Organic Gardening Progress 9/27 - Week 6

This is my Week 6 since I started this blog on organic gardening progress.




Your can see my progress week by week here



This week we actually had more stuff to pick:

Parsley, arugula and kale

First almost red cherry tomato! :)

Radish

Sprouts

I was able to make fresh salad twice this week with greens from my garden, which was a progress!

Arugula, sprouts, radish, beet leaves

I think I figured out how to grow my sprouts. You can see I used an old container from salad greens with soil and keep it on a sunny window. So you can see the progress 

week 1

week 2 ready to eat

Updates in my garden:

More green tomatoes forming

Bell Pepper is getting bigger

Veggies in my main veggie bed start flowering and getting bigger. I picked arugula, radish and some beat leaves from here.

All Zucchinis keep flowering but still only male flowers... :(

This was my last week project. I planted cucumbers but then I've got strawberries in the mail, so I had to figure out where to plant them, so I added couple here too. :)

We had this cute visitor one night :)

Thanks for reading and happy gardening!

Organic Gardening Progress 9/20 - Week 5

You can see my previous weeks updates here. Not a long list of updates but slowly you can see some progress!

This week I planted more of salad greens, spinach and beet roots which are not pictured. 

The rest of my veggies beds looks better and better. I can't wait to start picking some of produce besides that we have now such as mint, hibiscus and rose petals for teas, I wrote about teas here, as well as kyle and parsley. Not much for now... :)

Tomatoes, radish, zucchini, okra, salad greens in this flower bed

This is my last week "new" veggie bed

Little tomatoes :) 

Zucchini is getting bigger and bigger but still only has male flowers... :( 

These guys grew a little since last week

Another Zucchini plant with male flowers! 

I digged this babies from my Sago palm. I am thinking to make one as a house plant and maybe gift to my friends the other two.

This is my no fence yard. 

This is how our yard looked when we bought the house (minus playground).

Thanks for reading and come back for next week updates. :)

Grow Your Own Tea - Rose, Hibiscus, Mint and Lemon Leaves Teas Benefits

 I always knew herbal teas beneficial for our health but I just did an additional online search for different kind of tea we use in our everyday life. We try to use our own organic grown tea leaves from different plants we have in our garden. We mostly drink cold tea through the day and fresh hot tea in the evening.



Rose Petals/Rose hips tea benefits

I found Elena's Blog which actually describe 10 Therapeutic benefits of rose tea and roses.


My Tea Benefits also shares benefits of drinking rose petals tea. 

In short rose tea is a great source of Vitamin C as well as it helps with removing toxins, it can help with women health as well.


Hibiscus Tea



Let's move to Hibiscus. It's a little trickier to pick up hibiscus flowers because I always wait till they finish bloom and then pick them up.




Tori Hudson, ND wrote that drinking hibiscus tea can help with cholesterol and blood pressure maintenance.

Wise Geek wrote about hibiscus benefits for immune and digestive system as well as antioxidant and heart health.


Mint Tea

Mint is another ingredient of our daily tea and super easy to grow. This tea is great for different stomach issues, headache and sinus and much more.



Dr.Mercola shares 21 benefits of drinking mint tea here. 

Natural Therapy Pages shares an article on benefits of peppermint. 


Lemon Leaves Tea


One lady told me she is making a tea out of lemon leaves, so I wanted to explore this option since I never tried it before.

medicinalherbs-4u has some information about lime tree leaves but I think it should be pretty same for lemon tree leaves.

Gardening Central shares lemon leaves recipe and benefits here

After reading these articles I might try to brew some lemon leaves tea.

Thanks for reading and share about your favorite homemade tea recipe.

Organic Gardening progress 9/13 - Week 4

We had so much rain and finally it is cooling down here so all plants are enjoying this weather! Roses are blooming!

I am drying roses petals for winter teas as well as using fresh ones. We have lots of mint and hibiscus flowers too. 

Vegetables are growing too.

Finally some tiny baby tomatoes on tomatoes plants...

My son planted this green beans plant. He is excited to see that it actually starts producing!

Veggies in my newly veggie bed I wrote about last week are growing so fast!

Citruses will be ready to pick soon too.

Kitty is enjoying  nice weather!

Thanks for reading and Happy Gardening everyone!

Organic gardening progress 9/4 - Week 3

I was out of town for 4 days helping my mom moving her stuff and when I came back I was surprised how everything grew just in 4 days.
My previous post are here and here.

Before leaving I built Veggie bed #3 and planted my tomatoes, okra and zucchini. Here how it looked on my first try.

Then I noticed that my cats still figured out to use this veggie bed as a litter box, so I added more folks... :)

Below is the latest update on this veggie bed. As you might notice I planted different salad greens as well as beets and radishes in between tomatoes. 

In my Veggie bed # 1 tomatoes are flowering and even have couple of baby tomatoes on.

 Zucchini is getting bigger 

Veggie bed # 2 doesn't look good. So I will have to figure out what can grow well on this side of the house.

This is my upcoming weekend project. I ordered dwarf Banana, Fig and Pomegranate trees. I will plant those into pots. Four cherries bushes I will plant in one of flower beds. Then I also received strawberries roots, which I plan to plant some in ground and some in a big pot. They don't grow well here but I will try again.

I still have half of Veggie bed # 3 is empty, so I will plant there those.

Here are two ladies who are always on a mission of destroying my veggies beds.

Happy Gardening!