Starting An Herb Garden! (This was not really the plan…)

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time you probably know (or have figured out!) that farming is not my dream…  but the idea of an herb garden does appeal to me!  So I picked out the perfect spot and asked Papa the Farmer to till it up for me…

I have big dreams of turning this spot into herbally-medicinal wonderfullness that will grow back year after year.  Yesterday was the last day of The Heard Museum's Native Plant Sale so off I went to find some native goodies!  (Ok, and I also stopped at two local garden stores on my way home).  I won’t show you everything, but let me share a few of my favorite finds:

 

Stevia!

Last November a friend showed me her stevia plant that she bought at last year’s Heard Museum Native Plant sale.  The leaves taste so sweet!  I have been waiting ever since to get my own plant!  Stevia is a natural sweetener from Paraguay.  It is reported to be 100 times sweeter than sugar, but it is virtually calorie-free!  I am so excited to try this in my tea!

 

The Greek Oregano was smelling wonderful!  Had to get some of that!

 

These pictures are both different varieties of basil.  Isn’t it amazing how God creates plants that are so different and yet so the same, all at the same time?  On the left is Boxwood Basil and on the right is Sweet Basil.  Last year I was on a green smoothie kick and I experimented using the Basil to make green smoothies (like the recipe in the book said!).  That was definitely a mistake, so this year we’ll be making pesto!  Mmmm! 

 

I found this Citriodorium Geranium in the herb section at the plant sale, but I’m thinking it’s probably not edible.  It smells wonderful though and I immediately fell in love with it!  (Which is saying quite a bit, because I’m really not a plant person… This whole farming idea was not my idea, remember?)  It has a very strong lemon scent and so I am going to try steeping the leaves in water and using it to scent my home-made soap!

 

This is Pineapple Sage… and let me tell you, it smells exactly like a pineapple pizza!  Mmmm!  I said that to Papa the Farmer and he just got a weird look on his face and said, “It’s obviously been a long time since you ate pizza.”  Ok, whatever.  It still smells pretty good and I’m not the only one who thinks so:

 

My final super-duper find of the day was cilantro:

I must have had cilantro on my mind, because I only intended to buy 2 plants… and I did… I bought 2 plants everywhere I stopped!  Oops!  Well, you can never have too much cilantro, right?  (Oh, and if you are reading this and you happen to be my neighbor… You’ll know where to come for cilantro this summer!)

 

So anyway, those were all my exciting finds from yesterday’s plant excursion!  I figured I would come home and just pop all the plants into the beautifully prepared, weed-free garden that Papa the Farmer would have waiting for me. 

   

Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way.  Papa the Farmer tilled up an herb bed for me, but there’s still a lot of weeds in it.  I need to lay black plastic down and leave it there for a couple of weeks until the weeds die off:

    

See?  It doesn’t look so good right now.  But it will!  Now if I can just keep those plants alive for the next couple of weeks I will have a beautiful place of herbally-medicinal wonderfulness!  I’m so excited!

I AM A Farmer’s Wife!

I saw something yesterday afternoon that has me so, so excited!  Last year (back in the days when my mother might have been the only one to read this blog!) Papa the Farmer and one of the Little Farmhands put a peppermint patch in for me down by the front gate. (Isn’t my Little Farmhand cute working so hard like his Papa?)  This was one of our first projects after we decided to open a farm.

Now, I need to tell you… I have never gotten a plant to live.  That’s one of the reasons why this whole farming idea is so crazy.  For example, I was a student teacher in a kindergarten class one time and I was in charge of helping the children to sprout bean seeds in cups to take home for Mother’s Day.  I sprouted 10 extra seeds so that just in case some of the children’s beans didn’t sprout, there would be extras.  Well, all the beans sprouted except 10.  My 10.  I don’t know why mine didn’t sprout because I did all the same things to my beans that the kindergarteners did to their beans, but mine never grew.  All I can say is that it’s a really good thing my Mom wasn’t counting on getting a bean plant for Mother’s Day that year…

But I had grand dreams for this peppermint patch.  After all, peppermint spreads like wildfire.  People who plant peppermint complain that it’s taking over and they can’t kill it if they want to!  So peppermint sounded like a really good idea.  I envisioned a big, luscious bed of peppermint on each side of our gate that would smell wonderful… that I could use to dry and make tea… that the neighbors could come and help themselves to if they wanted some.  And all this, with minimal effort on my part!

