orchard – Page 5 – Peacock Orchard

How to grow and use lemongrass with a recipe

Lemongrass is such a wonderful plant. It can be used in cooking, to deter bugs, to make tea and medicinally. WebMD even has a page on it:

Lemongrass is a plant. The leaves and the oil are used to make medicine.

Lemongrass is used for treating digestive tract spasms, stomachache, high blood pressure, convulsions, pain, vomiting, cough, achy joints (rheumatism), fever, the common cold, and exhaustion. It is also used to kill germs and as a mild astringent.

Some people apply lemongrass and its essential oil directly to the skin for headache, stomachache, abdominal pain, and muscle pain.

By inhalation, the essential oil of lemongrass is used as aromatherapy for muscle pain.

In food and beverages, lemongrass is used as a flavoring. For example, lemongrass leaves are commonly used as “lemon” flavoring in herbal teas.

In manufacturing, lemongrass is used as a fragrance in soaps and cosmetics. Lemongrass is also used in making vitamin A and natural citral.

How does it work?

Lemongrass might help prevent the growth of some bacteria and yeast. Lemongrass also contains substances that are thought to relieve pain, reduce fever, stimulate the uterus and menstrual flow, and have antioxidant properties.

Source

I wanted to grow lemongrass for a different reason, the oil attracts bees. As you know we built our own beehives. I do not want to buy a package of bees, I’d rather attract a swarm. To do that I needed lemongrass essential oil. Husband has been wanting to try his hand at making essential oil, so I just needed the lemongrass. I went to our local oriental market and bought all the lemongrass they had. I put them in a jar of water until they’d sprouted roots, then I planted them out to the kitchen herb garden. They have really taken off. I’ve harvested some for lemongrass chicken and loved it.

Lemongrass

Thai Basil

Here is Daughter helping me prep the lemongrass. Ok, she’s just chewing on it. She informed me she didn’t like eating grass.

Such a cute face!

Stripped of stalk.

All I did to prep the lemongrass was strip off the base leaves, cut the white base of the stalk off, wash it and chop it up to be added to dinner. The recipe I gathered inspiration from is this one. As usual, I didn’t follow the directions and modified as I saw fit. I used bean noodles, sliced chicken breasts, carrots, and green onions. I did not use fish sauce, cuz yuck! O let me just tell you my recipe:

Lemongrass Chicken with Bean Noodles

Ingredients

1 serving bean noodles
Olive Oil- enough to coat bottom of pan
2 large lemongrass stalks or 5 small ones.
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried ginger
10 leaves fresh thai basil
1 carrot sliced thinly
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 TB brown sugar

Directions

Cook bean noodles as directed on the package.

Add lemongrass, ginger, oil and garlic to a medium skillet and sauté until fragrant. Add the sliced chicken and cook through. Add lemon juice, basil and brown sugar and coat chicken. Next add the noodles and warm through. Remove and serve in a bowl with carrot curls and green onions.

Add spice, to taste with sriracha or red pepper flakes. My children do not like spice and so we kept it optional.

I think bean sprouts would be great in this dish but I didn’t have any when I first made it and it was still great.

Cooking noodles

Cooking the lemongrass, garlic and ginger.

Browning the chicken.

Delicious!

Year 2 planting, what has survived.

It’s been a tough year for plants. We had an incredibly wet spring followed by no rain at all for months. However, that isn’t what the biggest killer of trees this year was, rabbits were.

We made bone sauce and applied it but it did not deter the rabbits at all. In fact I think I can say that every single nut tree is gone at this point. We had some almonds holding out but when I went to check yesterday, gone, super depressing. I’m not sure what to do about the rabbits now. I also saw an apple tree in the cider orchard that had clearly been lopped off by rabbits. I think I may end up opening the gate and letting the dogs in there to take care of the problem. Enjoy a slew of cider orchard photos:

Oh that dog! That turkey too……. He managed to get in once. At his body weight in clover.

I had some amazing help documenting the orchard this weekend. Son was lead photographer and Daughter was official musician.

Other than the nut trees a lot of the trees are doing fairly well. I’d say we had 80% live. An excellent survival rate with my, minimal intervention, approach. The peach trees universally did poorly. 3/4 of them did not come out of dormancy. 1/2 the cherry trees did not come out of dormancy as well. The bushes all did poorly. I’m not exactly sure why. The Goji berry, the bush I thought would be the hardest to keep, is doing the best of all. The cranberries were doing very well and I was so happy with them but…now I can’t even see them. Were they eaten? I’m just not sure. I have requested a refund on the trees that did not come out of dormancy. If it grew and then died because of my planting method I did not request a replacement.

Dead cherry tree here.

blackberry from 2014. It’s spreading out of both sides of the berm now. Must protect from rabbits this winter so I can get some fruit from it.

Black locust which has survived with 0 human intervention and is doing great!

Go PawPaw Go!

Frustratingly one of the paw paws had a single leaf. I was so happy, it lived! Took a picture, turned my back and BAM, daughter killed it. /sigh Maybe it’ll come back?

I was pleasantly surprised to find asparagus growing in a few of the Kraters. It’s also interesting to see the variation among the Kraters. The deepest Krater is doing the best, the widest and shallowest has the least amount of vegetation. The Krater that has a fair amount of that black pond clay mixed in with it is doing the best of all.

Look at that difference and they are literally right next to each other.

