Garden Fall Update 2018

We had so much rain here the past week + my garden is exploding! We have super invasive grass and I'm a mostly guerrilla gardener (meaning I let the plants do the work and I don't coddle my plants) that being said I still do a bit of maintenance.  So, I got out the scissors and trimmed the grass around my plants until my husband busts out the lawn mower and cuts down the grass around the garden nooks.

 the clouds made it actually enjoyable to be outside in the misty weather.

and while I was out there I harvested some sage and basil.

checked on the corn we planted from the phoenix public library x native seed search collaboration.

and I trimmed the lemon tree for some eco harvesting - meaning that it started to grow too many lemons so by cutting off some branches I removed the excess lemons and freed up some weight on the tree.

not sure which squash this will be since my daughter planted the seeds in their locations, but I'm excited to see what we get!

 all the rain revived my aloe vera plants too!

 another plant sonja planted, so we'll see what she matures into.

 rogue tomato plant from left over scattered seeds from our last baby tomato plant.

need to get a few more hens, these ladies are sweet but slowing down their eggs and I don't like to buy them at the store.  anyone have suggestions where to get ready to lay hens?  I'm scared to commit to baby chics.

I did find this melon growing in the vines in the middle of our yard, hoping I picked it at the right time, planning on cutting into it this weekend to see!

And that's our garden update these days. I'll let you know when we get some real edibles bursting out!

Fall Garden 2018

We started our Fall/Autumn Garden back up this August, we have a few sproutlings up and growing.  We used mostly seeds from Native Seed Search 'checked out' from our local library.  Phoenix Public Library allow each card holder to check out 3 packets of seeds every three weeks, so for the whole summer while doing our summer reading we would check out packets.  Then at the end of the summer we put them all in the ground! 

We love Native Seed Search because it's native plants to our area and often endangered plants that aren't conventionally grown.  This means they are more nutrient dense (they haven't been over bred and depleted) but it also means they're more unique visually.  I'm excited to share images of wild squash and fiery tomatoes. 

We planted the following seeds;

• Watermelon (Sweet Dakota Rose)
• Hopi Yellow Watermelon
• Onion
• Sunflowers
• Beets
• Peas (Oregon Sugar Pod II)
• Melon (Planters Jumbo)
• Black Beauty Zucchini Squash
• Broccoli
• Loofa Seeds 
• Jalepeno Chili
• Tyhme from plant
• & Mint from plant

// Corn!

// Squash.

Making our own Mesquite Flour {from our Mesquite tree, and it's Gluten Free!}

When we got home from our vacation I noticed a bunch of beautiful mesquite pods in our front yard,  I told the girls to collect them and we would make flour.  They were seriously excited.  I had no idea what I was getting into but I googled DIY mesquite flour and found a basic recipe here and decided to try it out!

I had the girls help add them to the baking sheet.

We gathered a baking sheet's worth of pods and since they were mostly but not all the way dry I put them in the oven at our lowest setting of 170*f and they baked for about 5 hours.  

I didn't even wait for it warm up I just put everything in and left it for a few hours, and then turned the oven off and left them in there until the next morning, just in case.

Then, we broke them up into smaller pieces so the food processor would have an easier time grinding them down.

The girls loved this part.

we love crushing things.

perfect for toddler texture activity.

I put them all into the processor and let Sonja turn it on {it was abnormally loud and may or may not have scared Vera, but we powered though}

I noticed they were sticky, so maybe I didn't get all the moisture out or maybe that's just the composition of the flour as it gets heated from grinding, but they seemed to turn out fine in the end.

After a decent round of food processing, I poured it into a strainer/sifter and separated the larger pieces from the powder.

I wasn't sure if it was grinding down enough, but when I picked it up it was flour texture.

 I repeated about 6-7 times until I was down to the tiniest of pod seeds that didn't want to grind, I saved them for a future mesquite milk recipe or for another batch of flour and if I get really lazy  I might just compost them.

As you can see, it turned out perfect, and now I'm going to have to bake a cake or something.   From my experience the taste varies slightly from wheat, but you can substitute equal parts so 1 cup mesquite flour for 1 cup traditional.  If you're not gluten free I suggest doing half and half, because it can affect baking and you won't know until you try a specific recipe, but mixing half and half has kept recipes working for me in the past.

TaDa! So, if you're in the Phoenix area and wondering what all those little crunchy pods are, pick one up compare it to the internet, then go back the next day and pull all of them off the nearest tree!

Happy DIY Mesquite Flouring!

another interesting resource about mesquite pods can be found here.