Strawberry Leaf Tea

More on Strawberry Tea...

Directions:

Harvest the young leaves through spring and summer (when the plant is flowering).

Stay away from any leaves with color discoloration (fungi), pick only 'perfect' leaves.

NEVER drink/eat leaves that are in the midst of drying out - the leaves go under a toxic change when they dry out - they won't kill you but will give you a nasty stomache ache, possible vomitting and diarrhea.

Dry leaves are completley safe to use for tea. Although its recommended to use no more than two teaspoons in your tea brew and to not ingest the tea leaves.  And they should be avoided if you are allergic to strawberries!

The special benefit is that strawberry leaves are one of the highest naturally occurring sources of Vitamin C. As with raspberry leaves, they make a pleasant spring tonic and/or tea.  Strawberry leaves are a well known herbal remedy that has been used for many years throughout the world. Strawberry leaves are completely natural, and gentle on an upset stomach, they help to ease stomach discomfort, and they have been known to help pregnant women deal with nausea more effectively.  The strawberry leaf contains a high number of tannins, antioxidant flavanoids, and some essential oil. Specifically, strawberry leaves are used to treat diarrhea, nausea, chlamydia, gonorrhea, bladder problems, digestive problems, aches, pains, skin problems, rheumatism, and for weight loss.

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Jeepers! I could of used some of this today! I've been in bed all day [and yesterday] with the flu!  I was just about to harvest some strawberry leaves.  I am preparing my strawberry garden - as it pretty much took over where its at and its needs more room to crawl.  Did I tell you I have wild strawberries?  I bought a couple plants at a local garden sale last year - I didn't realize how hard they are to find - so if you ever come across them, buy them! And cherish the fact that you have something that habitat destruction from urbanization/development, etc. is endangering.


Another tip: Get family members to save their big glass jars (or buy them at the second-hand stores) - they are great to store tea leaves.  But remember to store your leaves in a dark and dry place (to preserve the goodness).  You could also paint the OUTside of the jar to keep it dark.

More Dirty Gabble

Jason's Notes to Self


1) Fall in Love with Dirt.
2) Fall in Love with Woman that loves dirt and has a nail brush.
3) Fall in Love with Weeds.
4) Grow Food.


The spinach, lettuce and peas have broken ground. I also noticed the Joiners have planted corn under white crop cover yesterday. Mmm, I love corn.


I haven't noticed the mason bees around. I have noticed some type of long, skinny dark fly, I think I'll call it a tansy fly. We planted a Harko Nectarine tree, moved the olive tree, and rearranged the many strawberry plants. I think we planted about a dozen or two strawberry plants last year (some wild, some everbearing) and this year we must have 50 - 80 plants. By next year, the strawbeerry plants should fill in that area thickly enough to prevent any weeds or grass from creeping in.


I'm tempted to continue to cut the grass back year after year, letting the strawberry plants take over the yard. The strawberries would become a spreading carpet, free to spread until it runs into the lemon balm I've planted far away that I hope will grow and creep it's way across the landscape. And camomile and mint. Running the lawn mower over it all would make a nice tea ... for 200 people.

Dirty Gabble

Laura's 'Notes to Self'

1. Fall in love with dirt.
2. Get a nail scrub brush.
3. Take your rings off before you garden.
4. Take your shoes off outside before coming IN the house.
5. Get use to sweeping the floors often.

And here I thought keeping up with the cat hair in my house from our four cats was tiring. The dirt from two gardeners is unbelievable!

Ready, Set, Grow!

The garlic I planted in February is already sprouting! I'm still wondering if these bulbs will grow to their normal size, being planted late and all.

My wild strawberries are already blossoming. Hope the bees find their way to them soon. These wild strawberries are 'wildly' awesome how they seem to keep growing and growing from early summer to late fall. And the berries are so tiny and sweet, so unlike the other strawberries you find locally. I bought two wild plants from a garden fair last year [$2.00 each] and planted them in this one area, where they are now taking over! And the winter didn't seem to bother them one bit.
I recently read that strawberry leaves can be dried and used for a tea. I will be doing more reading on this and will keep you posted.

The rubbarb is coming back to life. Did you know rubarb is a great LOCAL alternative to use where it might otherwise call for lemons? Did you also know the leaves are poisonous - keep it where children and pets won't be tempted to munch on it!

