Playing in the dirt again

 I have another confession to make. School has started up again around here and as a result, at least the first week or so, its been hard to get into the garden, let alone get posts made. Sorry about that all. I am going to try (now that the first week is over and we are settling into routines) to get posts up about 3 times a week, maybe more. It all depends on the one thing I can't change the number of hours in a day.
A few days before we stumbled into a seed display still (I thought they were all packed up). Pooka and I had talked of doing radishes, but by the time we made that decision, we thought all the seeds were put away. Turns out Meijer's of all places still had all their seeds out. So we grabbed a packet of early radishes and away we went.



Then yestereday Pooka, Brother and I were at Target and I was looking at the clearance. We had noticed a bit before that Target was clearancing out some ready to plant herb crates. Daddy and I had talked about it before and decided if they were under $5 we would pick them up. Turns out, they started knocking them down to under $5. Pooka and I bought one dill crate since our dill has been struggling since it went to flower while we were gone. We figure we can bring it inside after the frost starts.

Once we returned home from our errands, Pooka wanted to go get dirty. I collected our tools and we got to work. We did 2 pots of radishes (And still had some seeds left over we may plant in a week or 2 to start learning to stagger plant). The pots look a bit big, but with my charcoal in the bottom of the pot trick, the pots are pretty easy to move. (Charcoal helps with drainage and keeps the pot lighter).


The dill Pooka decided she wanted in a pot. I was on the fence about the crate since I knew having it in wood with a plastic liner outside may not handle the elements well. The kit came with soil, but we added a bit of mirical grow to it as well. The pot was another Target clearance find. $0.25). The crate Pooka and I decided will go in our garden toolbox (another clearance find) and hold our seed pouches. It will help keep them from sliding around the drawers.


I thought about showing you the pots with just dirt in them. But I am sure by now you know what those look like. Now we wait and see. If nothing else, we eat small (Hopefully) radishes and I got a free crate.

An odd visitor

This morning we were trying to get ready for school. Kids were packing up and Pooka saw a birdy on the deck. Now, I will be the first one to tell you, I have NEVER been good with birds, so we are going to call this one "Bird that is not good to eat" or just "Bird."

Well Bird was quite happy sitting on the deck amid Pooka's pots. But something about Bird made me pause.  Maybe it was the fact that as I opened the door, expecting him to fly away, he continued to sit there. However, our female cat (who hates anything that isn't inside), was interested. I opened the door for a moment and watched as she struggled with "I can get it.. but it is out there... But I can get it" Realizing that I am wasting time, I walked outside and stomped. Again noticing that Bird walked deeper into the pots.

Now I start to wonder (and I closed the screen door) if Bird is hurt and what I am going to do with a hurt bird when Kiddo is due at school in 15 minutes. Bird continues to go deeper into the pots and while I am staring at him, he attempts to take off, and proceeds in hitting the oregano pot he is hiding next to.

At this point I am kinda thinking I may just let it be, see if he is still here when I get home. But the dog needs out before we leave. I open the door, and she does exactly what I think she will, she walked straight at it and that is when Bird flew rather erratically up to the top of Audrey's trellis.

Bird continued to sit there staring at me and making this very pathetic little chirping noise while the dog went about her business. I collected the dog and had decided to leave Bird to his chances. I also made a mental note to check the back yard before I let the dog or Pooka outside upon our return. As I open the door to walk into the house Bird takes off... not majestically. In fact, he looked like he was hurt and missed landing on a bush in the neighbors yard. He fluttered and flapped and tried to not crash. Reminded me of Woodstock actually now that I think about it.

Whatever happened to Bird. He made it to the neighbors yard. And while we wish him luck, I am glad he isn't in my yard and I am glad he didn't trill "Doom"  (if you don't catch the reference, it is from a book called Sleeping Beauty by Mercedes Lackey. It is a wonderful book and is well worth the easy read).  Good Luck Bird and don't eat the Carrots.

Sunflower seeds

I know today was suppose to be about how to finish drying your herbs. I finished them, I swear, I just well, haven't had time to write it up or make it look prettier since school started yesterday for Pooka, and today for Kiddo. Life kinda sorta gets in the way of blogging sometimes.

Instead, I thought you would like to see how we harvested some sunflower seeds from Pooka and Kiddo's sunflowers. We have been planting sunflowers on our south side in this tiny planting bed for a few years now. It is super narrow, and has alot of the stuff in it (see here the gas meter) so unless you have a reason, you don't go there often. In fact, we almost never use our side yards, and the first year we planted the sunflowers, we saw what a difference it made to the number of weeds in that bed (as opposed to putting NOTHING in it).

Mammoth on the Left, Multi head on the right

Now, we originally planted mammoth sunflowers, but for whatever reason, they didn't seem to grow real well. However, we had some volunteer sunflowers from last year which were smaller multi headed but they actually grew taller. They grew quite well. I went out Saturday night on the side of the house for well something (I couldn't tell you what at this point) and noticed the seeds were drying and ready to come loose. I figured with as many goldfinches that are coming around anymore, we better get some now. A quick google search told me what I think I needed to know. 

Now first you will want to check that your seeds have little black lines on them. That plus the drying of the head you see here means your sunflower seeds are ready to harvest.  Make sure the petals have all fallen off and the seeds are fairly large and plump. From what I read, that means they will be better seeds overall. 

