The Herbangardener

Make a Bug Bath!

Lindsey — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:05:40 +0000

If you’re an organic vegetable gardener, or just a lazy cheapskate-type gardener (or both like me), then beneficial insects are at the top of your list. They’re easy, they’re free, they do the work for you. For example, I’ve never found a better way of controlling aphids than relaxing in the shade with a cup of tea and letting the wasps eat them off one by one.

All you need to do is lure the beneficials in by making your garden as irresistible as possible. One good way is to make sure you have a variety of flowers blooming amongst your vegetables. I’ve noticed they especially like herb flowers and wildflowers.

Another good way is to provide a reliable source of fresh water — just like a bird bath, only for bugs.

To make a bug bath:

1. Find a dish and some rocks; the rocks will stick up above the water and provide islands for bugs to land on.

2. Locate the bug bath somewhere in your garden. Feel free to have multiple bug baths throughout your garden.

3. Keep the water fresh; I dump it and re-fill when I water the garden.

4. It may take a bit for the bugs to discover their new bath; have patience — they’ll find it!

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Free Shipping at Tropical Traditions! (Thru Monday May 14th)

Lindsey — Sun, 13 May 2012 22:22:27 +0000

It’s Free Shipping time again at one of my very favorite companies, Tropical Traditions! I love free shipping days. You save about $10-15 off your order, so it’s a good time to stock up, or try them out if you haven’t before. I really love this company’s products, and use them daily. Now through Midnight EDT on Monday May 14th, they’re offering free ground-only shipping when you enter coupon code 14512 at checkout.

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Click here to view my favorite products at Tropical Traditions.

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If you’re a new customer and have never bought from them before, you can also get this Virgin Coconut Oil book, with information & recipes, for free (any time, not just today) by entering my User ID, which is 6032410. When you’re going through the checkout process and you’ve added your shipping address and phone number, you will see the question “How did you hear of us?” Just choose “Referred by a friend” and then a new “User ID” field will appear below that where you can enter my User ID. (See screen shot below.)

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Garden walk, first week of May~

Lindsey — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:31:41 +0000

Let’s go see what the garden’s doing!

And you’re barefoot, right? Ok good! ‘Cause garden walks are so much better when your feet are on that cool grass, touching the earth directly…

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Mulching the beds… I know, I should’ve gotten to this task while the plants were smaller. Because when they’re already this big, you’re having to delicately thread your mulching material in amongst those maddeningly fragile stems!

Broad bean flowers

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A broken toe slows ya down… but moving more slowly has turned out to be a good thing.

Try it sometime (moving slowly I mean).

Potato patch

Onion patch

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Gratitude Sunday * May 6, 2012

Lindsey — Sun, 06 May 2012 16:26:40 +0000

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

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- Accomplishing so much in the garden this week. I feel so on top of it and so caught up — that’s a really great feeling. There’s always more to do — always! — but at least I’ve gotten a lot of critical stuff done this week.

- Lots of moneymaking work at the moment; it does feel good to be earning money. And yet still feel like I’m in charge of my life and not constantly feeling like I’m stuck under the thumb of a boss. I’m very, very, very thankful for this setup.

- The paradise-like weather we’ve been having.

- My Honey. He always puts a smile on my face, no matter what!!!

- Sometimes, just the fact that a day is over is reason enough to be thankful. And that sleep is the best reset button there is, and that the next day is a brand new day (and often much, much better!).

- The company and companionship of the people I love.

- Lily of the Valley. Oh gosh, that scent.

- Closing my eyes and inhaling the old-fashioned grape scent of an iris, the kind just like in my best friend Sonja’s backyard. That particular scent is powerfully associated with the really wonderful times we had goofing around together in her backyard in the summertime while those irises were blooming. It is one of the scents associated with being light-hearted and completely carefree — two things that haven’t quite been present in all of my days of late, ha!

- Finding a local source for Pu-Erh tea since my two usual sources have been out of it for a while. Cause I miss that stuff when it’s gone!!

- The slower pace I’ve been forced to adopt. I broke my baby toe three weeks ago but didn’t know it was broken until I finally went to the doctor this past week. I have to say, though, how nice it is to move more slowly. I don’t normally move very slowly. But I’ve found that the day feels much calmer and more in control if I just simply move slowly, even if I have a lot I need to get done. (And I’m also thankful that a broken baby toe is not incapacitating!)

- Baby squirrel antics. You simply would not believe how cute they are. I’ll post more photos, but here are just a couple from the other day. The babies are getting big!

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What gratitudes have you collected this past week?

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Low-tech, No-cost, DIY Herb & Food Dehydrator

Lindsey — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:18:38 +0000

Dehydrated chives

I’m all about low-tech, and this dehydrator is as low-tech as it gets.

The idea for it has been knocking ’round the back of my mind for quite a while now, and finally I just did it. It’s simple and slick. I dehydrated some garden chives yesterday, and they came out great. This would also be great for mushrooms and any other food, really.

Materials:

Cardboard box (shallow with a wide base is nice)

Clean tea towel

Lightweight tablecloth or large scrap of lightweight fabric

A warm day, or an open window with a breeze

Procedure:

1. Lay your tea towel in the bottom of the box.

2. Spread your herbs or food out on the tea towel.

3. Wrap your tablecloth around the top of the box, tucking the ends underneath so it stays secure.

4. Place the box in the sun, or in an open window. The cloth provides shade for the drying items and protection from flies, while also allowing air to flow.

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Peaches YAY!!

