Video - Seed Saving Tips

Marjory Wildcraft of Backyard Food Productions brings us a short video of tips on saving and storing seeds.

Goldenrod

“One gardener’s lifelong enemy is another’s lifesaving herb, and another’s treasured border plant”.    This quote came from Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs and was told in association with Goldenrod.  Goldenrod grows wild on our property and I think it’s great!  It is lovely to look at and attracts bees and wasps to the garden.  This is one of the reasons that it makes a good companion plant.  Another reason is that it repels some pests.  Whether you like it or not, you likely will have to decide what to do about it because it is native to Texas and according to some, does best in poor soil.  No wonder it thrives here!  

It is a beautiful flower and dries well, so it is a nice addition to dried flower arrangements.  It can be used to make varying shades of yellow dye and makes a tasty tea.  As a matter of fact, some people claim that after the Boston Tea Party, tea for drinking became scarce.  Liberty Tea, made from the ever abundant goldenrod was a common replacement and became so popular that is was exported to China. 

To the medicinal herbalist, the goldenrod has a long history or uses in North America, Europe and China.  It has been used as astringents, diuretics and diaphoretics, as well as for sore throats, bladder and kidney infections, headaches, flu and even flatulence.   Whether or not any of these things truly works or not, I don’t know but it does seem that no serious illnesses have been associated with the plant. 

If you want another piece of fun trivia about goldenrod, according to the Wikipedia article on the subject, Henry Ford gave Thomas Edison a Model T whose tires were made of rubber from the goldenrod plant.  How about that!

Enough of the history lesson - whether you think it’s a weed or a welcome addition to your flower bed, goldenrod is here to stay in NE Texas.   It has a long history associated with it, and maybe I’ve given you something to think about the next time you see a field of goldenrod waving in the breeze.   If you don’t have any growing wild around your place and would like to add some, you can either hit up one of your friends with an ample supply or find it at a local nursery.  

Until next time, happy gardening!

No Dig Sandwich Garden Beds

Janet from New Zealand has a great video on creating what she calls a sandwich garden in a raised bed (reminds me of lasagna gardening).  It includes suggestions on what you can use to build a garden bed into.  It's easier than you think, and you can even do this on a balcony or fire escape.  Janet has a great collection of videos at her You Tube channel, greenurbanliving.  Please check her out!

If you're wondering why on earth I'd post something like this in the fall, when many people are done gardening for the year, then I'll tell you.  If you're living in Texoma, or in any part of the country that boasts a long growing season, then you've still got time to grow a few things.  Cool weather crops like lettuces, cabbages, and peas usually grow beautifully and quickly for us at this time of year.  Also these grow direct from seed, so they're easy.  You can put together a quick bed, and sow it with a variety of these quickies for a harvest now, while all the lovely layers you laid in process down for a nice, fertile garden bed come spring.
If you're not able to put a bed like this together now, then note that Janet has a few bags of dried leaves making up a few layers.  You can gather up bagsful of fall leaves now if you like, and store them for use later.  My only advice on that would be to have a care where you store the bags, so the wind and rain don't stomp the leaves to bits.  If the leaves do get stomped to bits, well heck, use them anyway.  Oh, and keep them in a dry spot, or they'll turn into something unspeakable!    

What's for Dinner?

Jenny here. Dinner tonight will be omelets made with eggs from our hens, and the season's first chard from our garden. Being able to feed my children food that we've grown ourselves gives me such satisfaction. Homesteading is very, very cool.

Morning Glories

Now that the temperatures are cooling off, the morning glories are taking off!

I have them growing in two large rectangular boxes, trellised happily up two wooden frames that my husband mounted to the brick facing of the house.

Morning glories, and their night-loving counterpart moonflowers, are an annual vining plant. They are PROLIFIC growers, and will actually grow through and up other plants if you let them. Don't be shy about redirecting or pruning away any vines that you find misbehaving. This is a hardy plant.

Flowers tend to be large, and vary in color. The classic blue is my personal favorite, but there is an array of color variations available. It's a bit hard to spot in the photo, but I have four all growing together (blue, pink, white/purple picotee, white moonflower).

They grow quite tall. Mine are at about the six foot mark. I have an idea that if I had more trellis, they would be taller. Morning glory doesn't stick or cling to surfaces as ivy does. They twist their vines around structures to support themselves, so you'll need to give them something to twirl around. In my experience the vines are nowhere near as heavy as some other vines like trumpet vine or climbing roses, but don't give them too flimsy a trellis either. Mine are a mid-weight wood. Forget those cheap, stapled trellises. They won't do.

