Sunflower seed harvesting

This past year I decided to grow some new varieties of sunflower and the Valentine variety turned out to be my most favorite. They were amazing in all of the flower arrangements that I threw together. Even by themselves they looked beautiful. 

I made sure to harvest the seeds from these as I plan on growing more next year. I learned a few things about collecting the seeds and making it much easier to clean than previous years. I decided to cut all the sharp pokey edges off first so that when they dried, they were easier on the hands once these are completely dried up. After they are dried, I just popped out the seeds using a sharp tool and then labeled and stored them for next year.

For growing placement this year, I added a few of the plants in the corners of the vegetable and flower beds just to see what would happen. I really had no idea how tall they would get but they were perfect size in the flower beds only reaching about 4 feet tall. I like to intermix flowers among the vegetables as it attracts more of the beneficial insects to the garden and also helps with pollination and just looks amazing having flowers spill out of the edges of the boxes.

It’s interesting because the sunflowers that I planted along the fenceline turned out to be much taller than the ones that I planted in the raised beds and were about 2 feet taller. Im not sure why that was. Maybe the larger plants were able to get more nutrients along the fence as they had tons of native soil to grow into. Sounds like that could be a possibility. It’s a pretty good guess. I posted a short video of my sunflower seed harvest below, starting in September and I continued harvesting the sunflower heads into October.

September 2,

Homemade Herbal Teas

One of the most rewarding discoveries that I have made recently is the ability to be able to make my own herbal teas and gear them towards my personal needs. 

I don’t have any idea how many people share similar issues as me but my main struggle is getting enough sleep on a daily basis. Getting a restful nights sleep is so important to me. Yes there are other things like boosting my immune and detoxing that are important as well but the most important thing for me currently is sleep. 

I first started researching growing my own herbs a few years ago when I began purchasing a lot of teas from my local grocery store and online. I realized how much money I was spending on them so I began paying closer attention to the listed ingredients on the box and researched whether I could grown them myself and where to purchase seeds.

The first two herbs that I tried growing was Holy Basil and Lemongrass. Not for sleep but mostly for overall health and relaxation. Both of them are annuals so I would need to replant each year, which I don’t mind, as I later found they both are very easy to start from seed indoors. 

After I had success with growing those, I started looking into growing more herbs, like Valerian root and Skullcap. I had success growing both but later decided that skullcap had too many possible side effects so I decided it’s just pretty grown as a flower and don’t currently use it in any of my teas. Ive always had a love for chamomile tea and this seemed like a very simple plant to grow. I have tried growing it for several years and the plants ever seemed to thrive long enough to collect a good amount of blossom from them until this last year. I planted several plants and two of them produced a great amount of blossoms for making tea. 

(The above photos are the holy basil on left and skullcap on the right )

For the holy basil they were easy to harvest, dry and store in glass containers with bamboo lids. I dried them upside down inside for several weeks.  I now have a new dedicated shelf for all my teas as my cabinet is too small for my growing collection now.

(The above photos are harvested lemongrass)

The Pictures below are Valarian plants. Not only are they beautiful, but the blossoms attract all kinds of beneficial insects to the garden as well. The roots harvested and dried and placed into jars.

I found that harvesting Valerian root to be so different than anything that Ive ever done before. I typically have only known herbs to be used for the leaves and blossoms so this was new to me. I did also dig up some dandelion roots recently as well which was very similar but with dandelions you can also use the flowers and the leaves, and I am not familiar with the Valerian plant being used this way. Once digging up the roots I washed them and removed all the dirt before drying them and cutting up the roots for storage. This is time consuming but I really am enjoying the benefits of the tea. It really helps me to get to sleep at night and recently found that this root may also play an importance in relief of some menopausal symptoms which I find so fascinating that an herb can have such a wide range of benefits.

CHAMOMILE

Chamomile flowers are shown below. I am extremely happy with how my plants grew this year and was able to get my first real harvest for making teas. I will try and be more diligent about picking the blossoms on a daily basis as I feel that I could have harvested more if I just took the time in my busy schedule. 

