Natural living. Healthy eating. Attempted gardening.
This post may include affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I’ll earn a small fee at no extra cost to you.Did you know that you need special soil for starting seeds? While you might think you could just scoop up some dirt from your garden to start your seeds, that’s not a good idea. Why? Because your garden soil could have fungus! Microbes! Seeds! Pathogens! Bugs! And the seeds
Ahhh, April! Spring is finally here (for those of us in Zone 9 anyway), and it’s time to get our seeds and starts in the ground. Does it seem like winter lasted about 6 million years? It does for me. I can’t wait to get outside and get my hands in the dirt. This planting guide for Zone 9 will give you 12 vegetables you can plant in April for
Imagine, if you will: it’s a beautiful summer day, and you mosey out to the garden after work. It looks wonderful from afar–watermelon, zucchini, tomatoes–everything is growing well and you’re looking forward to a great harvest. Then you get a closer look and gasp in horror. Your precious, precious vegetables, that you’ve loved, cared for, and nurtured since they were seedlings, are covered with teeny bugs of evil–APHIDS. What are
Ok, show of hands. How many of you think that here in California, we put avocado and sprouts on everything we eat? *peers out of computer screen* Just as I suspected…99% of you think we eat sprouts 24/7! We do love our sprouts here in California. I’m not so crazy about the avocados, but that’s a story for another day. Sprouts are delicious on sandwiches, wraps, in salads and stir-fry…even
Making soap using the melt-and-pour method is the easiest way to make homemade soap. It’s especially fun and easy with kids, because you aren’t using caustic lye–that part of the soapmaking process has already been done for you. But how do you know which melt-and-pour soap base to use? A quick Amazon search will give you more than 100 different ones to choose from. Which one should you pick for
Show of hands—who has run frantically to the store at 10pm the night before Easter to grab a couple dozen eggs and some Easter egg dye? Surprised Chicken (who lives with my friends at Pasture Deficit Disorder) can’t figure out how you ran out of eggs in the first place, but that’s another story. Great news! You can dye Easter eggs naturally, with stuff that’s already in your kitchen. You
If you’ve been composting for a while, you know that food scraps and fallen leaves are perfect for the compost pile. (Beginning composters, get the scoop here.) There are some pretty crazy things you can compost that I bet you’ve never considered, though! For compost to decompose correctly, you need about a 30:1 split between “browns” (carbon-heavy materials) and “greens” (nitrogen-heavy materials). Don’t worry about measuring this precisely; just know
Brrr! It’s chilly in March, but the worst of the cold winter weather is over. If you’re itching to get outside in the garden, like me, it’s not too early to plant some spring vegetables. Your first step is to make sure you’re planting the right seeds at the right time. A vegetable planting schedule for your area will help with this. Then check if the soil is warm enough
Let’s say it: Winter is a drag for gardeners. It’s too wet and cold to get out and actually do any gardening, and there isn’t much growing anyway. And you can only read seed catalogs for so long before you go stir crazy! Thank goodness for snow peas, so we can get a little bit of greenery and fresh vegetables even in the coldest parts of winter. Snow peas are
Are you surprised to hear that diffusing essential oils can help relieve stress and anxiety? I was skeptical about this at first. But now that our family has been using oils for several years, I’ve learned through experience that they are useful for our physical health and emotional health. How can plant oils reduce stress? When you smell a fragrance, the scent molecules travel through your nose directly into the
I know, I know…the fancy gardening catalogs will try to convince you that you desperately need a compost tumbler and a bunch of other unnecessary gadgets to make compost. Just say no! It’s easy and inexpensive to make compost without any special tools. Remember, the fancy gardening catalogs are in business to make money. Keep in mind that they charge $159 for a seed starting light that you can make
Grandpa was my gardening advisor for many years. I wish I had written down all the things he told me! One of his best gardening tips was to add compost to the garden every year. Compost is good for the garden because it adds nutrients, helps the soil retain water, and of course it helps you grow bigger vegetables. But if you’ve ever gone to the gardening store to buy
