pineapple

Elephant Ears

May 24, 2018

Elephant Ears

One of my favorite garden bulbs is what we call “Elephant Ears.”

These are from three bulbs that we dug up in some weeds when we first moved in. They were tiny, neglected, and crowded. With good fertilizer and plenty of water, (we didn’t have to water them, God did it with the rain!) those three multiplied into fifteen by January when we replanted them in this nice half-shady strip between the carport and the side of the house.

We also leave the wild flowers that don’t crowd out our bulbs. Tiny white flowers that spread like ground cover are some of Jillian’s favorite because they look like “stars on green sky.” (Those are under the star lily in the above picture, but their blooms look like dots in the picture.)

These are the smallest ones. The elephant ears are now growing alongside a few lilies, six pineapples, tomatoes, and squash. (The clump of bushy leaves on the right corner are tomatoes.) The plants are called elephant ears because their leaves get to be the size of African Elephant’s ears. I’ve grown some before, which by their third year, had leaves that were five feet wide! (Since you have to clip the ears off at the stalk when the ears fall to help encourage new growth, the girls would save the clipped stalks for umbrellas!)

These are some of the “wild” tomatoes. This means we didn’t sow them there, they just came from our fertilizer/compost and we tended the plants as they sprouted. Jillian has the worm-picking job because we don’t use pesticides.

I love Florida bulbs, they are easy to grow and propagate quickly. I can give the many extras away and cover my yard in little groves of them within just a couple of years. Now if I can just get fruit trees like fig, citrus, kumquat, pineapple, and bananas to grow as well!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

May 2, 2018

Pineapple

One of our favorite fruits is the pineapple.

The best of the best is fresh cut. (We will get them straight off our bushes someday!)

Pineapple is great with pork, in oriental dishes, on pizza, in a cake, in muffins, or just plain and juicy sweet.

Up until a few months ago, I’d never cut a fresh pineapple! It’s really easy if your kids are like mine and want to eat as close to the rind as possible. My mom cuts the rind off and then dices the meat for a no-mess-later snack.

You cut off the top. (Be sure to leave a little meat so you can plant the top in a sunny spot and a year later you’ll have more pineapples!)

You cut off the base. (My kids call it the butt because the pineapple sits on it.)

Now stand the pineapple up and slice through it from top to bottom in two or three cuts. I always use three because I like narrower bites for small-child mouths to make less of a mess. Lay these four or six strips flat and slice into wedges. They will look like pizza slices. The yellow pineapple meat is pretending to be the cheese and the rind is being the crust.

And voila! Easy treat to grab and eat! Our chickens love pineapple rinds. Prim always thinks she wants them when we are cutting, but that’s just because we have the cutting board out and she thinks she’s a human.

Pineapple is loaded with vitamins and minerals needed for healthy bodies. It has an enzyme called bromelain that is anti-inflammatory and helps sooth coughing too. For the calories (82 per cup), pineapple is considered nutrient dense and low sugar. One cup of fresh pineapple has about 180mg potassium, 2g dietary fiber, 0.6g protein, 0.7% Vitamin A, 40% Vitamin C, 6.7% Vitamin B6, as well as copper, iron, folate, magnesium, thiamin, niacin, and 130% daily value of manganese! (Among others, check it out!)

So, for a healthy, easy snack that tastes great, try some fresh pineapple! (Just watch out for the “burn” you can get on your lips after a few slices.)

Fun facts:

Did you know that adding a little salt to pineapple makes it taste sweeter? Just not too much!

The pineapple is technically a berry! It is formed by several flowers fruiting together at the core (the hard central “Stem” through the middle of the pineapple) and fusing together into the soft, yellow meat of a single fruit per stalk.

The core and rind are edible! The core can be too tough to eat in an unripe pineapple. The rind is traditionally used to make a fermented drink!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Odd Biology

Some thoughts on how unique our biology is; we are each uniquely beautiful.