As far as growing them goes, you start from seed.  Any store that sells seeds is likely to have them in many colors.  Direct sow them into the soil in the spring, preferably after danger of frost is over.  Well draining soil is always best, but I have found that morning glory is not terribly fussy.  Water them well, and that's usually all it takes. I actually grow these on a west-facing wall, where the afternoon sun is brutal. The vines struggled through those 100 degree summer months that kicked all our butts, but erupted as soon as the nights dipped below 90 degrees. Vines grow and leaf out so thickly that they actually shade themselves from the sun and usually do just fine on what I like to call my Front Walk of Burning Death.  I have never heard of or experienced morning glory roots destroying walkways or foundations.  I plant mine in planters anyway just in case.

The plant is an annual, and will die back with a hard frost.  You'll notice a ton of seeds drop off the vines as you pull them off their trellises for the year.  Gather as many up as you like.  If you store them in a cool, dry, and preferably dark place, they should be fine for planting again in the spring.  Resowing may not even be necessary, as morning glory will often reseed itself from the seeds that you missed when you cleared the dead vines away. That's good and bad. You'll save a bit of money when they re-sprout. The bad? They never just sprout in the area where you originally planted them. Never. You will be pulling little morning glory shoots out from undesirable spots on a regular basis. Clipping the flowers off before they seed helps, but will not eliminate the problem. I love the heart-shaped leaves and bright flowers so much, that I don't consider this to be a big issue. I pull out the shoots along with any other weed that I find. It's a small price to pay for such a beautiful plant.

Happy Gardening!

Common Sense Homesteading: Autumn Jewels and Musical Fruit

Follow the link to a previous blog post from Laurie over at Common Sense Homesteading on harvesting beans. It's the easiest thing in the world to do, and she also gives you information on why and how to soak before cooking, and a few recipes just for fun. Please stay and have a look around her site. She has built a successful homestead on her property in Wisconsin, and is a selfless sharer of information on how you can do the same!

Common Sense Homesteading: Autumn Jewels and Musical Fruit: The boys and I continue working on cleaning up the garden and prepping food for winter storage. One of my recent additions to the mix is ...

Pears, pears, pears

Pears are great fruit that will thrive in our lovely NE Texas climate and soil.  It seems that no matter where I drive out in the country, I see a pear tree loaded with fruit.  They may be beside an abandoned barn, in a front yard, or standing in a field next to a park.  One of the things that this tells me is that once a pear tree is established, it is resiliant!  I read one post in my search for information about this hardy produce that jokingly suggested that the only thing you could do to kill a pear tree is pamper it.  Hmmm, this is sounding like my kind of tree!  In truth, I have killed a pear tree or two.  I have a couple struggling in the back yard right now that wish I had planted them somewhere else.  It seems that, once again, picking the right variety and proper location are the key to success. 

The picture at the start of this post is a small portion of the haul the kids and I gathered from a lonely tree next to the park my kids play at.   After some research, I have come to the conclusion that these are Kieffer pears.   This tree is described on Texas A&M horticulture website as the "old standard of pears".  They are heavy fruit bearers that will ripen in late September to October.  It also says they are "higly reistant to fire blight".    Sounding good...

Just on a state level, we seem to be on the border of Texas tree growing zones one and two.  That leaves a wide variety of pears available to us to grow.  I love the idea of the old, hardy, do-nothing-to-it and have it produce year after year kind, but the fruit of the Kieffer is not the high dessert quality that some people prefer.  Never fear, there are still more than ten variety of pear trees that will survive in our area if you find the right location!  One that is good in Zone one (which seems to encompass most of west Texas all the way over to Grayson County) is the Moonglow.  I have seen this particular variety in many nurseries around here, and have some in my yard.  They struggled over this hot summer, but did survive with only one watering from us.  The yield was very small, but the trees have only been in for two years.  The other pear tree we have planted out there is an Asian variety.  I have not given up on these trees and feel that they will thrive in years to come, but my next one will be a Kieffer and it is getting planted on either the north or east side of the house.

So, what do you do with all of those pears?  Give them to friends of course!  And eat them and make preserves, pies, and pear butter. 

I have a pan of pears boiling on the stove right now.  Trying out new recipies is a thing of joy!   The recipe for today can be found here:  http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/pear_butter/

The pear butter in the picture is from here:
:http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Spiced-Pear-Butter-2789

I don't know how today's will turn out, but the cinammon/vanilla recipe is wonderful!

Have fun and happy gardening!