a how to on germinating apple seeds

...and a couple of random photos. Including a picture of cukes and my first two zucchinis-ever!

Okay, first the how to. Then lots of pretty pictures.

So first I must say, it is really, really simple. Anyone can do it. It would be a good project for kids. For anyone really.

Anyway, first, you eat the apple away from the core. Or just cut the core out of the apple. Carefully pry the seeds out of the core, taking care not to damage them as you do so. Gently clean the debris off the seeds under running water and a paper towel and the gentle use of your fingernails if necessary.

Wet a paper towel-wring it out so that it is still quite damp, but not dripping. Put the clean apple seeds onto the paper towel. Roll it up like a burrito. Place into a plastic baggy. Put into the fridge. Chill for 1 month. After 1 month you should be able to see some seeds sprouting. 2 months in, most should be sprouted. 3 months, all the ones that are going to sprout will have sprouted by now. The 1 month ones are probably the strongest.

Pot up the little sprouted seeds completely, root side down, or if you can't tell, just plop 'em into the pot (gently of course).

Water very carefully. Only water enough to keep it barely moist. Apple seedlings are very prone to damp off in their first four or five months of life.

And that's it. Really. I would suggest planting outside after nine to 12 months. Change the pot to incrementally larger sizes each time growth slows or stops. Don't wait too long to change the pot, or you might permanently stunt its growth.

And onto the pretty pictures. I don't know what any of these are called, I just know that yesterday was very full of butterflies.






Zinnias and cornflowers.
...and freshly planted yellow zinnias and cosmos.And my glads are really coming out.

Have a good evening, folks. Don't make the mistake of working in the brutal high heat of the day. Trust me, it's not worth getting fried.

catching up

Sorry, I know I'm behind. I have lots of pictures and updates to share. So let's hop to it! Pull up a chair and pour yourself a glass of iced tea.I will spare you (most of it) my gibberish and instead assail you with many images.This is my catnip that I've grown in a glass jar (that used to have delicious caponata in it) on my kitchen windowsill. I checked it's potency on cats today. Yeah, it works.And here below I have a potted rosemary cutting. If you're looking for easy cuttings to start out with, rosemary would definitely be your best bet. You could even grow a plant from one of the sprigs of rosemary from a grocery store. Just strip the lower half of the leaves off the rosemary piece, soak in a glass of water for two weeks (and then some) changing the water every day. When it gets roots, pot it up, and keep the soil nice and moist.
Also very good for cuttings are four o clocks. I took a large piece of four o clock out of my large bed of them (by accident) so I quickly cut it into several pieces (each about five inches long with a couple leaves at the top) and soaked them in water. Now I have probably seven or more four o clock babies that can be planted.

Also, my tomato and pepper plants are starting to produce-yay!
I'm especially excited about my bells, because this is the first year they've looked so healthy. They're producing tons of flowers and they're a much healthier, darker green than I've ever had them before. I credit the dutiful weeding, generous watering, and extremely sunny location.
Also, June is very kind to flowers. Or at least, flowers like June. I do not claim to be a master flower gardener-so it's nice when I have to do a very little work to get pretty flowers such as these.Tiger lilies-one of the easiest flowers to grow ever. Maintenance: uh...what maintenance? Just give them a good hosing every once in a while, and pull off the finished blooms.
Glads are very showy, and very easy to grow too.



A couple things to remember-water them well if you don't want dried out looking blooms, and you may have to use a brick or stone or stick to prop up the heavy flower laden stalks. Also, as for all bulbs, even when dormant, it's a good idea not to step on the ground they're planted in. Witness below. Sad brown things where we and our dogs stepped across too much.
Zinnias are quite easy to grow from seed too, and cheap cheap cheap.

Bachelor's buttons are great, too. They have eye popping shades of pink, white, blue, and purple. Also known as corn flowers, you frequently see them by the road side, living by fields of which they're name for. Corn flowers also make zillions of seeds and reseed themselves easily every year.

Also, let us step briefly inside, shall we? Ever since the weather has broken into this heat, my avocado plants have gone crazy!! Look how big they are. Did I mention that I stopped growing anymore avocado plants now that I have seven or so of them around the house?


I'm also growing an apple tree-a granny smith in particular. I'll give you a tutorial on that tomorrow. I have to be very careful about watering these-they are very susceptible to damp off.

Last thing-because mine eyes are spinning-a lemon tree plant-I actually have five at the moment. They appear to be easy to grow. They don't seem to mind wet feet. But they did take a month to sprout. And another month to look like this one below.


Check back for a tutorial on how to sprout apple seeds and how to care for them, and pictures of me and my strawberry jamming process. See you later, and thanks for stopping by!

some photos to oogle at, hydrangeas, and pizza (because who doesn't like pizza?)

Okay, so before I show you pictures, I wanted to talk about hydrangeas, since I've been wanting to find out the secret behind their enigmatic color shifting!! I've done some online research (prompted by a bush I saw yesterday (which was ONE, ONE bush I tell you!) and it had both pink and blue colors on it.

So this is what I've discovered:

a) apparently, it is easier to get a hydrangea to go from pink to blue than vice versa.

b) If you want blue hydrangeas, you add aluminum supplements to the soil

c) If you want pink hydrangeas, you add lime, which makes it more difficult for hydrangeas to soak up the aluminum.

Essentially low PH=blue hydrangea. High PH=pink.

From what I hear, to get a mixed effect-you have to really cobble up the PH of the dirt where your hydrangea is planted.

I hope that helps people out there! I know it was interesting and educational for me. And now I really want a hydrangea (or two. Or three.)

Working onwards, I made a veggie pizza last night, using my tweaked and perfected pizza dough recipe, and I got to pick my first basil leaves from my patio container last evening, and a large banana pepper from the pot next to it.






