roamingtree

[roamingtree]

These are some gooseberry cuttings that I started last year:

I had to prune a couple bushes because I was moving them, so I stuck several of the twigs in the ground, figuring that there would be some that took. Four did, even without rooting hormone, or honestly, much care. I moved the babies into a more protected from deer location and watered them in.

I love gooseberries, so I'm happy to have more :D

#plant propagation #gardening

[roamingtree]

These are some gooseberry cuttings that I started last year:

I had to prune a couple bushes because I was moving them, so I stuck several of the twigs in the ground, figuring that there would be some that took. Four did, even without rooting hormone, or honestly, much care. I moved the babies into a more protected from deer location and watered them in.

I love gooseberries, so I'm happy to have more :D

#plant propagation #gardening

[roamingtree]

Reblog and put in the tags if you know how to cook or not (at least basic foods), and if cooking was an encouraged skill or not where you grew up.

#i cook or bake almost every meal that i eat #i have a stockpile of recipes that I've tried and refined #i also do stuff like make my own tempeh and sourdough

[roamingtree]

Seed starting, mid-April edition

I really like the concept of no-till gardening. I really do. The invasive bindweed in my garden makes it an impossibility, unfortunately.

So this morning, I went and pulled out all the bindweed I could out of a nine square foot area (about a square meter), put a small pile of wood chips to serve as a stepping spot in the middle, added about 2 gallons of homemade compost, sowed a mix of seeds, watered it in, and topped it off with a very fine mulch.

The mix is an eclectic combination of lettuce, spinach, arugula, amaranth, Nigella, cosmos, cilantro, green onions, marigolds, sweet allysum, mustard greens, melons, and cucumbers. If you've heard of a milpa or chaos gardening, that's kinda the idea. The weather is going to be unpredictable this year, and given that I know bind weed will be coming back, I don't feel like trying for careful spacing of particular crops. Instead, I'm sure something of that mix will be happy with what ever mix of water and sun it gets. And it's dense enough that it should do a good job of out competing the weed seedlings that would like to come up.

#April sowing 1 #chaos gardening #vegetable gardening #permaculture #sustainable gardening #frugal gardening

[roamingtree]

Prepping for the work week as a person who feels like she's got her ADHD finally under control, and who has multiple dietary constraints, some of which are voluntary, who grew up in a household where my mom stayed home to homeschool us kids, grow food, and cook from scratch*. For a household of two adults who both work 40 hours a week in a physically demanding job.

Frugality, digestibility, and vegan are my main constraints, and I'm also trying to increase the number of vegetables and fruits we eat. I don't count calories, because that is a whole lot of effort I've never felt the need to apply.

Weekend prep usually consists of:

Making sourdough bread

Making tempeh

Soaking beans

Double checking the meal plan on the refrigerator

Going shopping based on the meal plan on the refrigerator

I've actually gone through a lot of trouble to find recipes that I can make quickly and easily before and after work, without repeating so much that we get sick of them. I know some people prepare by making all their lunches for the week the same and cooking it all on the weekend, but if I tried that, I wouldn't be able to make myself eat lunch by the third day.

So. Variety.

I've got these recipes arranged by day, so to go shopping, all I have to do is flip through them and write down what we're low on and things that are perishable.

In an ideal world, I would feed the starter for the bread and soak the soy beans for the tempeh Friday night, cook and inoculate the tempeh Saturday morning, make dough and do the first several folds for the sourdough Saturday night then fridge it, and bake the bread and get the beans soaking Sunday morning. I also like to go foraging at least once on the weekend, and so a bit of gardening, which really helps in the whole trying to eat more vegetables while not spending gobs of money thing.

*BTW, her most repeated bit of advice to her three girls was to never put yourself in a position where you were financially dependant on a man. She didn't feel the need to tell my brothers this for some reason.

#meal prep #vegan #frugal

[roamingtree]

My other blog got too big for me to be comfortable just blogging about my life there anymore, so here's a side blog!

About me:

- intensely passionate about plants, food, foraging, gardening, and the intersections thereof

- Over 30

- ADHDer

- Pro-bodily autonomy for everyone

- I kinda suspect that if we as a species want to continue existing, those of us in so-called developed nations will have to become a whole lot less consumeristic, and that the shift towards a lifestyle that doesn't rely on sweatshops and child labor will actually be good for us, too.