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The Garden has Sighed

       I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com   We had our first frost this week and the garden called it quits on most things. I covered our peppers, as they have a ton of fruit on them but aren’t quite ripe yet. It was very cold that night, my husband even saw some frozen water in places! The green beans, tender herbs, and most of the flowers died. My sheets weren’t quite as protective as I had hoped and the tops of some of the peppers were killed off.      Since the nights are just plain cold now in the 40s and 50s, I think we’re going to pick all the hot peppers-many green still-and try to ripen them a bit inside and then will either dry them in the food dehydrator or chop them up and freeze. We have Trinidad Scorpions, Carolina Reapers, Habanero, and Ghost Peppers. All of which grew surprisingly well in our shorter seaso
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Time for Tea-Anise Hyssop, Mullein and Chamomile for a Cold

      I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com     I've been foraging, growing and drying herbs and flowers all summer so I could have a nice variety of herbal tea blends. Well, now that its the third week of school, we all are a bit sniffly with a cold and its the perfect time to try some out!  Today I'm stuffy and sneezy, so I've blended up a cup of chamomile, mullein and anise hyssop. it tastes amazing! I love anise flavoring, or black licorice flavor as some people may reference, so this cup is quite enjoyable.  Mullein leaves are known to have respiratory-supporting and anti-inflammatory traits, so I've included them along with chamomile for its soothing effects, and some anise hyssop, which has cough suppressing properties, and as mentioned, great flavor!  I filled a paper teabag with the leaves and flowers
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2022 Garden Season is Almost Over--Watch a garden tour on my YouTube Channel!

     I'm sharing a video of my garden as it moves into the end of a great season of peppers, green beans, of course kale, but a lack-luster tomato season. This could partly be because I chose smaller tomato varieties and they just didn't get very big! The Valencia Orange were very productive, meaty and had a nice, sweet flavor. My Romas were not the best producers this year and seemed to have a leaf issue most of the summer. The Five-Star Grape tomatoes were and still are VERY prolific. The Green Zebra were just a bit meh.       I'd appreciate it if you could also subscribe to my YouTube channel if you feel so inclined! My first goal is to get 100 subscribers so I can have a real name on my channel instead of a random number and letter stream. Thank you in advance! 
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Finding Your Garden Why

  I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com        Recent events have encouraged—and maybe forced—many people to grow their own food. This isn’t new to humans, but since people started living in cities, residential lots became smaller, time has become sparse, not many people were growing their own food. Grocery stores are abundant in most places, home delivery enables us to order things and receive them almost instantly. But people seem to be feeling the need to come back to the “roots” of supporting themselves, at least a little bit.      So, you feel the need to garden.   Before going out and buying all the seeds, you should think about why you actually want or need to do it. Some things that pop into mind could be, wanting to eat fresh (or maybe clean/more organic) food, reducing grocery costs, preserving for off seasons,
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Returning to the Garden Blog

 Well Hello! I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com   I think its been years...yes it has. We've done a lot of things: our son is 9, I've had a couple different jobs, we own a home. But I still feel the need to create and write about it.  This blog started with the garden and I'm going to continue with the garden!  I now have a raised bed garden in our back yard, made up of 12, 3x4' steel beds. It looks really nice and produces well also. I started them last year with 8 beds. This year I added 4 more and also surrounded the garden with a flower garden! Its so beautiful, so full of pollinators and also the rogue critters.  Since it was a lot of cubic feet to fill, I chose to follow the hügelkultur route. I filled the bottoms with 6" of dead tree logs, sticks and bits. Topped that with tons of decomposing lea
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Most Amazing Potato Soup Ever!

I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com   My husband loves loaded baked and mashed potatoes.  I decided to create a soup based on his slight obsession.  He loves this too.   Loaded Baked Potato Soup 2 Yukon Gold potatoes, diced 1 rib of celery, diced 2 small carrots, finely diced (adds a bit of sweetness, but aren't totally necessary) Small yellow onion, diced 1/3-1/2 c. bacon bits/pieces (REAL bacon, not the fake kind) 2-3 green onions/scallions, chopped 2 T butter 1 c.-1 1/2 c. (more or less) chicken broth  1/2 quart cream (skim milk if you want to make this sorta healthy, but it's just not the same) 1 can cheddar cheese soup Pepper Melt the butter at med-high heat, add yellow onions and cook until almost translucent, then toss in the bacon during this to warm up the flavor.  Add the broth and brin
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I've Been Busy!

I've been a little busy since my last post!  Only 6 days after my last post, we welcomed our son into this world!  He arrived 12/11/12 at 4:37 in the morning.  He's a true joy and is a wonderful baby.  I will be working on some better posts soon, but as most of you know babies keep you busy!  
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