Sunlight and Health

I began growing plants as a little girl. I was amazed at my mom's ability to grow anything in any conditions, and I strived to do as she did. It was one of our bonds in fact. When I got older, my houseplant growing grew into gardening. I LOVE gardening. I love the planting, the watering, the weeding, everything about it. It's just peaceful to me to be outside, in the sunlight, working in my gardens. When I was injured and learned I had a spinal disease, I thought my gardening days were over, along with my hiking, search and rescue and pretty much everything else. One day I decided I would never know what I could actually still do if I didn't try it, so we plowed a garden (Okay, so my husband did the actual tilling, but I did the hoeing and planting). What I started noticing amazed me.

On the days I was physically able to get outside in the mornings, work in the garden and stay out for at least an hour, I felt great. My back didn't hurt nearly as much as it should, my skin got clearer, even my dirty fingernails got healthier. I couldn't place it, but I KNEW sunlight is the reason. In the beginning God created the Earth, sun, moon and everything in between. Then He created man. No where does it say that God created houses, and artificial light or sunscreen.....those are man's creations. We all know well most things man creates really work. In the long run, they don't usually work at all, but usually create more problems. Please remember this is my opinion, and while you're free to disagree with me (I actually hope others believe how they choose in ALL things), debating me won't change my opinions. I don't believe we were created to be inside a house all day, hiding from the sun and heat. We have become so disillusioned to believe the sun is evil, sweating is a dirty hassle and that we can get all the nutrients we need from little pills, that we negate all natural benefits of being outside. Sweat, while if not cleansed can stink, is really cleansing to our skin and the systems of our body. Sunlight, while if taken at the wrong time of day or for too long each day can injure our skin, it also provides us with the tools to build our bones and heal our bodies and our minds....for free! And those pills we take as vitamins may help us for a while, but for how long, and should we have to rely on them forever to live?

Back at the turn of the 20th century, many people stopped farming and moved into cities where they stayed inside buildings most of the day. Rickets, TB and other plagues began to overwhelm us, and doctors started looking for cures. One doctor, Dr Auguste Rollier started studying the effects of sunlight on disease, and in 1903 he opened his first sunlight (heliotherapy) clinic in Europe. From the images I have seen, they put beds on the balconies so patients could receive sunlight directly on their skin, even in winter! What he found was sunlight and a healthy diet were all that was needed to cure even TB. In about a year people were being cured of diseases, just by eating right and allowing the sun to touch their skin. So I have to wonder why the CDC or FDA or whoever controls this stuff, keeps saying sunlight is evil to us. Yes, over exposure to the sun can cause skin damage, but all the evidence saying sunlight alone causes skin cancer is really lacking. I am curious now, and I want to study this more thoroughly. I'll try to keep you updated on what I learn........
Until then: Have fun playing outside in the dirt!
Peace.

Heaven on Earth....Or They're Alive!!

Look how sad they looked!

Sometimes God shows me that He is really in control of things, and regardless of what the experts say, it's still Him in control of things. This week was one of those times. A couple weeks ago, on July 4th, we moved and transplanted fully loaded grape vines. July is NOT the month to do this, but we are selling the house, so they needed moved...now! We dug as much of the root soil as possible to make the move as easy on the vines as possible, but I still didn't think they would make it. Not only did we move them at the wrong time of the year, we also moved them during the mid-day sun, the hot, South Carolina in July, mid-day sun. If one has never experienced South Carolina in the summer, think of walking on the sun, and you have a slight idea of what it's like.

We drove them to the farm, and picked a place where they had support and full sun....the fence. It's an old barbed wire fence that was used for cattle and horses. Why anyone would want to keep a horse in barbed wire I'll never know, but maybe they had a problem with them I don't know. We dug the holes, filled them with water, let the water soak into the red clay holes, then planted the vines. I meticulously tied the vines to the poles and to the barbed wire loosely, hoping to cut the ties next spring when they put those little curly cue things out to support the plants. Needless to say, all the unripe grapes turned into little black raisins within hours.

I went over daily to water them for the first few days, then every other day and so on, but they dropped their leaves, and I sincerely thought they were dead. My husband said we'll leave them there over the winter, and maybe  they will come back with new growth next spring....if not we could plant some new ones in their places. I was bummed!!! My Mother's Day Grape Vines, that the girls had not only went to buy for me, but also planted for me a couple years ago looked dead.

This was after 2-3 weeks. New Life!!

