Seed Bomb Sunday!

Sorry for the little hiatus.  I had every intention of continually posting but between life and the holiday season, I lost track of time and now it's the middle of December.  Sigh.

Anyway, in the handmade, gift giving spirit, I decided to make seed bombs for a friend who loves zinnias but due to physical limitations can't garden as much anymore.  I thought the seed bombs would be perfect since you can just throw it out in a bare, sunny space and let them just do their thing.

Homemade Soaps and Lotions

I've been obsessed with making natural, homemade soaps for a long time. I've talked about it and talked about making soaps as part of learning homesteading skills and I finally got around to learning this year.  And now I'm totally hooked!

November Garden Update 2013

It's been a busy weekend.

Rescued a Woolie Bear Caterpillar....

He/she now lives in one of my half barrels that I've prepped with a layer of grass and dead leaves to compost during the winter...

Arrival of Jack Frost in the Garden

The first frost came early this year!  Last year, the first frost came on Nov. 6th!!  This year, October 24th.  I think we're in for a bad winter!! BAD!  I'm O.K. with cold but snow?  Not really. 

Well, the one good thing that happened with the first frost is that my crazy, mind-of-its-own pumpkin plant finally croaked.

I thought at one point that it would start climbing up the house. :-P

Transplanting Strawberry Plants + Other Garden Surprises

It's been rainy, rainy, rainy all week!!  The plants are loving it and so am I since I haven't had to get up early to water!!  Being that it's rainy and overcast outside, it's also a good time to transplant my new strawberry plants. 

When Squirrels Attack + Happy Garden Surprises

This is about the time the squirrels go crazy.  They just have digging on the brain. My raised beds look like Swiss cheese lately and I'm finding acorns and peanuts stuck in the dirt in the beds.  Crazy squirrels.  And when they attack?  This is the result...

Homesteader Weekend: Concord Grape Jelly

Guess what I did today??  I canned for the very first time!!  One of the things I've always wanted to learn is to put up food properly especially via canning.  So far, I'm fabulous with freezing, which I have to say is still my favorite way to put up food.  Right now, I have two giant bags of Chinese long beans, a bag of rapini, tomato sauce, cherry tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, a Swiss chard/mustard green stir fry mix, and basil all packed in my freezer for the winter.  I love freezing but it was time to venture into hot process canning.  I just didn't think I would be making concord grape jelly.

Fall In The Garden

The weather is changing here!! It seems a little early compared to last year, but I welcome it.  I've been trying to clean up my psycho garden.  I've chopped down a lot of my squash plants and finally pulled out my melon plants.  All but one tomato plant have been pulled out.

Labor Day Weekend: My Psycho Garden + If You Grow It, They Will Come

Happy Labor Day Weekend!!  Here's what's happening in the garden:

MADNESS!!!

The garden has turned wild, crazy, out-of-control!!  This weekend and probably the rest of the week will probably be my clean up/prep-for-the-fall week.

Perilla Kimchi

I LOVE perilla!!  It's great when eating grilled pork belly saam!! Mmmmm....pork belly. Instead of using lettuce to wrap the pork belly, I just use straight perilla. This year, I grew way too much, which isn't that hard. I recently killed 3 of 7  plants because I was picking tons of perilla on a daily basis.  I ended up with a ginormous bag...

Napa Kimchi with Fish Sauce

Early in the summer, I was able to grow three decent napa cabbages. They were really chewed up by slugs but decent regardless so I decided to make kimchi.  And do it the old fashioned way.  :-P 

I used a recipe found here: Maangchi. 

Desert King Watermelon

This season, I grew a yellow fleshed heirloom watermelon called Desert King.  I had very high hopes since I don't care for the typical red fleshed varieties. I'm not a big watermelon eater especially the conventional variety that's sold in grocery stores because of the strong watermelon flavor.  This year, I was a bit disappointed.

August 2013: Garden Update + Hugelkultur

It's AUGUST!!  AUGUST! This summer is really going by fast!  I've been trying to get all my fall crops in before Sept.  I sowed mustard seeds and lettuce seeds but of course, it's become a buffet for my slug population.  Thankfully, some have survived and sprouted but I ended up having to sow more seeds, which sadly were eaten within a day.  So, I decided to start mustard seeds indoors using wet paper towels!!

This is the komatsuna.  They germinated in a day and this pic is from today, DAY 2.  I'll be able to set these guys out tomorrow morning.  The Korean mustard is being started using the moist paper towel method, too.  Apparently, carrot seeds can also be germinated this way if germination is an issue.  I've never had a problem with carrots but it's good to know!