The osage oranges I planted are doing amazing. I’ve never watered them. We’ve done nothing to them, but they’re growing so well. I may have to get some more of them. Great natural fence and the fruit is great for livestock feed.

I still have a lot of flowers blooming and a lot of unknown things, as well as turnips and radishes doing their part in the cover crop.

All in all, not a bad year.

Cider Orchard Establishment

I am happy to announce that our cider orchard is almost done. Ok, let’s just say it’s officially started. We took a portion of the backyard and fenced it off. We tilled and planted clover and wildflowers as mentioned in this post. The clover and such are filling in nicely, so are the weeds.

We have a lovely cattle panel arch leading into the cider orchard. I have a kiwi planted near it but that kiwi has been hit and miss for some time so I don’t know that it will recover. If it doesn’t I’ll eventually move some grape cuttings into the area.

We have the swales running in a circle around the orchard. They have proven that they can collect water already, though it was more of an aesthetic and ease of watering thing for me.

The trees are newly grafted heirloom varieties. It took us quite some time to get the infrastructure of the orchard up and thus the trees were in tree pots for some time. These tree pots. They didn’t do all that well in them. It was really hot but I did water them daily. Even still it is my guess that they cooked in the pots. The ones on the outside of did poorly. Some died but the rootstock of some lived. I’m going to let it grow and re-graft later on.

Not all the plants in the cider orchard are cider apples. I have hidden rose apples planted in there because I want to have them close to the house for my personal enjoyment. I also have a black currant bush in there that can be used as a mix in for cider or just for personal enjoyment. Eventually I’ll have a few specialty plums thrown in as well.

The wild flowers and vetch seeds were thrown onto the berm of the swale and into the back of the cider orchard where it is too shady to grow trees and also already has established willow trees.

Where the barn is it is very shady a lot of the time. Thus I am planting a shade garden. I have some hostas, a golden bell flower and a few other things thrown in. The wildflower seeds are doing best in this area.

Eventually I hope to have a lovely table and chairs and picnic amidst the flowers and trees. I think it will be a lovely retreat for us!

A walk around the house

Come take a look around with us. Turkeys approve this message, so long as it comes with snacks.

Yellow sweet clover? We’ve got 30 acres of that! It’s also freakishly tall.

I finally found rubber boots for the kids. They want to wear them everywhere now.

Prince is losing his train and Ella thinks it’s hilarious to try to tickle him with the feathers.

We saved a butterfly last week!

Taking a ride to feed the babies.

Hazelnuts are on the cusp of doing well and dying. how is that possible you ask? Well excessive rain and that sweet clover that grows taller than everything else. Ugh!

White oaks are doing alright though.

Ducks still think I’m Satan.

Paw Paws are doing well!

Vetch. Love it!

We have lots of flowers popping up.

Bindweed. Super depressing amounts of it!

The duck and Prince love each other.

Sugar snap peas. I haven’t cooked a single one. They get eaten right from the pod!

Grapes are struggling a bit

Gourds are doing alright. They’re even rooting along the vine. Crazy!

This is one of the Kraters. It’s doing well!

Jiki our pyr has to come out with me to protect me from the coyotes!

We have salad!

Water harvesting in mini Kraters

Our mini Kraters are doing well. In fact we haven’t had to water yet. The cover crop seeds are coming up. The bushes are flourishing. The trees are coming out of dormancy. It is an exciting time!

Every single Krater had standing water in the bottom of it. This will dry up fairly quickly but it is an AMAZING water source!

I did water the bushes after planting. They were leafed out on delivery and I didn’t bother to harden them off, thus they needed water.

So much water in the kraters that you can see it from a distance.

This is a plum tree that is doing amazingly well. Very happy with it! I did have a fair amount of death over the winter. I blame myself, I pretty much killed them all.

The good news is the rootstocks are alive. So I’m letting the rootstocks grow to be re-grafted later.

The unintentional pond was pumped dry but it has since refilled a bit.

A complete yard reboot

We have never paid much attention to the state of our front and back yard. The front has been mostly unused and the back is where the dogs are kept when we aren’t home. Simple as that. At least it used to be. Now we have kids and our space has taken on new meaning. I have been excited to create a playground for our children. It has been going quite well and I’m happy with the results of my labor. Unfortunately the grass and weeds have been a large problem in accessing this playground equipment. We have a mower but it attaches to our tractor and is quite large. Keeping the grass and weeds short around the toys is difficult at best. So we took drastic action.

We rented a tiller, took a day off and tilled the front and back yard. As you can tell, our back yard is humongous. We did make it for the dogs and we figured we might as well go all the way to the barn with the fence. Most of this space is underutilized, except by said dogs. So we decided to cut a part of the back of this yard off and put the cider orchard there. So on top of tilling we also did a small swale in the back section.

I ordered a large variety of seeds. I picked subterranean clover for around the toys and where we walk the most. This clover grows thick and short, we should never have to mow it. Then I ordered multiple species of clover: persian, rose, arrowleaf and ladino are what I remember off the top of my head. This went in the less traveled areas and in the cider orchard. The third bucket is full of wild flowers and vetch. This I sprinkled all along the fence line and in the very back of the cider orchard area. We do have trees in the area already, planted before we moved here. Since they will be too large to put a fruit tree near I have no problem spreading lots of flowers and tall vetch around them. It should be a beautiful location when everything grows!

Of course I was racing to get this done. There was a storm coming and I wanted that rain on my newly seeded yard areas. I made it just in time.

And boy did it rain a ton!