FarmTina

How To Get Rid of Fruit Flies

Fruit flies are really stupid. With the exception of that one in the movie "Fruit Fly to Harvard", they are all very dumb and easy to kill.

Lately, I've had a fruit fly problem around my indoor herb garden that I keep in the kitchen. I have 80 zillion tiny flies hovering around my plants! Fruit flies are annoying, but they can also carry disease and bacteria, so I definitely don't want them hanging around my kitchen. Here's how I got rid of them:

The Late Gardener

Think you missed your window of opportunity to grow your own food this season? Well guess what... you still have options! Here is a list of seeds you can plant in your yard or planter boxes and still have a food harvest in the fall.

Farm-made shampoo

I was inspired by this Grist.org video to make my own shampoo using only baking soda, water and some herbs that I'm growing in the backyard.

As with many other cleansers we use on our bodies, shampoo can become addictive for your hair: the more you use it, the more your hair comes to rely on it to stay healthy. Plus, whatever you use to wash your hair is being absorbed into your hair and skin on a regular basis, and that could be scary if you can't trust your shampoo ingredients. You can check the health of your beauty products on the Cosmetics Database safety review... you'd be surprised at how unsafe some greenwashed "all-natural" brands of body products are!

Aside from all that health stuff, making my own shampoo is cheaper than buying it. That's good enough for me!

Here's a simple recipe for home made shampoo that actually works:

Green Thumb Conundrums: How to Harvest Your Container Herb Garden

I have a problem with over-harvesting the herbs growing on my windowsill. When my rosemary starts branching out, I can't help myself from cutting it to bits. What's a good way to cut herbs to encourage growth and not kill your plants?

-Andrea from Brooklyn, NY

Herb Cuttings From the Farm

Since it's still so early in the growing season, I don't have much that I can harvest yet from the garden. The one thing I can do is pick the herbs! My basil, rosemary, mint, sage and chives are all growing like crazy. I've been using them for quiche, omelets, pasta sauce, pizza, bread, and of course bloody marys and mojitos.

Here's a beautiful photo taken by Josh Roxas of chive and rosemary cuttings that I gave him last week. He'll be back to take more photos of the farm as it starts to bloom!