Tag Archives: herbs

Herbs – Sweet Woodruff Sachet Shortcut

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Sweet woodruff caught my eye as May Wine recipes flew around my April twitter feed.  I wanted to grow it then realized it already graced our garden.

Sweet woodruff’s culinary and medicinal uses make me almost as excited as its household use as a linen sachet and pest deterrent.

As easy as sewing sachet pillows may be, the likelihood of me dragging out the sewing machine anytime soon ranks up there with me waxing the car and organizing my storage unit.

The shortcut: spice bags.  I’ve cheated before by stuffing dried herbs into old socks and stockings and placing them unceremoniously into my dresser drawers and closet shelves.  But muslin or cotton spice-bag-sachet-pillows are almost cute enough to give as gifts, especially if you package them in a handsome box with nice tissue paper and fine ribbon.

See the photo above for the easiest how-to ever.

A Few Notes:

1.  Dry herbs before using for a sachet.  Sweet woodruff dries very quickly – I cut it, leave it in a bowl covered with a cloth napkin or tea towel for a few days and it’s ready.  Other herbs can be tied with dental floss and hung to dry on a hanger for a few weeks or placed in a food dehydrator.

2.  Tie the closure tight so little crunchy bits of herbs stay within the bag as it bounces around in use.

3.  Tie something you can undo, like a bow, so you can empty and refresh the herbs when needed.

4.  Wondering where to buy reusable cotton or muslin spice bags?  I’ve seen them at the grocery store and city hardware stores (in the kitchen utensil section), fancy kitchen supply stores and for cheap online.  Just search “reusable spice bags” to find a supplier.

5.  Sachet “recipes” are endless if you’d like to go beyond a single herb.  Here are a few to get you started.

6.  This can easily be turned into a crafty project to do with kids, whether you make them for your own home or to give as gifts.

Having spice bags on hand saves time in the kitchen and, as it happens, in the sachet-making department.

Gorilla Glue Giveaway – New Plant Markers from Old Items with Gorilla Epoxy

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This post is #5 in a 5-part series. Thanks to the great folks at Gorilla Glue, The Soil Toil has 5 Gorilla Glue Prize Packs to give away!  What’s included in the Prize Pack and how to enter to win is all detailed here.

To enter to win, simply leave a comment on this post.  A winner was randomly selected on June 17th at 8 am.  However, you can still share what project you have in need of Gorilla Epoxy or testify to Gorilla Tough awesomeness by telling of projects completed with Gorilla Glue products.  The winner from today’s post will be  randomly selected Sunday June 17th, 2012, and announced at 8:00 am EST has already been chosen.

If you blog, tweet, pin, tumblr, Facebook, G+ or StumbleUpon, feel free to leave your site or social media handle in your comment and share the Gorilla Glue contest throughout your networks.

This Gorilla Epoxy project came about when I realized that, really, I do need plant markers.

Whether or not I need them, our apartment building neighbors with whom we share our back yard garden need them if I’m serious about “you can cut what you need” from the culinary herbs.

Ah, but from what to make them?  I was chatting this over with our friend and neighbor, Mark Silva, who showed up later that afternoon with a few old architectural samples and the most delightful thin wood squares.  They recently installed an attic door and he had cut original pine from the c. 1900 ceiling.  It still smelled like pine.

Click the pictures above to view the plant marker construction.

A Few Notes:

1.  Check for fit by fitting the pieces to be glued together before applying any glue.

2.  Once you mix Gorilla Epoxy, you have 5 minutes to use the amount you mixed.  Have everything staged and ready to go before squeezing it out of the tube.

3.  If you use heavier items for markers, such as little tiles, bend a length of coat hanger (or other stiff wire) in half to make a two-pronged stake instead of the single-pronged stakes I made.  Glue the bend to the tile.  The little single-pronged stakes may swivel with the weight of a top-heavy marker.

