Stone Beach Permaculture : In The Garden With Lauraetta

Back in the garden today to check up on the garden, you get a special look at my garden buddy! A black out door cat - its always nice to look after needy animals but remember to spade and neuter your animals

We have tomatoes growing as well as out peas!

We also discuss the stability of our hand rolled seed starter cups!

You get to see our Asian leafy greens up as well as the second leaves of our cucumber plants.

Happy gardening !

Lauraetta!

Lauraetta in the garden: 2018 spring May 14

Checking up on my bee trap! Free bees makes me a happy girl!
Unfortunately as you will see in the video above my bee trap is vacant. But non-the-less the video if full of tips to try to acquire your own free bees with your own bee trap.

You too can have free bees but some reading may be required!

I suggest these books! It should be said you can have bees in the city and now urban bee farms are getting more popular.  So don’t fret if you don’t have a patch of green grass or garden to your name! take your farming to the skies!

Stone Beach Permaculture broadcast: Ep 4 Monica Wilde

I had a fantastic and beyond informative interview with Monica Wilde - she is a researcher and forager in Scotland. Not only did she grace us with talking about the natural diet of humanoid species and how that affects us today, but her information on foraging is unmatched to anything I ever heard thus far.

Her main tools of the trade are a simple pen knife as to separate the plant from its roots - as to preserve the plant and to keep the area of the forest biologically diverse as you will not take away from the woods as you would if you have taken the whole plant.

And also what too look for in your foraging books- and what information to ignore. I can not stress enough how important this is, as miss information is too risky when identifying plants and mushrooms

Here are some links to some tools and books you may be interested in if you ever get the itch to discover the wild food around you.

You can also visit Monica's instagram page at and also her blog here-

Lauraetta in the garden : Spring 2018 May 1

Out in the garden today!

It makes me happy knowing I made my green house out of stuff I found in a throw away pile that was headed to the dump!

Today I was checking up on the greens just peaking up in the greenhouse made from a window that was about to be tossed in the trash! Reduce reuse and recycle!

 I planted some tomatoes, cucumbers and some interesting seeds !

Here are some of the herbs and vegetables I planted!

Don’t be shy and give it a go! If you have any questions you can always contact me!

Seeds, Seeds, Seeds - and some Gourds

Bellow is my next seed haul- I wanted to do a experiment what would be lest costly. So I went to www.OSCseeds.com and ordered some quick to grow vegetables. But also a but of a treat for myself- a big bag of bee friendly flowers-

I plan on using the seeds to mix into a pulp of paper to make some seed bombs- that video will be out later in the week (whenever I get the seeds)

The selection online definitely is something to be attracted too, as not a lot of people can go to a hardware store and pick up a wide seed variety. But the hardware/garden store is convenient.

Please join me in watching the garden grow as we continue our experiments in growing sustainably- 

If you find you are late buying seeds please use my list bellow as a guide on what to plant.

As you can see I ordered a lot of squash- ( I plan on canning them and selling them at a market)

I'm a bit of a Squash nut- but for good reason- you could prepare and store squash in almost unambitious ways. There is gnocchi, pastas, powdered and put into bread , steamed ,canned, pureed, and roasted. My mouth is watering just thinking of it- plus I have many different ways to plant squashes. My favorite being the Dump and plant method.

Squash are natural composting super houses. So if you have a very anaerobic compost pile just remove the "hardware" ( the bin) leave the pile where it is - cover with some black earth- dose not have to be very much and then mulch/dirty hay. Then plant.

I guarantee you will have the happiest gourds you have ever seen.

Stone Beach Permaculture Broadcast - Ep.3 Rossi Farms

You can find Mr.Rossi at his website https://rossinaturals.com

Foraging for ramps 2018

We recently went ramp foraging and I have to admit I thought it was going to be harder then it turned out to be. Not only were the ramps easy to find ( after much consulting of many plant identification books) but they were a breeze to harvest.
Ramps are wild onions that have broad leaves and a white bulb. They are so easy to harvest because of their shallow root systems that make them pull able with little effort.

Ramps can be used in many was but we are going to pickle them. they can be used in pesto's or marinades - anywhere you may use onions and garlic together , you can sprinkle in a few ramps. Over the next couple of days I'm going to test out a few recipes and I hope you get adventurous with cooking with ramps as well as they are a wild, sustainable food source that should be planted and looked after in your area. As long as they are native, that is.

I did harvest 10% or less of the patch I found , as this will not affect the productivity of the patch of ramps. If you wish to keep the ramp population healthy then I suggest following the 10%harvest guidelines .

These are a few items I will/ have purchased to go foraging with. This collapsible shovel is not only light weight but it can be clipped onto your pack or belt with a Carabiner clip.  ( you should always have one on your key-chain )

This makes foraging so much easier , in the future I will not bring a basket or a bucket as I found a much easier way to take your foraged produced out of the woods. This is a collapsible bag , and I think it will be my next must have to bring with me when I go out camping or hiking.

The last thing is a good knife and this fixed blade knife is handy. Make sure it has a belt clip and is not easily opened in your pocket by accident.