Weeds can be a big problem in anyone’s yard, but when you do your best to keep an organic lawn, the weeds can take over!  Fortunately, many varieties of weeds are actually very nutritious and can be beneficial to consume.  Before you start eating weeds, though, make sure that you are picking weeds from a trusted source, preferably your own yard that you know hasn’t been sprayed with any chemicals.

photo credit: Asbestos Bill

Make sure that you can identify weeds before you start chomping down on the green goodness.  What weeds are edible and good for you?  Let’s find out:

-Dandelions.  Dandelions are high in vitamin A, can act as a gentle diuretic to purify your blood, and taste great in smoothies or salads.  Pick the leaves before the flowers appear and you’ll get the most tender greens.

-Red clover.  Red clover is a clover that actually appears more purple than red.  Red clover is high in calcium, magnesium, thiamin, vitamin c, and even isoflavones.  Red clover can be useful for women with an estrogen deficiency.

-Purslane.  Purslane is a very common weed that has a mild flavor and a chewy texture.  The leaves are my favorite part and can be tossed in a potato salad to liven it up.  It is high in vitamin E and alpha linolenic acid (Omega 3).

-Japanese Knotweed.  Japanese knotweed grows like crazy and can take over your yard overnight.  You can use the young shoots and saute them in a little olive oil.  They will taste great!

Before you tackle your next weed problem, try to identify it to see if it’s actually edible.  Then search for some recipes, or even try it mixed in a salad.  Not only will you save money on your food, but you’ll pack a powerful punch of nutrients in as well!

Would you eat weeds?

It’s funny, every time I sweep up dog hair and put it in the compost bin, it drives Mr. Money crazy! He doesn’t believe, but I know for a fact you can compost dog hair.  I’ve been doing it for two years and he had no idea it was going in the compost bin!  The joke is on him.  There are a lot of people that aren’t sure of what you can compost, so I decided I’m going to share a list of things that you really can compost.  Some are pretty common; others may not be.

What you can compost

-Paid bills and other paper scraps
-The contents of your vacuum (sorry Mr. Money!)
-Dog or cat hair
-Tea bags
-Latex (only) condoms (?!)
-Coffee grounds
-Egg shells
-Vegetable scraps
-Tissues
-Human hair
-Any nut or soy milk
-Wool socks
-Brown paper bags
-Newspapers
-Nail clippings
-Fireplace ashes
-Poop (Animal)
-Crumbs from your counters
-Toilet paper rolls
-Dryer lint
-Old cotton clothing (cut into very small pieces)
-Dry pet food
-Dead flowers
-Roadkill (don’t do this at home!)

Do you compost? Are you surprised at what you can compost?

I’ve got some good news, and some bad news. The bad news is our summer garden is finally on its way out, and the good news is the fall garden is coming along nicely! Some more experienced gardeners may laugh at our little plot of land, but we’re pleased as punch with what we got out of it this year, and can’t wait to plant another new one next year! I took some pictures this afternoon.

Two of our tomato plants tipped over sometime last night. We really haven’t gotten too many off these plants yet (notice all the green ones!) so we are pretty bummed. When Mr. Money gets home from work, I’m going to have him go see if he can rescue them. By the way, these came up all by themselves and I transplanted them here. Can’t beat that!

Something is getting my beans. I planted these in August and they have been producing like crazy! We’ve been freezing them every chance we get, and man are they yummy! I looked today and there were little lady bug looking bugs on them and I found one yellow fuzzy worm-type thing. Gross!!

There are strawberries and peas in this bed. The strawberries were planted this spring and didn’t produce anything all year. Maybe in the spring? The peas are doing quite well!

Raspberries are taking over! I’m going to try to dry the leaves in my dehydrator. They are good for making red raspberry leaf tea, which is very good for women.

The herb garden with sage, basil, and parsley. I should dry some of these too. I have enough sage to scare away all the spirits in the entire state!

This is my “fall garden”. There are turnips, beets, collard greens, swiss chard, rainbow chard, kale, and spinach. These are tested to withstand (ha!) cold temperatures. Grow along, little veggies!

Last time I updated about the garden, the squash plants were in full force. We planted zucchini, yellow squash, and some patty pan squash. Squash always seems to do well, and we always have a plethora of the brightly colored vegetables. Truth be told, I was sick and tired of seeing, picking, and eating squash. That’s when it started to get bad. There was squash in the garden, in the refrigerator, and even on the counter. I finally decided to do something with it today.

I ended up freezing three gallon bags of various squashes and I’m thinking that tomorrow I’ll probably have at least that much more to do. This is what I did to freeze the squash so it will be yummy in the winter.

1. Washed and cut the pieces into a nice size for stir fry, casseroles, etc.

2. Started a large pot of water simmering to almost a boil.

3. Prepared an ice bath

4. Put the squash in the hot water for almost five minutes, just enough to get it nice and bright in color.

5. Removed the squash and put it in its ice bath.

6. After it was cool to the touch, I used my gallon sized Ziploc bags and put them in there. I stuck them in the freezer, and I was done!