4. Read the full package instructions before using.

I need to seal these markers and I left a few totally blank until I finish a final flower bed.  They turned out exactly how I hoped – easy to read, easy to relocate, easy to adjust height and compact.  Now other folks can spot the summer savory and not think it’s tarragon

To learn more about Gorilla Glue and their other products, visit their Facebook page. You’ll also find incredible user-completed projects, safety tips and a handy Gorilla Glue Guide for navigating your own projects.

Leave a comment below for your chance to win a Gorilla Glue Prize Pack! to share your Gorilla Glue stories, but a winner has been chosen for this post.  Thanks!

Herbs – Keeping Freshly Cut Basil

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Two early sprigs of fresh cut basil: Ararat and Napolitano.

The great debate: on the counter or in the fridge.

Limited precious counter space pushed my fresh cut basil into sealed bags in the fridge for the last few years.  I cut it outside and get it bagged and fridged within 10 – 15 minutes, no washing.  It lasts a week or two no sweat.  I remove any discolored leaves I notice as I use it.

Thanks to moving a cutting board, I have a little herb roost behind the sink now.  The basil pictured is two days old and looks great.  Basil uses a ton of water sitting in a vase.  You can put a plastic bag over the leafy mass to maintain humidity and slow its respiration.  Or just keep the vase filled with water.

Wondering how to put up basil?  A Pinch Of… will get you started down the road of year-round basil for cooking.  I’m a fan of freezing leaves in a sealed container (least amount of work) or drying (for soups, sauces and giving to friends), but that just scratches the surface.

Whether you buy it or grow it, store it to suit you and enjoy!

Herbs – Cut the Cough with Horehound

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A rodent pruned my horehound a few weeks ago and now I have two nice stems.

 

It caught my eye at the end of the DC State Fair Seedling Swap, during the free-for-all where you grab what you want after completing the organized rounds of selecting seedlings.

Horehound.  It sounded old.

Whatever it was, it was a tiny bumpy-leafed plant growing in an even tinier plastic seedling starter cell.  Three sat there.  I swiped two, selected more plants, then let the toddler make her own selection (she had already endured her version of eternity during the swap and the exciting grabfest caught her interest).

She immediately grabbed a horehound.

The itty bitty pot fit perfectly in her clutch as she carried it to our bag, she wanted to get it in there to “protect it” as I said for the others.  She said horehound with heft and a smile.

A month later, I’ve finally gotten around to looking up horehound.  It turns out horehound has been a cough remedy for thousands of years and is still a common ingredient in cough medicine.

Sustainable Urban Living  has a horehound page that jives nicely with my recently discovered favorite herb book.  It even includes the horehound candy drops recipe and an easy cough syrup recipe.

If making candy or syrup exceeds your domestic ambitions, The Complete Book of Herbs (the above mentioned favorite), instructs:

At the first sign of a cold: finely chop nine small horehound leaves, mix with 1 tablespoon honey and eat slowly to ease sore throat or cough.  Repeat several times if necessary.

Easy, breezy – bye bye coughy sneezy!

Whether the toddler grabbed the horehound because it was the smallest thing there, loved the name or just copied me, I love that we are growing cough medicine on the back steps.

Herbs – Pruning Basil to Get More Basil

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Basil.

When I worked at the garden center, if a customer bought only one herb, it was basil.  Folks would ask how to harvest it and, depending on which of us was asked, the answer was usually either “pick leaves” or “cut stems.”

You don’t have to be a an either/or pruner, but thoughtful harvesting will ensure you have fresh basil all summer long.

For a few leaves on sandwiches or in salads, step out and pick a few from established plants.  But when you need a good amount for a recipe, or when the plant gets about a foot tall, snip the plant above the second or third set of leaves.  Two stems will grow just below the cut and your basil will produce much more basil than just picking leaves as you need them.

If this sounds simple but harsh, read this basil thread on GardenWeb to see that you can’t really do it wrong but you can do it well by keeping a few things in mind:

1.  Leave 1/3 of the plant growing when you prune/harvest.

2.  Let the plant recover before cutting again.  Feel free to pick a few leaves (and leave enough leaves behind when you harvest to do so).

