Plants I didn't really need

Yesterday, between work and a doctor's appoint, I had an hour to fill. I took the free time as a rare opportunity to visit Campbell's greenhouse, a long standing Charlotte nursery with a great reputation for selection and variety (and a quick google shows perhaps a less than great reputation for kindness and manners). Their plant reputation, and the fact that it's frequented by Myer's Park homeowners, kept me away for fear the plants were too pricey, the environment too hoity, and that I'd walk away disappointed or far poorer than I could rationalize.

vernal witch hazel by flickr user lobstah1977
purple basil by flickr user proteinbiochemist
Pelargonium* by flickr use louisa_catlover 

What did I take home? Some sort of purple basil -- perhaps it will end up in several of these ideas on Farmgirl Fare.  I haven't been too experimental with some of my veggies the past couple years, opting for tried and true varieties to keep us happy over the winter but the purple was way too pretty to ignore. I also bought a vernal witch hazel, I've been asking around about witch hazel, but haven't found the east coast native variety (Hamamelis virginiana). This variety is native to the states slightly west of here and has the same useful properties as H. virginiana, so I figured what-the-hey and added it to my pile.  I've been looking for a rose pelargonium because the fragrance is a natural tick repellent, but haven't found one yet. They had apple and mint scented geraniums, so I brought home an apple variety.  I spent less than $30, not too shabby considering a few weeks ago the witch hazel alone would've easily set me back that much. Since they're out of season for flowering, though, I think I got a pretty good deal on it. 


*To be honest, the picture of the scented geranium wasn't labeled, but mine looks very much like this one.

The mess

When Ez talked about showing a little realness on blogs I immediately wondered if it would come across as self-indulgent and waylaying faults (Hello, my name is Renee and I'm a serial pessimist.) When I see imperfection in the mainstream perfect world I automatically think it's supposed to be a wink, like Martha Stewart saying, "Hey, look at me, I'm just like you." Except she has a giant sheet ironing contraption. I barely get the sheets washed, much less ironed, no matter how much she winks I'm not a part of that inside joke, I just feel even more inept.

But, in the spirit of openness and honesty, a few things I don't talk about because, well, they're a little messier than  where I usually take my blog posts:

• I have better intentions than follow through. I also have no attention span. Small goals and completed tasks amaze me. {In fact, this post was supposed to happen several weeks ago.}
• I am messy to the extreme and constantly battle the mess. I am also obsessive about recycling, and working with printing on paper makes it even harder to battle the mess. Charlie, is pretty much the same, sans recycling obsession. Poor, poor Mabel.
• Despite the fact that this blog shows otherwise, Mabel does not play outside all the time with natural toys in utter wonder. Sometimes she climbs all over me while watching Blues Clues as I nap on the couch because I didn't sleep well because we still co-sleep and she does acrobatics in her sleep. I can't take and post pictures of these moments because 1) I'm asleep, and 2) I'd have to learn to Photoshop the pool of drool collecting on the pillow at the corner of my mouth.
• I fibbed, I know how to use Photoshop and I'm not afraid to erase some crumbs from a picture of our dinner. Ironically, our kitchen is simultaneously the cleanest and messiest rooms in the house. I don't know how that happens, but it does.
• I'm 34 and still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. That simple fact is enough to induce panic. 
• Though I never really had a firm picture of who or what I wanted to become, when I was in college I thought I'd be someone else somewhere else at this stage in my life.  More cosmopolitan (too much Mary Tyler Moore in my formative years?) maybe a little more Door Sixteen or Little Paper Planes or something. 
• I have panic attacks and anxiety. They are one reason I rarely slam the pharmaceutical industry: medicine got me through some of the toughest times of my life. I also have a history of lock-myself-in-a-dark-room-and-cry depression. 

That's the short list of faults, mind you, not the deepest secrets I hold, by far, but an introductory mess. I think it's important to present a little bit of real, a little bit of well-edited. All of these things aside, I'm happier than I've ever been.  Half completed projects and all, it's exciting to be part of a relatively new internetosphere landscape. It's amazing to see the world anew through the eyes of a toddler, marriage in suburbia is...normal, and normal is far less scary than I'd pictured it when I was a teenager.

In fact, it's a rather lovely place to be!

Greens to Grub

The greens are coming in while the hot-lovin' summer veggies are starting to bloom. What to do with all those greens? Uber-lemony sorrel, bitter endive, lamb's quarters by the boat load...You planted it, now you gotta eat it {or the chickens are going gourmet for the next several weeks}.