My husband and two youngest daughters have been working hard lately building a storage building. We were over there yesterday working, when I noticed the plants looked funny. Of course I went to check it out. I thought the birds had been pecking at the dead vines or something. No, the birds hadn't bothered them, bugs hadn't eaten them and no animal has been bothering them. They were all sprouting new leaves and new growth.....this season even!!! I am so thrilled to know that my precious grape vines are not only still alive, but they are starting to thrive in their new homes!!! Yay!!! I was so thrilled I squealed, scaring my older daughter a bit.

More new growth!

Yay Yay Yay! My vines will live!! To me seeing something like this happen reaffirms my belief that I live in my own little piece of Heaven on Earth.

Until later....Have fun playing in the dirt.
Peace!!

Life is Good!

Wow! Did things ever get busy around here! We're packing to move, building at the new land, having showings on our current house, and trying to sell another piece of land, so we can begin the actual construction on the new house. We're doing all of this while trying to live normal lives with teen kids and every activity that goes with that....."Mom, can you take me here?" I think I will call my new (to me) car Benson, after the butler in that old television show, "Benson". It carries the groceries, runs errands, chauffeurs kids and does pretty much anything I need to do to keep a house running.

Learning how to care for a greenhouse in the SC heat and sun has been a learning experience. I would call it a challenge, but I so enjoy every minute I spend there, that "challenge" just doesn't fit the need. I have learned, so far, that plants will go into a bit of shock even moving them into a greenhouse, sometimes shade cloth is needed, and mostly, be patient and remember this is all under control. I am glad I am doing all of this learning now, instead of later when I move ALL the plants in there. I almost lost all my coffee trees, but they are all bouncing back now, even without shade cloth. I left the dead and dying branches on until after I got them into larger pots, and then once that shock was past too, I pruned them heavily. I noticed, while pruning, that everywhere a branch had died, there were little buds growing, and by pruning back the dead stuff, within a week I had scads of new growth all over the plants. That made me feel amazing!! Granted the plants didn't cost much, as they were on sale, but I still had cared for them for a year before this time, so losing them would have been a major bummer. I am totally thrilled!!

My stevia and lavender seeds never germinated. The greenhouse was getting up to temps over 130 degrees! I think they just cooked in the soil, but try try again. We installed 2 vent fans. One is a small 5watt solar fan, which we installed first. It just wasn't enough for the South Carolina heat. We converted an attic fan into a wall mount fan, added a power cord, and plugged it into our system. It's a 14 watt fan, and between the two of them they move the air nicely, and keep the heat down below 120 degrees in the heat of the day....a definite improvement.

Once we installed a water system on the land, I added a timer and automatic drip watering system. That was a whole new learning experience! I flooded the greenhouse twice trying to get it all adjusted, but over all, the plants are LOVING the drip system....now that I have it set to drip and not spray, the length of time better and the number of times per week regulated. My rain plant even bloomed inside the greenhouse.This is MUCH better than trucking in water every week!!

The sunflowers are almost as tall as the garage! They are forming flower heads, so I am excited. I had to transplant three of the sunflower plants, because out of that entire package of seeds, only eight plants sprouted. Seven of those eight were within a foot of the row, so instead of simply pulling a couple plants to thin them, I transplanted them further down the row. Two of the three transplants lived. Success!
 
So much going on, so little time each day and so few days in a lifetime to get it all accomplished. That saying, "Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer to the end one gets the faster it spins." is so true! Or at least to me, it seems to be true.

Today is a down day for me, with my only needing to make a few phone calls, send out a few bill payments and cleaning my house, so I plan to spend some time in a bubble bath later. Who knows? Maybe I will even polish my toenails. No matter what I do I will get out to play in the dirt a bit later.
Peace!

Invasion of the Bodysnatchers

My greenhouse was invaded.....by ants!! Not just sweet little picnic ants, but  nasty fire ants. I went to water the plants, and I noticed it looked like my rain plant had been leaking dirt! Further investigation showed a line of ants going from a gap in the greenhouse to the plant. I found their entrance point, and sealed it with a special caulk that seals both metal and cement (Liquid Nails brand). Then I used a borax solution to lure them away from my rain plant (Grandma's name for the plant, but locally it's called something else). The borax solution worked too....I returned the following day and no more ants. I call this invasion of the body snatchers because I watched these ants for a bit, and they were carrying egg sacks. I think they are egg sacks? Many ants were carrying these white sacks. Some of the sacks were so large it took two or three ants, working together, to carry them! They really wanted to invade! I hope the borax is enough to kill off the eggs, if and as they hatch, but if not, I have more borax for when the little boogers hatch. 