 

Dahlia Storage

Back in October I mentioned briefly that I was planning on digging up my Dahlia tubers for the first time and researching on how to do it. It’s amazing at how much information I found online about storage of Dahlias and it’s been so helpful to find those resources. I did not realize how many Dahlia farmers there are out there who are passionate about gardening and willing to share their knowledge. 

I have learned a ton of gardening tips from others over the years. One thing that has changed how I garden is making more use of the space that I do have to work with. Ive learned that it doesn’t take a ton of space to grow a cutting garden and there are a lot of ways to make better use of space that you may have. For instance I have found that if you are planning on growing a cutting garden that is full of annuals, chances are, that you will be replanting them new each year so you would not need to really worry about overcrowding since it’s for the short term of the current season and typically won’t do much harm. If it were perennials, or even biennials that is an another story and you would want to plant them in a spot with room to spread. Since you will be cutting the annuals a lot you could try and grow them closer than what is recommended providing that you are still allowing for good air circulation. Once I changed this way of looking at things I feel I became better at growing things. I’m still learning all the time and I think that is something that being a gardener is all about. It’s constantly a learning process. 

In this post I will share briefly what I learned about the dividing process of my first Dahlias and what type of storage method I chose. It’s all trial and error as I don’t know how my climate will effect the storage. To make things more complicated, I live in a small 450sq ft apartment and do all of my gardening in a space separate from here. I don’t have a shed or cellar or any type of climate controlled space so my situation is very different than anyone else that I read about. I did search for dahlia farmers in my local area and read their recommendations for storage and since we live in a very dry climate, the storage method they use is using the Saran Wrap method. I read others that used vermiculite and so Im trying a little bit of both. Mine are being stored in a wooden crate under my bed and it stays about 55 degrees in this spot. So far so good. Ive been checking them every couple weeks and they still are nice and chilled and firm and no signs of any rotting. I have a lot of hope for them to survive the winter. It’s currently 41 degrees outside and we are expecting snow very soon. The temps have been in the low 30’s with some mornings down to 18. It took me a week to dig them all up. I worked on half a garden box at a time and only divided what I could handle each evening after work. I brought it all inside on a table at the garden location and washed and sanitized and allowed them to dry for 24 hrs before storing. I labeled them the best that I could. Some are in ziplocs with vermiculite and some are wrapped in plastic. It’s amazing at how much I began with and how small they ended up being after dividing them for storage. What started as a big tangled mess of roots and tubers are now condensed into tiny little packages. I am sharing a few pictures below.

 

Winter Clean up

Today was much warmer out so I decided to do some yard clean up that I did not get a chance to compete this fall. I usually do not wait this long to start, but it has been so cold with temps in the 30’s for the high and it’s been hard for me to want to be out in the cold. I have also had so many other things going on during my weekends off that I haven’t had the time. During the week it is already dark by the time I get home so I am only limited to the weekends for now. I am hoping that the snow holds off for another few weeks so that I can get to the rest of the things I need to get done. 

It’s so hard to believe that the garden was beautiful and green and full of blooms just two months ago. I have not really sat down to plan for the garden next year but I do have a good idea of the plants I want to continue growing. I also have a few new seeds picked out to try. 

  

 

Star lights

 

Larger stars that I made and added lights inside them. They are hanging above my sewing machine. I cut out random patterns on the alternate parts of the points to create some interest and glued some velom to the inside so that the light is diffused. The larger star just has holes punched into the paper using my leather hole punch.                                                            

Yogi Tea Box Paper Stars

Here are the some progress pictures of the paper star that I made tonight. I think it came out nice.

Holiday Projects

During this time of the year I enjoy making handmade gifts and it really varies as to what I might make. When Im not able to work out in the garden I find other things to do, so I really stay busy. This year I am learning to macrame which I am finding is much harder than I imagined. I am going to keep at it and hope that I improve. I have also begun making some crochet hats as well and realizing that I only know the simple stitches and I would really like to learn some new stitches that involve more of a knitted look. Currently I am making hats that involve just the single crochet and half double crochet. The reason for this, is that it is very simple and I can make a hat really fast with those stitches but the downfall is that I am not pushing myself to learn the things that I would really feel most accomplished in creating. This is something I will be working on as I am more attracted to the more delicate designs.  

