urban-horticulture

http://www.conservatoryofflowers.org/atconservatory/wicked2011

It was Christian and Bob’s gaming day.  Yes, you read correctly.  A day in which Bob comes over in the morning and they game till the next morning.  It gets competitive and there’s lots of friendly jabs that go back and forth.  I don’t game with them, however, I do add a curve ball by jumping in front of the sensor to mess up their game.  It’s pretty funny.

Back to food and culinary herbs…  We all got pretty hungry and I decided to whip up some spaghetti and meatballs with red sauce.  I made my sauce with:

• tomato sauce
• garlic
• fresh sprigs of rosemary
• fresh mint leaves
• salt & a dash of sugar

The sauce gave off such a beautiful aroma in the house.  Appetites perked up and we all sat down to eat.  The mint flavor was definitely noticeable, but not offensive to picky palates.  If it were just me, I would have added much more garlic (enough to regret in a few hours).  All in all, this ended being a nice sauce I created.

It was Christian and Bob’s gaming day. Yes, you read correctly. A day in which Bob comes over in the morning and they game till the next morning. It gets competitive and there’s lots of friendly jabs that go back and forth. I don’t game with them, however, I do add a curve ball by jumping in front of the sensor to mess up their game. It’s pretty funny.

Back to food and culinary herbs… We all got pretty hungry and I decided to whip up some spaghetti and meatballs with red sauce. I made my sauce with:

• tomato sauce
• garlic
• fresh sprigs of rosemary
• fresh mint leaves
• salt & a dash of sugar

The sauce gave off such a beautiful aroma in the house. Appetites perked up and we all sat down to eat. The mint flavor was definitely noticeable, but not offensive to picky palates. If it were just me, I would have added much more garlic (enough to regret in a few hours). All in all, this ended being a nice sauce I created.

The strawberries are taking a bit long to grow.  I suppose I have taken granted how long it takes to cultivate fruits from nature since I’m used to eating bowls of fruit at a time, having bought it at the store.  Next year I’ll definitely start off the season planting many more plants so I can harvest more fruit.  Since I planted only 3 this year, I can easily see myself planting 10 times more.  The plants stay pretty small so they will be easy to manage.

Per Sara at www.SuperHerbs.net,  “Fragaria vesca is a cousin of the wild strawberry. It is found in woods and grasslands in Europe, western Asia, North America, and temperate areas in Chile. The word straw in strawberry comes from the verb tostrew, referring to the tangle of vines with which the plant covers the ground. Cultivated strawberries were developed from the wild ones.

Harvest and Use: The berries, leaves, and roots of Fragaria vesca have all been used medicinally in the past. The root was once a popular household remedy for diarrhea and the stalks for wounds. Antioxidantproperties have recently been discovered in the fruit, making them a valuable preventive for cancer. The leaves are gently astringent. You can make a tea with the leaves for diarrhea, digestive upsets, and to stimulate the appetite. Also, combine the leaves with St. John’s wort and meadowsweet for mild arthritic pain and with celery seed for gout. Crushed berries make an emergency treatment for mild sunburn. Eat them for gastritis and as a liver tonic. Strawberry juice has antibacterial properties and was once used to fight typhoid epidemics. You can steep the berries in wine to take as a remedy for “reviving the spirits and making the hart merrie.” I leave it to you to decide if it’s the berries or the wine that makes the “hart merrie.”

As a culinary, the leaves can be added to herbal teas for flavor. They are a good source of vitamin C. The fruit is delicious all by itself, can be added to summer drinks, or made into jams and syrup. Alpine strawberries are a natural bleach. Crush the fruit and mix it with baking soda to make a toothpaste for stained teeth. Drinking tea made from the leaves will do the same. Another remedy for discolored teeth applies the crushed fruit to the teeth and leaves it on for five minutes. The crushed berry can also be applied to skin blemishes and liver spots as a natural bleach to whiten skin.

Harvest the berries as soon as they ripen. Gather leaves throughout the season. They can be used fresh or dried”

Salad Tables and Salad Boxes.

I saw these Salad Tables on Martha Stewart’s show.  They look like the perfect way to grow your own salad greens if you have a sunny spot on your patio.  I have created my own salad table at home.  Instead of building my salad table with wood, I bought a plastic storage bin and drilled holes in it and put it on a plastic tool shelf.  Since plastic is very durable, it’s done just great over the winter.

Garden Table

These storage bins can be found anywhere (Target, Orchard Supply, or Home Depot).  What’s fantastic about these bins is that they come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and even colours.  Just drill the bottoms with an electric screw driver with the thickest drill bit you can find so that the holes are sizeable and functional to water drainage.  Holes about the size of 1 cm or less than 0.5 inches are preferable.  This setup gave me instant gratification because I felt like I built my own little farm.  I could grow salad on a larger scale that made sense for regular consumption.  For some reason I couldn’t get my spinach, mesculin, and okra to grow successfully.  Next time I plant seeds, I will try moving the salad table to a sunnier location of my patio.

Here is my very own salad table:

Salad table for the carpentering disabled

Alpine Strawberrries Planted

Today I planted 3 Alpine Strawberry plants I had gotten a month ago.  There are some itty bitty strawberries on them already.  The instructions say that the plants will bear fruit in about 60 days of planting.  The Alpine Strawberry requires at least 6 hours of daily sun.  I will give you updates on the progress of this plant in a few weeks.

I got a new Black Moor goldfish yesterday and snapped this pic in the morning. So far neither Kiwi nor Cashew are paying much attention to Aretha. Let’s hope they can coexist peacefully!

I got a new Black Moor goldfish yesterday and snapped this pic in the morning. So far neither Kiwi nor Cashew are paying much attention to Aretha. Let’s hope they can coexist peacefully!

I spoke with Christine last night and she alerted me to the possibility that my “Improved Meyer” lemon tree might not be a dwarf tree.  After doing research and reading up on the Meyer tree on Widipedia, I found out that Four Winds Growers played a signicant part in the creation of this variety.  I called up the nursery and was guided to the answer by identifying the graft.  There were no elbow shaped grafts located on the plant, so thus we deduced this was a dwarf tree.  Whew!

Karen at Four Winds Growers pointed me to the following link for more information on their history.

History – Dwarf Citrus Trees – Four Winds Growers.

Citronella

It’s difficult to see, but there are no flowers or lemons on it just yet.  I had taken this shot with my iPhone so unfortunately we can’t enlarge the picture.  This spot ended up being too shady and I had to move the tree out into the full sun.  Citrus trees love lots of sun and water.  Watering every other day is definitely not excessive.  Good drainage, however, is important.