My First Cuke

I started growing my own organic garden from seeds, soil, and organic nutrients in the beginning of the summer. Watering day after day, wishing, hoping, and believing, these seeds would turn into a fruit-and it happened. A cucumber was born! It made it's appearance on my cutting board...only to be eaten within 5 minutes. No sauce, no dip, just cucumber and mouth. This thing was yummy, crisp, and best of all: hand grown organic. I live in an apartment and was able to make my own fruit. Now it's your turn to try the same! Grab a pot, some soil, and some organic nutrients. Place those seeds in and water daily. Watch your own fruit come alive. For more details check out my other posts about organic gardening by clicking on the labels below.

Organic Balcony Garden Diary- Transplants

Roots mean Go Time!

Drainage is Vital

Fertilizer to Reduce Shock

Food

Summer Squash

Bigger Pot Please!

Make a hole 

Peel off the pod

Place in the baby

Bury and Water

4 Per Pot 

Ready To Grow

The pictures show the process that I endured without all the grime and dirty hands. And let me tell you, be ready to wash up after gardening. This is one dirty job (pun intended). I went to a local nursery, which was totally fun and cool, and got organic food and soil. I picked up a 12'' pot from Lowe's and was ready to transplant the babies. I realized I had way more than 4 to transplant and will be working on buying more pots to do exactly that. I hope you had fun looking at the photos and learned something!

Lessons Learned From Transplanting
   Buy extra pots. Bring lots of water. Be gentle with the roots. Buy pots with holes already punched out.

Juicer Day!

I used to think that juicing was just another trend diet and people were losing all their fiber by sticking their fruit in a juicer and drinking the sugar result. Little did I know that a juicer can be way more than a pulp-eating machine. After weeks of researching juicing, and reading 21Pounds in 21Days I had to get a juicer. I learned how juicing vegetables can give you more nutrients than you could possibly chew. I eat salads, veggies, and fruits all day in my mostly vegan organic diet, but adding a fresh juice will benefit me that much more. Plus, the machine you see below is not solely a juicer. It makes wheatgrass shots, nut and seed butters and milks, strings pasta (something I'm dying to try), churns out frozen desserts, minces, and chops my worst enemy: the onion! (Aha! Take that onions. I've finally found your match!)

I researched them for about two weeks before deciding on the all-encompassing one below. I already love to prepare healthy organic meals but now I get to add the drink from scratch as well. It seemed a little daunting at first, and the research was quite overwhelming, but I found my way to an Amazon 5-star rated nutrition center.

Omega 8006 Juicer

It came with all of these fun parts which look complicated, but are totally easy to use! 

The first thing I knew I wanted to make (since it wasn't the day of the farmer's market) was banana sorbet. All it takes is a frozen banana:

After it came out tasting delicious, I decided to run it through again to increase smoothness, but added frozen raspberries and green grapes this time. It added a nice tartness but took some of the sweetness away from the banana. 

I had sorbet for breakfast that only contained frozen fruit. It was so good, and surprisingly filling. The spoon you see in the bananas is my boyfriend coming over to share the morning goodness. We couldn't resist!

After I visit the farmer's market I will post pictures of my first juicing experience. I can't wait to get some wheatgrass shots going!

Dr. Roni De Luz has taught me that detoxing is very healthy, and pretty much mandatory in the polluted world that we live. Since I don't consume the normal western diet, I believe in doing a daily detox. Instead of only devoting 21 days, or every weekend, or even a 7 day run to a full on detox, I've decided to do it daily. Eating organic, drinking live juices, and staying away from pesky processed junk 99% of the time is going to make me live ten years longer (or at least that is what my doctor tells me). I have not, and probably won't, indulge in colonics, but everything else that cleanses the body is under my belt.

Juicing vegetables will hopefully become a daily habit that I can't put down. I got addicted to eating healthy, now all I needed was to add on delicious raw drinks and desserts. I'm always searching food blogs for the next best healthy dessert, but now hopefully I (and you) will be returning to mine to ask, "Mm how did I make that?"

Organic Balcony Garden: Day One

Starting Seed Kit

Saturation

Tip #1: Go S.L.O.W or the soil will topple out! 

I have been eating organic produce for over a year now. I know it takes a lot more work than conventional farming, but I really don't know how much. So my adventure begins today. I have planted cucumber, summer squash, and chive seeds into the above container. After they pop out I will visit a local nursery with notes of other products to buy, like sand and nutrients, and whatever else I find out I will need. I am not going to use a drop of chemicals on my plants, and will hopefully have a nice yield by the end of the summer (or at least I'm hoping).

I bought the starter kit at Lowe's, but the nice guy working in the department advised me to go to a local nursery for the rest of the ingredients I will need to farm my miniature garden. He said big chain stores don't carry many organic products, but a nursery would have plenty. I'm excited to see my seedling sprout. They are currently sitting in a warm spot in the shade on the balcony, but to my demise it is a cloudy day. No sun for my seedlings today. I will be doing research on GreenAnswers.com and other green, organic sites to find out the answers to my gardening questions.

Day One Lessons
Seed starting mix is super light and takes huge amounts of water to saturate. At first I starting just dumping water on it, thinking it would soak it up like sand, but the soil toppled over onto the concrete balcony. Not a fun mess to clean up. So I begin to fill in between the trays and go very slowly over the soil itself. Next time I will soak the trays, and place water underneath them so the soil has something to stick to. This will keep the soil from spilling out so easily.

You can't see it in the photos very clearly but there is a clear plastic top for the seed starter kit. After I was done planting the seeds, I placed the top on to catch the heat and steam from the evaporating water. When they pop out I'll take more pictures for you to see this.


Please feel free to comment with any tips! Thanks, and welcome to my organic adventure!