I've found 2 specific recipes will take care of any overload you may have: Sorrel and Potato Soup from Easy Growing and Goosefoot Pancakes from Wild Flavors*.  They both freeze and thaw well for future fast dinners.

I had 2 large heads of frisee, a type of escarole. A bit of bitter greens in a salad is good, but 2 heads was far too much to keep long enough to use up with salad. I wanted to tweak the recipe to bring out the subtle flavors that make escarole unusual; a quick internet search and I learned that people often pair lemon zest and anchovy paste with escarole.  I subbed the escarole for the goosefoot in Didi Emmons' recipe, and added a bit of both lemon zest and anchovy paste. The combination was sublime. 

*Chelsea Green sent me Wild Flavors to review. I haven't done that here yet, because I've been savoring it, reading a bit at a time. The fact that I want to finish it, but I don't want it to end, I want to soak up every single morsel of information, study and prepare every recipe,  and plant or forage every single plant may be review enough.

Where I grow

Every once in a while I've mentioned a community garden here, but I don't think I've explained it yet. See, I like to volunteer my time as much as I can, and in the past I've volunteered with the Matthews Farmers Market. I love the market, the people and all that it stands for, but this year I've switched over to giving my time to the Little Sugar Creek Community Garden. It allows me to combine my love of gardening, creativity, giving to others, while giving me a little social time that has otherwise been pretty hard to find with a toddler. The real gem of a reason for working in this garden? Through it I can give quality food to those in need, all the while fulfilling some of my own needs. From the ACGA site:

This garden is an active Friendship Gardens network member, donating over 10% of its produce to Friendship Trays, the areas meals-on-wheels program. Because of this dedication to the public, LSCG is regularly recognized as "The People's Garden" by the USDA and Keep America Beautiful, Inc.

 

I'm considered a "garden coordinator", which I think just means I've opened my mouth one too many times. I actually just stand back and ask more questions while Nadine (the county liason in charge of compost education) and Katherine do the real coordinating.

There's a sign nearby makes me a little squeamish, but I'm more at ease knowing we don't use that crap to make things flourish; LSC lives off county compost and organic amendments.  Even with the history of working with corporate polluters, this garden feels far more radical than the typical community garden. It's not about growing for oneself, it's about growing for others and, in return, cultivating oneself.

That's one place where I really have room to grow. 

This year things are off to a slow start since we regularly have about 3 pairs of hands to weed, plant, and prettify. If you're in the Charlotte, NC area maybe you'd be interested in bringing a few friends out to help get things done?

Preservation Proclamation

Friday evening I made a big pot of sorrel and potato soup from MizTrail's Easy Growing. It was excellent! Part of the issue with growing non-traditional honky foods is that I have to figure out a way to cook them and use them. Especially when they start coming in by the truck load. Note to self: having 3 sorrel plants for a family of 3 is more than plenty. Thanks in part to the potatoes, the soup was filling enough that it provided dinner for 2 (Mabel wasn't feeling experimental that night), Saturday's lunch for me, and a big enough batch for the freezer that we'll have dinner another night.

I spent a couple hours in the community garden on Saturday morning, first teaching a class (of 2!), then attacking the weeds* that had taken over. Currently the garden consists of 20 mounded rows, each 8' wide and 25' long. We've consistently had 3 people there working on Saturdays and 2 stalwarts who make it out a couple times during the week. Suffice to say, the uprooting of weeds has been much slower than the growth of new ones.


I brought some clear plastic to the garden to begin solarizing a couple of the beds. In return, I came home with a plastic grocery bag full of lamb's quarters, a giant cilantro plant that went to seed, and a bin of red wrigglers. Later in the afternoon I gave my own herb garden some TLC by giving one of the rosemary bushes a trim, uprooting and drying catnip (for our own use as tea), and dividing a few of my plants-gone -wild in preparation of unloading (errr...) giving them away.

This is actually a different batch of pesto than the cilantro pesto I made, 

but what can I say, it's Monday and I'm lazy.

To recap: we're now well stocked on rosemary infused oil, rosemary balsamic vinegar, cilantro oil, cilantro pesto, and coriander. I'm still deciding what to do with the lamb's quarters, we have a ton of lettuce to go through before I get to them.

All of this jabber is to get to the point of what my Mother's Day consisted of: preserving. Whether keeping herbs in oil, vinegar, or finding a way to freeze them, I've already got a nice stockpile and the summer growing season hasn't really started!

*Most of these weeds are edible, but we want more mainstream crops producing food for Friendship Trays.

Simply Put

Today my heart aches for my beautiful state. Yesterday a constitutional amendment was passed that limits marriage in vaguely defined terms.

"Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts."

