Seed to Sprout

Today’s harvest. 🌱✨

I found a new way of making a little greenhouse for my seeds sprouting.

I enjoyed a wonderful herb walk in the campus of the .herbschool with David Hoffman and Mitcho Thompson. So much incredible wisdom was shared. We had the pleasure of many waves of spring weather too. It’s a reminder of how much we have to be grateful for. And this time I have real proof was with me!

This spring’s offerings around our home.

I love Turkey Tail so much. It’s such a beautiful and powerful fungi.


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Lemon Balm - Melissa Officinalis

I harvested some homegrown lemon balm to make some tincture to help us brighten the mood, soothe stress, and help with our digestion.

When making a tincture I prefer to use fresh herb and a higher percent of alcohol with a 1:2 ratio to extract all the volatile oils. You need a much higher percent of alcohol to also accommodate for the water in the fresh plant that will dilute the alcohol.
I recommend trying 60-95% alcohol.

Lemon Balm also makes a heavenly tea by itself or in a blend.

It is an easy and somewhat invasive plant to grow so containers are recommended unless you don’t mind the spread. 🌱✨

The plants are waking up and the asparagus is sprouting! Just in time for the fiber to support the gut with all of those other seasonal bitter greens for nature’s time to lighten up and strengthen up our digestive enzymes and detox pathways.

bumble bumble

UPDATE: I put this on a shirt
https://arcanebullsh*t.com/products/unisex-t-shirt-1?variant=47552224264483

I made some pique hot sauce. A Puerto Rican gem! It’s so full of flavor and a great addition to so many dishes. I’ve tasted it at a few restaurants, but of course since I am the DIY queen, I had to get my hands on the ingredients to play and make my own.

I will know what to modify in about 2 days to 2 weeks.

I got a variety of peppers at the farmers market and added about 10 cut up with seeds removed, about 10 cloves of garlic, 10-15 peppercorns, couple sprigs of cilantro, a bay leaf, and apple cider vinegar to cover it all.

Yum!!! I can’t wait to share it with people once I master my own recipe. Food is my love language.

Mullein root (the root specifically) is a great tonifying herb for the bladder. It allows for more volume and less frequency of urination. Great for interstitial cystitis or bladder infections inflammation.

I got this incredible beast of a root from a wonderful fellow herbalist to cut up and make some herbal medicine with.

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Back to school hair for this handsome guy!

Another episode of WTF Fruit?!

This isn’t a small peach, berries just get bigger every year.

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Another episode of WTF Fruit?!

This isn’t a small peach, berries just get bigger every year.

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This giant hogweed was so beautiful I couldn’t pass on a photo. This is a look and don’t touch plant because it can cause skin irritation and blisters.

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Believe in growth.
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THE TOP 7 GARDEN PESTS--WHAT WORKED + DIDN'T

Here is some good information from a survey that Mother Earth News did to learn more about what works, and doesn't, when it comes to limiting insect damage in organic vegetable gardens. They had 1300 gardeners from across the United States respond, so is pretty good. I've included 7 of the top garden pests and info:

1) SLUGS-- took top honors as the most bothersome pest in home gardens, with 55 percent of respondents saying the slimy critters give them trouble year after year. Handpicking was highly rated as a control measure (87 percent success rate), followed by iron phosphate baits (86 percent) and diatomaceous earth (84 percent). Opinion was divided on eggshell barriers (crushed eggshells sprinkled around plants), with a 33 percent failure rate among gardeners who had tried that slug control method. An easy home remedy that received widespread support was beer traps (80 percent success rate).

2) SQUASH BUGS-- had sabotaged summer and winter squash for 51 percent of respondents, and even ducks couldn’t solve a serious squash bug problem. Most gardeners reported using handpicking as their primary defense, along with cleaning up infested plants at season’s end to interrupt the squash bug life cycle. The value of companion planting for squash bug management was a point of disagreement for respondents, with 21 percent saying it’s the best control method and 34 percent saying it doesn’t help.

Of the gardeners who had tried it, 79 percent said spraying neem on egg clusters and juvenile squash bugs is helpful. About 74 percent of row cover users found them useful in managing squash bugs.

3) APHIDS-- were on the watch list of 50 percent of respondents, but the success rates of various control techniques were quite high. Active interventions, including pruning off the affected plant parts and applying insecticidal soap, were reported effective, but so were more passive methods, such as attracting beneficial insects by planting flowers and herbs. Several readers noted the ability of sweet alyssum and other flowers to attract hoverflies, which eat aphids. “We attract a lot of beneficials by planting carefree flowers in the vegetable garden, including calendula, borage, zinnias, cosmos and nasturtiums” (Midwest, more than 20 years of experience).