3.  Harvest diligently (every four weeks or so) if you want to prevent your basil from flowering.

4.  Grow multiple basil plants to harvest one each week.

Whether or not to let your kitchen basil flower is another topic entirely.  I’m in the pinch-it-off camp, that is, if the plant is able to out-run my kitchen snips.

Come late fall, I let all the basil flower their hearts out.  The plants are spent, the flowers look great and the little flower heads are fun to fry up in a skillet.

If I were smart, I’d harvest the seeds to get more basil.

Herbs – Sweet, Sweet Woodruff

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Ever since Jayme Jenkins introduced me to May Wine, I’d had my eye open for sweet woodruff to add to our garden.  It sounded so old-timey and perfect, an edible perennial ground cover that loves dappled shade.  I had just the spot for it.

Pouring over Flower Mart’s incredible herb selection I spotted the marker, “Sweet Woodruff.”  Reaching over the table, I stopped short, its starry little umbrella leaves I’d seen so many times before, through which I’d picked looking for snails and crawlies for the toddler in our own backyard.

I looked over the little pot to make sure, and put it back completely positive that, indeed, Michelle had planted it many seasons ago.  Michelle lived in the apartment next door and established our building’s backyard garden a few hours at a time, salvaging it from decades of low-rent neglect.  We co-gardened the last few years, her in the garden beds and me in pots up our stairs.  As her gardening time dwindled I took over the tending.  She moved last fall and I’ve taken over.

And the sweet woodruff had long taken over its little protected patch under the camellia.  I remember her pointing to that patch of lovely green saying there was concrete just a few inches below the surface and not much else would grow there.  I just don’t remember what she was growing there.

Super yay all around!  The Herb Companion’s sweet woodruff entry lists medicinal uses to treat kidney and liver disorders, nervousness, heart irregularities and a host of additional maladies.  Good Earth Natural Foods gives an additional rundown.   The U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers it only safe in alcoholic beverages.

For growing sweet woodruff, The Washington Star Garden Book (my copy is from 1988) entry lists:

Soil: moist, acid soil

Exposure: shade

Propagate: transplant divisions in spring or fall, root cuttings in the spring

Plant: 4 – 6 inches apart

Height: 6 inches

Harvest: flower umbrellas and new leaves for May wine

Plants needed: as many pots as needed for ground cover

In The Complete Book of Herbs, Lesley Bremness explains

This pretty little woodland plant will, when added to a wine cup, “make a man merrie,” wrote Gerard.  Sweet-smelling garlands of woodruff were hung in churches, strewn on domestic floors, sprinkled into potpourri and linen and stuffed into mattresses, spreading its cordiality around the household.  The coumarin in the leaves develops its sweet hay scent only when the plant is dried, so sweet woodruff is invaluable from the appearance of its first flowers for the traditional German May Bowl punch, through Christmas, when it is used in herb pillows.

That its scent isn’t released until dried is an understatement.  I can’t smell anything off the fresh cut sprigs, but I leave them in a bowl under a cloth napkin for a few days and - magically – the most pleasant aroma you can imagine wafts up.  A direct comparison doesn’t come to mind, but it’s slightly sweet, with a hint of anise, the tinest front of mountain mint and rises wonderfully airy and fresh.

Reading that sweet woodruff helps repel bugs from linens is music to my ears.  I’ve sprinkled our house with ground cloves for nearly a year in a slow fight against carpet beetles, now I can add sweet woodruff to my baseboard and under-bed carpet sprinkle.

Ah, sweet woodruff, I can not wait to make little gift sachets with you for friends and drink you in maiwein with friends.

Native Plants – The Delightful Wild Strawberry

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Wild strawberries.

A few years ago I’d never hard of them.  Our neighbor who gardened before me in our shared back yard would (thankfully) weedwack everything outside the flowerbed she built.  As I started gardening back there as well, I asked she leave the little strawberries be.  I’d noticed most the nasty other weeds didn’t grow through their little patches.