The implications from this are huge, but more than anything I feel ashamed to  be "privileged" by marriage. Without getting into personal views or furthering hateful speech towards anyone of any belief, simply putting this issue up for vote has blurred the already illegible lines between church and state.

Paloma's Nest tile for the inclusive.

Independent Suppliers: Fire Escape Farms

This is going to sound like a commercial, but I promise this is a little post about an online store that I keep visiting {weekly!} for a bit of window shopping .

Have you ever visited Fire Escape Farms' website? Geared toward the apartment gardener but is packed full of high-quality tried and true products for all kinds of gardeners, the shop is packed full of beautifully designed essentials. Hard working and easy on the eye, that's what we all need more of.

This, though...These pruners are what keep me going back.

The ARS 120S-8 is the cadillac of Pruners. Made of high chrome steel it is coated with hard-chrome to resist rust and sap. A professional grade pruner, it creates smooth clean cuts and wipes clean easily. The metal handle is coated with rubber for easy ergonomic handling and is the perfect size for most hands. 

In the past 6 years I've probably been through as many pairs of pruners. Rusty blades, dirt getting into the spring mechanism, and most recently a chunk of metal fell out of the blade of my Fiskars when I opened them to prune something. I think I pretty much deserve a Cadillac, don't I? Seems it's time to stop window shopping and go in and make that purchase!

Sweet Little Smartie

When you drive a Smart car you get a lot of questions from strangers. They range from "How many miles a gallon do you get?" to "It's so small, don't you feel unsafe?"  First off, if I felt unsafe I wouldn't drive it, and I certainly wouldn't put my child in it. Now that's cleared up, here's how small it is.

A few months ago I bought an apple tree, pomegranate tree, 3 gallon blueberry bush, and a grape vine. The top photo was taken over my shoulder at a stop light. They're kind of shoved in there, but they fit with no damage.

Yesterday a friend sent me a note on Facebook that she'd spotted a slide on the side of the road, waiting for trash pick up.This was my view all the way home, granted I had to leave the back window open, but I got the slide home safely. It's clean and in perfect shape. Points for me and points for my sweet little hard-working Smartie, The Sippy Cup.

The Wu Tang clan of gardening

 I spent most of the day yesterday working on a piece for a show with Little Paper Planes for the book launch party in June. Although I took a few breaks to change up the pace, most of the day was spent sitting in front of the computer working in Photoshop. A brief conversation in Facebook about how to deter slugs from strawberries compelled me to illustrate my advice: use eggshells.

Let's drive the point home, shall we? Egg shells are the Wu Tang clan of gardening.

Laissez Faire Food

I'm planning on an outdoorsy kind of weekend, finally getting some seeds in the ground. It's nice to look back at an area that was once English ivy and a boxwood to see it growing into an area of abundant food.

 

The strawberries sent out runners galore last year. This year I'm letting the runners root and will move them to another garden bed later in the season. The rhubarb has disappeared, but it might've been moved without my permission. Funnily enough I've been wondering where a purple anemone came from that popped up in the backyard near the pond. Looks like a squirrel stole the tubers from the front and transplanted them to the back. The kiwi vines seem happy enough, as does a fall planted blueberry.

The rain barrel stand is an old iron frame from a wicker chair a room mate left behind about 8 years ago. It works perfectly! The stepping stones are actually insulated glass samples we get from window reps at work. I'm mulching with old, broken terra cotta pots. I just give the pieces a smack with the shovel every once in a while to make the pieces smaller. They'll disappear soon enough.

Here's a little timeline for those of you without the patience to sit through the slide show. After ripping out the ivy I put the compost bin in the area for a few rotations. The worms moved in and tilled up the soil and I started getting to work adding plants. Somewhere along the way my focus shifted from pretty flowers to tasty foods and it became a designated perennial edible bed. 

Souls and Soles

It's been a while since we did a little compare and contrast. Today we'll look at TOMS shoes vs Skechers' brand BOBS. Since the picture I put together explains most of the details I won't touch on those, except to say the curly brown haired guy on the left is Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS; the curly haired dude on the right is, as far as I can tell, just some dude they found to put on the website for BOBS.  Perhaps the obviously profit-minded Skechers could adopt a new slogan: Soulless Shoemaker.

Redneck Hot or Urban Haute?

I've been bothering Charlie for one of these for oh....say...2 years now? See The Brick House's vision? Search "stock tank pool" or "livestock tank pool" and you'll find pages of drool worth examples. The idea of pool upkeep isn't so fantastic so the popularity of living pools makes for an equally tempting option, albeit one that might leave you with little fish nibbles every time you swim. But as far as a plain ol' stock tank with water? In one context it's a whole lotta hillbilly, but in another it's modern, simple design.

