I Must Do This Again Next Year
Remember how I dressed up the garage window with my collection of flowerpots filled with a variety of begonias? They did really well all summer, I only had to water them once a week or so, even with all the hot weather. I’m thinking I may need to move the shelf a little lower as the plants got a little taller than expected. The one on the end got too big for it’s pot and flopped over.
I’ll definitely be doing this again next summer since I loved it so much and it was quite easy to take care of. I’ll be trying some smaller begonias or moving the shelf down.
Do you have any annuals you use each year in your garden? Anything you do from year to year to dress up your garden or home?
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Dr Bronner’s Magic Soap
Many many years ago Mr Chiots and I went on our first backpacking trip in Pennsylvania. My dad gave us an old bottle of Dr Bronners Peppermint soap because it’s biodegradable and you can use it in streams for dish washing, etc. We started using it and loved it and have been using it ever since, and not just for backpacking.
When we go camping we still use it for dishwashing and bathing, but we also use it at home for all sorts of things. I use it to make homemade cleaners and laundry detergent, I like the lavender or lemon for this. I love using it for bodywash, my favorite for this is eucalyptus. The tea tree oil makes a great dog shampoo as well.
I also use this for washing up any of my gardening tools and pots when they need it. I know I can safely rinse things and use the gray water in the flowerbed. I don’t have to worry about phosphates or any other petroleum contamination from this soap. I’d highly recommend giving this wonderful soap a try if you never have. It may seem expensive, but you only need to use a tiny bit.
Do you use biodegradable soap for washing garden pots and tools?
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Protecting the Fall Crops
Miss Mama is coming in quite handy protecting the fall crops from moles and chipmunks. One year the chipmunks ate all of my fall beets, this year, thanks to Miss Mama I should enjoy a great harvest.
We’ve had a lot of moles or voles in the garden at my mom’s house, hopefully they don’t do too much damage to our crops. Miss Mama seems to be keeping them out of my crops so far, too bad she’s too small to chase away a groundhog.
What’s your biggest pest in your fall garden?
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Shredded Paper in the Garden
I frequently use newspaper to smother weeds and grass when making a new garden area. I notice that the earth worms LOVE it when I do thes, I always find tons of them under the paper. Even though I was comfortable using newspaper in the garden, I used to be really leery of using regular shredded paper in my compost because of the chemicals used in it. Then I decided I’d rather use it here than send it away to be recycled.
Now I use most of my shredded paper in the compost or in the garden as mulch. I still don’t use heavily colored or shiny printed paper, but just about everything else that can gets recycled into my own garden. I figure if I buy straw to use in the garden it most likely contains more chemicals than my shredded paper since I know it wasn’t grown organically.
How do you feel about using shredded paper in the garden?
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Make Your Own: Toothpaste
For the past couple years Mr Chiots and I have been trying to get rid of any products that contain harmful chemicals especially when it comes to personal care products. We were using some all natural toothpaste for a while, but it still contained fluoride. I won’t go into the details of why we try to avoid fluoride and sodium laurel sulfate here today, you can google it and find all kinds of information. The toothpaste brand we were buying was also bought out by a large corporation so that helped prompt our decision to make some toothpaste at home. Making toothpaste is quite easy, you can make it in powder form with things you probably already have at home. If you want it to have a sweeter taste and paste like texture like store bought then you’ll have to buy some vegetable glycerin.
I used a recipe that I found over at Mountain Rose Herbs which is where I bought the vegetable glycerin that I used for the batch I made. They have a bunch of recipes on their website. This is the one I used:
Citrus Mint Toothpaste
ΒΌ cup baking soda
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons vegetable glycerin
10 drops peppermint essential oil
10 drops orange essential oil (I used lemon)
5 drops eucalyptus essential oil
Mix all ingredients together thoroughly in a small bowl. Store in a small, tightly covered container. To use, scoop a small amount out onto your toothpaste and brush. Beware, you’ll think you add to add more glycerin when you first mix this up, but resist the urge. If you do it will be too runny after it sits.
We actually were very impressed with this toothpaste and we really like it, we’ve been using it for about a month and a half now. It leaves your teeth felling fresh and clean, much cleaner than with regular toothpaste. The flavor and consistency are not like store bought toothpaste and it doesn’t foam since there are no added foaming agents (which is what we were trying to avoid). I think I’m going to try to make some tooth powder with myrrh next. We’ll be making homemade toothpaste from now on since we like it and it’s very inexpensive, this batch above cost me only about .50 to make, which is a great price for fluoride SLS free toothpaste!
Have you ever made your own toothpaste?
If you’re going to buy a few ingredients at Mountain Rose Herbs I’d appreciate a click through the link to the right as they give me a small portion of what you buy.
