Friday, May 22, 2009

Just got word from the Downtown Des Moines Farmer's Market folks re: our stall location. We will be on Court Avenue, in front of Dos Rios - same as our last 2 markets. Look forward to seeing you there!
Happy Freebie Friday!

Last week's Buzz Off Wand winners are: Darb, Jennifer VM, and Michelle! ! Please email us at shop at prairielandherbs dot com with your full name and mailing address and we'll send those right out to you!

Today's giveaway - a bar of Hands and Heels Scrubby soap. Because it is the only think that keeps our hands and feet in any sort of reasonable condition during this gardening season. :) It's got loads of pumice and walnut hulls in it, to exofoliate and scrub. Feels so good!


If you'd like to win a hands and heels scrubby soap, leave a comment on this week's post.

Rules:
1) One entry per person.
2) You must have a registered ID to post - if your post shows up under "anonymous", we don't know who you are, and therefore you can't win.
3) You have until the next Thursday at midnight, CST, to enter your comment.
4) Winner will be announced the following Friday - you must check back to see if it's you!
5) International folks are welcome. We ship Prairieland Herbs items all over the world, so we'll ship our "Friday freebie" anywhere too!
6) Each eligible post will be assigned a number, and we'll use a free online random number generator to determine the winner.

Thursday, May 21, 2009



I have no idea where the phrase "working like a dog" comes from.

(top photo - Lexi, with her new spring haircut, and Jake is shown at the bottom photo).

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

So. After a couple of weeks of super-shop-busyness, we finally managed to get out in the garden and get some stuff planted. On May 14th. Frost-free date for our area is May 15th. May 16th - yeah. Almost had frost. Mother Nature has a wacky sense of humor....fortunately all the plants survived the cold temps. What's MORE of a problem now is the massive gusting winds we have had for a few days. That's really hard on the new little plants, especially combined with temps in the mid 80's. All we can do is keep them watered, and wait.....


We're trying some new things in the PLH garden this year. My mom's house needs a new septic system (groan) and it's going to have to go right in our biggest, oldest, main herb bed. *sigh* at first we were majorly freaking out about this. But then, after thinking and looking, we decided that it was a good thing. The bed had gotten weedy and really needed to be totally overhauled anyway. So we decide to simply tranpslant the few plants we really wanted, and have a much smaller, more compact, and hopefully easier-to-care-for herb bed this year. That's the plan, so....let's hope it works out that way!

So here we have, left, a beginning of a straw bale garden. This is six bales...I have 20 more being delivered today. I'm going to grow all my veggies (tomatoes, peppers, spinach and swiss chard) in it. They are just for personal use, so if the whole experiment is a failure, I'll just rely on the farmer's market and our local CSA. Right next to the straw bales is the beginning of a lasagna garden. It sounds really easy in the books. Just put down a layer of old newspapers or flattened cardboard boxes, then pile layers and layers of compost, mulch, wood ash, peat moss, etc. up, and plant your garden right in the layers. However, hauling wheelbarrowload after wheelbarrowload of all that stuff gets old...so I'm hoping the results are worth it. I have more pictures of the bed in progress - I'll try to post them all after it's finished.



Yesterday we employed the Automatic Lawn Mowers. They're very happy to be hard at work. :)

We also fenced off a large portion of the PLH acreage - the section behind and to the south of our shop. Donna's six mini horses need alot more pasture than they had, so we're trying to accomadae their needs. While cutting down on mowing at the same time - awesome!

And here's your gratuitous cute kitty pic. Violet LOVES this weather - she is naturally shy and cautious by nature, but when the weather allows us to leave the shop door open she gets brave and wanders outside to see what's happening in the big wide farm world.

Violets are still gorgeous and lush here - time to make some violet syrup!! Here's my favorite recipe and method , and an awesome variation that my friend Tina from The Essential Herbal makes. That's what I love about making herbie stuff. There's really no one right way, and, you can always experiment with ingredients and methods!