I’ll have to be honest and say that there was some squash that went bad, as well as some green beans I didn’t get blanched in time. I’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen again!

Do you prefer frozen or canned veggies?

Imagine my surprise when I went out to check my garden after I got home from work and discovered that some of my new green bean plants have been eaten! Needless to say, I am not a happy camper.  While I am a huge animal lover, I am not a fan of my garden being eaten.  Not one bit.  So I decided I’d try to beat the rain and make a trip up to Home Depot to buy some stakes to put leftover chicken wire on to keep the rascals out.

I purchased 10 stakes plus ties.  It cost me $20.  When I got home, I ran around looking for the hammer.  After I found it, I pounded some stakes in the corners of the boxes, attached some of the chicken wire plus this green mesh netting thing around the green bean bed and tied it to the stakes.  That ought to hold for a few days until I can get more blood meal or whatever it is that deters rabbits.  I’m half tempted to leave my dogs out in the yard permanently now.

Not only am I angry that these darn rabbits are eating my plants, but now I’m aggravated I had to spend money to keep them out!  Mr. Money suggested we get some plastic snakes to put out in the garden, and that may be another option.

Anyone hungry for rabbit? 

One of my favorite things about owning this house is the fact we have enough land to have a garden to grow our own vegetables.  I love the idea of homesteading, and we’re trying to create our own little homestead here in our neck of the woods.  This year we got started a little late so we’re only enjoying copious amounts of yellow squash so far.  This is the third year we’ve had a garden, and each year we enjoy it more and more.  The more we add our compost to the soil, the more the plants take off!

Here’s how our garden looked this spring, before planting:

And here it is today:

In this bed we have zucchini, yellow squash, patty pan squash, okra, sugar snap peas, and bush beans. The huge plants on the right are the yellow squash plants.

To the right of this bed we have some volunteer tomato plants that came up from seed by themselves and I transplanted (I don’t have the heart to kill them!):

Our first tomato:

Near the back fence of our property we have a bed that contains strawberries, a blueberry bush, and some sugar snap peas I planted last weekend.

We have a raspberry box that will hopefully multiply:

I am also going to be saving the leaves to make raspberry leaf tea out of. It’s great for your womanly parts (sorry guys)!

We have three rows of beans that I planted last weekend and hopefully will be able to can or freeze:

The front bed contains peas, beans, and lavender. I hope to use the lavender in my homemade soap this fall for Christmas gifts!  The bed behind it has basil, rosemary, oregano, chives, sage, and Italian parsley.

And last but not least we have some beautiful rainbow chard that is recovering nicely after I tried to kill it:

Growing a garden is not only delicious to me, but it’s also therapeutic. I love going out to my garden at the end of the day and digging in the dirt and watering the plants. There’s nothing like it!

What’s your favorite home grown vegetable?

DO NOT USE THIS RECIPE. This is not a good recipe. I apologize in advance for posting it without testing, but I told you I’d update you with results, and I can assure you it’s NO GOOD. I thought the collards were bad yesterday, but I am much happier with holey collards than no collards at all!

Here’s a comparison.

Yesterday.

Today.

Needless to say, don’t make the same mistake I did.  I’m hoping that my swiss chard and collard greens will come back to life.  I’m going to be heartbroken if they don’t.  Now I need to find a real recipe for a good organic pesticide.  Anyone have any ideas?

To Can or Not to Can: that is the question.  Yesterday I wrote how we save money by growing vegetables in our garden. I decided today to take it one step further and can some of the tomatoes that were overgrowing the garden. Please call me crazy.  I am still not done and I started about three hours ago!  This takes a lot more time than I thought it would.  This is an actual picture of one of our tomato plants.  It is over 5 feet tall!

I anticipate getting more tomatoes off these plants.  There are some green tomatoes growing currently.

Look how big these tomatoes are!!  I’ve never seen any this big.

This was my process: dip the tomatoes in boiling water for about 1 minute, shock them in an ice bath, remove skin and seeds from inside, sterilize jars, put tomatoes in jar, make sure there was no air in them, seal, and put in canner.  I know it sounds easy, but trust me, it was a lot of work!  Honestly I don’t think this was a money saving endeavor, but what can I do?  (pun intended)  The first batch is sitting in my dining room and I hope they seal.  If they don’t, I’m going to have to put them in the freezer, and I really don’t have all that much space in the freezer.  Plus, all the time that I spent on doing this would be wasted!

I think I would have saved (or made) more money had I taken them to the farmer’s market this morning.  If I would have done that, I would have saved time and energy.  I hope that my efforts are not fruitless come winter, and these canned tomatoes are better than any other tomato I’ve eaten.  I can make spaghetti sauce, chili, and a whole lot of other dishes.  Plus, they are in glass jars versus aluminum and I like that.

Do you think it’s worth it to can your own vegetables?