Actually, the peppermint patch went pretty well… until I got involved.  Several weeks (ok, maybe it was months!) went by and weeds were growing.  It occurred to me that somebody had better weed that garden right there down by the road and since it’s technically my peppermint patch, the responsibility fell to me. 

Now you have to understand.  This is TEXAS.  It gets really, really, hot here.  If you have never experienced a Texas summer, imagine yourself in a sauna, then turn the heat up a few degrees and lock the door so that you can’t escape and that gives you a pretty good idea of what Texas in July is like!  There was no way I was going to weed that peppermint patch in 108 degree weather, so I went down in the evenings when it got a bit cooler (You know, like, 100 degrees or so) and decided to weed then.  For four nights in a row I would weed until it got too dark to see any longer.

On the fifth morning, Papa the Farmer said to me, “I was just looking at the peppermint patch.  I see you’ve been working hard, but I was just wondering… why did you pull all the peppermint out and leave the weeds?”

After spending hours working in the heat, I just knew I couldn’t have done what he was suggesting.  But when I went down to inspect… sure enough… the peppermint was sitting in the compost and I had a collection of carefully preserved weeds growing at my gate.  In my defense, the weed in question did look amazingly like peppermint… especially in the dark.  So that was the end of my peppermint adventure.  I gave up on that project.

But yesterday I noticed, it has decided to forgive me!  Look at these little baby leaves, coming back!

 

So there, world!  Maybe I do have potential to be a farmer’s wife after all!

How to Build a Pole-Bean Teepee (Tutorial)

Somewhere deep inside of me there is a lady who does really unusual things sometimes… and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s a really awesome mother who does fabulous things with her children, or if it’s because she’s a really big kid who never grew up.  I’m pretty sure it’s because she’s a big kid…

Last week I built a teepee for my children… because you know, as a child, I never had a teepee.  If you can’t have a teepee as a child, having one in your 30’s is definitely the next best thing.

Now let me tell you… I have never built anything in my entire life.  So if I can do this, you can do this too!
First, I sent the Little farmhands to gather up the tools:
 

(I really didn’t know which shovel I would need, so bringing them all seemed like it would save time!)

The next step was to take a pick and just sort of chop-chop a circle into the ground.  My circle was a bit oblong and I didn’t bother turning over the soil where I wanted the door to be.  (That’s right… we never did use the shovels!):

 

Next, I put 4 bamboo poles in the “corners” of the teepee.  I just gathered the poles at the top and tied them with twine.

Then I filled in the teepee by adding more bamboo poles and tying those poles up, around the poles that were already there.

(By the way, if you make one of these, make sure you take the stepladder out of the teepee before adding too many poles.  Otherwise you’ll have a stepladder permanently inside your teepee.  Yes, I learned this the hard way.)

 

Then I just wrapped twine around the poles (making sure to leave an opening for the door!).  The idea is that the beans will grow up the sides of the teepee and it will support the beans and provide a really unusual, shady place to hang out during the hot summer months!

 

Oh, but guess what.  When Papa the Farmer came home, we made him close his eyes and we brought him around to the side of the house and then said, “Surprise!  We made a teepee!”

And Papa the Farmer said, “Beans will never grow there!”  And he picked the whole thing up and moved it down into the garden.  It will add an interesting dimension to the garden, but when I think of all that time I spent digging up the ground!  

So maybe I will plant sunflowers there instead.  I think sunflowers will grow there!

Do you have anything unusual that adds dimension and interest to your garden?  I would love to hear about it!  Please don’t be shy!  Leave a comment!

Gardening Inspiration!

Everyone thinks that the farm lady must have an amazing garden!  Right now, my garden looks like this:

 

Sad.  Pitiful.  I can’t see past this and imagine that it will ever look different. 

 

 

So I am posting some pictures of our garden in better days, just to inspire myself. 

 

Lest you think I am responsible for this, I’m not. 

It’s Papa the Farmer who likes to garden.

 

I like pulling all last year’s dead plants out at the beginning of the season to give myself a fresh start.

I like looking through last year’s seeds and this year’s catalogues, planning what to plant. 

 

 

I like walking in the garden and sampling the snap peas when they are ripe. 

And I love a table filled with fresh garden-goodness!

 

But the weeding, watering, installing fences, fighting off animals and all the other work that goes into maintaining a garden? 

Not so crazy about that part.

 

So for now, I’ll just post pictures and dream about the really great garden we are going to have this year!