March 13, 2018

Odd Biology

You know, our bodies are all unique. This is an amazing thing – but I bet it’s frustrating to medical science!

You see, I have this odd biology where my body reacts to some of the silliest things. (One of the reasons I’m so into organic and natural as possible!) I had some bad mosquito bites so Louis suggested I take some Benadryl. Normal stuff for everyone to take, right? Not me. I break out in hives – my entire body covered in red icky blotches that itched worse than chicken pox at 19! So I’m allergic to normal Benadryl. I’m allergic to latex. I’m allergic to aspartame, phenylalanine, and acesulfame-potassium. My body is just weird.

Last week I got pneumonia and was prescribed an antibiotic. I followed all directions, stayed away from foods that might cause any reaction, but does my body just accept this medicine and dry up the pneumonia? No. Not me. I’m two days from finishing the antibiotic when I bust out in hives and nausea that puts me to bed.

So I go in to the doctor and they are like “well, you are allergic to this antibiotic. Usually we prescribe an antihistamine like Benadryl to combat the hives, but that won’t do you any good.”

I walk out with orders to rest, eat fresh pineapple, drink water and Gatorade or coconut water, and come back if the reaction gets worse. I’m told, “it could take 5 to 7 days for the antibiotic to leave your system.”

Oh well. At least I rarely get sick. And now I know another chemical my body rejects. Its interesting learning how different each person’s biology is: Louis and the girls don’t have any issues with fake sugars or with Benadryl.

Isn’t it amazing how unique each of our bodies are? All of us have something that makes us different from everyone else. We are each uniquely beautiful.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Spring Seeds

March 3, 2018

Spring Seeds

Florida likes to tease our tropical plants a bit with a fake spring. It’s really the start of spring weather but we will have at least one more cold snap to remind us that we do participate briefly in the season the rest of the country calls winter.

My favorite plant (outside of anything edible and my personal favorite trio of roses, gardenia, and Camilla) type is bulb. In Florida, many bulbs thrive with minimum care. Our yard had a few worn beds of overgrown bulbs when we arrived. Year one was break them up and replant.

Year two is sprouting. (See how I love bulbs! Fast growing, hardy and results in a year!)

Elephant ears are one of my favorites, but this yard has two types of elephant ears, bananas, gorgeous lilies, fire-flowers, a yellow-red lily with a huge 6” bloom (just a green few in the picture here as tall, cup-like leaves with “spokes”), and the normal replanted ones like celery, onion, and garlic. Celery bottoms replant and grow until they are tired of being stepped on. We have one two-year pineapple and two newbies. Two garlic cloves are growing. Dozens of onions dot the design.

And we have what we call “bonus plants” these come from our fertilizer.

We fertilize with an organic mix of hay, biodegraded plant material, and chicken droppings. Since our philosophy is to waste nothing, our chickens end up eating a lot of kitchen scraps that include seeds. This often leads us to wonderful “bonus plants.”

These gems are usually milo, wheat, millet, collard, eggplant, citrus, pepper, or tomato! We’ve noted cucumber, sunflower, and pumpkin as well. When we find a tomato, we baby it. Usually, though, the next day the lizard hunter has trampled it even though the gardens are strictly off limits. Any lizard who makes it to the house or the garden is safe!

But this spring we were babying one tiny tomato in the front porch garden when today, voila! ~ ~ We discovered this literal bed of tomatoes hiding under an elephant ear! We’re so excited we haven’t figured out if we want to attempt to dig them up and separate them while they are small or just leave them in this area they appear to like. (I’m beginning to believe a single chicken must have eaten an entire bag of tomatoes last season!)

All of our young pullets are finally hens, laying and regularly producing so we have an average excess of 10 dozen eggs a week! Now our chickens pay for themselves and the dogs! (The money we get from the market for our eggs pays for chicken feed and dog feed.) I love the seeds of spring!

(So does Lucas, who had to have his picture taken without his dirty shirt.)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

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