I also layered onions and tomato slices with mozzarella onto the pizza...hmmm...sadly, I was too busy eating it to remember to have taken a picture of the pizza when it was done.

But.

I will give you my crust recipe. Because it is very reliable, and quite tasty.

First off, you will need a pizza stone, cornmeal, and a pizza paddle. Sorry, those are my rules. Play experiments at your own risk!!





This will make two medium sized pizza crusts.


In a large mixing bowl combine:

1/2 cup vegetable or olive oil

almost 1/4 white granulated sugar

1 c. warm water

1 packet of quick rising yeast (2 1/4 tsp)

1 1/2 tsp salt

A generous shake of garlic powder

A generous shake of onion powder

3 c. all purpose flour

Stir with a spoon until dough is combined. Stir for another two minutes. Cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for 1 hr undisturbed. Place pizza stone in oven, preheat to 450 degrees fareinheit (yes indeedy I want it that hot!!).

When one hour is up, sprinkle a generous portion of cornmeal onto the pizza paddle. Scrape half of the dough out of the bowl onto the pizza paddle. Spread with your fingers (gently) until you've made it as large as the paddle will allow. Run your fingers around the edge to make sure it's not sticking to the paddle. If it is, no panicking. No. Really, you're not allowed to panic in my kitchen. Gently pull the edge of the crust up and stick some more cornmeal underneath it. Do this all around wherever you find that it sticks.

Open the oven door once it's preheated. Holding onto the pizza paddle handle, shimmy it quickly with a fast jerking/shaking action onto the stone, sort of working from the back of the stone towards yourself, since the inclination of the dough is to want to try to hang onto the paddle.

Once it's off, bake for 15 minutes, or until it's golden brown. A couple of brown spots is okay.

If you're planning on doing more than one pizza, pre bake all the crusts this way, stacking them as you finish them.

Once your crusts are all baked as a fore mentioned, spread one with sauce, cheese, and your favorite toppings. Put the cheese on last, and any meat you put on should already be already cooked.

Now, if you're only putting a few things on top of the pizza, you can just dress the crust up while it's on the paddle, and then finish baking it by sliding it back onto the stone. But if you're nervous about mess, especially because you have a lot of toppings, there is an alternative method. Leave the stone in the oven. Put the crust onto a baking sheet. Put sauce and toppings on as normal. Put baking sheet with pizza on it into the oven on top of the stone-the stone still does its job of wicking away excess moisture and making the pizza sturdy.

Either way; on stone of baking sheet-bake for 8 minutes. Turn oven onto broil and broil for two minutes. Pizza's done. Presto, and enjoy.

Next post is going to have more pictures, including one of two yellow squashes which have fused together, a scallion trying to make a flower, and a broccoli head (amongst other things). See you then. Have a good day!

why deer are not my friends.

Do you remember when I told you guys that I had a sort of peaky rose cutting and a healthy rose cutting? Each had two leaves? Yeah, those are the ones.

So guess who decided to visit right next to the doorstep?

Guess who it was who decided to visit, gasp, which rose? The sick one?

No, you can't bother with that-heck, it's a gianormous three feet away, that's too far to bother, but hey, that healthy one is right there next to the door, where people walk and everything.

Guess which rose is missing. And which one still exists.

Yeah, I'm ticked off. Really. Ticked. Off.

So yeah, I forgot to add the (apparently) third enemy of freshly planted cuttings. Deer.

Okay, now to distract you and myself from my maddening mishap, I'm going to post some photographs that I've taken recently.





Firstly, this is my first year to have been able to constantly go out to the garden and be able to get some greens for dinner, and cilantro for guacamole. Mmmm....

















This is also my first year for growing green onions and red lettuce. The green onions are amazingly easy to grow. Plus, they're cheap. How cheap? When you buy them from the store, and you use them, but still have just the bottoms left, DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY. I repeat, DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY.


Soak the bottoms in a glass of water for a couple of days, and you'll see roots begin to grow. Plant into dirt, leaving a bit of the stalk above ground. Water well. In a week or two, you should have enough tops to snip off with scissors for your salad or pizza or whatever you use green onions for! Plus, don't forget, if you don't trim off tops, and you let the 'green onions' get old, they will turn into regular onions, if you so desire. Because here's the shocking truth-green onions/scallions are just baby onions. There's nothing different about them!


Here's also a picture of my Hungarian yellow wax peppers-my first year for growing them-but not for growing peppers and tomatoes.
















Also, it is definitely not too late to start tomatoes for a later in the year crop. I wanted to make sure I had some stewing/slicing/large tomatoes, so this is a sprouted tray of mixed tomatoes: early girl, better boy, bigger boy, beefmaster.
























Also, I added trellising today, (made out of old grape vine canes and some twine) to my large patio pot of basil and one cherry tomato plant...and a stray cosmos that somehow found its way into there.






















Also, do you remember what I said about how roses love water? Well, here's a progress pic-you can't really see it in this picture, but over the last week, because of the amount of water its been receiving, this rose now has 7 rose buds that it did not have last week. Insane!!

And here's a picture of a very intensely busy bumblebee, going about the lavender.























Before I make this post too long, and before I sign off, I also want to put up a pic of my first broccoli head!














And my first chick peas-which, for the record, I grew straight out of a bag from the grocery store. Did you know that some people, for the intrigue and fun of it, will buy one of those mixed bean bags from the dried goods aisle of the grocery store, and plant the entire bags' worth, just to see all the neat beans that come up? Not a bad idea, if you ask me. :)


Okay, I'm going to sign off. What stuff have you tried to grow from the grocery store? Did any of it germinate? Did it grow? Was it a proper plant? Did it produce? Feel free to comment and share your stories.