previous one. My old garden was so destroyed nothing came back this year, so I am not sad over losing any plants. My new plants are keeping me quite happy.

Next year I will most likely be getting mostly heirloom seeds to replace the plants that will not return. Pretty much everything in my garden save for the grapes are not a returning crop type. I am ok with having some heirloom and some hybrid tomatoes, though I will be replanting the saved heirloom seeds I do get from the ones I have.
I would like to save seeds from my squash plants but they are not heirloom. I will replant an heirloom variety next year that I can save seeds from.
I have been hand pollinating the squash flowers using a q-tip in hopes of a fruitful harvest.

I have mostly herb seeds, carrot, broccoli, beet, and that is mostly it. I will need to set up a grow station with shelving and grow lights in addition to getting other seeds I need.

On the food preservation side of things I have pitted (using a chop stick. Don’t judge) about 1/3 of a gallon of cherries and have frozen them for later use. I could make pie, cobbler, smoothies, and a million other things with the cherries later.

I am slowly adding bits of frozen fruits and veggies to the freezer here and there. It will certainly make cooking meals that much easier later.

I am focusing on freezing things for now until I get my canning set up complete next year.

Closer to the end of the month I will be direct sowing some beets in the garden. I will have at least a little harvest this year with the start of my garden.