The garden is growing!

I love to grow different herbs to dry and use fresh here at home. This is a picture of some of my oregano. It is huge and looks like a little bush. It is a perennial and comes back each year. This one is about 3 years old now. I usually cut it back, and dry it on a dehydrator, then package it in food saver bags with the air removed. It is lovely.
The garden would not be the same without some wonderful sunflowers. My dd planted them this year and there are tons of them all over the place just getting started. We love to see them and let the birds enjoy them and it just wouldn't be garden season without them coming up in our garden.
I have a soft spot in my heart and stomach for potatoes. I love them, baked, fried, mashed, in salads, as a main dish, or side dish...just gotta have them. I decided to plant more this year than I have ever planted before. With all the rains this year (record amounts even) I thought I would lose a lot of them, but they are coming on strong since the sun has been out for a few days in a row. They look great and some have even started to bloom !!! Can't wait to have some new potatoes cooking, yum!
Well, we have some peas out too and this is little pic of some of the pretty blooms on some of them. I planted 2 different types and most of the blooms are white, but not this little batch...they are the most beautiful different shades of purple. We haven't had any peas as of yet, but we are hoping soon.

Chamomile-from flower to tea- make your own today

I try to make some of our own tea around here and so far, one of the easiest to make is Chamomile. It is nice, soothing and can't be beat for mild taste and flavor. To get started making your own, first you must plant chamomile plants. You can do this from seed or from already started seedlings from your local nursery. Once I got mine started, they reseed themselves every year and there has been no need to replant. This is a pic of the actual plant. Not that the flower heads are small about the size of baby peas at the most. As your plants bloom with the flowers, then you go and pick all the millions of tiny little flower heads off your plants and keep them. They take a long time to collect so you need to do this over and over to collect enough. I do it about ever 2 or 3 days and dry it each day and keep adding it together to make a larger amount.
This is a picture of one small batch of the chamomile that I have picked, cleaned and have laying out on the dehydrator. You can use any type of dehydrator that you may have, or even put it in a very low oven (warm setting) or even with a pilot light on and let it dry out. It really doesn't' take to long because it is very small to begin with.
Once all the chamomile is dry, then I place it in a plastic baggy and keep adding to it every few days. It takes a while to collect and to actually accrue any amounts, but it does happen. Once I get about 1 cup of dried chamomile, then I place it in a food saver bag and remove the air, so that it will "save" for a long period of time, without losing any flavor. That is all it takes to make your own wonderful Chamomile tea, right from home.

Back in the Garden Again!!

We have been working on the garden again...between the rains and the freezing weather that is.

This is a pic of one of my raised beds that have green peas planted in it. We made some "natural" and "recycled" trellises for them out of some old branches that we trimmed off of some trees. The vertical ones have y tips and the horizontal ones lay in the y's. We just pushed them down into the ground one at a time and it worked out well for us.



This is my hard working husband, who is tilling more of our garden up. We planted peppers in this area today.