'Bout that lemongrass...

So, remember that lemongrass that I left in the shower to chill until I could get back to it?

Yeah, I got back to it, and spent about 3 hours finagling with the blasted thing, cutting it, taking apart the bulbs/clumps, and simply washing it.  After quite a few days in there it still was housing its own little eco-system and the slugs came tearing all out.

I ended up bringing the food processor INTO the bathroom because I was in no mood to carry dripping piles of lemongrass nearly 4 feet long across the house into the kitchen.

Oh, and as it turns out and I should have thought about this before starting, lemongrass leaves do not process well.  I saved the bulbs whole in the freezer because they have the most flavor and are great on their own, but the leaves... yes...  instead  of my brilliant plant of finely shredded lemongrass, I got a massive spool of it looped around the processor blades >_<.

I had to get my hand in there a million times to turn the shredded stuff to the top and the hoops of lemongrass to the bottom.   Much aggravation.  After I completed the leaves of one clump I said, "screw it, this is too painful," and decided that I would not process the other clump I am saving in a pot to overwinter in the house.

I didn't need the leaves of the clump in the pot and I knew that it'd do better if I gave it a haircut so that the rest of the plant could get a fresh start indoors and not be too stressed (and start pushing out fresh new leaves for me).   I just couldn't deal with anymore lemongrass!

The idea of just chucking it in the compost bin made me feel guilty (it's so precious, worth it's weight in...um, expensive grocery store lemongrass?) and thought about donating it to the local Vietnamese restaurant, but realized that they might not accept non-grocery store produce, but instead fell upon the idea of just giving it to a friend who was having a party and that was that :)

No guilt and no shame!

The great thing about processing all the lemongrass was that the bathroom and the house smelled obviously lemony fresh.   The bad news is that my bathroom looked like this:

 Blargh.  Mother visiting in 3 days and counting... Maybe it would be easier to just tell her in third world countries many people use the sink?  Just kidding!  I'll clean it up *grumble, grumble*

(DON'T FORGET, LABEL/TAG GIVEAWAY STILL OPEN UNTIL END OF THIS WEEK so comment if you'd like to be in the running!)

(100th+ post) GIVEAWAY: Tag! Maybe you're it?

Hello all! My time has flown by fast! I've been much more diligent about this blog than I expected and I appreciate all the comments and encouragement from people.

This is about the 100th (+?)  decent post I have made here after the deletion of the intro post of this blog (I know a crime, but it was so bad and incongruent I felt it had to go)

As I enjoy celebratin' and giftin' I would like to do both of those things below:

Remember I talked earlier about garden craftiness and labels/tags? Well I did some more experimenting and found that I could use my nifty glass paint on the metal can tags I make and thus create really nice durably designed ones, woohoo!

These are BAKED on, so won't wash off like regular paint or nail polish a person might use.

Here they are, being modeled with a little Cuban oregano so you can idea of them being in use. (kind of crowded I know)
So, in celebration, I will randomly choose by the end of the week (Happy Halloween) one person who commented to send these to (you'll be contacted via email as to where you'd like me to send it).

NOTE: I'd like to apologize about the purple-yellow one... I was trying to do a lotus type thing, but it didn't turn out quite as well I would have liked. I still enjoy it personally myself, but if you want tags and don't like it so much, just tell me.

Thanks again and best of luck!

Crafty gardening: Pots

Fall replanting/transplanting reminds me that I am in constant need of pots.

I am a bit of a snob about my pots too, as I hate the readily available plastic type. I hate: its texture, flimsiness, non-breatheability, essentially cheapness in quality.

Granted, they are great in a pinch and I horde the ones that I get from the store/nursery so I can do starts, propagate and etc because I am so cheap (aka poor, ok, not too poor, just cheap).

Give me terracotta, lovely glazed pottery, or metal (yeah, yeah, overheat/gets cold) pots, but plastic makes me cringe.

In my search for proper plant-ware, I hound stores like TJ Maxx, Tuesday Morning, thrift and antique stores for interesting pieces and find some awesome deals, like this plain white pot for a buck:


Which brings me to my obsession for color (I do like the minimalism of the white pot, but I get bored easily). Having just learned of glass paints I wanted to get some garden crafty on.

Also being utterly pretentious I wanted to paint a design on this pot too that I would find humorous, so here's the Space Traveler commonly known as The Little Prince:

(Little Prince on his little planet)

(The Lamplighter and King)

(The Business Man and the sun behind the Lamplighter's planet)

(The most famous Little Prince quote translated: "One cannot see well but with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes")

When I came up with the idea I realized that this would be best for a friend of mine who enjoys The Little Prince as well. When I was done I sort of wanted to keep it, but I knew that she would probably gain more enjoyment from it than me.

