Gift Wrap from Nature & the Recycling Bin!

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Getting Creative With Nature

by Sandy Swegel

As always, necessity spurs creativity in my life. I had a party to go to last night and needed to wrap a simple gift, but had no wrapping paper much less any of those easy gift bags in the house.  Even though I love a nicely wrapped gift, I’m really cheap when it comes to buying wrapping paper, but wrapping gifts in newspaper comics is so 1970s that I can’t make myself do it anymore.

So in a panic, I headed out to the recycling bin where I found the box to put the gift in and some brown packing paper to use as a wrap.  The recycling bins happen to be next to the ancient spruce tree, so I pulled out my pruners and cut off some low little branches to use as a “bow.”  I thought I’d have to use a pine cone, but the cotoneasters had some great berries so another snip-snip and I had a red accent piece.  Jute twine from the junk drawer, a curl of orange rind from the compost and a couple of twistie ties later, I had a beautifully wrapped gift and it didn’t cost a penny, except for the stress of scurrying for a last-minute wrap.

You can do this even more artfully and gracefully if you plan a bit.  Keep a neighborhood mental map of where you can “forage” decorations from shrubs with berries, or soft cedar trees. Twigs and sticks work great too.  In a pinch, walnuts from the kitchen or even a tangerine make an edible wrap.  To my surprise, I got more praise for the wrapping than for the gift!

There are zillions of internet image ideas for “gift wrap” from nature.  If you live someplace warm, you can even follow the example of blogger Justina Blakeney and use big tropical leaves for the wrapping paper.

Photo Credits: http://blog.justinablakeney.com/2011/11/nature-wraps-diy-green-gift-wrap-for-the-holidays.htmlhttp://www.corinnavangerwen.com/2011/10/15/green-gift-wrapping-workshop/

A Gift for Wild Animals

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What to Give all the Animals in Your Life
by Sandy Swegel

After the first big cold snow of the season, I find myself drinking coffee next to the window, captivated by the Wild Kingdom drama of the outdoors…watching the many different kinds of birds foraging or lurking near the bird feeder waiting their turn, or hearing the rustling of unknown small furry creatures in the garden debris.

The best gift for wild animals is a heated bird bath.  I might even put two out, one on the deck rail for the birds and one on the ground in a wild area for all the other thirsty creatures…rabbits, squirrels and even the field mice. When it’s super cold like it is now, snow doesn’t melt and there are no natural water sources near my house.  Maybe a water source will keep the squirrels from eating holes in my irrigation pipes.

Holiday Shopping List for all the Animals in Your Life

Dogs:  Plump baby carrots are the gift of choice for my dogs.   I had to fence off the main garden from their enthusiastic digging, but I leave an area of little round carrots and beets for them to “discover.” Cats:   Catnip of course. Don’t waste your time on anything else. Chickens:  Swiss Chard is my chickens’ most favorite food. I think they like its natural saltiness. I throw bags of dried leaves on the garden bed as insulation just so I can harvest some greens from under the bags all winter. Wild birds:  Sunflower Seeds naturally…and any seeds. I discovered dozens of little birds the other day in the snow in a patch of lambsquarter and tall weeds that I had foolishly allowed to go to seed. Bees:  Wildflower seeds of course. Rabbits:  A wild clover patch, anything green. Field Mice:  Any seeds left to fall on the ground.  Overgrown zucchini and pumpkins left to rot. Squirrels:  Pumpkins.  The Halloween pumpkin left out is the perfect squirrel buffet. Owls, hawks:  Any of the above-mentioned seeds left in the garden bring the mice and voles and other rodents that are the perfect gift for the birds of prey.  The rodents double as gifts for the snakes. Soil microbes: What else but moo poo tea is the ideal gift for the soil Earthworms:  Make them a compost pile.  And forget to harvest some of the root vegetables. As the vegetables decompose in place in early spring, hundreds of hungry earthworms show up for the feast. Humans:  All the vegetables are the perfect gift of health and vitality for the humans in your life, especially when packaged with the love you grew them with.

I wish to all this Winter:  abundant food and water and a warm place for all good creatures.

Photo Credit:

http://birdsandbloomsblog.com/2013/11/09/winter-bird-bath-tips/

http://dipperanch.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-last-purple-rattlesnake.html

One Reason to Weed Right Now!