I love Jay Sauceda's images of the pool at El Cosmico in Texas; the built up stone edging, the way the water calls for a dip. Check out the Lundberg Design sophistication going on--zero redneck there.

Steve and Glen's Joshua Tree abode as seen on Apartment Therapy.  bigBANG studio's pictures of the same.

Who's ready for a dip? What do you think? Redneck hot tub or modern with a bit of twang?

DIY Soil Amendment: Calcium

Calcium is one of those things we don't usually talk about in terms of garden nutrients, right? I mean, you buy a bag of soil amendments and the big numbers are NPK, but what about the little guys? The minerals and micro nutrients that feed soil health? I'm no soil scientist, I don't purport to be an expert, but I can recognize a deformed fruit when I see one. (Blossom end rot, anyone?) Funk lookin' fruits can be a sign of calcium deficiency. Calcium is vital for sugar production in plants, it's part of what keeps your vegetables from being bitter. 


To boost my beds with a bit of calcium I fill empty milk and dairy containers with water to rinse them, but instead of pouring the water down the drain I'll pour it on a garden bed. I'm also hoping the finished bokashi will add micro nutrients to the soil, and the addition of bokashi-composted bones from dinner should add a little something to the soil, too.

We also have a plenitude of eggshells. After a Sunday of cooking snacks for the week ahead I generally have a small pan full.Now, if you've ever thrown eggs in the compost bin you know they break down very slowly. When added directly to a garden bed they break down even more slowly, so they don't directly provide much calcium to your plants; something like Soft Rock Phosphate is better suited for that. This past winter I've been saving the shells from hard boiled eggs and grinding them up. I've also been taking the shells from other eggy exploits and sticking them in the oven to bake when I'm cooking dinner. My theory is to kill off unwanted bacteria and dry the shells out for storage. They, too, are ground up. In the end, I have something that looks like this:

The texture ranges from a fine dust to gritty bits that look like pulverized shells on the beach. Since eggshells are a good way to keep slugs under control, the grit should work double time. The powder will be more readily available to the plants and the larger grit will work as pest control.

It's not revolutionary, but I get a little excited about free garden solutions. Do you save your eggshells? What's your favorite free soil amendment?

Tincture Thyme

This weekend Mabel and I went to the community garden to do a little digging. Since I'm the newest volunteer there, I feel best about doing hard labor over planting any of the crops, at least until I get my sea legs there. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy a little of the bounty though!

It's still early in the season to harvest any veggies, but the herbs are going bonkers. I brought a couple handfuls of thyme and about a cup of chive blossoms home to make herbal vinegars.
According to TLC Family,

"Thyme has a pronounced effect on the respiratory system; in addition to fighting infections, it dries mucous membranes and relaxes spasms of the bronchial passages.
The ability of thyme to relax bronchial spasms makes it effective for coughs, bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma. Its drying effect makes it useful to reduce the abundant watering of the eyes and nose associated with hay fever and other allergies. And gargling with thyme tea can reduce swelling and pus formation in tonsillitis.
Thyme combats parasites, such as hookworms and tapeworms, within the digestive tract. It is also useful to treat yeast infections."

Chives have less medicinal value, but are high in Vitamins A and C as well as folic acid, sulfur, and iron. If you haven't tried a chive blossom before, they're in the onion family, so they have a mild onion taste, but also a surprisingly pleasant note of garlic. The chive blossom vinegar will be the perfect addition to homemade salad dressings.

It's fairly simple to make an herbal vinegar. For the chive blossoms I followed the recipe in Grow Great Grub. For the thyme vinegar I followed pretty much the same process:

1. Sterilize your jar,
2. Thoroughly wash and pat dry the herbs, stuff them into the sterilized jar. 
3. With the chive blossoms I warmed white wine vinegar and covered the chives, but with thyme I wanted to reap the enzymatic benefits of  apple cider vinegar in conjunction with the thyme so I didn't heat it.
4. Cap the jar with a layer of wax paper to prevent the metal to come in contact with the potentially corrosive vinegar.
5. Steep the herbs for several weeks. Give 'em a good shake or two each day. After at least 2 weeks you can strain the vinegar from the herbs for storage or leave the herbs and just strain off the vinegar as you use it.

Time for a Giveaway!

Watch this video about Spoonflower and see if you can spot some Wolfie &the Sneak fabrics in the background.  Leave a comment below naming the pattern you saw and you'll be entered to win a tea towel made from Ashley, Jena, or Kristen patterns printed on organic cotton sateen from Spoonflower!