And they’re cute.

The wild strawberries inspired me to buy cultivated strawberries and plant them a few places the wild ones thrived.  The cultivated ones made it into their second year this season with great fruit alongside their wild cousins.

The toddler says “They’re strawberries everywhere!” as she goes around picking and eating the little wild ones that all ripened these last few weeks.  She loves them.  To me they taste like tiny seeds held together with a little juice-less flesh, I’m not that into eating them.  She checks on the “real” strawberries and reports to me when the cultivated ones are ready to pick.  She has free reign over the wilds.

The wild strawberries keep to the edges (being many in our city yard) and make the most polite garden bed invaders.  Their little runners constantly make it across our scavenged brick-and-stone bed border but I divert them back across as I find them.  Slowly they mound and fluff up in favored spots.

The Complete Book of Herbs, by Lesley Bremness, confirms Fragaria vesca fruit are edible and suggests eating fresh with cream or using for jam, cakes, pies and syrups or to flavor liqueurs and cordials.  It also notes the leaves of woodland strawberries can be infused with other herb teas to add bite and, medicinally, infuse as tea for anemia, nervousness, gastrointestinal and urinary disorders.  Reading you can eat the fruits as iron supplements sold me.

Today, as B brought me tiny wild strawberries with garden-dirty fingers and a giggles, I said “Thanks so much!” instead of “Oh, thanks, but that’s for you.”

Iron never tasted so cute.

Herbs – Building a Basil Library

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Basil.

Basil, basil and more basil.

The Complete Book of Herbs, by Lesley Bremness, notes you should “pound with oil or tear with fingers rather than chop” this native of Africa and Asia when used in the kitchen.  I note growing tomatoes mandates growing basil – your summer will never lack a side dish or garden-fresh hors d’oeuvre.

Last summer I grew Genovese, Thai and African Blue basil.

This year I can’t stop myself.  From various plant sales and farmers markets, I have potted so far:

Red Rubin

Dark Opal

Cinnamon

Ararat

Valentino

Napolitano

I sowed seeds in two tomato pots and have tiny starts:

Sweet Genovese

Eritrean

In my seed packet pox, woefully waiting for me to sow again (original batch lost to cut worms and damping off):

Salad Leaf

Holy

Genovese (more)

According to Wikipedia’s list of basil cultivars, I am well on my way to having way more basil than someone with a modest city yard should have.

I am so excited.  Neal collects records, I collect basil.

Potting – Pepper and Tomato Frenzie

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Pots!  Get the pots!  Need more potting soil!

That about sums up the last week.

Some of the tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings finally started taking off.  Plus, I am about to take off for a long weekend, so I sorted what to keep and give away, and got to potting.

The Jimmy Nardello’s Italian pepper, Celebrity tomato, Garden Peach and Eva Purple Ball tomatoes were the first chosen and potted.  The rest of the week blurred by with Flower Mart, The DC State Fair seedling swap, more potting and more planting.

Companion planting scratches that itch to magically make containers produce more with less fuss.  I am obsessing over borage this year but have never grown it.  It deters tomato hornworms and is a best friend to nearly everything, so I stuck a borage seedling in with each big pot I planted this week.  This may have been wishful thinking since they grow 2 – 3 feet tall.

I mixed and matched other tomato companions: marigolds, basil, carrots and chard.

I heard from Midwest gardeners on through to the East Coast and South saying they were slammed busy between rains this week.  I think we were all on twitter during the rain and outside when it wasn’t.

What did you plant this week?

Herbs – Divide and Conquer

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WARNING: This is not a how to.  This is a what I did.

I have never before divided old plants.  My timidness on the practice explains why my herb box has gone five years without splitting up the overgrown chives and thyme.

For real advice on dividing plants, start with Fine Gardening’s 10 Tips for Dividing Perennial Plants.  If you’re looking to create more plants from cuttings, see Gayla Trail’s guest post on Apartment Therapy.