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Preparing for the Gardner’s Rest

by Sandy Swegel

It’s the week after Thanksgiving and the beginning of a month of serious holiday celebrations. In Colorado, night temperatures are getting colder…my compost pile freezes at night.  I’ve given all the garden and especially the trees a good watering and turned off the irrigation system.  It is time for our well-earned winter rest. Even if you are in a warmer climate, it’s a good time to take a good winter rest.  People are thinking about festivities…not whether your garden is in perfect condition.  All of nature has cycles of dormancy where nature just takes a rest.  It’s the gardener’s turn to do that now.

I did see in the news one reason when it is absolutely essential to do some weeding if you have this problem.  A young toddler in China had to go to the doctor because a dandelion seed had flown into her ear and germinated.  It was starting to grow.  That’s about the only good reason I can figure to weed in December.  Otherwise, it’s time to sit back and enjoy the beauty and the bounty as we like to say at BBB Seed.

There is one other gardening-related task I do in December.  It’s time to try to recover the poor gardener’s overworked body. It is no longer OK to have dirt under my nails and cracked fingers and dirty feet from spending all my time working in the garden.  It takes a bit of effort, but you can heal those cracks in your fingers in time for holiday parties.  So use those gritty soaps and herbal lotions and get cleaned up and re-moisturized.  It’s the season to enjoy and celebrate. You deserve it. It’s been a good year.

Save the Monarch Butterfly!

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Doing Your Part to Save Nature

by Sandy Swegel

The big nature news this week was an article in the New York Times that 2013 is the first year anyone remembers that the monarchs didn’t appear in the central forests of Mexico for the Day of the Dead. It’s part of the cultural tradition there that the annual migration of monarchs to their winter home in the mountains of Mexico represents the souls of the dead.  Last year scientists were worried when only 60 million monarchs came back to Mexico, but this year a paltry 3 million struggled in weeks late.

A primary cause of the monarch’s disappearance is the destruction of milkweed in the Midwest, the monarch’s only food. Native habitat in which milkweed thrives has been destroyed as prairie turns to endless mono-crops of Roundup-drenched fields of corn.  There are other factors such as massive deforestation in Mexico and the transition of prairie land to suburbia. But no milkweed means the monarch starves.

It’s interesting that the New York Times has been a big supporter of the monarch.  This was the third article in the last year in which they have featured the decline of the monarch. They have seen the writing on the wall.

What can you do?  Keep up the usual things you do opposing GMO crops that rely on Roundup to wipe out all native “weeds.”  There’s political action work to reduce the corn subsidies that make Roundup profitable.  But as a gardener, you can plant some milkweed and other native plants that will feed the many native pollinators in dramatic decline.  The monarch might be the prettiest most dramatic victim of our prairie destruction, but there are many others.  Gardeners understand the delicate web of life that depends on native habitat.  Tell your friends.

New York Times on the Monarch: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sunday-review/the-year-the-monarch-didnt-appear.html?_r=0http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/monarchs-fight-for-their-lives.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/science/earth/monarch-migration-plunges-to-lowest-level-in-decades.html

Photo Credit:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/science/12butterfly.html?pagewanted=all

Plant Some Garlic!

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Tips for Planting Garlic

by Sandy Swegel

A foot or two of snow on the garden may make it seem like the gardening season is over, but if your ground isn’t frozen yet, there’s still time to plant some garlic.  Fall is the best time to plant garlic (which needs a cooling cycle before growing) and even though it seems like winter already, the garlic will do a lot of root growth before the soil freezes.

Garlic is super easy to grow.  If you have garden soil that’s already in decent condition, you can be finished in less than an hour.

Get your garlic, preferably garlic sold for planting or organic garlic from the grocery.  There’s a chance that non-organic garlic has been treated to prevent sprouting in the supermarket….which would mean no sprouting or growing in the field.

Take your head of garlic and split it into cloves. Big cloves are better….they make bigger plants.

You’re already half done….that’s how easy garlic is.

Plant garlic 6 inches apart. Plant in a grid, not just a single line.  My beds that had lettuce until hard frost are three feet across so I plant in a grid…five cloves the width of the bed and then as long as my row has space.  I just had four feet available….so that’s 40 cloves of garlic that will equal 40 heads of garlic next June.

