Herb drying time!!!

In one of our gardens we have an herb garden. We have 8 different kinds of herbs! In this post I discover how to dry herbs.


My first drying experience was with mint!










I picked the mint....












Then I washed it and drained it......












Then I separated it and laid it out on the dehydrator
making sure none of the leaves are touching or stuck
together!













It comes out way smaller than you would think. So if you
think you picked alot....you didn't! I picked half a grocery bag full and got 1/4 of a sandwich bag full.














Then I made a big mistake....I put it in the coffee grinder.
This made a very fine powder. I would put the dried
leaves in a zip lock bag and crush with fingers. Don't do it
too much!







I did another batch and I am going to use it for teas!

There you go! A How-To on drying herbs! hope you liked it! Let me know if you have any questions...I'll try to answer them!

Urban Gardening!

I have had the privilege of starting my first urban garden(or 3) in the inner city of St.Louis! Me and my boyfriend have taken on 3 gardens in the city limits of St.Louis 20 blocks from downtown. We work as missionaries for Sun Ministries. We were approached by Gateway Greening about 1 community and 2 school gardens they wanted us to take care of these gardens. We are going to take these school and community gardens and turn them into Opportunity Gardens. These Opportunity Gardens will sell the produce to people in the neighborhood and take the money and hire kids from the ages of 14 to 16 on agricultural permits to keep them out of trouble and next to our missionaries.

We are both new to this gardening thing. I helped my mom with our garden when I was young but I was young and only got to pull weeds. My boyfriend has had little experience as well his dad has a small garden in his back yard. It was a little much when the opportunity for us to manage 3 gardens of 32 beds in all roughly 5x10 each came to us.We took on this project this past winter. So we entered a class for beginning gardeners and read alot and asked a lot of questions. Not only were there 3 gardens but 2 of them were a mess and 1 of them had never been planted!!!! So with volunteers and help from friends and family we have gotten all 3 gardens planted!!!! BUT!!!!! We have had our issues and pests and critters and intruders! We have had almost anything you could think of...we have had anywhere from Aphids to Squash Vine Borers to Rabbits to People steeling produce to people trying to steel whole plants!!!! So far we have learned a few things for this Urban gardening thing. On this blog I will give you tips, quick cures, pictures and funny stories! so sit back relax and have fun reading this blog!


-Amy