The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

December 12, 2006

Nothing to sneeze at — packing dried herbs as gifts

Filed under: Herbs — bob @ 3:52 am

Actually, there was a lot of sneezing going on. Have you ever tried crushing a one gallon zip lock bag full of dried cayenne pepper and packing the resulting product into tiny containers?

Today we prepared and packed herbs to be given away for people to use for preparing their holiday meals.

There was about a dozen or so packets each of sage, rosemary, cilantro, cayenne, and oregano. We also picked coriander seed this fall, but it is very tedious and time consuming to pick any kind of volume. We ended up with only about a snack-sized zip lock bag full of coriander.

I sowed two flats of thyme late in the summer but never got them planted, they have been frozen and snowed on but still look happy outside. I wouldn’t recommend doing it that way. I will probably pot most of them into larger pots sometime during the next couple of weeks. I’m sure we should be able to harvest enough for our personal use later on this winter.

The plan this spring is to expand the number of varieties of herbs we plant.

Freshly dried, home grown herbs are a delight!
Rhyming and thyming,

Bob

small recloseable bags   http://www.stockpkg.com/Zipper-Bags_c_79.html

December 10, 2006

Why, Hello there little sprout!Sprouting seeds

Filed under: Indoor Gardening — bob @ 7:57 am

You get the whole cycle of gardening… planting, growing, harvesting. Yes,ML (comments), I believe sprouting counts as gardening.
This blog is not just for people with gobs of money, fancy greenhouses and stuff. A homemade coldframe for example, can be used in place of a greenhouse well into the fall.

I still have 4 coldframes with lettuce growing in them right now.

Good things from the garden… Bob

Is sprouting gardening? Definitely. There are plants there that are growing and you keep an eye on them till they reach the right stage, and then harvest. That’s gardening. Nutrition wise , it’s loaded.

The sprouter that I have is ingenous. It has five trays set on top of each other. Water is added at the top and floods that top tray, wetting all the seeds. Then the water , thru siphoning action, flows up and down a tube to the next tray and floods that one. Same thing with the third and fourth tray. The fifth tray at the bottom just collects the water until I empty it. This gets done once or twice a day for 3 to 5 days. If the sprouter is put in the sunlight the last day, the sprouts will turn green. The sprouts can be harvested all at once, rinsed well in a colander to get the seed hulls off and stored in the fridg. I would think that the harvest could be staggered but I haven’t tried that. I use brocolli seeds but there are others to choose from.

It’s a lot of fun and does satisfy that need to be tending a growing thing.

Bye for now, Judy

sprouting seeds is gardening

Seeds for sprouting http://www.johnnyseeds.com/c-245-sprouts.aspx

More sprouting information http://sproutpeople.org/seeds.html

BAM! Key Garlic Growing Requirements

Filed under: Herbs — bob @ 4:56 am

Reader Dave just kicked it up notch! (see comments)

For great garlic:

Highly fertile soil, organic matter, water etc., etc. you heard it all before, but it goes double for garlic. No weeds at all: none,nada, zip, zilch. The big secret is to plant in the fall and mulch in Dec.
Bob

key idea: plant garlic in the fall, mulch in December

December 9, 2006

Mulch garlic beds

Filed under: Herbs — bob @ 5:26 am

Today we mulched our garlic beds. The raised beds we have for vegetable production measure about 5′x9′. Five pounds of garlic bulbs plant six of these beds exactly. We used wheat straw about 6′”-8″ deep to cover these six beds. Four moderately heavy bales did the trick. By the way, these bales of straw were of the most beautiful golden wheat color I have seen in a long time. In a way it was amost a shame to use them for mulch, but that’s what they’re there for. The bright color ensures that we don’t import a new batch of weed seeds from weed stalks that could have been baled up out in the field by the farmer along with the straw. Straw that has lots of different color stems in the bale more than likely are contaminated with weeds.
If you promise not to tell anyone, I”ll let you know the secret to growing super size and delicious garlic. So just let me know if you can “keep it under your hat”, by writing me a short note in the comment section that you like garlic.

Well, now that the garlic bulbs are all tucked in their beds for the winter, I think I’m going to have lunch and take a nap. Bob

for more information search:  mulching garlic, straw mulch

December 8, 2006

Isn’t it a little early to be talking about gardening?

Filed under: Garden Preparation — bob @ 3:16 am

So, you say….”what kind of gardening are you doing in the middle of winter?” Well, you might be suprised. As professional gardeners, Judy and I are working with plants year ’round. Right now I have over 250 Poinsettias in the greenhouse that will be given to folks for Christmas. Some will end up in people’s homes, while the rest will decorate chapels.

Easter Season has also started for me. Easter Lillies need to be potted up soon or there will be no blooms for Easter this year. There is also St. Valentine’s Day to think about, not to mention shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day. The orange trees will be ready to pick soon as well as the bananas.

I’m sure you have been thinking about spring too as the first of the gardening catalogs arrive.
You and I will have a lot of things to talk about in the upcoming days and weeks. Judy has plenty of topics as well. I’m looking forward to talking with you again and encourage you to participate often by posting comments and/or questions.

So, let’s jump right in to the deep end and get started!
Bob

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