Projects

December 2, 2011

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Make Your Own Herbal Bath Tea

This is an old project that I originally posted to this site back in the early 2000′s. It was lost when we switched over to a new design, but I’ve brought it back in time for holiday gift-making. (p.s. the photos are small due to the original page design)

You can expect a few more oldies, but goodies to appear here over the next week.

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This is a simple, but satisfying gift to make using herbs grown in your own garden. I’ve been making them for years and can fire off a large batch in one night. It’s the perfect gift for those who bathe — which is just about everyone.

What You Need:

Cotton muslin or pre-made resealable tea bags (large size).
Ribbon or string
An assortment of herbs (see recipes below)
Essential oils (optional)
Rolled oats, epsom salts, sea salt (see below).
Cellophane bags, cellophane roll, other packaging.

To make the bags you will first require some unbleached cotton muslin. Other cotton fabrics can be used, but I prefer this kind the most because it is dirt cheap ($2.00 and change for a yard or cheaper if you buy scraps from the ends bin) and has an open weave that holds in herbs yet allows their goodness to leach out easily into bathwater. In the past I have purchased ribbon (I’ll explain its use later), but this year I found some nice seam binding tape in earth tones for a very good price (29 cents a yard).

If you don’t want to sew you can purchase special large-sized, sealable tea bags made especially for this purpose. They are relatively cheap to buy and can be sealed with an iron. However, I guarantee you that even the most inexperienced sewer can make this. Keep in mind that it is going to be used a few times and eventually tossed into the compost heap. Precision is not necessary.
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October 6, 2011

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Venus Fly Trap Bowl

Every botanical garden has their forte, their special something that sets them apart from the others. Prior to any trip that includes a stop at a botanical garden, I tend to scour websites in anticipation of the sort of plantings I will see. However, before my trip to speak at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens last month, I decided not to do any research before hand. I thought it might be more fun to be surprised and wowed without the anticipation that comes with knowing what to expect.

Sure enough, I was absolutely giddy to discover that one of the garden’s claim to fame is their carnivorous collection! I have lots more to share with you, but first is a project that can be achieved at home.

Venus fly traps (Dioneae muscipula) are probably the most well-known carnivorous plant, and are widely available as impulse buys in big box stores and supermarkets. Yet, few of us get to really experience them beyond one small plastic shell packet in a cardboard counter display. The plants are marketed as an enigma, tend not to last long in our dry winter-heated homes and are a little bit intimidating as a result.

They’re a temperate-warm climate plant that prefers high humidity and can withstand short freezes, but can not survive the killing frost we experience here in the North. Venus fly traps love Toronto’s hot, humid summers, but require a chilly, but not freezing, winter dormancy period that fluctuates around the 50 degrees F mark. For this reason I have grown them as an annual in miniature bogs like the one shown above (photographed at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens) through the summer months, but tend to abandon them once the winter comes. In the right climate you can easily achieve the sort of mass planting shown in this bowl as the plants do reproduce readily and will even set seed.

Soil:

I’ve had a lot of luck using a mix that is 1 part sand, 1 part peat (substituting coir), and 1 part perilite.

Planting:

It wasn’t clear to me if the bowl (shown above) had drainage holes or not. In my experience, I have had best results growing venus fly trap outdoors in a pot with holes with a deep, water-filled saucer placed underneath to keep the soil moisture high, yet also allow for drainage through periods of heavy rainfall.

When drainage is not offered, I line the bottom of the bowl with gravel and keep the pot in a sheltered spot where I can control the amount of water it receives. Venus fly traps like wet conditions, but they can still become water-logged and rot if left permanently submerged in water.

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I cover growing a carnivorous bog in my first book, You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening, and if you’d like to learn even more on growing all sorts of carnivorous plants, I highly recommend The Savage Garden: Cultivating Carnivorous Plants by Peter D’Amato.

The Carnivorous Plant FAQ has an detailed section on growing venus fly traps, including a few tricks for dealing with dormancy.

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April 26, 2011

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Repurposed for the Garden: We Recycle!

I’ve taken the message on the side of this recycling bin quite literally and am recycling it by turning it into a salad greens garden.

This house came chock-a-block full of junk, especially the backyard. Not that I’m complaining — we’ve found new uses for a great deal of the items and have saved some money in the process.

First up are the recycling bins: there were several, but we have no traditional use for them as living in a house means we are able to keep a large-sized recycling bin that suits most of our recycling needs. It was practically impossible to keep one recycling bin for any length of time while living in an apartment — someone was always stealing them off of the curb! And now, here, we have too many. Go figure.

Fortunately, recycling bins make great planters, if you can get past the ugly. We’re still in a yard renovation holding pattern as we now realize that a tiller is required if we’re going to manage the back breaking work of levelling it out. I originally thought we could do the work by hand because I’m not a big fan of tillers and may have also been overly optimistic when the snow was still on the ground, and the backyard garden was just a dream. Levelling out a bumpy, slopped garden requires time, something I don’t have right now as we are in a crunch to layout book #3 (due out in Spring 2012!). I also have some stray photos to take. As a result, I can’t get my raised beds in place, which means I can’t plant spring greens or peas. GAH! One of our big goals this year is to become completely self-sufficient in salad fixings. Starting next month (or so), I don’t want to buy a single head of lettuce ever again, if I can help it. This should be easy enough to achieve over the long term as I intend to dedicate a rather large bed to greens alone. So exciting! Obviously, this goal is unachievable if I can’t plant….
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February 3, 2011

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Build a D.I.Y Lighting System

When we moved, I abandoned the cobbled together grow light setup I had been struggling with for years in favour of beginning again with a much improved, bigger and badder system.

In the old place I had to stuff the grow light shelving system into a corner nook of my office. Consequently, it couldn’t be more than 2ft wide. Have you ever tried to buy a shop light that is only 2 feet wide? Good luck. Yes, they are available, but they are built in a boxy shape and are meant to be wired in as under-cabinet lighting. I had to do a bit of precarious electrical wiring in order to attached a plugin cord to my lights. Because they were mounted and stationary, I had to lift my seedlings up to receive the necessary amount of distance between them and the bulbs as they grew. This meant regularly adding and subtracting stacks of books that I had placed underneath flimsy trays that wobbled and spilled liquid whenever they were shifted.

As you can imagine, this method did not always work out well for the books.

And then there was the shape of the shop light boxes themselves. Boxy shapes with sides that come down straight don’t reflect light well. I made due, but the set up was what it was. At the time I was happy to take what I could get.

So when we moved I abandoned that mess of wires and spare parts with the dream of something less ramshackle in mind. And then… work, life, moving, stuff. Finally, it all came to a head during the Holidays when the unheated front porch froze and several plants that should not have been out there but had no where else to go, froze. I needed a lighting system stat.

Here’s what I built.
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September 28, 2010

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Cheap and Cheerful Water Feature

Today, as I was going through folders of photos I took through the spring and summer months, I came upon this cheap and cheerful water feature my friend Barry devised for his garden. It looked so classy, yet was unbearably simple and didn’t cost a thing.

All he did was take three terracotta saucers of varying sizes and stack them into one another. He set overturned plastic saucers underneath the top two layers to give them height. Brilliant!

The water feature did encourage a lot of wasps to a warm and dry part of the garden, which may not be your thing, but it turned out to be a simple and stylish way to encourage and keep these beneficials doing their work in the garden. No one has ever been stung.

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