Lavender Bath Salts...how to make your own...

Aromatic bath salts are such sweet luxury, and there is nothing better than a nice, therapeutic soak after a chilly end-of-winter day in the garden. If you are lucky enough to have herbs that lend themselves to aromatherapy uses, then bath salts are an awesome way to bring the outdoors inside as you await springs arrival. Lavender happens to be my favorite, but anything that pleases your senses will work!

You will need small, airtight containers for your finished salts, a box of epsom salts from the store, dried and coarsely refined herbs, and, for an extra punch of scent, some essential oil if you like. Citrus makes a great addition, and can be achieved by drying and chopping orange or lemon peels.

I can't make my own oils, so I purchase them from reputable distillers (Medicine Crow/Floracopia are wonderful dealers and very ethical in their work). The process is simple:

pour some salts into a bowl, lightly sprinkle oil on them and mix...just a few drops will do! Mix in your dried herbs and package up in air tight containers. WaLa: perfect gifts from the garden and easy enough to do with the kiddos.

My favorite mixes:

Pure lavender

Citrus mixed with mint

Citrus mixed with rose petals

Lavender with rosemary

Pure Rosemary

Rosemary and orange

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Hand made holiday wreaths from the garden

A great way to share the tradition of creating fragrant, evergreen arrangements from your winter garden is to shape fresh greens into a tidy holiday rings. Luckily, North Texas is home to many plants that make perfect wreath materials, and you may be surprised by how many of them can be gathered at your doorstep.

Nothing could be more simple:
Purchase:
1) A wreath form from your local craft shop. Either foam (for full, easy green arrangements) or wire (for more advanced, airy and lighter projects.)
2) Floral wire. Green or silver are both available, and a medium/thin gauge is appropriate for evergreen trimmings.
3) Ribbon or twine for hanging, if desired.
Gather:
- pruning shears
- bucket with an inch of water for gathering greens and trimmings
Suggested Plant Materials:
- any aromatic evergreen: Christmas tree trimmings, cedar, juniper
- evergreen herbs: rosemary, santolina, lavender
- plants with berries: nandina, holly, juniper- broad, glossy leaves: magnolia, hawthornMethod:
Start with one handful of greens and hold the stems flat against the wreath frame with one hand, while beginning to wind the wire around and around the bottom 2-3 inches of the greens to secure them tightly with the other hand. Leave the wire on the spool and use it like a bobbin and a means to pull and tighten the arrangement.
Lay another handful of greens over the wrapped up/ wired ends of your first handful. Be sure it overlaps the initial bundle enough to hide the wired ends. Secure it in the same manner as the first, as shown. Continue all the way around the wreath form, being careful to tuck your wiring under the lose tips of your first greens when you make a full circle.
Use extra greens, stems with berries, or smaller silvery herbs to tuck in and fill any areas of your wreath that seem sparse.
For an added holiday touch, wire (or hot glue) a few pine cones, pecans, or dried flower heads in a cluster.

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Garlic!

Garlic may be the perfect winter crop. Even north of Texas, it can be planted as long as the ground is still workable in the late fall - experts even recommend waiting until AFTER the first frost to poke your little cloves in the dirt. Start with fresh bulbs of ORGANIC garlic. Be sure you get organic, or the bulbs may be treated with growth inhibitors that prevent them from sprouting. This is convenient for grocery stores, but will mean no sprouting in ze garden for you! The bulbs below are organic cloves grown in California...obviously, NO growth inhibitors... Separate bulbs into individual cloves. You don't have to be fussy or get all of the paper off. It is best to soak the bulbs for 4-12 hours in a dilute mixture of fish emulsion and baking soda. This will help prevent fungal infections in the soil while things get revved up and germinating...

We tried a wee garlic experiment this year: half of the crop was organic garlic grown in Cali that we bought at the local market, the other half was purchased at a local garden center for the purpose of raising a crop. We shall see:)

Here is the pre-soak - yes, it is a smelly mess but worth it~

Poke coves in garden beds about .5 - 1 inch under the ground. I (finally, blessedly!!) have loose soil, so I go closer to 1 inch or critters tend to dig at the fresh cloves... In about two weeks, sprouts look like what you see in the photo above, especially if you are still having warm, sunny daytime temperatures...This is why mid-November is ideal here in North Texas.

Even through all but the harshest of winter days, garlic will take a beating. If heavy and prolonged ice or super low temperatures and wind chill is expected, then a covering of light straw is good for the shoots...

In Late April, pull a few stalks up and wala~ whole, juicy, sweet garlic bulbs will have formed. As a well known medicinal plant, garlic will help your body fight infection naturally! Less imported foods right from the garden, less medicine, it ALL equals Guard'n the Planet~ GO TEAM~!!

ps, the tender green shoots are to die for in any recipe that calls for green onions or chives~~~! pss, you will never have to worry about vampires again:)

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Container Gardening/ A Container 'Farm'

Check out this link to Mansfield Magazine! There is a great article by Steve Huddleson, chief horticulturist at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens, and a juicy little sidebar written by moi! Steve addresses the basics of designing and caring for container gardens (ie 'potted plants'), and I get more specific with ideas for growing herbs and veggies:) Enjoy! click here for Mansfield Magazine Lawn and Garden link

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To Market, To Market...