I read a few google results on dividing thyme and chives and went for it.  I also divided my old Golden sage but, it turns out, that was probably a waste of time.  I didn’t even take pictures since it just felt wrong how I cut it in half.  The leaves were tiny and bland last summer, about a year after I should have replaced it.  I have a robust Berggarten sage starting its second season and can live without the spent Golden.

Really, I should pull out the divided Golden sage to allow more room for the two flagrant cat-lady additions: pineapple sage and lemon thyme!  (Though, my impulse-buy pineapple sage might get too large for my herb box, it would be lovely to see it bloom just outside our screen door.)

I created the new (second) herb box for a friend, she’ll receive it in a few weeks once I’m sure the inhabitants recovered from surgery.

If these herbs survive my dividing, I will have conquered one more proper maintenance item.

Grow It – Urbanites Make Perfect Herbanites

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It’s garden center time, farmer’s market time, spring time – are you growing herbs yet?

“Herbs are easy” reaches mantra status as new gardeners ask gardening friends what they should grow.

Herbs are easy for us city folks because they don’t require a trip to the burbs to get started. Every retailer remotely qualified to sell them has displays at the entrance: hardware stores, grocery stores, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, farmer’s markets, and of course, actual garden centers and home improvement stores. You can get a few herbs, a container(s) for them and a small bag of potting mix and lug it home on your bike, the bus or your feet. No car required. (If garden centers aren’t your thing, Target has everything you need except the herbs.)

Instead of my own Top 10 Herb List, see Apartment Therapy’s 10 Best & Easiest to Grow Herbs, I really can’t improve upon theirs.

Instead, here’s my

Why Herbs are Awesome for Every Gardener List:

1. They’re Cheap: Herb seedlings cost about the same as a plastic pack of cut culinary herbs at the grocery store. Even after you buy a container and potting soil, they pay for themselves quickly.

2. Pests Don’t Bother: Herbs are not indestructible but they just don’t attract as many destructive insects as vegetables.

3. Compact: Common culinary herbs do well both in containers and in the ground. For tiny city yards or two-person balconies, you can trim them to fit your space as they grow.

4. They Love Company: Most herbs grow great in containers with buddies. Check companion planting lists to see which herbs do well paired with other herbs, flowers and vegetables.

5. Easy to Preserve: Freeze them, dry them, put them in oil, mix with butter, make herb vinegars – no special equipment required.

6. Easy to Give: Friends sending me home with baggies of fresh-cut herbs is the number one reason I now grow them. So fresh! So awesome!

7. You’ll Cook Tastier Food: Want to turn scrambled eggs into amazing eggs? Chop a few basil leaves and add with garlic to the hot pan before pouring in your scrambled eggs. Turn grilled cheese into grilled fantastic by laying a few rosemary leaves under the bread in the skillet. Fancy. Easy. Fast.

8. High in Vitamins: Add a few flat leaf parsley leaves and chives to your sandwich and you just ate Vitamin C!

9. There’s Nothing to Rot on the Vine: When veggies are ready to harvest it’s go time.  That’s great, but it’s summer! You have beaches to hit, BBQs to attend, roof decks to drink on, trips to take and music festivals to recover from!  Set your herbs up with a little self-waterer and go enjoy summer!  Once established, they’re ready to harvest when you need them, not when they say so.

10. You’ll Want More: Herbs are the gateway drug to gardening.

Speaking of drugs, here’s a very short intro to herb healing properties.

If you’ve had your herbs for a few years and think perhaps they need a little attention this spring, The Herb Guide rounds up a few common herb maintenance items.

My herb box begs for a division session. It works out, I want to give a friend an herb box. Once divided and on their feet again, she’ll have what I have, only at her place.

You should have herbs at your place.

Kids – Growing to Eat

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I posted the pic our two year old eating chives on tumblr yesterday.

The Greedy Gardener summed up in a comment my entire philosophy on the importance of providing real food to our children:

I think the best way to encourage kids to eat veg is to grow it at home – it becomes part of every day life rather than a penance rewarded by cake

I was scarred for life when Bunny (our child’s nickname, one of many) was a few months old and we stayed with friends who had two daughters, about ages 4 and 6.  If it didn’t come in a package or look like white pasta, they wouldn’t eat it.  Period.

