Fried Morel Mushrooms

Here in Ohio, these mushrooms are hard-to-find but so good to eat. I went out three times this year and didn't find any, but luckily someone found over 400 and was willing to share.


You can prepare these by soaking and then rolling them in a flour and corn meal mixture (with garlic salt of course) but this year I bought a beer batter mix and they turned out really, really good. All I did was add beer to the mix, roll them in it and fry. Season to taste with garlic salt and pepper.


You'll never eat better mushrooms than these, I promise!

What we did for earth day

Last Saturday, in celebration of Earth day, the street where Different Daisy is located held an Earth Day Festival. In store, we fed visitors
Loma Linda Big Franks and Tings and passed out literature outlining the environmental impact a meat based diet has on the planet.





Flyers we passed out (PDF, you need Adobe for these):
Page 1
Page 2
Feel Free to print these and hand them out at your next event.


For the kids we made "Rabbit Food" Gardens that they could take home. Each child got a reused flower pot with stickers and ribbons to decorate it and spinach & lettuce seeds. The child first places soil in the pot, the adds the seeds, covers lightly with more soil, waters and covers with plastic wrap. The seeds will germinate in about 10 days and in 40-60 they will have "Rabbit food" to eat.






For the adults, we made a body scrub they could take home. We used epson salt and sea salt, sunflower oil, and NOW foods essential oils. Each person got to pick their choice of scent for their personalized scrub.


Recipe for a small take-home container of scrub:
4 T Salt
1/2 to 1 T oil
Serval drops essential oil

Stir and enjoy!





People came up with all sorts of combinations but lavender was a top choice and an invigorating blend containing tangerine, orange and grapefruit was a close second.

New Favorite Flower & Salad Burnet

Salad Burnet is a cool herb that many people have never heard of before. It is pretty new to me as well. What's fun about this plant is that if you eat a whole leaf you suddenly, magically taste cucumber. I mean the exact taste of cucumber. Just one bite of a leaf and nothing, but the whole leaf and there it is.
You can add this herb to salads, dips and sandwiches. It is perennial in zones 4-9 so you can use it all spring and summer as a substitute for cucumber.
These are my salad burnet starts which I just got potted up and on the porch tonight. It's April 22nd and the last expected frost date for Southern Ohio is May 7th, lots to do outside before then!






Wow, I absolutely love these Rananculus plants! The flowers are so pretty and the blooms have been lasting over 2 weeks, they're amazing. This is the first year I've had these and it won't be the last...










I picked these 2 plants up at a local garden center but I also have some seeds for these so hopefully they will do well for me.

New USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map/Climate Change

For the first time in 20 years, The USDA is updating the Plant Hardiness Zone Map in response to climate change. The map shows where various types of plant species can thrive, and as warmer annual temperatures move northward, the more than 80 million U.S. gardeners and farmers will be looking to the map to see what new plants may be able to grow in their area.

View the Map:
http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html

Indoor Tomato Update & Mandevilla

Last year I posted about the indoor tomatoes I purchased that were supposed to live indoors in the winter and still produce tomatoes. Sadly, they didn't make it through the winter in my house. To be fair, I didn't have them under a grow light so maybe they needed more light to survive. We did get some tomatoes off them last year so they weren't a waste of money but I was really hoping they would produce all year. Maybe if I had a better set up they would have survived.


I did have good luck wintering over my Pink Mandevilla. This plant is an incredible bloomer but tropical so it can't survive the winters here in Ohio. I put it in the basement and just watered it occasionally. A few weeks ago it looked dead! All the leave were brown and crinkled. But, to my delight when I got up close it was producing new green shoots. These last 2 days have been in the 60's here so I've been putting the mandevilla and my orange citrus plant outside to enjoy the warm sun, they seem pleased.

New Video Uploaded- Vegan Cosmetics I Love!

In this video I will be showing you the vegan cosmectics items I use on a regular basis. To purchase these item please visit:
VeganGoods.com
All items are 100% vegan and cruelty free



vegan cosmetics, plants, herbs, gardening, herbalism

Preparing for Spring

I finally got the Aerogarden back out to use again. We moved and it had been packed away for a few months. I planted it with an herb kit last week and they are all sprouting except 2 which take a little longer. For Christmas I got a second Aerogarden so I'm about to plant it using a Garden Starter Tray made for the Aerogarden, shown here:

I will be able to start up to 70 seedlings at once to transplant into my garden this spring. I chose the following seeds to start:

Winter Savory, Creeping Thyme, Bee Balm, Wild Bergamot, Salad Burnet, White Horehound, Beetberry, Chinese Wolfberry (Goji), Lovage and Pot Marigold. I'm starting these a little early and plan to keep them growing using a grow light in the basement. I hope it works!

I tried to get all heirloom or organic seeds. I couldn't for a few of these. I chose these plants specifically because they are edible or medicinal. I will do another planting with pretty flowers later, maybe in the Jiffy Greenhouse. They work well for starting seed. You should be able to pick one of these up at Lowes, Home Depot and maybe your local garden center. You can purchase refills so this greenhouse can be used over and over.

At a local department store I picked up some everbearing strawberry runners. This $3 bag should keep me and my family in strawberries all summer and hopefully I will have some extras to sell. Some strawberries produce only during 1 month in the summer, these are supposed to produce all summer. We'll see.

I also picked up a Bowl of Beauty Peony root. I love this type of Peony and have wanted one for myself for at least a year.

This plant is not edible or medicinal that I know of and it will be years before I see the first flowers, but it will be beautiful for sure!

Lastly, there was a brightly colored bluebird making a bunch of noise outside day before yesterday. I tried to get a picture but that crazy bird was flying all over the place. Back and forth he flew yelling at his refIection in the truck mirror. This was the best shot I could get of this pretty but very distraught bird:

vegan cosmetics, plants, herbs, gardening, herbalism