Our smallish community (Mansfield, Texas) has recently started an even smaller Farmer's Market. I have always envisioned participating in a Farmer's Market: Saturday mornings with a cute floral print tablecloth draped over the back of an antique truck, produce spilling out of bushel baskets, garden accessories on the side....
Making the vision a reality has been more difficult than I imagined, of course. Because we have to literally 'make our soil as we go' out here on the Hippie Homestead, expanding the size of the garden has taken much longer than planned, and ten times the labor. All that composting!!! Wowza! We DO get good harvests, but haven't learned to space the planting dates yet, so everything is ready all at once. And with two full time jobs each, Eddie and I can't always get everything in the ground that we want to before the full heat of Texas summer is upon us.

Even so, we are participating in the Mansfield Market tomorrow, Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 7 am - come hell or high water. (Interestingly, both are expected as rants and theories of 'the rapture' mingle with the evening forecast)....I am sure there is more money to be made at a larger market; Fort Worth, or even Dallas, but that would not be in keeping with the Spirit of Local Foods, so the young Mansfield Market and I will have to be patient with one another:)

We don't have as much to offer the community as we would like, not by a long shot. It will be garlic and onions (which are so amazing Eddie is trying to hoard them all!), swiss chard, rosemary, cut zinnias in bundles, and some potted herbs: stevia, comfrey, mint, echinacea...maybe a dozen eggs.

I invited friend and fellow home gardener Jennifer Peterson to participate along side. She is overflowing with squash right now...so we can all look forward to her organic offerings as well!!!

Friend Heather is helping organize a compost exchange so we can expand faster. I have six bins left for anyone who would like to take one home each Saturday, and deliver the next week full of kitchen scraps for my composting projects (which are everywhere our here!) ... Clean bins will be available to exchange each week...

No promises on being able to make a showing every Saturday through October, although we certainly will try! If more home gardeners in Mansfield want to join in our informal "gardener's co-op", please do! Establishing such cooperatives is one of the goals of this blog, afterall... Share the wealth, share the health....

See ya at Market!

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Growing Garlic

We harvested the first bulb of garlic last weekend: what a wonderful Mother's Day gift from the garden!


Pictured Left: "Fresh from the earth", a massive bulb has gently been eased out of the bed it has rested in for the last 5 months.

It was a much easier project than I expected (but of course, I had no idea what to expect!)



We purchased 5 bulbs of ORGANIC garlic from the grocery store, looking specifically for the 'locally grown' label. This is important for two reasons: organic garlic will not have any growth inhibitors sprayed on it (so it doesn't sprout in the grocery store) and the 'local' label means it is a variety suited for our area...




The bulbs were separated into individual cloves. No need to undo all the papery wrappings...and soaked for three hours in a bowl of water containing a splash of fish emulsion (from the garden supply center) and a teaspoon of baking soda (to help ward off any fungal diseases).



November 10: Cloves were poked into the bed of loose, well draining soil about an inch under the ground with their 'pointy sides' facing up.





That was it! a little water during dry spells and nothing else had to be done... The young garlic sprouts are edible the way fresh spring onion greens can be...and it was a trooper through our very cold Texas winter this year. We will definitely be planting more again next fall !!

In the mean time, fresh garlic will be for sale at ze Farmer's Market this spring!! We start next Saturday, May 21, at 7am near the corner of Broad and Main in Historic Mansfield... See you there!

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Medicinal Herbs: 18 powerful medicinals you can grow

Check this link to an article at WebEcoist - it was fun and informative. 18 powerful medicinal herbs and their uses, all accompanied with photos and fun commentary:)

From violets growing wild in your garden beds to tansy and catnip in the herb plot to the ever-controversial marijuana hidden in the national park just outside of town; you never know when a cure is staring you in the face!

Enjoy;)

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Winter Gardening

Hands down, the most beautiful photographs of a winter garden are found at The Gardener's Eden. Clearly, Michela is a more experienced garden designer and author than I, having done freelance writing and photography for the mighty Martha Stewert. Michela's grasses, particularly, have amazing sculptural structure.

The picture at right, yoinked from The Gardener's Eden site, shows winter scene to die for: the three cardinal evergreen colors (green, deep red, and pale green/yellow) are perfectly balanced by the simple and strong gray of the concrete. Even her use of concrete is flawless, with natural, organic forms (steps) contrasted by geometric (bowl).

I am filled with envy.
Winter is a gray and dreary time for gardeners, and a season when productivity slows substantially - if not altogether -for food crops. If you live in an area with mild winter temperatures (zone 7 or warmer), then winter production may still continue by careful plant selection and the use of floating row covers. Here in North Texas, we continue to grow chard, garlic, onion, sorrel, burnet, rosemary and sage all year 'round.

left: chard, a winter survivor great for stew and soups...

For gardeners in more northern environments, winter is a good time to focus on the 'architecture' of the garden: evergreens, sculpture and other accessory elements, as well as gardening for the birds and wildlife. (Link here for more information on gardening for the birds .)

right: monochrome magic: simple concrete sculpture in our winter garden at Forgotten Works. The concrete was literally a road side find, shaped with a jackhammer...

Sculptural elements in the landscape can also add interest, especially in the deep of winter when everything may be shades of white, gray and brown. Some pieces combine function with beauty, while others exist only for ornament. When investing in art for your garden, go with a piece you love. Look for durable materials such as steel, concrete, or porcelain. Glass is durable, but can be subject to breaking during temperature extremes; be sure glass vessels are overturned so they don't hold ice and crack.

Don't let winter ruin your garden fun: if all else fails and it is just to cold, winter is the perfect time for scanning favorite garden catalogs and seed suppliers sites! Sstay by the fire and dream:)

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