4) SQUASH VINE BORERS-- had caused problems for 47 percent of the survey respondents. The best reported control methods were crop rotation and growing resistant varieties ofCucurbita moschata, which includes butternut squash and a few varieties of pumpkin. TheC. moschata varieties are borer-resistant because they have solid stems. Interestingly, if you’re attempting to fend off squash vine borers, lanky, long-vined, open-pollinated varieties of summer squash (zucchini and yellow crookneck, for example) may fare better than hybrids, because OP varieties are more likely to develop supplemental roots where the vines touch the ground.

Many gardeners dump soil over these places, so if squash vine borers attack a plant’s main stem, the plant can keep on growing from its backup root system.

5) JAPANESE BEETLES-- Forty-six percent of respondents reported working in the unwelcome company of Japanese beetles, with handpicking being the most popular control method. Some gardeners grow trap crops of raspberries or other fruits to keep Japanese beetles away from plants. Several commonly used interventions — garlic-pepper spray, milky spore disease, pheromone traps and row covers — had high failure rates.

6) TOMATO HORNWORMS-- were of concern to 42 percent of our survey respondents. Bt and handpicking were the preferred control methods, and several folks commented that tomato hornworms are among the easiest garden pests to handpick (probably because they’re large, easy to spot and produce a telltale, pebbly trail). Many gardeners reported seeing tomato hornworms often covered with rice-like cocoons of parasitic braconid wasps. “I had a lot of tomato hornworms this year, but the wasps took them out! Just like in the photos online and in bug books!” (Mid-Atlantic, more than 20 years of experience). Gardeners named zinnias and borage as good companion plants for reducing hornworm problems.

7) CUTWORMS-- were a concern for 41 percent of respondents, and effectiveness ratings for using rigid collars (made from plastic drinking cups or cardboard tissue rolls) to protect young seedlings from damage were amazingly high (93 percent effectiveness rating). A common practice to reduce cutworm damage is to cultivate the soil’s surface once or twice before planting and hope robins and other bug-eating birds will swoop in to gather the juicy cutworms. Big, sturdy seedlings are naturally resistant to cutworms, so many gardeners said they set out seedlings a bit late to avoid cutworm damage.

There are more Garden Pests than listed here, but wanted to list the Top 7 that Families ask about.

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A big cedar branch fell during one of the last storms a while ago so I decided to make use of it and make some cedar smudge sticks.

Is your citrus tree producing inedible fruit and thorny branches? This may be the Trifoliate Orange. The citrus trees you purchase at the nursery have all been grafted onto a rootstock that is a completely different type of citrus. Trifoliate Orange is often used as the rootstock.

Once you have located the graft union on the trunk, you must never allow any shoots to sprout and grow from below the graft union. These shoots are called “suckers.” If you let these vigorous suckers grow, you are allowing something that is not your desirable citrus variety to grow.

When a citrus tree produces atypical fruit, it generally means the rootstock has been allowed to sprout and grow. The trifoliata rootstock produces poor quality, seedy, sour, round yellow fruit. The growth from the rootstock often has different shaped leaves from your citrus and is thornier. These notes have been provided by Dan Gill, retired LSU AgCenter horticulturist.

Parsley project.

I have a couple huge patches of parsley about to go to seed. I don’t need much right away so I am harvesting it for food prep to dry it and also make some frozen chimichurri cubes.

I do feel bad cutting so much back because there are lady bugs all over the parsley plants so I will leave some of the plant there for them and then I will have to relocate some to an equally inviting space. So grateful for those little critters, I don’t want to lose them.

My go to salad this week was a strawberry arugula with gorgonzola and walnuts with a squeeze of some meyer lemon, a splash of balsamic vinegar, another splash of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Just a reminder to those in the Northern Hemisphere that Dandelions are a key source of early nectar to Pollinators, flowering normally begins in a few weeks time but we're already getting reports of Dandelions appearing across the hemisphere, so consider leaving a few plants to flower if you are mowing 🐝

Dandelion (genus Taraxacum) are flowering plants in the family Asteraceae, which consists of species commonly known as dandelions native to Eurasia and North America, but the two commonplace species in the wider world, T. officinale and T. erythrospermum, were also introduced from Europe and now propagate as wildflowers in those regions. Both species are edible in their entirety. The common name dandelion comes from French "dent-de-lion", meaning "lion's tooth". Like other members of the family Asteraceae, they have very small flowers collected together into a composite flower head. Each single flower in a head is called a floret. In part due to their abundance along with being a generalist species, dandelions are one of the most vital early spring nectar sources for a wide host of pollinators that themselves are critical to pollination of later flowering plants. Although they are appearing earlier, May-June is a peak blooming time critical for Pollinators.