Did I mention the chives are growing steadily? I have a soft place for chives in my heart, ever since Jason showed up on our first date with a bundle full of chives from his garden [now our garden] two years ago when I met him. That and flowers from his garden, which happened to be more like 'sticks with flowers' as what was in bloom at that time, included the magnolia tree and other bushes. Come to think of it, it was a month later in the season than it is now [April] and yet our plants/trees are over a month ahead of schedule in comparison to where they were at that year [2008].

Raspberry Madness

I did it again. I forgot to wear a long sleeve shirt when tieing up the raspberries this year. A week of scratches on my hands and arms are my new beauty spots.

Jason bought some posts and wire and set them up - I followed behind tieing up the canes to the wire. I am definitely an amateur at this... but at least it will help to manage them before they take over by early summer.

We have everbearing raspberries, which means we get crops in waves, starting in late June until the fall. We harvested so many berries we didn't know what to do with them all. We even tried selling some from our driveway. We still have jam from last year and we gave oodles of it away for christmas and birthdays this year. Time to start getting familiar with new raspberry recipes.

Each year we end up with more raspberry canes than we first start out with. New shoots grow each year. We make sure to pot them up or move them to a better location. This year, we put an ad on craigslist to sell some of our canes. We have made about $100 so far [one week]- money we have alrady put back into garden supplies- and we have more to sell. Jason is talking about building a large planter box and growing some of them on the roof [because we are running out of garden space]. That could be interesting. I wouldn't mind a sun chair or two up there as well - nice place to relax and look over at the garden.

Bees in the Garden

We picked up some Mason Bees from the garden store.
Last year we didn't get any pears on our pear tree because the bees arrived after our tree started flowering - so this year we thought we'd try with mason bees. Although, we wonder if we have wasted $15 on 10 bees that may have flown away, hard to say. The bees started waking up pretty soon after the store clerk took the jar out of the fridge. We made a hive out of a piece of wood drilling a bunch of 5/16" in diameter (min) holes, about 6" long or so. In nature, mason bees usually live in the holes left behind by termites so we figured these hole would do just fine. We were instructed to get the hive and jar set up as soon as possible after leaving the store, as the bees were going to start waking up (due to the temperature change). They did. Let's hope the bees found a home close to our garden. It would be nice to see them come in and out of the hive we made for them. I will keep you updated.

PS One of our 'to dos' this year will be to figure out an early budding spring flower that the bees love, so that they will stay around for the fruit trees. Apparantly the bees are super busy in my sister's heather shrubs.

Daffodils

Looks like Jason has joined in on the blog. Yeah! Here's something to add to the daffodil gabble. We planted about 100 bulbs in the fall, just before the frost - so we could enjoy the colors of spring!

The daffodils are now in full bloom in our back yard, which came about 10 days later than the front yard. The garlic is coming up nicely all over, even a couple very old, dry cloves.

Our First Garden Salad 2010

Our first salad from the garden in 2010. Today is Monday, March 15th

We made a salad out of some of some of our first greens including; cabbage, chard, kale, chives, mint, a turnip, thyme and pansies. An interesting blend, full of unusual, but tasty flavours.

A Winter Garden

The garlic planted in the fall is starting to grow. Red Russian has grown the fastest. We also have music, legacy, leningrad, hungarian hot, portuguese, pitirelli, and our unknown surprise garlic. In total we planted about 300 cloves [from approximately 50-60 bulbs]. We figure we need about 150 bulbs just to eat for the two of us through the year... the more the better...ever tried throwing a garlic bulb on the barbeque? Mmmmmmmmm.

The weather has been so beautiful and warm - we figured its a good time to start planting. A couple weeks ago, we planted two types of potatoes, leeks, lettuce, onions, kohlrabi, peas, and spinach. We also tried planting some garlic late, as we came across some new varieties from a winter farmer's market in Mission: Northern Quebec and German Hot. Not sure how they will grow in comparison to the bulbs planted properly in the fall.

We planted leeks in the spring and only got three decent size ones to eat in the late summer. Then they started to grow as soon as the weather got cooler. This large leek is one that started growing in the fall. Then in January, I found three more leeks starting to grow.

The Trees Get a Haircut

A gardner's work is never done! So many trees, so many to trim. January through March is tree trimming time - just before the trees start blooming. Jason finally got to those giant cedars. All in a day's work. [Took a day of work].