To do this, you have to take a paper bag and hold it over the flower head. Then you cut the head off with up to about a foot of stem attached. In our case, this wasn't always possible since some of the multi heads were attached 6 inches apart. Once the flower is free, we left it in the paper bag till we were ready for the next part.

 Next comes the destruction, I mean seed removal. I won't lie, this part is a bit gross. Bugs and things will fall out of the flower. It is nature and it happens. That being said you are suppose to rub the sunflower to have the seeds "pop" out. Well our seeds didn't want to pop. Instead they wanted to be forcibly removed. We did end up breaking some of the heads, but in the end, I dont think it mattered much. It just meant there was a bit more clean up to do.

 Here our the seeds when we were done. We washed them off in just regular water to separate out some of the gunk and the seeds. Now if anyone has a better way then picking through each one, please let me know.

Being that this our first time harvesting seeds, I am curious what kind of response we will get. We saved about a fifth to replant next year (and Pooka is talking about putting some in her goodie bags for her next birthday party), and the rest we roasted. But that is another post. We are contemplating planting one to see if they will even plant. I just haven't had the time to set that up. Maybe this weekend.

Drying Herbs the cheap and quick way

Last week we decided the herbs were getting too overgrown. We needed to do something with them. So I got the grand idea to dry them.

Except we don't own a dehydrator. I know there's a way to hang the herbs to dry, but with the large volumes of herbs that we will need to dry (especially before winter comes), I was hoping for something a bit faster then "Hang here till black and not yummy looking".

Then Daddy, the fan of cooking shows and storehouse of useless information he is, remembered seeing a Episode of Good Eats, where Alton Brown invents his own drying set up. (See the info here) So off we went to our beloved hardware store and purchased supplies.

Now 2 things to keep in mind when you do this. A) DO NOT USE FIBERGLASS filters, you want the ones that are basically paper and wire. B) Do not use anything with anti - anything chemicals. Neither are very yummy or good for you.

Once you have your hardware, go out and pick some herbs. This day we decided to try with some sweet basil, purple basil (that was looking kinda green), oregano and thyme (since all are in abundance).

After you harvest your materials, you will need to blanch them. Basically dip them in boiling water for 5 second, then throw straight into ice water. Once they have cooled, place them on paper towels to dry (or as in Alton's case, a salad spinner.)

Proceed to lay out your herbs in a single layer on the filter. Try to keep them as even as you can, but realize that sometimes you just can't get them flattened out (like thyme).  Once your layer is done, put another filter on it, which in our case we put MORE herbs on, then a top filter to hold it all in place.

Once you have your nice stack, bungee cord them tightly onto your box fan and plug in and run on medium for 12 hours. After twelve hours, flip the filters over, then repeat for another 12 (Note, don't start this too close to bedtime, or you will have to take it all off the filters at bedtime as well the next day).




 Extra bonus to this, we ran the fan in our garage, and it smelled WONDERFUL in here. You could smell all the herbs in the filter in the garage for 2 days after. This can be done in the house, we just didn't want anyone playing with it.

How did it turn out you ask? Well come back tomorrow to see the final results.

Long day

I had planned to spend today working on the garden. Pooka was itching to get her fingers dirty and help me harvest.

Sadly, my job had other ideas. I got called in early and stayed longer then I had hoped. We were still able to get a few things done, we got some herbs harvested to dry (Stay tuned for that on Monday) but Pooka found a surprise when she went to look at the garden.

Baby carrots are starting

Her carrots are sprouting. This discovery turned a tired grumpy Pooka (and a tired Grumpy Mommy) into a much happier girl. We are all anxious to see which colors we will find. Brother asked if he could only take orange carrots to school in his lunch. I told him he will get what I find that morning.

Pot numerous dos with little green sprouts

By the looks of things, both pots will probably need some thinning, however the 2+ inches of rain we got yesterday seems to have helped. Pooka's beloved cilantro does not have any real sprouts yet, but I told her not to worry, they have been in the dirt less then a week, and then they will go wild as soon as they emerge. Cilantro in our experiance (in the one time we have grown it) will suddenly just be there and from then, we better have alot of tacos.

A good end to a long day. 

It's raining

Today is going to be a short post because it is raining. We are hoping it stays JUST rain, however they did say we may get more hail. Talk about a weird weather year. Either way, we got a quick harvest in this morning and while Pooka was sad she couldn't use her fresh herbs for Daddy's dinner, she is happy it is raining for her carrots and cilantro.

Raining on the dill and thyme

Rain rain, please stay.

Garlic Results

If you all will remember, we stuck some garlic in the ground in the first part of June. It had already started to sprout in the fridge and I never expected much from it.

 Well it grew quite well, even survived the drought, but from everything I had read in our gardening books, it said to harvest garlic when it is half dried and falling over, which these were. So we dug them up...

Pooka enjoyed this part since it was more playing in the dirt. And as she said "I Love playing in dirt because it is messy."

And to our surprise....

We had what looked like 2 - 1 clove bulbs. They were actually kinda bulb shaped. Now granted, had I planted them at the correct time, or had I thought even remotely considered putting them in early spring... well I would have better garlic. For now, Pooka's garlic is hanging in the garage to dry.

However, we have started looking into where we will plant garlic come fall. If for no other reason then I want to see if I can get it grow correctly. Pooka was asking when she could plant some more, but I told her we had to wait a bit more before we can.