My soil is wet from two weeks of early snows, so I didn’t do a lot of digging because I didn’t want to ruin the soil texture (i.e. dig up clumps of clay).  I just took my yardstick to make a straight line and poked 40 holes the depth of my index finger.  Then I dropped a clove, pointed side up, in each hole. Press the soil closed around and over the hole. Done.

The two most useful tips that I learned from our local garlic expert Karen Beeman of WeeBee Farms is:

1. Put 2-4 inches of grass or hay (non-pesticide treated of course) as a mulch over the soil. It helps with protection from drying winds and cold.

2. Water very thoroughly, especially if you’re in a dry climate.  I don’t mean just stand there with a hose.  Put a sprinkler on the area and drench it thoroughly.  Or arrange an all-day rainstorm that puts a couple of inches of moisture into the soil.  I didn’t water the garlic in so much thinking winter snow would be enough, but my heads were pretty puny at harvest.  The cloves didn’t get growing soon enough in soil that was parched from a long hot summer.

There, you’re done for this season. You can harvest some scapes in spring and your fully grown garlic next June or July.

Not bad for an hour (or less) work today!

For more tips from Karen: http://weebeefarms.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-plant-garlic.html

Garlic-love Picture: http://lipmag.com/food-2/healthy-bytes-goodness-of-garlic/

Which Foods are GMOs, Anyway?

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Detecting These Foods and How to Avoid Them

by Sandy Swegel

We read a lot about GMO foods, but a recent reader question made me think about how little I know about which foods are genetically modified when I go shopping. I know I can avoid GMOs by eating only organic foods, but once I stray from the organic aisle, I’m going to run into the approximately 30,000 genetically modified products that are on grocery shelves. Where are those GMOs hiding?

Most of the GMO foods in the US are foods that are ingredients in other foods.  The top GMOs are corn, soy, cottonseed, milk, sugar beets and aspartame.

The bottom line is:

If your food is sweet, there’s likely a GMO involved. Sugar beets are common GMO products and the source for most granular sugar in the USA. Liquid sugar like high fructose corn syrup is made from corn and is often GMO.  Even if you go the artificial sweetener route, aspartame is often GMO. If your food is sweetened, whether, soda, juice, cookies or candy, GMOs probably are ingredients.

If your food is a protein, there’s a good chance GMOs are involved. Soy proteins are everywhere boosting protein content and 95% of US soy is GMO.  If you are eating beef or eggs, it’s likely the animals were fed GMO corn.  I paid extra for nice local eggs until I found out that standard chicken feed from the feed store was made of GMO corn.  GMO corn and alfalfa also fatten up your cows and pigs that produce beef and pork. And now that most fish are “farmed,” the most common food they live on is corn.  All those protein drinks and “smoothies” we love are GMO soy based.

If your food has a thick texture, GMOs could be helping.  The ubiquitous lecithin is made from GMO soy. Lecithin and beet sugar are prime ingredients in favorites like yogurt and ice cream.  GMO cottonseed oil and canola oil are common ingredients used in margarine, salad dressing or for frying potato chips and processed food. GM synthetic hormone rBGH is found in milk products unless they are labeled “no rBGH.”

The bottom line?  Eat like your great-grandparents.  Grow your own food when you can.  Buy organic vegetables and fruits when you shop. Get grass fed meats and wild caught fish.  And don’t waste your money on all those processed foods that aren’t real food anyway.

Sources: http://action.greenamerica.org/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=7608&gclid=CPm7q7Giy7oCFU1gMgod0DkArQ

Photo Credit: http://paleodesserts.com/avoiding-gmos-heres-how/

When the Garden Stops Making Free Food!

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Heirloom Vegetable Seeds
by Sandy Swegel

The hard freeze is upon us here in Colorado.  We’re scurrying to save and process the last of the harvest.  Counters are full of green tomatoes. Winter squash line the shelves of the mudroom. But fresh organic food coming in from the garden is dwindling.  The time of buckets of lemon cucumbers in the walkway is over. (How does that plant produce so much fruit?) Despite good intentions of growing most of our own food, it is time to return to regular shopping at the grocery store when the garden stops making free food.

Paying for food after getting all those zucchinis for free all summer can be a little depressing—especially if you end up paying $1.50 for a tiny little zucchini. For a while, I thought I was just getting old and turning into my Depression-baby grandmother who always complained about things being so expensive.  Even though she had money in the bank and a good social security check coming, later in life she took to having just two little chicken wings for dinner. That’s what I felt like going shopping this week as I bought just one onion, one squash and two pears when I went shopping.  Prices seemed so high.

