The healing ability of plants

There's an uncountable number of plants, which we use (or have used) for medical purposes. "Doctor plants".

Update on free homemade safran

It's still a bit early, but our safran crocus has started to show themselves with tiny little purple flowers that will soon bloom, and then we'll be ready for harvest.

The first rime

For the first morning this season, I woke up to the sight of everything covered in rime. 

Geez, now we have to ice off the car before driving. I really don't like this sign of winter on the way.

Dust off the pepper corns: organize your spices

A big part of the fall cleaning is the kitchen, and in this case spices.

In some areas of spices we are self sufficient, and we get our herbs for free from the garden.
Spices, we don't (can't) grow ourselves, we have to buy in the store like everybody else.

Fall cleaning

We have 4 weeks a year which are marked cleaning (order and organising storage) Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. 

Many tasks are the same, and then trees the seasonal tasks.

When living self sufficient it's important to clean out cabinets and make order, to be sure nothing is wasted and must be thrown out. Cause that's a waste of money and resources.

Climate and gardening

Here we live in temperate climate. (Cold winters, warm summers)

If you live further to the poles or equator than I, the temperature differences will most likely effect the plants you can grow, effect when you are able to plant outside and when the plants are ready for harvest.

So just to make everything clear, before I get people from the the North Pole to chase me with an icepick for giving bad advice;
This is written with my experience from temperate climate.

But as I wrote in another post; nature  is confused. We gave had the most warm summer in a hundred years.
The change from summer to winter was fast though. Like Indian summer never really kicked in, and now it almost feels like winter.

Today the wind is blowing hard, it's difficult to close doors to the outside, because of the power of the wind. 

Even the dogs didn't want to get out, and then you know it's really bad.
I was also quite scared of the puppy being taken by the wind and get hurt bad. So we spend the day inside close to the fireplace.

An there we are creating our new plans along with a to do list for indoor tasks.

I just noticed the forecast, and this week the cold nights continues and the temperature will drop below 0C (32F)
The day temperature has dropped to 5C (41F) or just above.
Perhaps the winter will be as surprisingly cold, as the summer was warm.

With changes like described above,  its very hard to predict anything. Well just have to go with the planning as usual. 

Potting, preparing and planning

Harvest and storage is still going on. Potting plants is going steady, but we need decent containers for the plants in the living room.
So off to the market, but without result, they were all too small.
So until we get more containers, the potting is on pause until we find some.

Evening hours goes with planning.

If you are lazy, you just plant stuff here and there, when you find it.
The kitchen garden is just planted in the order, you drag the bag of seeds out of the bag.

Egg shells for many purposes

Right now we sadly don't have poultry. All hen houses was "cleaned out" by a huge dog, which slaughtered our beautiful chickens.

We therefore have an overstock of chalk for chickens and don't need some until spring.

Even though, there should still be an overstock of chalk, since the chickens also pick in the ground and eats insects, worms... and gets it naturally.

Fresh soil for indoor plants

While we are getting plants like tomatoes, peppers etc. ready to take inside through the winter, we might as well bring the indoor plants new soil as well.

Here's my favourite indoor plant. You can grow it outside during the summer, but this one I always keep inside.

It's Aloe Vera doctor plant aka doctors aloe Vera. There's many sorts of this plant, but the "doctor aloe" I had difficulties to find.

Yes the pot is fairly large for this plant, but I want to give it room to expand and make new plants. Actually it's a rare sight to see this one so "pretty", since I use it for many purposes.
That's however another subject: doctor plants or plants with healing abilities.

We're not yet finished with all we wish to take inside. The windows however, is more than "finished" :-)
They are overloaded. Ah yes, whoever has the ability to limit oneself, truly poces some kind of magic power :-)

Get your dirt ready for winter

Think about all the different kinds of seeds we come along during a period. We plant many of them just for fun.

Now we have to be prepared for "funny seeds", the ones we just try to grow for fun.

If we don't want to carve out an block of frozen dirt each time, we need to prepare some pots with soil for planting.

