Make good use of invasive kudzu & turn the blossoms into jelly. Kudzu flower jelly tastes lightly of grape and is delicious! This is a small half-batch recipe. Feel free to double amounts for a regular sized batch, but don’t triple or above since that will affect outcome. Get Ready To make everything easier for…
Learn how to grow and care for Indigo Rose Tomatoes. They’re beautiful and full of healthy antioxidants, plus perform well during high heat and drought conditions! About This tomato’s an interesting one! Between the name, the coloring, and its high anti-oxidant and anthocyanin content, Indigo Rose Tomato snags your attention when you come across it…
Learn how to grow and care for Dragon’s Egg Cucumbers. They’re mild, delicious, and fun to grow! About: Dragon’s Egg is a sweet and unique cream-colored cucumber that originates from Croatia. This is an excellent cucumber well-worth growing at least once in your garden- it’s a mild, faintly sweet-flavored, thin-skinned delicate little thing, free from…
Learn how to grow, harvest, and dry bee balm (wild bergamot), plus 8 creative ways to use it, including recipes for bee balm salve, tea, infused honey, and more! Bee Balm (Monarda fistulosa, M. spp.) also called wild bergamot, is an excellent plant to put in a pollinator garden! Beloved by bumblebees, butterflies, and hummingbirds,…
Yarrow and Queen Anne’s Lace have overlapping bloom times so it can be easy to mix them up, but these tips about their differences will help you tell them apart! What’s Yarrow? Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is a perennial flowering plant with feathery leaves. You’ll often find it growing in sunny meadows, at the edges of…
This delicious freezer jam features fresh strawberries and rose petals. It’s quick and easy to make – no canning required! Ingredients: Preparing the Roses: Collect your rose petals off of unsprayed roses, packing them fairly tightly into the measuring cup as you go. Give them a quick rinse and pat them gently dry once back…
Learn how to grow lavender from seeds or cuttings, tips on pruning, watering, and other growing requirements, then how to harvest and dry the flowers and leaves! Want more lavender in your life and flower beds? Try growing your own plants from seed or cuttings! How to Grow Lavender from Cuttings Rooting or propagating your…
Use some foraged early spring greens to make a lovely little lip balm! Violet leaves, purple deadnettle, and chickweed combine with sweet almond, tamanu, and castor oil to create a soothing balm for chapped lips. Infused Oil First, you’ll want to make an infused oil to use in the lip balm. You will need: 1…
Learn how to make naturally pink lemonade using redbud flowers, lemons, and your sweetener of choice. It’s that time of year around here where the sweet pink mist of redbud flowers is visible around the edge of the woods, and it won’t be too much longer until they’re gone! So while they’re still here, why…
When spring has arrived and the forsythia flowers are in full bloom, head outside with a container. It’s time to pick those lovely blooms to make some delicious jelly! Forsythia bushes (Forsythia suspensa, F. spp.) are non-native shrubs that produce bright yellow, edible flowers in early spring. They’re commonly found planted around homes or in…
These two plants have the same common name, but are very different! One plantain (Plantago spp.) is a leafy weed used to make things like a lovely first aid salve, while the other (Musa × paradisiaca) is a starchy fruit that looks like a banana. At a Glance Don’t want to read through the whole…
Rosewater’s an easy enough project if you have a bunch of roses to spare and just a little patience. And since the method to make it’s the same for any number of fragrant plants, why not indulge in a little experimentation? Rosewater Rosewater (or the closest one can get without having specialized equipment) is pretty…