Wheatgrass Sprouts

Over a year ago now, Benji & I ordered both the Easy Green Sprouter and the Green Star 2000 Juicer to start a new healthier lifestyle (remember this and this?). We used the juicer quite a few times initially, juicing mangoes, apples, mulberries and carrots to name a few, but after a number of weeks, the excitement wore off, and the juicer went into hibernation on the kitchen counter…

The sprouter suffered a similar fate. I unsuccessfully attempted to sprout some old broccoli seeds we had kickin’ around and subsequently gave up, and the sprouter has lived since, caked in dust, on top of the laundry cabinets.

I can’t remember exactly what spurred my latest round of enthusiasm, but I finally went ahead and ordered 10lbs of organic wheatgrass seeds online, and when they arrived I was excited to get going!

So I started them on Wednesday (I think) and here’s what they looked like on Day 3

Day 3

Day 4

The Easy Green Sprouter comes with a timer that you can set to mist the sprouts automatically on whatever schedule is appropriate for the crop you’re growing. It really makes it super simple! I think I read that wheatgrass takes about 10 days before the sprouts are ready for juicing. It’s so amazing to watch the sprouts change and grow every day! I can’t wait to try some new varieties for juicing & salads once I get the hang of it!

Will keep you posted!

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Growing Onions from Onions

Maybe I’m just lazy, but trying to find somewhere that sells seeds, or bulbs is more trouble than I’m prepared to go through to get started, let alone trying to sprout something myself. So most of the gardening or “growing” that I’m prepared to do has to be pretty simple…and it really doesn’t get more simple than this:

• Cut off the bottom of an (organic) onion (the rooty side) with about 2 inches of “meat”
• Let it dry out for a few days…
• Stick it root-side-down in a pot of soil (or the ground, whichever) and cover with about 2 inches of soil
• Water as needed
• Once it develops a few leaves, pull it out of the soil and remove the old onion scales
• Separate the plants as needed (more than one plant may develop from a single original root)
• Replant and trim leaves by about 2/3
• Harvest as green onions, or allow to mature fully

green onions, separated

I got my information here, btw.

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Green Thumb

So yesterday I showed you my basil cutting growing roots, as well as the pot I decorated here, but here they are together!

pot o' basil

Also, the pomegranate tree that I planted back in September 2009, finally has its first fruit!

Update: Benji is disgruntled that I did not give the others involved any credit for this pomegranate. My bad. Benji & I bought the pomegranate tree (really more like a bush) together, and subsequently had my dad arrange digging a hole and actually putting it in the ground.

perfect pomegranate

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Time for Distraction

In less depressing news…I have stuffs to show you!

First of all, I read up on how to prune basil, and learned two things:

1. aggressive pruning leads to greater leaf production,
2. you can propagate basil by cutting off a branch and suspending it in water. in just a few short days, it will have sprouted its own roots! ready for planting!

my propagation set up

look at all ze roots!

So now you may be wondering what I’m going to plant my new basil plant in…Well. I have an answer for that too! Ta Daaaa!

shell pot! a pot with shells!

And yes. I glued all those shells on myself. Crafty, aren’t I? :-)

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Herbalicious

I said I was gonna do it, and goshdarnit, I did it!

Witness! MY HERB GARDEN!

Ta Daaaaa!!!

Waaahh Waahh…..slightly underwhelmed, no? Well, bummer as it may be, the nursery only had what you can see here. And what you’re looking at (left to right) is basil, rosemary, native thyme and mint.

Would you believe that stupid plastic fake terracotta thingy cost me $32! THIRTY TWO DOLLARS!!! The Bahamas is so ridiculously overpriced! Anyway, the herbies smell divine, and I can wait to cook with them!

I’m proud of me, and I know you are too! I tried something! :) Now let’s see if I can keep them alive!

close up of the little herbies

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Back on the Wagon

Wow. Random. I suddenly had a bunch of blog views on my post about dog breeding…which unfortunately never happened! Not with Shera at least. We’re hoping that if Brees turns out to be as great as we think he will be, we will breed him. But seeing as he’s a male, we wouldn’t have a whole litter, we’d prolly just get pick of the litter…but I’d be fine with that :-)

kisses for mumma!

On to other things now. I haven’t really been trying much of anything lately…which is maybe why I haven’t blogged much lately. I’ve decided, however, that today I am going to start a herb garden. Yup. AND, I’m going to get my composter back up and running (oops, did I not mention that I’ve been neglecting it the last couple weeks months? teehee) Now that our horrible, evil housekeeper “H” no longer works for us, it shouldn’t be as difficult to maintain. I swear I told her on a daily basis, no grapefruit, no banana peels, etc. And yet, they ended up jamming my poor composter EVERY DAY! Ugh! Seriously though! To the point that it actually broke, and I had to email NatureMill for them to send me new parts! And believe me, it’s no fun installing those new parts into the dirty stinky composter! Yeck!

Also, I discovered this cool new blog today called Herban Lifestyle! (so clever hey?) That’s actually what inspired me to start my herb garden tonight. But anyway, the point I was getting at was that she posted a recipe for Mulberry Pie! How cool is that?! If you’ve ever read my blog, you may recall that I have several mulberry trees in my yard! So I’m uber excited to try this new form of mulberry goodness!

My prospective list of herbs…and some non-herbs: (provided that the nursery has them in stock)

• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Basil
• Oregano
• Parsley (flat-leaf/Italian)
• Bay Leaf
• Mint
• Neem
• Lavender
• Garlic
• Arugula

SO. Do we think it’s a bit over ambitious? I’m not sure…

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Suggestions?

got 'em?

So I already feel like I’m running out of things to write about on my poor little blog, and that it’s already as dull as dishwater. Maybe you people in cyberspace have some suggestions of things I could try out (preferably along the lines of my interests…) My interests are pretty simple:

Environment/Conservation, climate change, invasive species

Animals; pets & wildlife

Health/Diet, vegetarianism, cooking, organic, gardening, composting

Fitness: gym, weights, tennis, swimming, water-sports

Some other interests of mine which I haven’t written about yet are things like: boating, reading, spirituality, decorating, crafts (oo that reminds me, I could show you guys some of the (pretty?) things I’ve made)

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Shrooms in my Pot!

heheh, suggestive title…not what you think!

daddy shroom & baby shroomies

overview of my shroom garden

I’m gonna guess these mushrooms aren‘t edible…but does anyone know what type they are? They came from no where-totally unprovoked!

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Shera-ree-ra!

This isn’t really me trying anything, but…she’s just so gosh-darn cute, I had to share…

Hi Mumma!

sniffin' around the Dilly tree!

On a rather unrelated note though, I’m trying to convince my Dad to trim back this Sapodilla (dilly) tree, cuz it is just overgrown. The canopy is a mess of branches; dead ones can’t even fall to the ground it’s so congested! And when the tree is loaded with fruit, the whole tree vibrates with the sound of wasps living in the tree! Why!? It’s bad…so anybody-any tips for pruning/trimming a dilly tree?

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Avocado Update!

Check out all the new roots! WOOOOO!!!

so many roots!!

I can feel it – any day now the shoot is gonna come bursting through the top! I can’t wait!

I also just started sprouting another Avocado pit:

new baby avocado pit

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