Lindsey — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:03:20 +0000

Remember I was telling you how excited I was that my own three-year-old grown-from-seed peach tree had ONE blossom on it? These photos were taken March 25th:

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Well now, one month later, look! The ONE blossom has been replaced by ONE peach!!!

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And one of my other peach trees (still in its pot) also had blossoms, and now also has peaches! I can’t wait to see how this all turns out…

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Nettles!!

Lindsey — Wed, 02 May 2012 01:51:51 +0000

As I mentioned in this post, I found nettles! This was really very exciting because now I can collect my own instead of continuing to purchase my usual dried nettles for tea. And for the very first time, I had freshly cooked nettles and they’re amazing! A mild and pleasing taste. I cooked them in some salted water, and ended up drinking every last drop of the broth too — it was thick and delicious — almost meaty. They’re so good for you, too. High in protein, vitamins, and minerals.

Cooked nettles

Nettles & white beans

And I love nettles tea because it works better than an antihistamine pill for me. This was an accidental discovery; I’m allergic to bee stings, and I get honeybee and ‘mixed vespids’ venom immunotherapy shots every 6 weeks so that my body gets desensitized to the venom. Normally I get a big, itchy 3″ wide welt on each arm where I get the shot, and I take a Claritin pill the morning of the shots to help counteract that. However one day I had some strong nettles tea before my shots, along with the pill. No welt! No redness! No itchy! At first I didn’t realize it was the nettles, until another time when I’d forgotten to take the antihistamine pill and only had nettles tea, and same thing! No welt. Finally I realized it was the nettles tea, and the pill wasn’t even really necessary. So now I make sure to have nettles tea before my shot, and every day for at least about a week afterward. It’s quite magical. If you have seasonal allergies (mercifully, I don’t), you might try nettles tea!

My favorite nettles tea:

2-3 Tbsp dried nettles

~1/2 Tbsp dried mint

~1/2 Tbsp dried lemongrass

In a mug, pour 8-12 ounces boiling water over herbs, cover, and steep about 15 minutes.

So anyway, back to the fresh nettles. I couldn’t believe my luck with finding patch after patch of them, and while I often travel with an empty plastic bag (you never know what you’ll need it for!), I didn’t have one with me on the walk. However my mom had packed snacks in a bag, and thank goodness she had! Precious, precious bag. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to collect any. Disappointing!

I had an empty little sandwich baggie which I used as a glove to pick them, though still got plenty of stings on my wrists. (The stinging compounds are easily neutralized once the nettles are either boiled or dried to a crisp.) I stuffed the bag full, and also took some plants with roots and have planted those in pots outside, hoping they’ll decide it’s a satisfactory location to grow. I’ve read that nettles are particular about where they grow; you might think you have the ideal location for them — but they have the last word.

Do you cultivate your own nettles? Have any growing tips?

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As you can see, the living room was full of nettles for a while. I ended up getting about 3 gallons, dried.

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Gratitude Sunday * April 29, 2012

Lindsey — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 02:39:11 +0000

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

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- A really wonderful bike ride today with my Honey. I needed it — and enjoyed it — so much!!!

- Having a second bike to use as a backup, after I got a flat tire a block into our bike ride. I don’t know why I get so many stupid flat tires!

- Beginning to harvest some beautiful produce from the garden! This week, radishes and arugula.

- Gorgeous weather on my birthday, garden time, tea & a nap on the grass under the lilacs, feeling great, a delicious dinner with family, a sunset stroll with everyone, the most thoughtful and wonderful presents (!!), awesome birthday cake, relaxing & not doing any have-to’s — how much better can a birthday get?! I loved it.

- My mom’s beautiful homemade-with-lots-of-love birthday cake!!

- Time with loved ones. It’s what life is all about, in my eyes…

- Lots of synchronicities lately. I see them as confirmation that I’m where I’m supposed to be, which helped a bit in the face of lots of fear and overwhelm this week. It was quite a roller coaster week, with wonderful highs and awful lows.

- Finding nettles.

- My aunt and her honey visiting this week — it was such a nice visit!!

- The weather allowing for lots of outside time.

- Laughter. Thank goodness for laughter, huh!

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A Special Nature Outing

Lindsey — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:30:04 +0000

Pelican

Just wanted to share with you some pictures from the wonderful nature outing I had yesterday! My aunt and her honey are in town visiting this week, and they, together with my mom and dad and I, all went to a nature spot that holds a special place in our hearts. I’ve been going there since I was just a toddler! The weather was sublime, and we had the place to ourselves. It was such a special family time, I’ll never forget it. I only wish my F could have been there with us, I know he would have loved it too. We saw some amazing bird & wildlife activity, including a bald eagle on its nest, a Swainson’s hawk, grebes, pelicans, a couple bullsnakes, a garter snake swimming across a canal (!), and a rattlesnake hunting a bunny!

The cherry on top, for me, was the discovery of a bunch of nettles patches around the place! I didn’t know nettles grew in dry Colorado, so this was quite exciting! More about that in the next post…

Here are some pictures:

Nettles, yay!!

This adorable sight was in the nature center!

Also at the nature center was a whiteboard where people write what they saw while out and about. I had a good laugh at one of the things on this list! Can you spot which one?

And I gathered two delicate blue speckled eggshells that had been chucked out of a nest, maybe to make room for growing babies. I added them to my nature basket at home. Aren't they beautiful!

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Gentle Reminders

Lindsey — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 06:02:11 +0000

I need these reminders, too. So…

♥ Speak up for yourself ♥

♥ Be kind to yourself ♥

♥ Hold yourself dear ♥

♥ Trust yourself ♥

♥ Be yourself ♥

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