So much packaged food is something to eat, but it isn’t food.

Children 100 years ago didn’t survive on squeezable fruit sauce and puffed toddler snacks.  They ate food that was cooked and prepared in a kitchen.

Children of developing countries don’t have Go-Gurt.

Toddlers in India eat – wait for it – Indian food. 

Spices and all.

Street food in Rio de Janeiro (and everywhere else we went in Brazil) is real food – kids have cups of fruit, pastries filled with meat and cheese, sticks of roasted cheese…

Not everyone can grow vegetables for their kids or manage a garden – the reality is people work multiple jobs, don’t have the know how to get started, don’t have the hours in the day to get it going or the space for a few containers.  But the importance of farmer’s markets and access to real grocery stores (produce at Wal-Mart and Target matters, regardless of the farming practices) is so fundamental.

Smart phones are bringing the internet into households that never before had it (to both low income and rural communities).  Buying fresh vegetables, looking up how to cook them and serving them with meals is a vital part of raising healthy kids.  Even if only a few times a week, it matters.  Adding them to a frozen pizza before cooking it is legitimate.

I’m preaching to the audience if you’re reading this.  But realize your influence as gardeners.  You can grow a child’s love of herbs, fruits and vegetables:

- Invite a busy neighbor and their child over to pick a few strawberries.

- Let your nieces and nephews smell all your garden herbs and choose a few for dinner.  Better yet, make grilled cheese sandwiches in a skillet with the herbs.

- Help the Sunday School teacher do a few lessons on sowing seeds and reaping the rewards (radishes are fast and fun – you can scare up something to grow them in and you can tote back and forth to church for a month).

- Bring bunches of mint to the BBQ and let the kids munch on it and add it to their lemonade.

- Ask your own kids how you should share your garden.

Last spring, Bunny wasn’t quite 2 and I called her over to the chives.  “You can eat these, would you like a taste?”  She opened her mouth.  I gave her a piece and she cried.  I gave her a cracker, told her “It’s ok” and that they taste better when added to other foods.

This spring she has been really into smelling everything, especially the rosemary (which I constantly cook with).  When we got to the chives, she said they smelled like onions and that she wanted to “taste it.”  Her eyes got wide and she said “Those good, mom!”

Now she picks them at will, bringing me a few to eat as we get ready to garden.

What’s Growing – A Few Chilly Days til May

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DC spring decided to switch gears to cold rain with May a week away.

One last hurrah from the Winter that Never Was.

Checking on the plants in the cold drizzle showed just how far the garden has come since setting the first seed pots in the cold frame two months ago.  April weather dipped cooler more often than March and the seedlings have gone through growth spurts between holding steady.  The cold frame is protective but only gets a few hours of good sun thanks to the rowhouse canyon of our backyard.  Each day their sun time increases thanks to the earth tilting in our favor as spring heads towards summer.  Things are growing, albeit a little slowly.

I’m wildly satisfied.

The Update

1.  Turnips!  The top: March 21st, four days after sowing.  Bottom: April 23rd.  I need to thin them out.

2.  Parsnips!  The right: Radishes alongside the parsnips last week.  Left: Radishes thinned to let the parsnips grow.  Originally sown March 17th.

3.  Beets!  The top: Sown March 17th.  Bottom left: The few that sprouted looking noble last week.  Bottom right: Either heavy rains or a bird flatted two, April 23rd.  Sadly, I need to thin the few that are growing.

4.  The Camilla!  Top: The last bloom hanging on five weeks after the first opened.  Bottom: Those that let go below it, April 23rd.

5.  Zinnias and Marigolds!  Top row: Transplanting them from their egg carton seed pots, around April 4th.  Bottom: They were the first to get kicked out of the cold frame a few weeks ago.  Short, but growing, April 23rd.

