I was so happy when we moved into our house and discovered that the backyard was covered in calendula flowers! 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….
Grow
Growing your own food and medicine is one of the most rewarding and self sufficient things you can do for yourself and your family! I’m here to help you learn the benefits of growing your own vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers, and how to get started.
You will also find information on permaculture, forest gardens, and other regenerative gardening techniques.
How to Choose the Right Seeds for Your Garden
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…
The Many Uses of Rosemary
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…
5 Ways to Protect Potted Plants in Winter
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…
How to Grow, Harvest, and Cook with Fresh Sage
I don’t know about you, 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. Here is how to…
Growing and Foraging for Raspberries (and their leaves!)
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…
How to Build a Permaculture Swale Planting Bed
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…
Growing and Foraging for Lemon Balm
You have probably seen lemon balm growing whether you knew it or not. In the mint family, lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is a perennial herb that spreads rapidly and has become a fairly common “wild” plant. When I’m out foraging and I see what looks like a plant in the mint family it is more…
Growing and Foraging for Comfrey
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…
Tropical Permaculture
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…
