This month I’m working on several projects that have been on my to-do lists for months.
I have a lot of work to do in the garden, as the weeds have grown quite a bit in the last month while I’ve been recovering from having a baby. I am also behind in planting several things in the garden (or else they haven’t come up/were munched by bugs).
Sewing:
1. Sew burp cloths for the baby
2. Sew three dresses for myself
4. Sew pillow cover for living room pillow
5. Mend at least 5 items in the mending pile
Cooking and Canning:
1. Can apricot vanilla jam with our apricots
2. Can plum sauce with our plums
3. Make rosemary fig gelato with our figs
4. Make mint chocolate frog ice cream with mint from the garden
5. Make lemonade with our lemons
6. Make hibiscus tea with hibiscus flowers from the garden. I’m trying several different recipes to find a combination I love.
7. Make popsicles several times, including apricot honey popsicles with apricots from the garden
8. Make blackberry pavlovas
9. Make yogurt and granola
10. Make white bean dip and pita bread
Garden:
1. Pull weeds
2. Trim hedges in back
3. Run drip lines to some pots and a few other places in the garden
4. Cut and dry herbs from the garden
5. Sow seeds for parsley, basil, hollyhocks, zinnias, Armenian cucumbers, dahlias, alpine strawberries, sunflowers, vincas, red noodle beans, winter squash, and chives
6. Collect nasturtium, leek, and lettuce seeds from the garden
7. Pick blackberries, strawberries, figs, plums, apples and apricots as they ripen
I absolutely love, love, love that your backyard is a food forest! Also, where do you get fabric for all of your projects? I just scored a good amount of fabric from Goodwill for $6, but I’m always on the lookout for better deals on good quality fabric.
Our peach trees have several young peaches on them for the first time ever! I really hope they make it and that we have fresh peaches this year. Still waiting on our raspberries to ripen, but I hope to have plenty to eat and freeze.
My biggest goal for June is to give the kids many opportunities to play in the water so they can finally learn how to swim. And to pay more down on our debt.
What you manage to produce on a city lot in Las Vegas never fails to amaze me! I hope you’ll share your favorite hibiscus recipe(s) after you’ve experimented. I grew it for the first time last year. The few calyxes I got went into a fire cider recipe. I’m hoping to be able to do more with them this year. The nasturtium seeds I planted are growing well, & we have a nice little crop of plums. You’ve got me thinking about apricots again. It was one of the first trees I planted here, & though it blooms, it has never fruited. It was advertised as self-pollinating, but I need to add another, or replace it. I looked up the grape leaf skeletonizers, which seem to be just in the western US. Our grape worms are plain green with just a bit of color at their heads. Pesky critters!
I love that you need to recover from having a baby , it always makes me laugh when you see the immaculate celebrity mums with their personal trainers and nutritionist , 3 nannies and a stylist . The reality is so different …lol
I like Hibiscus cold tea (Jamaica) very popular in latin america, its very good for your kidneys or when experiencing UTI’s
I buy it @ the hispanic market in bulk.
wonderful production from your fruit trees and berries. those are pretty nice figs. i have the brown turkey but hasn’t done to well the last few years. maybe it will do better this year. hope everyone is doing well,
Have you tried using a paint brush to pollinate. Could also be the age, is it old enough to bear fruit. The next thing to check s nutrients in the soil. I might be missing something, but those are probably the main things. Plus on a lot of plants… even w self pollinating… you need more than one to produce fruit. It just depends on what it is.
I love reading about all of the fruit you harvest from your garden. I am making lists of fruits that will grow up here and nurseries to buy them from so hopefully next year I can buy some to plant. I’d love to be able to expand my horizons to growing some fruit around here on top of our veggies :).
I have different things planned for this month. Like you, I have sewing projects that have been put off months, but just because other life events got in the way, so I’m hoping to do some of those this month.
My list for the month can be found here…
Monthly Goals: June 2016
http://makedohomemaker.blogspot.com/2016/06/monthly-goals-june-2016.html
Here’s the way I make hibiscus tea (I experimented until I came up with something I liked):
Makes half a gallon
1/3 to 1/2 cup dried hibiscus flowers
handful of fresh mint (or a couple teaspoons crushed dried mint)
handful of fresh lemon balm or anise hyssop (optional)
1 TBSP dried licorice root pieces (or less, to taste)
Boil two quarts of water. Pour over herbs in heat proof container. Cover and let steep for a while (anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours). Strain and chill. Serve over ice.
I bought a quarter pound of dried licorice root last summer, and I still have more than half of the package left. I like it because it adds sweetness to the mix without adding sugar.
I drink gallons of this stuff when it’s hot out. So good!
Brandy I love your blog! Over the years it has been a constant source of inspiration and encouragement. Would you mind sharing your dress patterns? I see on your pinter estate you have ideas for your daughters dresses but I’d like pattern # ideas for womens dresses. I’m prayerful your recovery postnatal goes well.
I have not attempted to hand pollinate it, Anie. It’s quite tall now, but I could reach some lower flowers and try it next year. There could definitely be some amendments added to the soil there; it is in a spot that is rather neglected. I know that self-pollinating trees often do better with another tree, but it has never produced even one fruit. It is something like 18 or 19 years old now. Thanks for the good ideas!
Sandi,
I have several pins on Pinterest for free women’s dress patterns (and some skirts) on my Sewing Inspiration board: https://www.pinterest.com/prudent/sewing-inspiration/
I also pinned a tutorial on making a dress pattern from an existing dress on there. I want to make a pTTERN from one I have, but it’s a wrap dress, and I’ve pinned several tutorials on those. I want to make all three dresses as wrap-around dresses using the same pattern but different fabrics.
