endall (@endall)

Working to learn about the medicinal properties and herbs is an ongoing education. Spent the day harvesting some usable oak inner bark for medicinal purposes as well as getting leaves harvested for teas and tincture. Harvested some bark from a neighbor's sweet gum tree to add to a tincture with gum tree leaves. So, got 2 quarts of tincture started, one with oak bark and oak leaves and one with sweet gum bark and leaves. Also put back a small batch of tincture from the small sassafras tree in the front yard. All the jars from the last canning run sealed so had to wash and label all those and get them stored away. Still have some transplanting to do with the valerian into a larger pot as well as harvesting the last of the holy basil. Letting all the other basil plants go to flower so I can get some seeds from those. The green bean plant has stopped bearing so we need to uproot that and get it composting. We still have lots of banana peppers to harvest and the bell pepper plants we bought did very well. I'm hoping they are heirloom because we are harvesting some seeds since they produced so well for us this year. Still getting tomatoes. Got some oranges and grapefruit on sale last week and took the bags and made a bottle of juice from each of them. Ran the orange peels through the blender to chop them up before dehydrating them, which ought to make it a lot easier to powder them for different uses (baking, tea or whatnot). We try to buy the glass jars of juice with lug lids so they can be reused to can our own juice concoctions. Mostly trying to keep up with the harvesting of leaves and/or bark before the leaves turn, while still managing the garden harvest. Made some pickled purslane and was impressed enough with it that I think it can be used as a dill relish substitute. Being loaded with Omega 3 oils makes it that much better. Hope everyone is doing well with their gardens and canning projects. Tis the season..........