Turns out prices really are high.  It’s not reported much on the news, but the cost of living is increasing and food prices are worse than the general economy. Since 2006, the consumer price index has risen 14% but the price of food has gone up 20% in the past six years.  Ouch.

So what do you do?  Besides planting even more vegetables and fruit next year, you have to watch what you buy. And you need to remember to keep buying organic produce even though it is relatively more expensive.

Prices are higher now than when you bought groceries last winter. But don’t compensate by eating pesticide-contaminated food.  The Environmental Working Group puts out a list every year of the foods that have the most pesticides even after they have been thoroughly washed.  They call the worst ones the “Dirty Dozen.”  Most of our staple foods are on the dirty list:  apples, celery, kale (!), cucumbers, and zucchini.  If you do have to save money this winter and buying non-organic food seems the only way to go, at least choose foods least likely to be full of pesticides…the items on their “Clean Fifteen” list.

And grow more food next summer!

Dirty Dozen: http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/ Data on food prices:  http://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2013-august/price-inflation-for-food-outpacing-many-other-spending-categories.aspx#.Um5XtvmsgWc

Do Be Bitter

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Why to Grow Your Own Bitters

by Sandy Swegel

One doesn’t often go to a plant lecture and find oneself roaring with laughter, but that’s what happened this month when I went to see Amy Stewart at the Denver Botanic Gardens.  She is a gifted and entertaining writer and her stories about her latest book, The Drunken Botanist, could put her on the late night stand-up comedy stage.  You probably recognize Stewart’s name from previous books on earthworms (The Earth Moved) and flowers (Flower Confidential).  The Drunken Botanist is about the botanical origins of our favorite alcohol beverages. Many of her side stories are about plants as flavorings and medicines and I was intrigued by many of her ideas about bitters.

Bitter flavors and foods are coming back into favor after our long consumptive love affair with sugar.  Sweet is great, but bitter flavors stimulate the digestive system and offer depth and intensity to our foods and drinks.

Traditionally, we get our bitters at the beginning or the end of our meals. Amy Stewart starts her salads with an arugula-baby green mix and then adds leaves of other bitter greens and herbs to create a culinary digestive treat. Being a drunken botanist, she also likes to end her meals with bitter aperitifs like Campari or herbal liqueurs or drinks with Angostura bitters which are made from gentian root.

As you’re planning next year’s garden, be sure to include a range of bitters that are easy to grow. Chicory, dandelion, arugula, radicchio, and endive are excellent wildish greens that can be part of salads before meals.  Some bitter herbs you can snip into your salads include yarrow, rue, chamomile and peppermint. It may be just accidental, but many bitter leaves are also colorful (radicchio) or interestingly shaped (arugula). We must whet our appetite with our eyes as well as with bitter flavors.

In Amy’s honor, I served after-dinner drinks of soda water with splashes of bitter liquors. While toasting friends, I remembered that in another time, the enthusiastic toast “to your health” or “a votre sante” wasn’t just a good wish, but really described the medicinal benefit of a good bitter drink.

Amy Stewart’s webpage: http://drunkenbotanist.com/

If you want to learn more about the medicinal value of bitters as a digestive aid and even protector against diabetes and other illnesses, read the Weston Price Institute’s report.  http://www.westonaprice.org/basics/bitters-the-revival-of-a-forgotten-flavor

Photo credit http://the-bitter-truth.com/tag/jerry-thomas-bitters/ http://medcookingalaska.blogspot.com/2009/02/recipe-for-salad-of-bitter-greens-with.html

Season Extenders

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Season Extenders – Protection for the Garden

 

Here in October in zone 5, we have had a couple of snows now so it’s hard to pretend the garden season isn’t over for most of us.  The daytime temperatures are still well above freezing and downright balmy in the 60s at times.  But nighttime temps dip down to the 30s and can ruin vegetables and fruits still on the vine that otherwise might keep growing in warm daytime weather.  It’s too late to sow late-season crops now but there are ways to stretch the growing season for the fall and the spring.

