Learn why currant tomatoes are an excellent addition to your garden and how to grow them! We’ll also focus on two varieties of currant tomatoes- Gold Rush Currant and Sweet Pea Currant. Both tomatoes are grown and cared for in the same way. About Currant Tomatoes These bright, pea-sized heirloom delights look similar to currants…
Learn how to harvest and use Usnea, a gray-green forest lichen with medicinal benefits! Also includes recipes for usnea tincture, infused oil, salve, and wound powder. Usnea (Usnea spp), is also called beard lichen, lungs of the forest, or old man’s beard. It’s considered a cooling, drying herb and is valued for its powerful action…
Learn how to grow, harvest, and store delicious Alexandria Alpine Strawberries, and fill your garden with these tasty little everbearing treasures! These heirloom berries will provide wild-flavored strawberries all summer long. Here in US Zone 7, they’re quite prolific, even providing fruit into November, weeks after the first heavy frosts arrive. About Dainty Alexandria! How…
Learn how to choose the perfect pumpkin for pie-making, plus how to make, store, and freeze pumpkin puree! Choosing a pumpkin No matter if you’re buying a pumpkin or growing it yourself, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got the right kind before you turn it into pie! The sort of pumpkin you’d pick out…
Learn how to grow Antler Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum sensu lato) using an indoor grow kit. It’s a super easy way to produce your own medicinal mushrooms at home! While we selectively forage wild reishi mushrooms from our land, and also grow them on inoculated buried logs down near our creek, we can’t resist buying indoor…
Learn how to identify and harvest reishi mushrooms, plus how to dry and use for tea and tincture. Reishi’s distinctive look makes them friendly for the beginner mushroom hunter! There are multiple species of reishi worldwide – all are thought to have some forms of medicinal properties and none have poisonous lookalikes. Here at our…
Learn how to forage, identify, and harvest black walnuts (Juglans nigra) plus how to dry and cure the nuts, and use the hulls and leaves for remedies! ID Tips for Black Walnuts It’s fairly easy to identify a black walnut tree in autumn, when the ground beneath is littered with fallen nuts! Here are some…
Make a delicious jam using fresh or frozen maypop fruit! It tastes light, tangy, and tropical, and can be stored in your freezer. (No canning required!) Identifying Maypops Maypops are the green, egg-shaped fruits produced by our native passionflower (passiflora incarnata). Be sure to check out our article: Growing & Foraging Passionflower & Maypops to…
Our native passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) is a plant with many uses: it produces edible fruit called maypops, the leaves and buds have gentle calming properties, and the beautiful flowers are adored by pollinators! In fact, one specific butterfly, the Gulf Fritillary, relies on species of passionflower for its continued survival- it’s the only host plant…