I think it's obvious she should plant a miniature rose in it, but it's her pot, her choice.

Luckily I have 3 more pots that I can brainstorm on.

But back to being cheap, in need of pots and glass paint!

My cheapness has gone to the next level and recently, I had a mini-flip out about buying yet another simple ceramic piece I wanted to paint for a buck, and thought to myself, what can I use as a pot, that I can paint cool stuff permanently on, like a glazed item?

The idea of something metal led to the idea of TIN CANS, as I already use large tomato sauce cans as planters already and glass jars and beer bottles.

Though I find the aesthetics of plain tin cans and glass jars/bottles to be fine on their own, it's nice to spice things up a bit!

Here's the result:
A gold colored design glass paint beer bottle might make a nifty vase?

Large baked on glass paint tin can to be a pot. Maybe I'll work with the lines/grooves more another time?

I would like to note, like plastic shrinkies, I think the large tin can has a lining and may off-gas (I could be paranoid about a smell coming from the oven, but I like to always add caution when necessary). So, while it was fun to make, I may just stick with regular tins or paint that doesn't need to be baked on, even though this makes them super-able to weather the outdoors!

Either way, fun experiment and may the garden crafty be with you, especially during the doldrums of winter!

Gentlemen (and women)! Please prepare to activate your compost!

Baby it's starting to get cold outside and you want, nay you NEED to keep the heat on in your compost pile, so why not do it the easy natural way? 

Pee in your compost.

Ok, that was a little blunt, but really, not to get all "Dodgeball" the movie on you (j/k), but human urine is really a great method to get your compost hot and bothered and eventually broken down.  The urea in urine is chock full of nitrogen and trace minerals (little did you know your were a little fertilizing machine!) and heats up compost like nothing else.  In case you were worried about sanitation, do not fret.

OK, there is the issue of cold buns, and while I could talk about men having it easy and methods akin to the doctor's office, I'll get off the topic of bodily fluids/functions and mention the other natural methods because purchasing something labeled: Compost activator? Phhbbbtt.  Don't buy those.

Before I continue on to what a person can use as compost activators, let me explain what it is (other than the obvious in its name).

Compost activators are heavy boosts of nitrogen added to a compost pile to get it to heat up and break down faster and thus giving your your pirates booty of black gold quicker, because hey, am I not American?  I loves me the instant gratification ;)

So yes, cheap easy activators (other than urine):


Alfafa?  I've spoke of it before, and here I'll say it again.  It's awesome! And will heat up your compost too, so chuck some pellets in there.


Dry dog/cat food is also considered a good compost activator.  Just watch fido/fifi in your garden for a while.


Coffee grounds will jolt things right up, especially if you are a daily drinker or are a Starbucks stalker.


Beer, though this seems like a crying shame to waste a brew on, it's less of an issue if you are poor and have some of the more flavorless type.


Ammonia is a killer of slugs too (and our nasal passages), but did you know that it also is a byproduct of urine?  Oh the connections!

Really, there are so many easy, accessible ones there you'd be surprised!  This post may seem like a reiteration of me spouting on and on about amendments and such, but this is a great time to get things in the ground/compost bin/pile so that the freezing/thawing of the upcoming seasons will allow for organic matter to decompose and release nutrients more fully.

For the most part, many of you who compost already most likely are consistently keeping your bins hots without trying by inadvertent addition of these elements above, but for those who are trying to figure out why things aren't heating up or breaking down accordingly try the above materials and always remember that you need a good mix of browns and green and sometimes, you may need to water your pile.  Don't forget, your in luck, you have an easy source right in you! ;)

Thank Google! (and I am sorry Rodale if this is your bane) but here is an excellent link with more amendment info:
The Rodale book of composting - Google Books

Halloween decorating with a little help from my garden friends

I'm not much into holiday decorating. Just this thing I have about keeping stuff around that you only take out once a year.

I have a few Christmas things I have been given that I like to take out here and there because of sentimental reasons, but as I : 1) have no children who care about that stuff and 2) no one visits during those times to see it, yeah, I'm kind of boring in that regards.

I do have a soft place for Halloween though because I loved it as a child and I decorate a bit then because pumpkins can be bought, eaten and used/composted each year, so there's nothing left to store/put away once it's over!

This year however I have some little (well, not so little depending on your definition) friends to help me with some extra special decorating!


I was surprised too by their enthusiasm! On a recent rain I only noticed this :
(pardon some bad pics, it was rainy and some angles were difficult and shot from inside my sunroom grainy screens)
(over 3 ft in diameter! ...and near the hummingbird feeder, hmmmm...)

