Nina's Soap

My perennial vegetables are flourishing in the garden.

Today the second Saturday of May has been cloudy the whole day. After making Coconut oil and Cocoa butter soap in the morning, I went to the garden to sow green bean along the fence in the back yard. I also sowed lovage, Greek oregano, and cucumber. During my sowing, I remarked Creeping Charlie the weed growing tall in some parts of the garden.

I harvested a gallon full of it to the chicken where I rinsed it, chopped, and packed loosely in two gallon bags before freezing.

Later during the day, I harvested leaves of Egyptian onions, rinsed, chopped and froze in two gallon Ziploc bags.

Wild Thyme is growing well at some area of the garden. I cut few to make thyme infused olive oil. I rinsed the leaves, chopped them and pound with olive oil using my granite mortar and pestle. I then scoop to a glass jar and store in the freezer. It would be very good on chops and steaks during winter.

After lunch, I went back to the garden and harvested young raspberry plants.

My raspberry bed is crowded of young plants. I need to create path for the kids to be able to harvest raspberries for their snack in summer. But for now, I just cut few plants tied them in small bunches and hung them to cloth hungers. I hung the hungers to a wire in my garage. I used to dry herbs in the basement but last summer, I asked my husband to install few hooks in the garage wall and we hung some concrete wire along the wall. I have some in excess after fencing the garden. They are very useful to dry herbs. Last year I even dried herbs outside in the shade for few hours before getting them to the garage. To dry outside, I took a concrete wire joined the two edged together to overlap them and let it stand without any support. I tied herbs I freshly harvested in small bunches to hungers and hung the hungers to the wire. I put the wire in the shade in the morning. As the sun rose in the sky, I moved the wire to another shaded area of the backyard. In the early evening, I took the hungers from the wire and hung in the garage. I hung outside during the weekends as I harvested fresh herbs in the garden. During the weeks, after work, I would live the garage door open for few hours to get fresh air in and out. Last year, I harvested raspberry leaves from branches that fruited in late spring as I cut them down. If you grow raspberries, you can have few opportunities to harvest the leaves for teas without affecting the fruiting production. You can harvest the young plants in spring, as you trim the patch, or the leaves from the previous year branches after they fruited in late spring.  Raspberries leaves can be used to make tea.

After hanging the raspberry plants to dry, I harvested broad leaved sorrel. I rinsed them, chopped and froze in two gallon zip bags.

I have a patch of garlic mustard in the garden.

They are growing in the shade and under a tree where few plants like to grow.

I harvested a gallon worth of leaves. I quickly rinsed them, chopped, and froze in two gallon zip bags. My sorrel is growing fast and few plants are about to flower.  I like to let my perennials go through their circle. Even when my sorrel flowers and produces seeds, I continue to harvest the leaves. But the leaves production would decrease around summer and pick up shortly after.

During the harvest, I remarked two asparagus plants started to shoot spears.  I harvested the two asparagus the next day. I rinsed them and removed the bottom part which I added to a bag in the freezer for vegetable broth. I froze the asparagus in zip bag. All the vegetables I harvested are frozen by the next day. I moved them to the bottom of my smallest freezer and moved the rest of last year vegetables on top. I would use the previous year vegetables first. My smallest freezer is almost full of fresh vegetables and it is just early spring.

I ended my harvest on Saturday with some mint variety growing in the garden but I didn’t plant.

It has lemon scent to it. I like to call it lemon balm. But if anyone that knows what plant it is, can tell me. I made tea and my family enjoyed drinking it. The tea tasted like lemongrass tea. It is in fact one of the two mint varieties that grow in the garden I didn’t plant.

I planted two types of mint: English mint and Peppermint. So I have 4 types of mint. My kids like mint tea and I dry my English mint and Peppermint for tea during winter. We drink mint tea a lot in winter. That helps when we have cold.

My weekend has been busy but it was worth it. I did a lot of harvest on Saturday between cooking. Sunday has been quite similar with cleaning, cooking, and making my low sugar chocolate chips cookies as Mother’s day treat for my family.

I don’t need to buy onion, kale, collard, or spinach at the grocery store. The vegetables I harvested from my garden and listed above are used as substitute for them. I harvest fresh from the garden for my daily cooking without using my frozen vegetables in spring unless it is raining.