From the Garden: Mid-Winter in Southern Oregon

An epic mid-January double rainbow!

One of the things that I love most about Oregon are the four distinct seasons - and especially the transitions between them. Sometime in January-February, we get a little break from the normally long, dark and wet Winters. The storms move to the North or South of us, and we enjoy a few weeks of clear, sunny skies and unseasonably warm weather. We begin to see buds swell, the pasture thickens green and an army of robins return to forage.

Heavy December rains caught in between our sleeping food forest beds.

 This Winter was especially wonderful (and wet!). Our region was pounded with heavy rains from cold storms leaving thick blankets of snow in the mountains. After several years of extreme drought, this 'normal' Winter was a welcome change. We're currently sitting at above-average snowpack and we can only hope that this pattern continues for several years to help replenish our weakened water table.

The ducks enjoying a seasonal pond in the pasture.

 But now that we have received a slight break from the rains, we get to think ahead to the coming growing season. This year, we plan to grow more herbs for Wild Rose formulas including Burdock and (hopefully) Arnica. We had much success with our essential oil still last year and plan to extract more Apple Mint and Catnip oils from our lush herb beds.

Romanesco Broccoli harvested in January

We're excited to see what this Spring and Summer will bring for both Wild Rose and our little homestead!

From the Garden: March at the Wild Rose Homestead

Spring has arrived in Southern Oregon! Here's a few scenes from around the homestead over the past month.

This is our second full growing season on the property. The fruit tress we planted last year are looking marvelous - like this Asian Pear exploding in flowers! Maybe we'll get the first fruits this year?

We also planted two-year-old asparagus roots last year on the garden edges. We're starting to see some nice, thick stalks pop up, though we wont be eating any this year. We're patiently waiting for the plants to become well established. Next year we should have plenty to harvest.

Looks like these Calendula volunteers are giving us a hand with our goal of growing all of our own Calendula in 2015. When these babies bloom, they will be used to make our Calendula Extract for our Ink Spray Tattoo Aftercare as well as our Attunement and Clarity Cleansers.

We added more fruit trees this year, including this Puget Gold Apricot! We wont get fruit from this tree for several years, but the blossoms are a real treat!

From the Garden: Recycling cardboard at Wild Rose

We go through a lot of boxes in a single holiday season! And while we have an amazing local recycling center, we try to reuse as much as possible right here on the homestead. Cardboard is an ideal first layer for our lasagna garden beds that we are establishing on the property. So, each box is saved, de-taped and used either as a weed-blocking base layer or as a seed starting tray in our gardens. Here, boxes that once held The Original Beard Cream are now being used to start a future blueberry bed. The box stops here!

From the Garden: Recycled Box Seedling Pots

We go through a lot of jars at Wild Rose, which means we go through a lot of jar boxes! Jar boxes are typically small with corrugated partitions to protect jars during shipping. These boxes aren't very useful for storage or garden mulch, so we've started using them for seedlings. We save all of our jar boxes through the busy Winter shopping season for our Spring seedlings, leaving the partitions in place to prevent neighboring seedlings from intertwining their roots.

The boxes degrade quickly, so we simply start our seeds in them before potting up. The seedling above are tomatoes that are just about ready to be transplanted to larger pots. The spent seedling boxes are then composted with the rest of our household/workshop plant waste.