I decided that I will be making more paper stars this year as well. They are beautiful and very inexpensive to make. They make great gifts to hang on the outside of packages or just individually. I like to make several of them in different sizes so they can be enjoyed hanging in groups. I have several hanging from my ceiling and I just love them. I made them from a brown paper stock last year but they can be made in many colors. I have a new idea that I am trying in the next few days which I will share when they are completed. I am planning on using the insides of some paper tea boxes by Yogi tea and see how that works. I drink a lot of Yogi teas and have been collecting the boxes for a purpose. The inside designs are so unique and I’ve always thought it would be fun to make something out of them. I think some paper stars would be the perfect project to try it with. Hopefully some pictures will be posted soon :)

Learning Macrame

This morning I planned on getting up first thing to start my new project early with coffee and then go for a walk later when it warmed up, but I had the opportunity to walk with one of my friends, so I skipped the early morning macrame and went out instead. I am so glad that I did, it was great! Here is a scene from the walk. The fall colors are just amazing and hearing the water in this steam was a treat. We made it back before the rain started. 

When I returned I began working on my new macrame project, I am working on learning this new skill. I found a beautiful book and treated myself to it and I am planning on making some gifts for my family. When I was a young girl my mother made a kitchen curtain out of macrame and today I look at that in amazement because it was so much work. She really put her heart into it and it was a gift for our family kitchen. So, with that thought in mind, I hope that I do good. I ordered my threads and started preparing them cutting the strips first and today I have been learning

 a few knots. I intend to made a wall plant hanger because it looks like the simplest one to start with. Here are some pictures of my progress. 

It is definitely not as easy as I thought it would be but I think I am getting the hang of it. 

   

Inspiration from the Garden

While organizing my art space, I found this unfinished garden wall hanging that I started in 2005. The concept of this was to use some recycled elements, and I chose recycled dryer sheets which I washed and dyed with paints and cut them into shapes and fused them to a fabric base with an iron. I did some machine sewing using random patterns in the background and helping affix all the materials together, adding dimension and started to attach glass beads in some areas, along with some heavier embroidery thread that I used to make more details in the flower centers. Once I get to feeling creative again, I might be inspired to complete this now since it really makes me think of the garden space that I created this summer. It’s almost a glimpse into my future back then if I really think about it. All of the sunflowers, zinnia and Dahlias that grew this year are magically in this painting. 

Many years ago I belonged to a local art quilting group and one of my favorite things that we did was to challenge each other to complete projects and had a mind set of anything goes where there were no rules and that is how I discovered this unusual technique as I was challenging myself to do something different and just have fun and play experimenting with different mediums. I felt that I was always the odd one in the group because I used a lot of non traditional fabrics and leather. I enjoyed also belonging to a group that used traditional fabrics as well since it held me to see both sides and helped me with my confidence in trying something new.

      

Planting Fall Bulbs

This is a very busy weekend with plans to dig up my larger Dahlia tubers and store them today. Yesterday I planted about 100 bulbs for spring in a mixture of many colorful tulips as well as some peony variety tulips and a unique mix of daffodils along the fence in the picture below. This is my first time planting bulbs so I am hoping that I did everything right. It was easier to plant them than I thought though and glad that it is done. Something else that I did was to dig up two dahlias that I planted from seed in the spring and they actually have little tubers so I am excited about that as well. I don’t know if I did this right but I did experiment with dividing the two and now I have six new plants. I am hoping that they survive and don’t shrivel us because they are pretty tiny. Today I will be digging up the other Dahlias that I have. I  actually a little nervous about it as I have never done it before.

 

Collecting seeds

For the last few weeks I have been collecting seeds from the garden. This is one of my favorite things to do. The organizing is not may favorite part but the collecting part is very calming to me. It just amazes me that a tiny seed can create such a beautiful display. This year I have a lot of new seed varieties that I am saving. In the past it has been mainly sunflowers and cosmos but I have so many new flowers that I added this year, so I have many more to add to my collection. I am also trying something else that is new and that is collecting some Dahlia seeds from my garden. I’ve learned a lot about Dahlias this year. I am fascinated at the fact that a seed from a flower can produce a new variety and is not like the mother plant. I think everything about this flower is mind blowing actually and I am excited to learn more as my gardening experience grows.