(This is web is unfortunately by the back door, however built intelligently out of the way of human traffic!)


(Once again, I keep tilting the camera video feature the wrong way. My apologies, but I think it's still worth it when you tilt your head right a bit. The rain and wind make this so beautiful I think. Ah spiderwebs, lightness and strength.)

(Hi-five for effort!)(ooh! Click on this one above! The hairy detail is great! I had to get really close to this, it was in the huge web and the background was cloud white, thus the brightness)

So, yeah, Halloween decorating? Me and my little friends have got it down.

Now if only I could convince them that the front door would be an excellent place to catch introduce children to the joys of spiders.

(N.B. The golden orb spider traversed to my next door neighbor's backyard, and spun a huge web outside her kitchen window.  My neighbor hates spiders, dubbed it Bruinhilde and then called me and asked me if I might want the spider back.  So I brought it back, let it loose and the next day it ate the spider in the last pic :(

Save the Basil!

Luckily I have LOTS of basil in volume and variety, but unless I want to re-purchase them all each year, I have to make a mad dash each end of season (well, only mad because I procrastinate) to get all my cuttings, seeds, and basil preservation in.

The seed issue is only for the sweet basil which I like to use as companion plants around many of my vegetables like the tomatoes every year, so I need that in abundance.  I often forget to cut the flowers/racemes of the other basil varieties off, so many of them self seed in my garden, oftentimes better than the sweet basil which I wish would!

As basil grows quite large, I only take about 3-5 cuttings per plant to make for a manageable pot each winter and then let the actual plant itself die down.  Well, what is left at least after I harvest all leaves possible to freeze chopped up in jars with a little canola oil for easy scraping out or whole leaves in bags for flavor and visibility in soups (LIKE TOM YUM). (Ok, if that Tom Yum thing gets annoying, please someone tell me, but it's so hard to suppress the enthusiasm for something so great).

Basil Preservation Primer (very simple):
Fresh/overwintered:
Take your basil cuttings, strip the last 2-3 leaf nodes of their leaves and place in a cup of water in a sunny place.  After they form some good roots, pot them up and enjoy!


Frozen -in Jars w/Canola oil:
Strip all the leaves from the basil you wish to preserve.  Puree the leaves in a food processor or blender as fine as you like, drizzle just enough canola oil that it doesn't look oily and won't affect the flavor of what you will eventual cook them into.  Find an appropriately sized jar and freeze.

Frozen-in cubes (aka Basil pops):
Same as instructions above minus the oil addition.  Place the basil puree in ice cube trays that you can leave you basil either in, or pop them all out eventually for storage in a freezer bag and use the trays to make more basil cubes.
(Um, I would have shown you a picture of this, but it really wasn't pretty... lots of brown... if consensus states that they want to see real, pureed Basil pops in the raw I will post it, but yeah... a little icky)


Frozen-whole:
After rinsing leaves, freeze them whole, or on a tray if you wish.  I don't care if mine are wrinkled and get all crunched up, as long as they are relatively whole I'm happy.  This method is if you like to see your basil.  Fragrant of course still, but not like fresh as you can imagine.

But for the most part, your basil is not going to be as pretty as what you can find in a tube at the grocery store because that stuff has color stabilizers and preservatives and etc.  If you are fast and your basil is still looking at its peak (which is doubtful about now) you can prob get a reasonably lovely colored puree.  Mine for the most part always gets a bit oxidized and brown tinged at the edges, but it's still delicious!

More motes of randomness: Psycho Lemongrass

I had 2 ginormous clumps of lemongrass started from very humble grocery store roots, only about 5 bulbs per clump...

I dug one up to pot up for the winter and have fresh on hand.  The other one I dug up (as we can't overwinter it here) and plan to preserve it using the food processor/canola oil method.

Due to not having a good clean bucket to hold it in I popped it in the bathroom shower and added some water for it to survive until I could get to it:

 I closed the shower door soon thereafter and now freak out when I enter the bathroom because I keep forgetting that I left a HUGE CLUMP OF LEMONGRASS in there and it looks like a person is in there instead.

I probably ought to take that out before my mom visits soon.

Just thought I'd share :)

Let's do the Time Warp again... for some reason, this never got posted in April?!

(Funny posting that never happened and I didn't notice in April quite possibly because I was not diligent)

I have been making the effort to grow most everything by seeds since it’s cheaper and my husband and I enjoy pretending we are old Depression era souls. Growing by seed is a labor intensive and not so labor intensive process all at the same time because sometimes you’ve got seeds like peas and mustard and beans which means you just chuck them in the ground when it’s warm enough and it’s like, poof! there’ s a plant. Other seeds, I think I’ve learned it’s better to start ahead because you want the delicious faster and sometimes those plants need to be big and strong when they are put out in the garden to combat the toils of Memphis’s crazed weather. It’s like Mother Nature is on crack here and you just can’t predict what she’ll do next. So some of your babies are delicate and need the abuse of a personal gardener such as yourself before MN (and the monster bugs) can get a whack at them.

