Seed starting and the herb garden

Jillian wants to expand our little culinary herb garden to include medicinal and tea plants. These include comfrey, stevia, ephedra, mullein, echinacea, mugwort, borage, hyssop, saffron, cumin, fennel, licorice, white lavender, lovage, peppermint, spearmint, lemon balm, penny royal, sweet basil, cinnamon basil, lemon basil, kapoor tulsi basil, rama tulsi basil, vana tulsi basil, krishna tulsi basil, and chamomile. 

Seed starting rack

Spinach, purple orach, and cabbage.

Baby cabbages. We put them out too early and many of them froze, but several have survived and are starting to grow larger.

Transplanting pepper seedlings from sand to a potting mix. I have been starting most seed on shallow (.25 inch) bed of sand covered with plastic food wrap film, opened twice per day to spray with 1.5%-3% hydrogen peroxide (this helps keep any fungi dormant on the seeds from spreading). It has worked for most types of seed, though some smaller seed transplant poorly (hyssop and lilac have been abysmal failures,  mint has been ok though mint started in potting mix does better). Garlic chives won't even sprout on the sand. 

Many pepper plants!

Comfrey bloom

Tomatoes started in January. I don't think I will start them that early next year, these were just a germination experiment...but I couldn't bring myself dispose of them when the soil experiment ended. With the children, we tried sterilized and unsterilized potting mix, tap and distilled water, and three fungi treatments for the unsanitized soil: cinnamon, hydrogen peroxide, and chamomile tea. Distilled water was no good, all those plants died. Only peroxide did anything for the controlling (but not eliminating the fungi). Transplanting from fungi infested soil to clean soil helps drastically reduce or even eliminate the fungus on a given plant. 

A product euphemistically marketed as 'aged dairy compost'. We have been using this in our garden beds, either tilling it in or top dressing with it.

I started the elimination of grass for the herb garden by cutting an outline in the grass. The sod was piled to create topographical features in the beds. The little tree in the center is a double flowering pink weeping cherry.

A close up of the blooms on the weeping cherry (thanks uncle Rao for the gift card!)

More bed outlines

The bed outline, this time covered with several layers (10+) of newspaper topped with a couple inches of the compost. This week we'll add several inches of chipped evergreen wood. In the upper right, there are three five-gallon buckets sunk into the ground. Peppermint and spearmint will go into these to control them from taking over the yard. The tree in the center is a peach that was here when we bought the property.

The three beds (with more sunk buckets) with the remaining grass paths. The tree in the right is another peach.

The cherry with the sod mound covered in newspaper. 

A friend connected us with leftover newspaper that I went and retrieved as deliverers prepped their routes at 2 in the morning. I think I exceeded my van's weight limit, but made it home. Lots of grass to smother this summer.

March 2014

Stephen's cute wife, reading (likely something about martial arts or herbs). It must have been a Sunday morning or afternoon, as the Sunday paper is still on the floor. We have been saving our newspapers to smother grass with for the large herb garden Jillian has planned (more on that in another post).

Quinton, on his bike, pulling his  frog from Babci* Browning, holding the giraffe the Home Depot employee gave him when he became board with the woodcraft project his siblings were working on.

*Babci is Polish for grandmother

Zachary and his friend Logan at their pack meeting. 

Quinton at pack meeting, who would not leave until he got his picture despite the meeting having convened and everyone trying to be quiet and attentive.

Zachary and Steven Knight (my sister, Amy's husband) helped me build three new top bar bee hives. Zachary and I spent most of a Saturday getting the boxes and bars finished. He was fantastic help as we ripped triangle shaped pieces to attach to the 110+ top bars we made. I'll post more on this later.

Zachary at the pinewood derby race. I was recruited to run the release mechanism on the track. Quinton help well for a while, but I had to find a replacement (Jillian was at her Karate class).

Chayce, Payge, and Quinton cheering. Not sure what Zachary was looking at. 

Quinton helped me dig a hugelkulture bed for our new blueberries. Our 2-year old plants produced a few fantastic berries last year, which was sufficient encouragement to double our patch size.

Chayce has taken primary responsibility for the chickens this spring, including cleaning, feed, water, and egg collection. One of our older hens produced the giant egg on the left. The egg on the right is a standard store large egg.

The morning of general conference, Chayce and Payge wanted to climb the mountain behind our house. We made it about 2/3 of the way to the first saddle point. It was snowing lightly the whole trip. 

Chayce and Payge on the way back down the mountain with a view of USU in the background (upper left).

Jillian took the children to the park during spring 'break'. We didn't ask them to do any school work that week, but it took two trips to the library to keep them satisfied.

Jillian and Rosie, just past half way done.

Tree Pruning

Today I taught my children the principles behind fruit tree pruning and had them come help

 me with the peach and cherry trees. They each took a turn selecting and discussing candidate cuts, making cuts, and placing pruning tar over the cuts.

I need a bath now

Seems Quinton is going to be as witty as his older brother. He asked for a bath, but we explained to him that he'd already had one earlier in the day, and so didn't need one. A few minutes later he comes to us pantless and covered in marker and said, "I need a bath now."

Guess!?!

Quinton was making noise rather than going to bed. I went up to see what was wrong, and he claimed he could only talk to mommy. So I brought him down to Jillian, and she asked "what do you need?"

"Guess"

ok then

Blah vs La vs Law

Payge was attempting to sing the Hot Chelle Rae song "Tonight, Tonight" and it came out

Blah, Blah, Blah, Whatever

To which Chayce corrected her "no, not Blah, it's La". Payge said "but it is a boy singing it, so it is Blah, not La! Girls say La".

Chayce insisted, "no, it is La".

Payge retorts "the song isn't about laws, they're not breaking the law, it's about a party!"

toddler thumbs

Today in church, Quinton suddenly became distraut and started loudly cursing at the fact he could not easily remove his thumbs. Hard to keep a straight face during hymns with a little man screaming "stuck, thumbs, stuck!!!!!"