 

For spring:

 

Mini hoop houses are super easy and there are hundreds of DIY plans available.  These make a pocket of air around the new seedlings and keep the soil and air a bit warmer.  These mini hoop houses or low tunnels can give you an extra month of the growing season.  Your seeds will germinate better, you’ll have fewer pests, and vegetables that require less watering.

 

Here is a simple, inexpensive, easy hoop house plan.

 

6 sections of 2 ft. rebar

6 5 ft. sections of ¾” irrigation hosing

Any kind of large plastic covering. (painter’s plastic, opened-up large trash bags, wrapping from a mattress)

Bricks or rocks to hold the cover down around the edges.

 

Here are some super simple designs to inspire you.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/low-tunnel-construction-mini-hoop-house.aspx

http://growingthehomegarden.com/2014/03/how-to-build-mini-hoop-house-early-start-garden.html

http://www.leereich.com/2012/01/cold-has-yet-to-throw-wrench-into.html

The best part about the popularity of mini hoop houses or low tunnels is that you can now buy pre-made, fold-up tunnels for less than $25 at garden centers, hardware stores, or online

 

For Fall:

Other than hoop houses, here are some ideas of commonly found items to use for protection against frosts and critters.

 

Old worn bed sheets (love the flannel ones with cartoon characters)can be lightly laid over anything that might be hurt by freezing.  This includes vegetables like green beans and squashes and herbs.

 

Plastic bags of leaves.  Just quickly throw the bags over and around root vegetables as temperatures keep dropping to keep the ground from freezing.  If you can still work in the soil, your carrots and turnips and beets are still edible and yummy!  Two bags of leaves snuggled around the basil patch will keep basil alive for a bit longer.

 

Upside down garbage cans.  I can keep a pepper plant going in cold temperatures until they turn red by putting clean garbage cans upside down over them at night.  It doesn’t take much to protect against 29 degrees…just a pocket of warmer air.

 

One of the biggest struggles in the fall is to protect pumpkins and squashes from the nibbling critters hunting for food before the cold sets in.  The squirrels and raccoons love nothing better than to sit down to dinner on my pumpkins and gnaw holes through them to get to the seeds.  A barrier of chicken wire, hooped and secured over the ripening fruit has proven successful in keeping them out.

Plants, at this time in the fall, aren’t growing much, but they are still alive and producing nutrients, which is better than their fate in the back of my refrigerator.

Best of Show for Fall Flowers

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Wildflower Seeds

by Sandy Swegel

And the nominees are:

Asters, Asters and Asters.

I am always entranced by asters. They offer intense color at summer’s end and an alternative to the perfect rounded chrysanthemums you see for sale everywhere.  I don’t have many asters because sometimes they just dry up in late summer heat or they flop all over because I was too busy with the tomatoes to stake them…This year the asters bloomed and bloomed and bloomed.  Even wild asters were beautiful.  The Aster novae-angliae is a wonderful performer that does well even in partial shade.  Included with the nominees this year is the Daisy Aster, not a real aster but an Erigeron, but I have it lined along the edge of the garden where it has formed a mat of little white flowers for months this year.  Next year, I’m trying all of the blue asters.  They are just magnificent this year leaning through the neighbor’s chain link fence.

Yellow Columbine

Always a good performer, yellow columbine is still pumping out flowers this fall. One little plant will probably get the “Most Determined” award by managing to seed itself and then grow up through the juniper. Yellow Columbine and Blue Scabiosa have competed in past years for being both the earliest and latest bloomers.

Red Salvias

The blue salvias were nice enough this year, but the red salvias rule this fall, having tall bright flower heads in full bloom, glorious when highlighted by the gold foliage of nearby trees and shrubs.  The Salvia coccinea in the wildflower garden and the Salvia greggii and Salvia splendens in containers are competing for who can be the most vivid.

Agastache

Hummingbirds and bees love the red salvias, but the agastaches must be very tasty this year.  A couple of weeks ago some wild winds had knocked over the agastache so I went out to try to stake them up a bit.  The bees that were out there happily feeding had a definite opinion. Their hum changed from a happy “I’m just eating and going here and there” to a menacing “Don’t touch my dinner” as I was jostling the plants and I decided the flowers looked just great, leaning over the nearby echninacea.

The judge for the garden awards isn’t very impartial, so the asters will probably win because they haven’t gotten any awards in recent years, but I think all four of these flowers would look fabulous planted together in a wildish meadow type design.