6.  Chives blooming!  This herb box welcomes its fifth season with the same chives, thyme (also blooming) and golden sage (not pictured).  I should replant the box but don’t want to touch it (other than my usual fertilizing and mulching), the inhabitants seem happy as is.  It survived Snowmageddon and Snoverkill in 2010.

7.  Mesclun!  Sown March 31st, pictured April 23rd.  Tiny salads at our first 2012 BBQ this Sunday!

8.  Bush Beans!  Top row: Planted by and for toddlers, April 5th.  Mid row: They sprouted(!) April 17th.  Bottom: Thriving, April 23rd.

9.  Wine-Box-O-Root-Veggies!  Top row: Prep, sow, grow (radishes a few days past April 5th sowing).  Mid row:  A few tiny beets on the left, carrots on the right and radishes all over, April 23rd.  Bottom: Carrots in front of radishes, April 23rd.

10.  Onions!  Top: Reclaiming pantry onions for their greens, April 11th.  Bottom: The stalks look great and spinach seeds sprouted alongside, April 23rd.  I’ll harvest the tops as scallions this weekend, they should regrow.

11.  Potatoes!  Left side: Planting a sprouted potato so the foliage will hang off our stair rail (just for looks), April 11th.  Right side: It’s growing, April 23rd.  I do this every year.  The pot is too small and it’s never as lush as the ornamental sweet potatoes, but it grows.  To really grow potatoes, you do it differently.

12.  Fresh seedlings!  Left: Balsam, 10 days after sowing.  Right: Borrage, 10 days after sowing.

13.  Freshly sown!  Trying to slip under the wire with this cold snap: onions, spinach and mesclun, sown April 22nd.

14.  Tomatoes!  I have yet to count how many tomato seedlings we have, same principle as counting chickens before they hatch.  I kicked a few out of the cold frame April 20th and two days later the 48-hr cold rain came.  I huddled them behind the covered bike to protect them from the 40 mph predicted wind gusts, picture April 23rd.

What’s not growing?  Basil.  After fighting off cutworms, they died after transplanting.  They were tiny and I think succumbed to damping off.  I’ll try again in a week or so.  I’ll also direct sow a few in the big tomato pots when the tomatoes are ready for final transplanting.

Not bad.

Not bad, at all.

Roundup – Weekend Bits via the White House

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Let’s just say the weekend starts on Friday, for the sake of argument.  Then this was quite the weekend.

Friday – Potted up the final tomatoes.  They were the last of the peat pots given by a friend.  Peat pots are controversial and many gardeners complain about their effectiveness, all I have to say is the DIY toilet paper tube seed pots worked the best of all this season’s methods.  We also fixed pots and continued our seedling success (borage and balsam).

Saturday – A friend called Friday with White House Garden Spring Garden Tour tickets.  This was priceless.  They’re free to anyone who stands in line for them, but standing in an infinite line with a toddler is a high a price to pay.  We loved it despite it being more a driveway stroll than a garden tour.  The White House Kitchen Garden was THE most meticulously beautiful vegetable plot I’ve ever seen.  Kitchen Garden tours are available most Tuesdays and Thursdays to DC area school aged children.

Late Saturday – Second birthday party(!) at a friend’s house.  This friend wowed me a few years ago with the quantity of spinach, basil and salad greens she grows in window box planters hung along her DC back yard fence.

Sunday – Earth Day.  We really didn’t do anything special, mostly because it’s been Earth Day nearly every day for three months for the toddler – “helping” build the cold frame, finding earth worms, mixing soil, watering seedlings, talking about the flowers coming and going, experiencing the cherry blossoms, going on tulip patrol all over town, planting her own seeds with her buddy – I could not think of anything to do in the cold rain that would make this day stand out to a two-year-old.  Besides, she was much more focused on the candy she brought home from the birthday party.  The most important thing Sunday – it rained.

One day of rain doesn’t end a drought, but Sunday’s rain was more than we’ve seen in months.  More predicted for Monday.