July Update: Harvest+ Clean Up + Fall

It's the end of July!! The summer seems to be flying.  It's been a busy, busy weekend.  I lost two days during the week due to a freak'n cold.  I literally slept for two days and spent any time awake stuffing myself with spicy, super hot soups and stews.  I was eating my weight and then some in food and I think it worked since yesterday, I felt almost 100% with tons of energy!! 

Anyway, end of July means harvest time in these parts... 

Fried Green Tomato BLT

I am a Southern girl.  I've come to terms.  I once considered buying Emeril's dutch ovenesque smoker to smoke meats in your oven while living in Cali because I had a hankering for BBQ but couldn't find it the way it was made in the South. I also have a hankering for fried green tomatoes every summer.  I LOVE fried green tomatoes and they have to be made with cornmeal.  CORNMEAL!!  Not panko and not a mix of flour, panko and super fine cornmeal.  JUST CORNMEAL.  Just like southern BBQ needs to be smoked, fried green tomatoes ain't right if it's dredged in anything else but cornmeal.

It is tomato season right now.  My tomatoes are just starting to ripen. I'm growing a green heirloom variety, Emerald Evergreen.  Perfect for a fried green tomato BLT!

July 2013: Garden Update

It's July already!! Where did the time go?  I LOVE July because the watermelons and melons are in full swing!!  I spent the 4th with family and left the garden to do its own thang.  I came back to total chaos!!  With all of the rain we've been getting, the garden just went crazy and took over the yard. I LOVE IT!!  That's my kind of chaos!! Nature taking back the hood. The grass and weeds were so overgrown in the melon/watermelon bed and my winter and summer squash plants just took off crawling out of the beds!!!

These are the summer and winter squash plants. 

Bunny Chronicles 2013: Baby Bunny Update

Last year when the baby bunnies were born in our yard, one stayed all summer long.  She was the one that came back and decided to have her babies in my raised bed.  Well, one of her babies has decided to stay, too.  I started calling him  Bunny Foofoo.  Unlike his mother, the bunny decided that one of my 4 X 4 beds was his personal bunny condo.

This is apparently his place.  For a while he kept trying to rearrange my plants like the arugula trying to go to seed. They're the plants flopping over and spilling out the bed. I eventually had to pull them out anyway... he's much happier now.

What's Growing: Watermelons, Melons and Long Beans

Things are happening overnight these days.  I love it!!  It's nice to see something you've never grown before do well like these Chinese Long Beans...

They are full of beans and growing like crazy!!  I'm surprised that they haven't been affected with mildew or insects by now. 

June 2013: Garden Update

I love June.  My plants are filling out the raised beds and the summer crops are starting to fruit.  It's amazing and lush right now and by the end of this month, it'll be even better.... I hope!  Here's how the garden is looking now...

I don't know but writing everything I did last year may have paid off. Everything is growing a nice dark, healthy GREEN as opposed to the light green last year. I have consciously tried not to water too much and to fertilize regularly, which I royally failed to do last year.

Bucket Composting

Two years ago, I really wanted to compost outdoors in addition to using my fabulous worms.  At the time I was living in an apartment with a balcony so I decided to do it on a very, very small scale using a little red bucket. 

Total experiment, but it worked really well and fast relatively speaking!

Bunny Chronicle 2013: They're Here!!

The baby bunnies are awake, frisky and taking over our yard!

A couple of days ago, I noticed the covered up burrow was open.  Peaked in and saw a little tiny baby bunny!

At first, I thought there was only one in there because the hole was so small.  But then the next evening, the mama bunny came back....

Bunny Chronicle 2013: First Baby of Spring

This is an older baby bunny that lives underneath the porch of a neighboring house.  I was surprised that he was already used to me being out in the garden. 

Bunny Chronicles 2013

So from the beginning, I wanted to garden by working with nature and not fighting nature.  Of course, you fight certain aspects like bad bugs, slugs, which I continually battle right now, and bad weather, but for the most part, I don't want to spend a lot of energy fighting.  Period.  Last spring, we had 4 baby bunnies born in our yard and one stayed; we called her "our bunny" because she seemed to recognize us and had a very relaxed attitude when I was out in the garden.  Anyway, I didn't fence off my garden last year nor did I do it this year. The bunnies never damaged a whole lot last year.  When they were babies, they definitely nibbled and the only plant that really got damaged was my sugar snap peas that I did fence off eventually, but beyond that, when the babies grew up, they stuck to munching our lawn. I'm sure our neighbors think we're absolutely nuts!!

Anyway, this year, our bunny showed up with a friend!!

May: The Garden So Far

We're now into late spring, I guess, and it's cold!!  This morning it was in the upper 40s.  Last year around this time, we were already deep into the 80s and only getting hotter.  As much as I complain about the cold, I'm glad we've actually had a spring season this year.  So here's what's going on in the garden now....

