Nourish and Thrive
A cup of hot chamomile tea is the perfect way to end to any day, as it helps to calm the mind and relax the spirit. I know that I enjoy it most evenings. Beyond its ability to tame frayed nerves, chamomile has many other benefits, both for the garden and for us. I love…
{This post is sponsored by Beesponsible} With the bee population at risk due to overuse of pesticides and other factors, it’s important to plant flowers that bees love – and that aren’t treated with pesticides, of course. Having a little pollinator garden is nice, not only for the bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects, but…
Chives are often one of the first plants to pop up in the springtime and they are a welcome sight after a long and cold winter. I love growing chives for many reasons beyond putting them on a baked potato with sour cream (but that’s an excellent reason to grow them, too!). They are great…
My husband Joel has been making this awesome homemade natural fertilizer for our garden using comfrey, and its been working amazingly well! It’s super easy, too, especially if you have comfrey growing in your garden already. Basically, it’s a simple comfrey tea, or infusion to be exact. Joel wrote this post for us today to…
Violas are one of my favorite flowers, not necessarily because of their beauty, but because of their hardiness and multiple uses. They are an edible flower, which are my favorite kind, like calendula, lavender, and nasturtiums. They also have some medicinal uses. Viola is actually a genus composed of many different species, including pansies, wild…
Oregano is an amazing herb, and definitely one that everyone should have in their backyard herb garden. Not only does it add great flavor to your favorite dishes, it’s also a powerful medicinal herb. Many of the common culinary herbs like rosemary, thyme, and sage also have healing benefits, and do double duty in the…
Growing your own food is one of the most rewarding things that you can do, whether you have a large homestead on many acres or a small backyard lot. Either way, it is well worth the effort to have homegrown produce. It is helpful in many ways to be able to extend the season a…
If you know someone who has a backyard garden, and I’m sure that you do, I have some great gift ideas that they will love! Many of these items are a little different than the normal gardening fare, and some of them even have a bit of a permaculture twist. This gift guide for backyard…
Thyme is on your side, yes it is! Really though, thyme is a wonderful plant, and an herb that everyone should have in their garden. Besides being an awesome culinary herb, thyme also has some powerful medicinal benefits, and it’s great for the bees. Thyme is a hardy perennial that doesn’t take a whole lot…
In many instances, saving seeds is pretty easy. Cut open a butternut squash, scoop out the seeds, put a few on a paper towel to dry, and there you go. With some veggies, like zucchini and cucumbers, you need to let a few get pretty big – bigger than you’d want to eat, so that…
Lavender is one of the more common garden and backyard flowers, and for good reason. It has so many uses and benefits! I have to admit that lavender is one of my very favorite flowers. It doesn’t take a whole lot of care, looks gorgeous, and is something that I use quite frequently for numerous…
Mint has a bad reputation for taking over the garden, for good reason. But, there are many reasons to grow mint in your backyard without fear! Even though mint is a highly beneficial plant, due to its spreading nature, many of us opt to just go without it all together. The problem with doing this…
Nasturtiums are a plant that every gardener should consider growing. Besides their beauty, nasturtiums are also edible, medicinal, and are great for companion planting in your garden. On the California coast they have naturalized, and you can often find large patches of them growing wild. I have always been amazed by this, and I wonder…
I was so happy when we moved into our new house and the backyard was covered in calendula! I use this flower in so many of my herbal preparations because it’s a wonder plant, full of so many benefits. Calendula is a plant that everyone should have in their yard, for multiple reasons. First and…
It’s that time of year when those of us with the gardening bug find extreme pleasure in pouring over seed catalogs. I must admit it’s one of my favorite winter pastimes. In fact, as I write this, we are having a gorgeous spring like day that is making me so excited to get out and…
To me, rosemary is a given. What I mean by that is, whatever life gives me and wherever I end up, I will always have rosemary. While thyme and sage are also amazing perennial herbs with multiple uses, for some reason I have a special fondness for rosemary. It may have started in my early…
I can’t even believe it’s almost winter already, but here we are. While it’s not technically winter yet, it has been quite cold in our neck of the woods, and it’s supposed to stay that way for a little while. Over the past several weeks we’ve cleaned up the garden, harvested what we could, and…
I don’t know about you guys, but I love sage. The sage in our garden has flourished throughout the year, and has really become a beauty this fall. Maybe that is why it has become the quintessential fall herb, although it could also be because it goes so well with Thanksgiving dishes. What I love…
We lucked into a raspberry patch at our place, that much is for sure. Such a welcome surprise to discover! Not only has it given us wonderful berries for the past couple of months, but it has also provided us with medicinal leaves that we have been drying and storing for use throughout the coming…
Hello my gardening friends! As I alluded to in my recent updates post, I have a really cool project to share with you today. If you’ve been reading my blog for a little while then you know that I’m big into permaculture, and my husband Joel is even more so than me. He has taken…
If you’ve done any reading on the subject of permaculture, then you have for sure heard of comfrey. This plant has become the permaculturists darling for good reason, as it has a multitude of benefits including, but not limited to, natural fertilizer, dynamic accumulator, living mulch, companion plant, compost activator, and numerous medicinal uses. Unfortunately…
Hello! As you may have seen in my Updates and Recent Happenings: Costa Rica! post, Joel and I have recently returned from the wonderful Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. Even though we were there on our honeymoon, we still couldn’t resist the urge to learn as much as possible about all of the awesome tropical…
Grow Food Not Lawns! This is my new mantra. While lawns can be nice for playing soccer, rolling around on, or as a place for your dog to poop (don’t roll on it after that), all of those tasks can be done elsewhere. Beyond that, with the drought that we’re having out west, why would…
When is the last time you ate a potato? I bet it was somewhat recently. I have to admit that, even though it’s unusual for me, I had a handful of potato chips this afternoon! Not the healthiest option, but sometimes that’s how life goes. But, the real question is, have you ever had a…
This is Part 3 in our Permaculture 101 series: What is a Forest Garden? Check out Part 1: The Basics and Part 2: Zones for more permaculture ideas! This post is so exciting to me because having a forest garden is my dream for the future. I know it will happen in the coming years…
This is Part 2 in our Permaculture 101 series, check out Part 1: The Basics and Part 3: Forest Gardens! Here we are, on to the second part of our Permaculture series. This one is all about the different zones in a Permaculture landscape, and how you should try (as best as possible) to design…
This is Part 1 in our Permaculture 101 series, check out Part 2: Zones and Part 3: Forest Gardens! I’m sure many of you have wondered, “What is this Permaculture I’ve been hearing about, anyways?” It’s a good question and today I’m going to hand this topic over to Joel (my other half) who has…
This is Part 3 in my Grow in Winter Series, check out Part 1: Herbs! and Part 2: Sprouts! Ok, two small posts in one today. We’re going to regrow veggies and order seeds! First off, I’m going to show you something that you may have seen before, but I think that it’s so cool! …
When there’s not a lot of fresh produce coming out of your garden in these colder months, it’s time to grow right in your own kitchen! Today I’m going to show you how to grow sprouts, the ultimate hippie food for good reason with their extremely high nutritional content. I am seriously excited about this…
This is Part 1 in my Grow in Winter series, check out Part 2: Sprouts and Part 3: Regrow Veggies and Order Seeds! Ok, so since I’m still learning (this blogging thing is no joke!) I’m going to make this easy on all of us. This post will be more about inspiration rather than learning…