DIY – Bottle + Can Vase Bank for Fresh Cut Flowers and Herbs

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Unless I suddenly kill all my seedlings, I will have a nice selection of flowers and herbs to cut come summer.  We have negative counter and table space (I have to move stuff to make room to do anything), so where to put vases is always a challenge.

I came across A Can Can and started hoarding cans.  I even asked our neighbors for their cans since we don’t go through that many.

I got an idea to solve my lack of vase space issue.  I would mount cans on the wall to hold bottles as vases.  We rent and the walls are drywall, so the less holes the better.

The solution: The Bottle + Can Bank

Mounting the cans shoulder to shoulder along a plank would enable me to use only two screws to attach the whole thing to the wall instead of a screw for each can.

I made this about six weeks ago and love it.

It took multiple sessions since I can’t really do anything for more than an hour at a time with the toddler at my heels.  Once you get your cans and bottles ready to go, it’s a perfect weekend project.

A Few Notes:

- Soak the labels off your bottles. Goo Gone is great for those weird plastic labels that don’t soak off (heating them in hot water will soften the adhesive and allow you to peel off the label but the adhesive left behind won’t scrub off without solvent).

- Most can labels come off without much (if any) soaking.

- I washed my cans out and let them air dry as a little test. I didn’t use the ones that rusted. Though, a nice rustic patina might be just what want.

- To fix the burr left from the can opener, crimp it flat with pliers then apply a fat drop of clear nail polish to smooth it over. Pesky burrs can get multiple layers of nail polish, letting each dry between applications. If your pliers might rough up your cans, place a rag between the pliers mouth and the outside of the can where you’re crimping the burr. Practice on a can you don’t plan to use.

- You’ll need to punch a hole in each can where the screw will hold it to the wood.  Make the hole about a half-inch below the can lip to make the screw less noticeable.

- Don’t punch the screw hole too far below the can lip or it will be very difficult to screw the screw into the wood (your screwdriver or drill will be at too much of an angle to engage the screw head if your screw is too deep inside the can).

- Use a primer paint designed for metal, it will provide a lasting base. I overkilled it with primer and a coat of neutral spray paint I found in my paint stash. I finished with a final coat of interior matte white latex I painted on with 2″ brush. It was free from a neighbor and I liked the texture from the cheap IKEA paint brush.

- Whether using a screwdriver or drill, use care attaching the cans to the wood with the screws or you’ll mar the paint on the cans.

- I got my wood as scrap.  A little sanding can give old wood a new life.  I left mine bare but painting is easy enough.

- Leave two cans unattached so you can hide the screws that mount the wood to the wall behind them. Offset those wall screws from the centerline of the hiding cans so your cans will lay flush when you attach them (after mounting the wood to the wall).

- On Pinterest I found a mirror hanging trick.  It’s similar to how I mark anchor placement when fixing wood to drywall and don’t have a helper.  You can sink the wall attachment screws through the wood so they poke out the backside just enough to mark the wall where you want to sink your drywall anchors, about 1/8 -1/4 of an inch.  Position the wood, tap the screws with your hammer to mark the wall, set the wood aside and sink your drywall anchors (or masonry anchors if installing into brick or concrete) at the marks.  Match the wood and screws back up with the drywall anchors and screw them in.

- Two screws through the wood into drywall anchors about 6 inches in from both ends provided sufficient support for the size of my plank.

The late day sun comes in through our back windows and just adores our kitchen. I built the vase bank (the vasery sounds better but I made that word up) to live alongside our kitchen table and the long rays of light writes love letters to it.

I could devote an entire tumblr to this.

I am obsessed with the Trader Joe’s 10 Stem Alstroemeria bouquet.  It lasts 10 – 14 days, and for $3.99, it can’t be beat.  It’s also like an archaic clock telling me when I need to make a trip to TJ’s.  The petals fall off and – Hey what do you know! – it’s time to go to Trader Joe’s!

Soon, like a bank of elevators bearing summer delights, this will present fresh herbs and awesome flowers from our own garden.