A couple trailer loads of branches to the landfill's compost.

Blueberries

Jason found some blueberries for sale on Craigslist for $3.00 a bush. They are the Chippewa variety [artic hardy]. We started with five bushes and then Jason came home with a wagon load. We now have 60 plants. The bushes needed to be pruned and most of the buds taken off, so that the roots can reestablish themselves in new soil.

The first five (above) and all the rest (below).

A New Year, Another Garden

These are photographs from February 2010. We had an unusually warm winter this year. All the spring flowers showed up in February.

Here is our buddha garden... sitting pretty in blooms. Snow drops. Seems like yesterday that we put these bulbs in the ground.

Kale returning from last season. Kale is one of those amazing vegetables packed with vitamens and nutrients that keeps growing and growing all year long on the BC coast. If you don't already have it in your garden.... I recommend it.

The chard is growing back from last year's crop. What an amazing bountiful vegetable! It grew from the time we planted it up until the frost and started growing again in January. If you were to buy chard from the market you'd pay ~$2.99 for a small bunch of it. Why buy it when you can grow it almost all year long and have plenty of it.

Our herb garden box is starting to fill in nicely. It started in January.


Chives are the first to appear, followed by parlsey...

Our Garden in the Fall [2009]

Here are some of our garden goodies from the fall 2009. We can't wait to start eating our produce again this year. Looks like we won't have to wait very long, there are already things starting to grow back in our garden and due to the warm winter weather we have begun to plant this year's 2010 garden. Now that I have brought everyone up to speed in our garden [since moving in here in 2008/2009] I can bombard you with our current garden gabble as we getting our 2010 garden growing on the go! Stay tuned.

Learning about preserving, canning and preserving our food. Its such a treat to eat our garden goodies in the winter months. Items included homemade salsa, tomatoe sauce, spaghetti sauce, pickled beans, onions, pickles, canned soups, canned fruits, beans and chard. I don't think we will can chard again this year, as its only absent from the garden for about 2 months before it shoots up again.

The sunflowers were harvested. Some for eating, some for replanting. Chopped off the heads and let them dry out in the sun. I'd like to find an easier way to get the seeds off the stalk, it seemed to be a lengthly job.

Jerusalem Artichoke. We tried making french fries out of them for our first sampling. We are still getting use to this vegetables' new flavor and texture. While it takes like artichoke in some fashion, this root is a part of the onion family. It grows in plenty and we saved many of the roots and stalk to grow for next year.

A whole lot of goodness. One last pick through the garden to collect the remaining goodness before the frost comes.


We grew squashes of all sorts.
Made a bunch into soup and froze it. Jason made a bunch of pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving.

Jason's Favorite Garden Story

The story of Jason's Giant Pumpkin...

A little thing, just a little smaller than Jason's foot.

Now bigger than Jason's head.

A proud gardener.

It weighs a ton!

What do you do with a giant pumpkin? Carve it and stuff a baby in it.

Oh the life of Jason's giant pumpkin.

A creative art piece for Halloween [a giant snake head to scare the tricker treaters].

Homemade Salsa [2009]

First you skin the tomatoes... and chop up the other ingredients (fresh basil, peppers [of sorts] and onions all from our garden]. The skinning of the tomatoes takes a fair bit of time, but hot water poured over them does the trick. Not all ingredients a part of our garden mile diet. This year, we had to purchase garlic, while we await our garlic grove to get gargantic.
Sterlize the jars and lids... Tip: Start hunting for your glass jars in the spring time from second-hand stores [to save $ and to 'resuse']. If you wait until canning season, they will most likely be gone.

Three different types of salsa's this year... one with Tomatillos [green] and one super spicy, and the other ridiculously spicey. You'll have to ask Jason about most of the preserves as he spent most of the time in the kitchen 'cooking' away.

Summer into Fall [2009]

Spagetthi Squash. [We are still eating last year's crop]. In fact, I used a spaghetti squash for the 'noodles' for spaghetti last night [using a jar of our garden sauce]. This year's task will be to figure out where to purchase local cheddar.

Corn.

Peppers. A variety of peppers. Some local to this climate, others not. Jason brought several varieties of peppers [seeds] back from Mexico.

Mini watermelons.

Three canteloups grew. Some thing I learned this garden year, that canteloups can be grown in our climate.

Bell peppers.

Egg plant.

Acorn Squash.

Pumpkins.