The last harvest

I think we almost got the last fruit on stock.
Most of it doesn't keep for a long time, so we use as much as possible as long as it's fresh. Then we store otherwise, by drying or freezing.

It's a well known quote that "one bad apple can spoil the bunch" - and it's true.

When the fruit start to ripen, the picking of fruits start.

Follow up on the indoor garden

As written before, we unfortunately do not have a winter garden, where the plants can grow until spring.
We simply have to use all our windows.

It's not always nice to look at, but if you have the "skill of decoration", I'm sure you'll come up with great ideas.
Most of our ceramic pots are broken, but we manage :-)

Dates with potential

Some time ago we made our free date seeds and started up some of the to sprout.

Some we planted in dirt immediately, others we put stated with moist kitchen towel in a plastic bag.

Let's unwrap our little "gift", and see how the date seeds are doing. At least we once in a while have to change the air and the paper around the seeds to avoid them from going bad.

Let's give the mango another shot

We have previously, without luck, tried to make a mango seed sprout, so I think I'll give it another shot.

Pomegranate update

Some time ago we made our own seeds from a pomegranate.

Let's have an update on that.

The seeds wrapped in kitchen towel has not yet sprouted. However our homemade seeds planted in dirt is starting to show potential.

Just look at that...

Nature is confused

The temperatures here makes everyone, and especially Nature confused. 

Look at the forecast!!!
I've never seen anything like it. 

The strawberries blooms the 3d time this year, 3 days ago I harvested a handful of raspberries. 

I'm a bit concerned and also curious of what's going to happen next.

Visit at the Veterinarians Hospital

When we decide to take in a new type of animal, we always consider veterinarian bills. Can we afford it?
If we can't, there's no reason to take in pigs or cows.
That's one reason we don't have more livestock, but as for now we could afford it, but we wish to move closer to the ocean to be able to catch fish without having to drive to get there.

But always always consider the bills before you buy livestock. It's our most important job if we own animals: to take good care of them.

Weekly shopping saves on driving

Google Keep

Even though we try to live self sufficient, we cant do that totally. For instance we do not have any livestock besides chickens (yet).

I tried to make homemade cheese once, but that's a task so difficult, that before I learn, i will have wasted way too much. So I rely on the stores for that.

Furthermore we are not fanatics, as you watch in some tv-shows. We don't burn our own bricks, and we don't produce our own tools, we buy them. 

Today we have spent the time shopping for the week, in that way we don't use the cars as much. The "shopping" car is a Hybrid, so when we do have to drive, we don't use an obscene amount of gasoline.

Homemade sunflower seeds for free

Sunflowers are so wonderful to have in the garden. Its nice to look at, feeds the wild birds, can make a hedge when the summer is best and makes great food for poultry. A wonderful plant.

It's always nice to be self sufficient in food for livestock, but almost always impossible if you want to feed them thru winter without buying anything.

Also this almost always happens for one or more types of seeds... As soon as the summer is over, the rain and moist starts to make everything go bad.
Last year our corn seeds went "down with the rain", so we had to use store bought seeds for this year's harvest.

Otherwise sunflower seeds is easy food... You just dry them and give the hens a "head" a day, they enjoy picking the seeds free of the dry plant. But this year...

It's pouring down, windy and cold

The weather is really uninviting. It's pouring down with rain, windy and rough cold.
So besides the normal chores like growing sprouts and experimenting with growing exotic plants from homemade seeds, we don't do much visible during days like this.

I'm still "fighting" with my camera and especially video editing software, frustration one on one ;-)
But still there's tasks for days like this, so  let's get more serious than just my stupid lack of ability to do video editing.

It's time for planning....

 

What's happening?

Yeah, why am I so slow and don't give daily updates this week(?)
Well, I actually bought a "thingie" to hold the camera for me, when I do something, I would like to show you.
But...
It's not as easy as it looks. Taking the video is no problem, it's the editing!
You see, I did this to be able to show and explain more easily, but it takes time to learn to make a decent video. I want to make it as short as possible, and cut out all nonsense.
I hope it'll turn out to be ok, and become better with each task, and in the mean time nothing seems to happen here...
But trust me, the chilli is still growing strong ;-)