I love to mix my tea with lemonade, helpa with thw tartness and such and ur right it’s awesome for kindey function, just one 8 oz cup a day really helps. It did my mom who was having kidney issues and such.
Garden:
Mulch the raspberries and strawberries
build the raised bed for the blueberries – that will give me much better control over the soil acidity. I have tried them straight in the ground and have had no luck getting them to grow.
Build 2-3 more raised veggie beds + fix one that was pushed apart by age and frost heave
Stay on top of harvesting and preserving anything that comes ripe.
Build a trellis for the grape vine I dug out (it self seeded and was not in a good location)
House:
Continue cleaning up the yard of all the overgrown areas (almost done with this thanks to my daughter)
Paint the front porch posts
Paint the main bath
Remove wall paper border in my pantry and use left over paint to brighten it up.
Fix the trim in a couple places that have gotten pulled out or ruined
Build the shelf with hooks for the dogs leashes and poop bags so they are all in one place.
Sewing:
Make the toiletry bags in “the bus” RV colors
Make new cushion and pillow covers for the front porch
Make the curtains for my sewing room and the roman shades for the master bedroom
Start recovering couch cushions (this will more than likely take the entire summer because I don’t like doing it :/ )
Otherwise – my goal is to just enjoy the summer and not dwell on the bumps in the road.
My goals for this month include finishing planting the garden, washing all the windows inside and out (once the oak pollen has dispersed — it really sticks to the windows and I learned the hard way to wait until it is gone to wash), make a skirt and a dress for me, list some items on eBay and take others to the local thrift store, wash both dogs and make some of Brandi’s delicious mint chocolate chip (she makes mint chocolate frog) ice cream from the mint in my garden. We also hope to go camping at least twice (first trip is next week.)
Honeyberries grow exceptionally well in Southcentral and Interior Alaska. The fruits look like long blueberries and are great for jams and eating straight. Grow uncomplainingly, don’t need to be trimmed back or shaped, and one bush gives a lot of yield. If you buy form a nursery, make sure there are two in the bucket because you need that for pollination. Mine produced from year 1 and have never given up. You can get early and late fruiters, for a near constant supply. I live in the Fairbanks area and we practically live off our honeyberry and raspberry bushes during the summer. (And the rhubarb…just made chocolate rhubarb loaf this morning, as a matter of fact.)
Hi Brandy,
Do you pull all your weeds by hand? Do you use any kind of spray?
Love your apricot vanilla jam – will be making it today with apricots from our tree!
S.
Stephanie,
I pull the weeds in the garden by hand. I don’t get a ton, since it doesn’t rain here; they’re usually by the drip irrigation. I do have some problems with crabgrass, though, from manure we brought in at this house when we first started the garden. I will never get local manure again because of that; at my last house I never had that problem, using sterile manure and soil. That is my major problem right now; in 10 years, I haven’t been able to completely eradicate it. I do have some other grass that has grown in the garden that also has to be pulled. The other weeds (regular weeds, like dandelions) I’ve already pulled this week. Now it’s just the crabgrass and the other grass that has self-seeded.
Cool, thank you! I’ll definitely add honeyberry to my list of things I want to get :).
Hi Brandi and all and hope you have had a wonderful month 🙂 . I love the beautiful things you have been able to harvest from the garden for your family, truly a blessing.
This month we have picked strawberries, turnips, peas, snow peas, capsicum , cucumbers, sweet corn, onions, spring onions, silverbeet, spinach,parsley and Thai basil. We have blanched and frozen a lot of spinach, silverbeet, sweet corn and capsicums.
In the garden we plan to plant some more –
– carrots.
– climbing beans.
– replant some broad beans that got hit with a sudden heat wave.
– fertilise twice this month.
Harvest –
– The rest of the pumpkins in the garden and put on the shed roof to season & then store under the house.
– Silverbeet and spinach which we will blanch and freeze in case of more frosts.
– Capsicums to blanch and freeze as they should be going dormant shortly.
– Any other crops that ripen for teas and snacks.
– Check on sweet potatoes growing in the front yard as the vines are dying back to see if they are ready to dig up.
Weeding –
– Weed a few large garden beds in the back gardens, one each couple of days.
– Weed the house lawns and under the home.
Wood cutting –
– Cut & split some more free to us timber & collect some more kindling to restock our supplies on the front veranda we are using.
Sewing –
– Make around 10 sleep masks to replace items sold in my internet shop.
– Try and make 6 more sets of 4 curtain tiebacks to replace items sold.
Is the flavor like a cultivated blueberry or a wild blue/huckle berry? And do the require the same picky soil conditions that blueberries do?
Thank you!
Thank you! We have Bermuda Grass that I have been working on for years and probably will be forever.
Hi Brandy,
Your harvest is simply impressive. I must ask, How are you producing such perfect fruit. I have 15 fruit trees but yet every season I lose all my fruit to fruit flies and bats. I am feeling so despondent about it I am thinking of cutting the trees down and replacing with ornamental trees. I have tried netting my trees and I place 1 fruit fly trap per tree. Any tips you could give would be appreciated. Should I increase the number of traps? We are mostly affected by Queensland Fruit Fly here. First they start in the trees, then they move onto the tomatoes, capsicums and everything else. Thanks again
Brandy, It seems like you have bounced back so quickly from having the baby. I know with a few kids it’s kinda hard to stay put isn’t it? I’m so glad you are doing well. I absolutely love seeing all the produce you are harvesting. The grapes looked to-die-for. That is amazing.
Brandy, this post is so absolutely delicious. Such gorgeous, colorful and engaging photos and your fruit choices here are so beautiful. I love the shot of all the baskets and colanders full of your pretty harvest.
What a delightful blog you have here with so much variety and good things. It’s my pleasure to visit and browse around.
I’ll be back for more… for sure.
Happy day.