Along with my ant invasion, I noticed that leaving the top window vents open was not such a good idea. I was so worried about the heat building in the greenhouse, I opened the vents fully allowing heat to escape, but what happened was direct sun came into the greenhouse and burnt some of the leaves on my pineapple plant. The baby pineapple that is hidden beneath the main parent plant is fine, only burning the tip of one leaf, but the mother plant looks a bit sickly. I closed the vents to the first link, and I think this will fix the problem, but the poor pineapple looks pathetic. There are enough leaves untouched, that it will recover, but awww poor little pineapple plant. Heat has to be better for tropical plants than direct South Carolina sun. Even so, I did leave the vents open a bit, to still allow some heat to escape. I will just need to watch the water very closely, because with the heat they seem to be VERY thirsty. I should have a couple solar panels set up in the next week or two to run a fan. I didn't know this but most ceiling fans are variable speed, meaning as long as there is power to it, they will run. I think I will install one and see it helps combat the excess heat as summer rolls in.

The ficus tree is doing AMAZING! It's the one plant I was most concerned with being overwhelmed by the greenhouse, and it's the one plant that seems to be loving the greenhouse most. This makes me feel better about bringing the big ficus. The big ficus has been part of the family for 22 years; almost as long as my husband and I have been married. When we bought it, we paid like a dollar for the plant, since it was almost dead. I brought it back to life slowly, and it grew and grew and now it's taller than me. It's in the largest pot I own, and could use a larger one now, but that will have to wait  until I find or make a container larger than two feet in diameter. It has survived almost dying a few times as I learned about houseplants, a 700 mile journey from northern Indiana to South Carolina and a couple moves in between and since. It's a tough little plant! It's the oddest tropical plant I have grown yet. It actually drops leaves every fall. It doesn't lose all its leaves, but when the trees change and drop leaves outside, it has a few leaves turn yellow and drop too. It doesn't like to be moved, even from one location in the house to another, and with its size it will be very difficult to move to the greenhouse. I think along with being taller than I am, it also weighs almost as much as I do. This will be a fun trip! Thankfully it's only a 10 minute drive to the greenhouse for now and soon I will be living on site.

I planted lavender and stevia in pods yesterday. it's a bit late to be starting seeds, but I didn't have room under the lights in winter, and with the heat, the seeds should germinate quickly. I read that growing stevia from seed is quite difficult and growing from cuttings is the way to go, but I took that as a challenge over a warning. I am ornery that way sometimes. We'll see how they grow. I planted a row of sunflowers along the back side of the garage. My husband wasn't pleased with my placement and said if he starts getting bees in the garage the sunflower go! I said deal (since I have another pack of seeds I can plant somewhere else). If they do attract too many bees for him, I may try transplanting them. They are Mammoth sunflowers, so that may not be possible, but I will try almost anything once...garden-wise.

Ahh I love spring and summer, right down to every new freckle and sunburn I get. I was out in the sun for 30 minutes last yesterday and I am sunburnt! My forehead feels like it's on fire, and I even had my bangs down. I missed early planting here, but I am still planting every warm season plant I can find, as soon as I have water at the land, so I can stop carrying it in each day. 

Get out and enjoy some sunshine....and have fun playing in the dirt!!

Growing Food in Red Clay

Is red clay even soil? My mom always said dirt won't hurt. Well, she never met the red clay down here in South Carolina. This stuff stains everything! When we first moved down here, I was in awe of the gorgeous color of the ground. I am color blind, so it's difficult for me to see certain colors, like red, but when I first saw this soil I was amazed at how vibrant the color is. I felt like a kid again looking at all the new things life offered down here. I called our place "Our own little slice of Heaven on Earth". Of course Heaven on Earth comes complete with bugs the size of my face, animals that would rather eat me than look at me, and snakes.....all KINDS of snakes!! I was on a night search training hike (I am a registered search and rescue worker-inactive currently). We were doing a grid search when the man next to me said Stop! There is a copperhead in front of you. I looked down and sure enough a copperhead was slithering across the toe of my boot! That was enough to make me get out of the grid and back onto the path for the rest of that hike!

