Hello friends,

I've been collecting our lavender, calendula, and chamomile flowers all summer, with the intention of making my own cold-pressed soap with an olive oil infusion from the flowers this autumn. Years ago, when I lived in Wellington, I attended a cold-pressed soap making course, and I have been making my own for years since then. It's an interesting combination of gardening and crafting, with a big splash of science, and it's a lot of fun to make once you know how to take the safety precautions.

The first step was to gather the flowers I dehydrated over the summer. I store them under the stairs in our home, the temperature is cool and dry there, so it's perfect for storing dried flowers.

I then filled a glass container up as high as possible with the dried flowers.

Once the container was full, I filled the jar with olive oil.

I usually use olive pomace oil, but I didn't have enough to fill the entire jar, so I had to go out and buy some mellow olive oil. The cheapest olive oil is the best to use, as I hate using extra-virgin olive oil for soap making, when it could added to meals.

Once the olive oil was filled up to the top, I removed as many air bubbles as possible, and used a spoon to ensure the flowers were mixed evenly.

After putting the lid on the jar and dating it, I stored the jar in a cool, dry place for two weeks while it infused.

When the time was up I passed the olive oil infusion through a cheese cloth to remove as many flowers as possible. The olive oil had taken on such a beautiful orange colour, and smelled like lavender.

I've now stored the oil infusion away for couple of weeks until it's time to make the soap.

This was such a fun project to do, and I can't wait until soap making day in a couple of weeks. 

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.

Tags: 2024, Autumn, Calendula, Chamomile, Lavender, Oil Infusion, Olive Oil, Soap, Soap Making

Hello friends,

It's a very busy time in the garden with lots of harvesting to do, and last week I finally got around to harvesting chamomile, lavender, calendula, and catnip.

It was a bit of a battle to work around the many honey bees, bumble bees, and native bees who were all doing some harvesting of their own, but I finally got the flowers harvested.

The calendula and chamomile went straight into the dehydrator, but I had to chop the lavender stems back to make the lavender flowers fit inside. My dehydrator now lives in the garage, as the scented air flow sets off my asthma.

Once that was done, it was time to harvest the catnip. I grow our catnip in the berry cage, as it's the only way of getting a harvest for our indoor cats, Missy and Rosie, without the neighbourhood cats destroying it first. The catnip plants however had grown like weeds, and were far too large to fit inside the dehydrator.

After giving the branches a trim, luckily there was enough space inside the glasshouse walkway to fit them all in, so I laid the catnip out flat to dry. I put an old mesh door over the glasshouse during the day to stop the birds eating my tomatoes, but it also handily fends off the neighbourhood cats too.

Now that all the plants are dry, they go into storage for later on in the year. I plan to use the chamomile, calendula, and lavender in soap making once I have the time and space to do it. And the catnip will go into the cat's stash of catnip I keep all year for them.

Do you spoil your fur babies with their very own catnip? I find homegrown catnap is much more potent than store bought.

Have a wonderful day.

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon.

Tags: 2024, Berry Cage, Calendula, Catnip, Chamomile, Dehydrating, Dehydrator, Flower Garden, Flowering, Garden, Gardening, Glasshouse, Harvest, Harvesting, Herb, Herb Garden, Herbs, Lavender

Hello friends,

We're up to week 4 of spring seed sowing, and I feel like I'm running behind. The past week has been busy painting and prepping areas of the garden for the coming growing season, but the pressure is also on to continue seed sowing as well.

Vegetable plants sowed this week:

• Beetroot Cylindra
• Cucumber Crunchy F1
• Cucumber Lebanese Medici F1
• Carrot Amsterdam Sprint
• Radish Easter Egg
• Sugar Beet

I also invested in some chicken wire cloches to prevent the sparrows from taking all my precious seed, they watched me hungrily the other day as I direct sowed the first of the root crops.

Herb plants sowed this week:

• Lemon Balm
• Orange Balm
• Olive Herb
• Basil Gustosa
• Basil Sweet Genovese

I'm particularly excited about growing the Olive Herb plants, as we definitely don't have the space to grow our own olive trees. A summary from the Kings Seeds website about the plant:

"Woody low growing border plant with green leaves that have an intense olive aroma. Said to add the flavouring of olives to marinades, pasta, a variety of meat and tomato dishes or wherever olives might be used. Combines well with thyme, rosemary, basil and tarragon flavours. The attractive yellow pompom flowers are also edible. Low maintenance plants are fairly hardy, preferring humus rich, well drained soil but will tolerate other conditions and soil types too."

Flower plants sowed this week:

• Dahlia Beeline II Keith Hammett
• Dahlia Keith Hammett NZ Gardener 2023 Seed Swap
• Dahlia Sunflower Keith Hammett
• Lavender Hidcote

I sent in a self addressed envelope to NZ Gardener in order to get some Keith Hammett dahlia seeds for this year's dahlia grow along, it's always great to see what sort of dahlias pop up, they're dahlia seeds collected from his breeding program. Each seed will be unique, and not ever seen before.

I hope your seed sowing is going well, this week is spring!

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon.

Tags: 2023, Beetroot, Carrots, cucumber, Dahlias, Flowers, Herbs, Lavender, Radish, Radishes, Root Crops, Seed Sowing, Seedlings, Seeds, Sugar Beet