A Million Potatoes the Easy Way!

This was one of my compost piles where I put leaves, grass clippings, pine cones and the chicken droppings I clean out of the coop. It's a nice, fertile place for potatoes to grow! So I moved the pile of compost and laid down a couple handfulls of some exotic purple, red and banana potatoes with eyes growing on them. The next part is the key and will save you a lot of digging. Using a piece of fencing wire made into a round cage, I just set this on top of the pile of potatoes, which I've lightly covered with compost. I used some bamboo poles, gleaned from neighbours who were cutting a bunch down and didn't want to deal with it and it is a great find for me I'll tell you...Anyhow, I just used three skinny poles, stuck into the ground, to hold the wire cage from tipping over and voila! Instant potato garden! The pile of compost I have reserved to gradually pile on top of the growing potato plants as they emerge. By the end of summer it'll be filled to the top and flowering potatoes will be shooting out everywhere! Be sure to keep it watered but other than that, when the flowers die off, tip the whole thing over and have a million potatoes to enjoy!

Happy Equinox! Go Pick Some Nettles!

Seeing the beautiful green shoots of stinging nettles popping up in damp places tells me it's Springtime long before the calendar says so! I was out foraging just a couple of days ago (St. Paddy's Day) along a river trail, close to our house, where there are huge cottonwood trees and lots of happy, singing birds. I just had a bag and no gloves so I improvised by just using the bag as protection while I pinched off the tops of the sprouting nettles. If you do it this way, the plants recover quickly and it branches out to be more bushy. Even if you get a "sting" from a nettle, it'll go away in an hour or so. No worries.
Stinging nettles are a powerful tonic because they are full of the yang of Springtime and will cleanse your blood, urninary tract, can help heal an enlarged prostate and nettles are full of iron and taste good too. I like to dry them for a tea to drink every morning till Summer but I also like them steamed up with some butter and mashed potatoes...Go pick some soon and accept nature's gift to you.

Toilet Paper Roll Seed Pots Are Cool!

I knew I was saving toilet paper rolls for a reason! As the photos show, just cut the roll about one and a half inches up on four sides, so you have four flaps to fold over for the bottom of the pot. Don't worry if the last flap makes the pot kind of tippy because once it's filled with soil and dampened, it will sit flat just fine. Now get some potting soil, not garden soil because you want your little seedlings to have the best start with no competition from bugs or weeds. Fill them right to the top and tap it down a little, then get a pencil or pen (use the dull end) and put a little hole in each pot. Only go down about half an inch or so, that way your seeds will not be planted too deep. Today I started tomatoes and some lettuce. It's a little early to start things like cukes or eggplant or basil because they like it hot! And beet seeds will be going straight into the ground in the next couple of weeks, along with chard and kale etc.Put your tray of seedlings somewhere warm, like the top of the fridge, to sprout and keep them moist with a misting several times a day. I poured some water in the bottom of the tray too, so they can soak up moisture from the bottom. Once the sprouts come up just keep misting them and move the whole bunch to a very sunny, warm window in your house. In a month or so, they can be carefully transplanted to either you garden or larger pots, depending on the weather conditions in your area. Here in Seattle I'll put the lettuce in the ground in a month and the tomatoes I'll keep babying along until it's warmer and they can be put in the garden. Enjoy this great little recycling idea and get those seedlings going!

Making Cottonwood Bud Healing Oil

Majestic Cottonwood trees grow where it's wet and fertile, like river sides and marshes. They have sticky, resin filled and fragrant buds, which contain healing oils you can make into a wonderful massage oil, great for aches and skin dryness. I make my own oil every couple of years and use it in my acupuncture practice. People love the smell so much that they will often ask for a little to take home with them! Here's some photos of our river trail walk on St. Paddy's Day, collecting the buds and then infusing them in good olive oil, sitting the jar on a sunny windowsill for several months. I just made a small batch to show you but this won't be ready to use till September. Here's what it looks like when it's all done. Rich, fragrant and full of nature's healing light. Try this yourself for a satisfying little project.

A Simple Potting Shed

When the sun came out yesterday I just couldn't resist taking some shots of the brave veggies growing in our little potting shed greenhouse we built in the fall. I put someme chicken manure in there, which was pretty "hot" so a layer of soil on top. I was hoping that the manure would warm the soil enough to grow some things this winter and voila! Here is some Swiss chard, mustard greens and arugula, all of which will be ready to eat soon. They took their time growing but look really healthy and I just baby them along with some fish fertilizer every couple of weeks. The lean-to faces south and a friend and I put it up in two days. The polycarbide panels are very inexpensive and last a lifetime! What could I grow in here during the summer? Maybe some melons....

The Great Pumpkin Feast

Our little backyard flock of Plymouth Rock hens are great layers as well as being pretty feisty. Like all chickens, they eat anything and our Halloween pumpkin was no exception. Chickens are the ultimate recycling machines, which I love. Every kitchen scrap goes into the chicken run, much to their delight. I recently put up a sign in front of our house inviting neighbours to deposit their own kitchen scraps in the bin for our chickens and every morning I go out there to find several little bags of potato peels and leftover noodles and such, gifts for our girls and my little green heart. Amazing what we can all do if we just take some time to nurture small things.

