The winter solstice is over, the sun is rising earlier and that means only one thing - SEED CATALOGS. Yes everyone it is true, there is life after death. Gardening in on my mind and such thought are a welcome relief from the cold wind and snow. For seed starting in the past I had been using newspaper pots with success -- I have a Potterfactory tool. The tool can also function as a soil blocker, I've punched out a few to test. They look good so far. The little soil blocks will bottom water, anyway that's the plan. I'm graduating from paper pots up to soil blocks this year. This looks like it will be perfect winter therapy.

Care of Stevia cuttings

I'm learning more about starting stevia from cuttings. I've mortally wounded most of my cuttings by accidentally leaving them in the full westerly sun on a hot day. Two have succumbed to my mistake and withered into sad heaps of mushy stems. All is not lost, one cutting has displayed a sense of immortality and is recovering. The secret is: keep them moist, but not too moist or they will develop a form of mold on the leaves. As important if not more so, don't set them in the full sun while their tender roots develop. I now have a very healthy cutting, repotted and soon ready to put into the ground.

The stevia leaves that I pick I have been brewing in a dish of water, just like a cup of tea. Just grab a half dozen leaves, tear them up and put them in a little dish with a few ounces of hot water and let them steep, sometimes for several days. I pour the liquid through a tea bell into my iced tea, it takes the bitterness out of the tea and gives it a very nice sweetness. Once in a while I'll add a little more hot water to the steeping leaves, there seems to be a lot of sweet power packaged up in the little leave, no sense in letting it go wasting.

Within the past few days I've noticed an uptick in the number of articles about local foods. Yesterday it was how a local hospital was sponsoring a community-wide farmers market every week right at the hospital. Their focus on good nutrition is spreading out to include providing healthy foods along with instrutions on how to prepare tasty dishes. Then today the newspapers main editorial was on the importance of local foods. What with record gardening this year, even a garden at the White House, there is a sudden resurgence of interest in food quality over cheapness.

There's something quite amazing with my lawn this year, it looks incredible. What did I do different? I applied alfalfa pellets from the farm supply store, instead of chemical fertilizer. I remember my dad the farmer telling me of the benefits of green manure, the alfalfa and clover that he would grow on land scheduled for corn which got plowed under before the corn seed was planted. I don't understand all of the stories about microbial action and trace nutrients, but I do know what I see and that is a definite improvement in the lawn. Come fall, I'm planning on using corn gluten meal -- the fellow at the farm feed store is a bit aghast that I would use animal feed on my lawn but I really prefer the non-polluting nature of corn over all of the chemicals that normally get used.

Stevia propogation

The stevia herb has fascinated me this year and I found a wonderful plant at the farmers market. My pops was diabetic and I've always studied alternatives to sugar. It appears this simple herb stevia could be the answer to a lot of the worlds obesity and health issues related to sugar consumption. I would be so happy to eliminate the high fructose corn syrup that is in most everything I buy, from ketchup to salad dressing. From my young stevia plant, I clipped a few three-inch long shoots. Using a razor blade, I cut a slit in the stem near the lowest leaf node pair about an inch long. Then I pulled out my PotterFactory newspaper pot making tool, it came in really handy. In a minute, I had whipped up three newspaper pots filled with seed starter mix. In the center of the soil in the newspaper pot, using a pencil - I poked a hole down thru the soil and just dropped the cutting down into the hole with the top leaves above the soil. Push the soil around the cutting and set the sweet little things in a plastic tray from which you can bottom water. I poured a little water in the tray everyday keeping the pots moist - the newspaper pots bottom-water so nicely. In about a week I noticed some small little roots poking through the bottom of the pots, so today I transplanted then into a large pot with some rich compost. My one stevia bush has now become three bushes and I'm looking forward to drying some of the leaves for use over the winter. I'm starting to use stevia frequently, I really like to crush a couple of leaves into a glass of iced tea, it removes the slight tea bitterness. Although the Food and Drug Administration refuses to label stevia as a sweetener, and as long as corporate sugar growers finance politicians, we will continue to see only sugar and HFCS used as sweeteners but we can avoid using them and now grow our own. If you do not have stevia, go out today and get a plant and get one growing, don't put it off. As the wise old horticulturalist once said, "... there are two good times to plant something you like, one is twenty years ago, and the other is today."

Hazelnut and Expresso coffee grounds in the garden

There were two coffee shops in the neighborhood who were so gracious to save their grounds for me and I picked up a bucket of coffee grounds from each yesterday.    The grounds were sprinkled over the garden and spaded in.  The whole garden had this unusual aroma of hazelnut and expresso and the bird activity really seemed to pick up - possibly the earthworm radar had gone off, they seem to love coffee grounds and must have started to migrate to the freshly spaded soil.  Coffee beans contain protein, about 12%,  which converts into nitrogen.  Using the protein to nitrogen conversion factor of 6.25:1 we can estimate about 2% nitrogen.

Should we try to use the grounds on the lawn?  Using the old rule of thumb of applying a pound of nitrogen for 1000 square feet of lawn, you would need 50 pounds of coffee grounds per 1000 sf. (considering that 100 pounds of coffee grounds X 2% nitrogen would provide 2 pounds of nitrogen in the 100 pounds of coffee grounds).

Now that's quite a bit of coffee grounds, but hey, they're free.

Alfalfa as lawn and garden fertilizer

The farm supply store was included in my stops yesterday where I picked up a bag of alfalfa pellets.  I don't have horses, but I do have a lawn.  Alfalfa contains nitrogen and in lieu of commercial chemical fertilizers, I broadcast spread the alfalfa on the lawn.  I'm anxious to see how this works, and expect it to take some time as the microbes feed on the alfalfa.