So everything I grew in the fall/winter has or is going to seed now.  These are the collards above.  They'll start putting out little green bean like pods and I'll actually be able to collect seeds this year!

Spring Garden Update

This morning I planted out my Korean peppers and Riesentraube tomatoes.  Besides slugs eating everything in sight, the expanded garden is doing o.k.

Early Spring Harvest + Bunny Sighting

This is the first and last spinach harvest for early spring.  I overwintered spinach this year and they did SOOOO much better than when I tried planting in early spring. Besides some minor damage from slugs, the spinach grew bigger and healthier than my spring spinach and avoided these guys....

Jin Pang or Korean Steamed Buns/ Chinese Bao

I have cravings for specific Korean foods sometimes.  Today, it was Jin Pang or Korean steamed bread also known as Chinese steamed buns or bao. 

Confessions of a Seed Hoarder: Sharing and Collecting

This Easter weekend (Happy Easter BTW) started with a frenzy of planting and dirt slinging!

My dirty fingernails are proof that growing season has begun!!!  This time of the year is definitely my happiest.  I always look forward to warmer weather and starting seeds and planting out seedlings. I naturally get up much earlier (farmer's hours, I call it) and itch to get outside.

Quinoa with Collards, Red Onions, Cilantro and Preserved Lemons

Picked the first collards of the season this evening!  I planted collards in the fall to see if they would taste sweeter and boy do they ever!!  I think the extended winter we're having has helped improve the flavor even more!  So I was wondering what to make with my collards and decided to add it to quinoa.

Update: Garlic the Wild Card

Last year, I had my garden planned out.  I knew what I wanted to grow and incorporated experimental vegetables and fruit and then, my cousin gave me giant cabbages; a veggie I had no plans to grow at all.... the wild card. I gave away 3 and kept 1 and surprisingly, even with neglect and cabbage worms, I harvested a cabbage.

Grass Killa + Arrival of Spring, Maybe?

This morning was beautiful!! Warm and hopefully only getting warmer, the robins were out and I saw my first bee of the season.  Is it spring??  I hope so!  After a pretty decent snow fall 2 days ago to this, 60 degree weather and SUN!!  I'm really hopeful! 

Today was the perfect day for me to go out and kill some grass!!  I generally hate grass.  I know grass feeds our wild rabbits and cows, etc., but for the most part, I would rather use my yard for raising food or flowers to feed bees and other beneficial insects than grass.  So, today I started my garden expansion.

March Madness

Am I wrong, or didn't the groundhog say that we would get an early spring?  This cold weather is killing me!  I've been completely out of sorts these pass few weeks.  Between stresses from work and trying to get ready for my spring planting, I've neglected posting and have generally been a little bummed out. :-(  Anyway.....  I've been itching to get out in the yard and start planning and planting and cleaning stuff up.  If I haven't mentioned before, my plan is to expand the garden this spring mostly because the boy doesn't want to mow the lawn.  And I'm planting an Asian veggie garden, which I am most excited about!! 

I went out in the garden this morning; it's been a while because of the weather. In the fall, I decided to try my hand at winter gardening.  I have to say lettuces do exceptionally well...

Slug-fest Update + Where R U Spring?!

YESSSSS!!  One slug down, god knows how many more to go!!! I don't know if the booze lured him in or not but he's dead and a little frozen.  That's all that matters. 

Garden Update: February Seed Starting + Slug-fest

It's been COLD!!  I haven't really been out in the garden because of the weather.  I really hate the cold.  I can't wait for spring.  But I'm always excited about starting seeds during the winter and Feb. seems to be one of my busiest seed starting months.

I bought a seedling heat mat with my Park Seeds gift certificate from my sister-in-law and brother!!  At the beginning of January, I started swiss chard and Thai eggplant. They sprouted mid January. The seed mat has been keeping them nice and warm. Towards the end of January, I started my kale and Asian greens (kailan and komatsuna).

Seed Starting 2013

Last year, I started my seeds in Feb. but the weather started to really warm up earlier than expected and my early Spring planting didn't happen.  So I decided to start some of my seeds now.  Today I started my onion flats, Thai eggplants and Swiss chard.  I also direct sowed red beet seeds in the raised beds.

Happy New Year!

2013. The year seems to have flown by.  I would've posted earlier but I spent most of the holidays with a chest cold.  I'm finally better and I'm glad that I didn't get the flu.  Anyway, I am so not going to make a list of things to do this year since I seem to suck at completing the list. I do hope that this year will be better than last year, though.

Well, I know the growing season has already surprised me....