From a pile of dirt to a garden plot...

There was nothing here and so we put down cardboard, brought in some compost, and after a lot of raking it has become the main garden site. To me it's a miracle. I use that word a lot but really, having vision and intention is how we get things done. The wood chips around the soil are from the tree trimmings that were chipped up and left in a huge pile and I use them everywhere for mulching around trees and the paths here between the rows. Gardening requires trust and an open mind and heart. That's all. The soil, sun, water and seeds do the rest!

Roots and Shoots

It amazes me to see the roots at the bottoms of these little plastic containers. Within a day or so, as soon as the soaked seeds have been placed on the moist soil the seeds start to send down roots and before long there is a complex network that runs underneath all the plants as they grow. As the plants continue to grow, so does the root system, drawing nourishment from the soil and also helping to hold up the plants above. The roots are hidden but essential. They are white from not recieving light but that does not stop them from spreading and thriving.

I love metaphors and the roots and shoots metaphor this morning seems like we could learn something from it. Look at how we as humans put down roots when we find ourselves in fertile, friendly soil. We connect with one another deeply and find that the system of our rootedness supports and nourishes our continued growth. Not only that, we gather experiences and connections to help feed those roots, like a plant gathering sunlight to send down and further strengthen the entire plant, for without the roots, a plant cannot thrive and so it is with humans. We are learning....

A garden can be something tiny or something grand. This is my little herb garden from last spring, when I just put it in. I took cuttings that other people gave me, plus some Craigslist rescue sage bushes, rocks dug up from our yard and wood chips dropped off free by the tree trimming truck. For me, half the fun of gardening and homesteading is finding free stuff and recycling it for another lifetime of good use. I love seeing things get used instead of wasted. Stay tuned, as soon as it stops raining outside for a couple of hours I'm going to show you my potato growing trick! Don't mean to complain about the rain though, the birds singing outside this morning made my heart smile. There's lots of worms for them and they're happy....

From Seeds to Sprouts

One handful of dried sunflower seeds plus some dirt, water, light and five days or so of watching in wonder gives you a bowl of beautiful sprouts for your salad. This little miracle happened on my kitchen windowsill but you don't even need a kitchen window sill. Sprouts will happily grow for anyone, anywhere. Even with very little light they will be a bit more leggy but they will still be green and good for you. Give it a try. Trust. Watch life happen before your eyes.

What I love about seeds and planting them is that is takes trust to believe that a tiny dry seed will turn into something miraculous. You put it in the soil and give it some water and light, keep the weeds from overtaking it and every day, take a look to marvel at the progress. Life's like that too. We plant the seeds of ideas and take the chance that by putting ourselves out there, things might just work. We have to trust because we know that trusting somehow helps. And then we nurture our ideas and plans. We tell others about what we want to do and that puts more force behind doing what we believe. We keep the weeds of negativity and apathy from overtaking our cherished plans and fledgling ideas by being positive and doing all we can to feed the seeds and tiny seedlings of our hopes and dreams. Then we stand back and marvel at our progress and are thankful that we took the chance to try something. That's part of why I love growing things....

What's a Green Heart?.

Where did the name Green Heart come from you ask? There's several reasons including the fact that it is Springtime and so much is green in the world. If you are someone who is familiar with the concept of chakras, the heart chakra happens to be green, which is fitting because it's always growing! When something is green, it is said to be new, fresh, young and innocent, which are all the qualities of an open heart. Finally, growing things is so close to my heart and that started as an eight year old child, when I was given some seeds for a Kiwanis Club gardening contest. I had no clue how to grow things but I got a shovel and dug up the sod in our backyard, planted my beet, carrot and lettuce seeds and faithfully watered them every day. To my amazement, things grew! In fact, my softball sized beets won first prize and I was forever enchanted with growing a garden.

Green Heart emerged in the same "accidental" kind of way and I just started growing sunflower seeds, until I got the idea that these portable little gardens could be the start of something to help connect more people with the miracle of our earth and how with just a little help, we can provide for ourselves and others.

Sunflowers can heal the land

 I want to talk about more things I love about sunflowers besides the fact that they make easy to grow, delicious and nutritious food. Sunflowers are used for phytoremediation, which means they are special plants, which clean the soil. In Japan where last year's nuclear disaster contaminated land with radiation, sunflowers were planted everywhere because of their special ability to take up contaminants and transform them into clean soil again! Every idea begins with a little sprout and we can learn a lot from small beginings.

Growing things to eat is a sacred thing....Millions of little plastic containers like these are thrown away every day but there are better uses and a little garden of sunflower sprouts can be grown anywhere...even in a shopping cart or under a bridge, or in a car...Plants love everyone!