Category Archives: Garden

Anything from any garden.

Planting Nasturtiums

Garden, Organic

DSC01815 There were forty-five nasturtium seeds in this packet, which said to file each seed, so I did.  One of the main reasons I wanted to plant nasturtiums was because they help to control certain garden pests.  We are doing organic gardening.  According to The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, by Edward C. Smith, nasturtiums discourage squash bugs and whiteflies, so I planted some individual seed next to the freshly planted cucumbers and eggplant,  near each of our three citrus trees, as well as next to carrots and cabbage in the main kitchen garden.

On the Burpee website, it said that nasturtiums have whiteflies as one of their several possible pests.  I can speculate that there is no contradiction, but I will watch and see what happens here.

I had never paid so much attention to planting individual seeds as I did today with the nasturtium planting.  I filed each seed, and soaked them in water for a couple of hours before planting each in its own, well-spaced little hole, the locations of which I only approximately know.  I am hoping to be able to recognize them when they come up by way of them not looking like weeds, and by these approximate locations.

Southwest Kitchen Garden Bed Planted on February 21, 2014

Flowers, Garden, Kitchen, , , , , ,

DSC01801 All the weeds are pulled from this bed.  We had landscape fabric under some mulch, which had been overtaken with weeds and grass. Then I dug it up in most places,  amended the soil with a bag of garden soil, raked it, and planted it with the vegetables  okra, cucumbers, and eggplant.  These plants, which “fruit” in the botanical sense, should be quite safe to eat from the lead point of view, because of the triple barriers to any lead from soil to the “fruit”.

  1. The soil to root barrier
  2. The root to stem barrier
  3. The stem to fruit barrier

Besides that the soil had been replaced after we had painted our house the first time.

Additionally, because there was a lot of space between the vegetable plantings, I sowed some flowers, blue bonnets, lavender, and some nasturtiums among vegetables and each other.  I hope I will be able to distinguish most of the seedlings as they emerge, because there were a lot of weed roots that I could not completely remove.  After the sowing was done, I applied some of the plantain and stick mulch, as much as I could, and watered it well.

A Satisfying Book Find

Garden, Herbs, ,

DSC01797 I found this little treasure of a book in an antique store, and purchased it.  A few thousand copies were published in 1992, 1993, and 1994.  The author, originally from Michigan, lived in East Texas for awhile.

DSC01798  I was extremely happy that I had purchased it, because it contains many unusual culinary recipes with herbs (even sorrel, an herb, vegetable which we have recently had a hard time locating), and edible flowers (for example Stuffed Squash Flowers).  It also contains ways to cultivate the herbs including  sorrel.   It also tells which herbs are annual and which are perennial.

DSC01799 Written by this lady, the book contains quite a few uses of herbs for health.  For example, did you know that dill tea can help hiccups?  In Hungary, they use caraway tea for this purpose to help a hiccuping infant.

This book will be a useful resource for our kitchen garden.