Most of the time I can be super dumb and decide to seed start early indoors because I NEED to see something potentially delicious growing during the chill of winter and the dream of home grown food can sustain me whilst I stroke my deer foot fern like the cat of a crazed evil doer commonly depicted in movies. (I have heard that ferns are edible, esp their fiddleheads, but I still have yet to go there. If I started eating the ones I have there would be no ferns left. Do you any idea how long some ferns take to grow?!? If only that cinnamon fern tasted like cinnamon and if that Japanese painted lady tasted like…. Just kidding).

Luckily once the season gets warm enough and I have decided that M.N. isn’t looking, I tend to plant in say….. the warmest day in February (that was one beautiful 80 degree Fahrenheit day by the way this year) only to find out (because I am the best gardener ever) that it was going to rain, potentially hail and freeze over several times over the next day. I decided that the seeds, screw it, they’re cheap, if they live, they live, if they don’t, I just notched more points on the experience-o-meter. Not only did some live (even the tender nasturtiums!) through the freezes through my covering up efforts, I got peas and some veggies in late March! Booyashaka to you naysayers, you, “doom to all who plant before April 15thers!” I grew the delicious! It’s done and will proceed with regular programming!

Already, April 26, my bean plants are sprouting their tender necks above the soil rim, my strawberries are showing the beginnings of green berries and the asparagus, it’s been producing and I’ve been whacking it. That sounded wrong, but hey, life is good and growing.

Mote of randomness: It's a boy!

Er... I mean, it's a face!

So yeah... what caused this... "protrusion" shall we call it, I have no idea.  I imagine some sort of insect thing, potentially entombed within the eggplant flesh now (more research on that later and if anything really exciting happens when I slice this thing open, I'll tell you).

Anyways, disturbing.  Uni-eggplant?

Plants have needs too.

(slightly weird, but relevant pic from photobucket via clashfever, thanks!)

I'm researching plant nutrients which I will post here in the future, but my reasoning for looking up nutrients was because I was musing on plant needs and of course, as living things like us, they're needs are more similar to ours than you might expect.

Think of a plant as a human here.  Just like any person, plants need beneficial bacteria for nutrition (like the much touted pro-biotics in our guts), and helpful microorganisms that naturally exist and collect inside and outside of us, often called flora/fauna by the scientific community to crowd out and compete with bad bacteria/microorganisms in order to stay healthy.

A good balanced diet and getting vitamins and nutrition this way (compost)  rather than eating crap or processed junk foods (harmful purely chemical fertilizers) and popping a million vitamin pills to make up for poor eating habits.  (Ha, can you imagine a plant thinking/saying, "Does this fertilizer make me look fat?")
 
Exercising and having positive stresses is good for humans and keeps us physically and mentally prepared and sharp.  Plants similarly, by having to fight against the elements and pests when not overwhelmed are healthier and won't get "fat and lazy" by having too many conveniences, like being sprayed with pesticides all the time so not one bug or insect bothers them and they thus build no response to a nibble.  We don't go to the doctor over the slightest headache or fever do we? (Plus, lots of plants make their own aspirin... and so do we, sort of!, see links!)
 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090106145544.htm
 http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080918-plant-aspirin.html
 http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1039/

(Better methods other than pesticides:
http://www.sierraclubgreenhome.com/go-green/landscaping-and-outdoors/safe-pesticides/ )


Taking food (nutrient dense food like whole grains/compost) in slowly rather than all at once (high calorie fast food/straight chemical fertilizers) is better for both of us.

We both need plenty of water so that those nutrients can float all through our bodies, but not so much that we'll die of dihydrogen monoxide poisoning (http://www.dhmo.org/)

 Perhaps this is a stretch but plants too need many varied diverse and interesting relationships (companion planting and beneficial insects) with those they are similar to like humans need other people for support, an ear or to bounce ideas off of.

A good clean home environment (garden bed) that doesn't hide any unexpected guests or intruders (weeds and pests) and makes it easy to just chill and spread out.

If you're a gardener or camper at least, you understand the benefits of a good air movement (who likes to be in a stale room?) and the appropriate amount of sun.  Too much and the burn (sun scald/sunburn/skin cancer) on either plants or us isn't pretty.

So, this was an analogy filled post, but I think when you can relate by remembering that plants are living things not far from yourself, you will be able to relatively easily anticipate your plants' needs.