Back to the topic at hand...Red clay occurs from iron deposits. I don't know the exact reasoning, but iron is the culprit.  Many people say they cannot grow a garden in clay soil....to that I say hooey! I've done it. It wasn't the most desirable way to grow food, but I was successful. In fact I had a bumper harvest, growing in nothing more than red clay. All I supplemented with that year was with water from my fish tank. I grew tomatoes, peppers (both hot and sweet bells), cucumbers and marigolds, and let me tell you the marigolds went wild! Those puppies were almost as tall as me, and the flowers were ENORMOUS!! I wish I had video of the garden that year, but a photo will have to do for now. That was enough to teach me, that I don't need expensive soil additives or tools to grow a garden. All I need is faith that it will grow.

And grow it did!! I was harvesting so many tomatoes I couldn't process them all before they rotted, so I ended up giving many away. I made salsa, tomato sauce, and canned more tomatoes than I thought I would need in a winter. I learned that there is no such thing as canning too much salsa in this house. My family went wild for it! My husband said it was addictive, and the kids said it was better than the store bought kinds. When teenagers compliment your food, you've arrived!

So while I am learning how to make compost, and use other soil amendments I make myself, I will be growing food.....directly in red clay dirt.  I hope you won't let the condition of the dirt in your yard stop you from trying to grow something new too. Have fun playing in the dirt!!
Peace!

Quick Ant Fix for your Garden Beds and Around the House

It's a BEAUTIFUL Easter day here! I don't want to be inside writing all day, so this will be short and sweet. I want to go hunt Easter Eggs with the kids (like I remember where I hide the eggs anyways, and we usually lose an egg or two that we find a couple weeks later Stinky Stinky!)

Ants- they are fun to watch but can wreak havoc on a garden or in any area of the house. We have fire ants predominantly here, but almost every yard is infested with some type of picnic ant, carpenter ant or fire ant. There is a simple, organic fix to keep ants at bay-Borax. Who knew Grandma's cleaning secret was also an ant killer?

Here's what to do. For major infestations, mix 8 teaspoons of powder borax (found in the laundry aisle of many grocery stores) about 4-6 teaspoons of sugar with a few cups of boiling water. Once the borax and sugar are fully dissolved in the water, let it cool enough to not melt a spray bottle when filled. Pour the solution into the spray bottle, and spray the infested area. You have love my exact measurements! Really there are no set measurements, so use the amounts that work best for you. The sugar attracts the ants who eat the solution and then die. I have heard differing reason why they die, but the main thing, to me, is the fact that they die, or at least that they move away. This solution may need to be resprayed daily for a few days, and then weekly for keeping them gone, but check the area regularly to know what best meets your needs.

For a seasonal application to keep ants at bay, sprinkle borax around the edges of your home or around the outside of your garden beds when planting as a preventative measure. It's safe and when done every spring will keep the ants away.

I hope this helps new and experienced gardeners, and as always....Have fun playing in the dirt!!
Peace!

New Greenhouse

We found a "great deal" on a 10x12 greenhouse at Harbor Freight. It went on sale, plus I had a 20% off super coupon, so I got it at a GREAT price. It has a steel base, aluminum frame and plexiglass panels. The entire thing weighs a little over 200lbs. It's made in China, which I didn't care to know, but for the price, I had to give it a whirl.

Being made in China, the directions were written in what I now call "Chin-English". Building this thing was a comedy of errors, and had it not been for the diagrams, I can't say we would have been able to fully understand the directions. We had laid a foundation of concrete for it, to make it a more permanent structure, and then anchored it to the cement with some sort of fancy cement anchors (I'm glad my husband already had some on hand but who keeps cement anchors on hand? haha). A tip when using concrete anchors, have a good cement drill bit handy to pre-drill the holes, and maybe an extra bit too. The parts didn't all fit correctly and had to be altered (thankfully I married "McGuyver"). It was very difficult to tell which side was the front or top of most of the parts as well. It took a LOT of patience to assemble, but once assembled it looked GREAT! 

Then came the storms. We didn't reinforce the panels with screws like the reviews recommended. Big Mistake! The storms came with high winds and a lot of rain. The next day my greenhouse was water logged, and some of the panels had blown off. Thankfully, they were still in the yard, so I was able to reinstall them, but without sheet metal screws, the best I could do was clip them back into place. Tomorrow we will screw them into place permanently, and we will also caulk around the edges of each panel to "waterproof" them. There are a few gaps in the frame corners we will secure as well, to ensure it stays warm enough in winter for my tropical plants. It doesn't get super cold here, so I shouldn't need much of a heater in there, if at all, but closing all the gaps will definitely help. It turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself. Thanks to my husband and our youngest two daughters, this was such a fun project! All-in-all this has been an adventure, but then again what project isn't....Life is a journey...enjoy the ride.

Have fun playing in the dirt!