I should know better than to mess with recipes on my first go. It ALWAYS ends in ‘interesting’ results. But I just had to. The only reason being that I had some sunlight soap. I had some because I found this beautiful soap cage at the Riccarton Farmer’s markets for $2.00.

My Nana always used sunlight soap in one of these cages. I remember the way she used to shake the cage under the hot water in order to create the illusion of soapy suds. She was a beautiful Nana. She passed away last year and the smell of sunlight soap reminds me of her. It’s also a great soap. So I dutifully shaved it…

I heated 4 cups of water, added 1 cup of soap and left it on a low simmer for about an hour. Stirring constantly. When this had cooled, I added 10 drops of tea tree oil and a tbsp of vegetable glycerine. This is what it set in to:

Goop…

No good for the dishes, but bloody marvellous for washing gardener’s hands. So much better than my $10.00 bar of gardener’s soap. No dermetitis flare up. Also good for chilli burnt skin when one is stupid enough not to wear gloves whilst chopping red hot chillies. Who me?

Oh yes, and the smell of sunlight soap lingers on my window sill, where my goop now takes pride of place, reminding me of my lovely Nana and making me smile.

x Ma

A Plant Life Cycle

A plant life cycle describes how long a plant will live:

1. Annual: A plant that usually germinates, grows, flowers and dies in one year, e.g. lettuce. (An Ephemeral is like an annual and has more than one generation in a season).
2. Biennial: Has vegetative growth in the first year. In the second year, the plant will grow and form flowers, then set seeds and dies. E.g. carrot.
3. Perennial: Can live for many years and usually produce flowers and seed each year after maturity. Woody perennials have permanent top growth. Decidous plants lose their leaves in Winter and Evergreens are evergreen! Herbaceous perennials do not form woody tissue.

• All plants in the above life cycles produce flowers and seeds, which means they can be propagated by seed.
• Seed propagation contains risk as the seed will be made up of a combination of the parents’ DNA. With plant sexual reproduction their is no guarantee of the seed parentage due to cross pollination.
• Asexual reproduction, done through cuttings, bulb division, etc is the same as cloning a plant so the resulting plant is more predictable.
• Growing supermarket veg and fruit can be risky as a lot of these varieties are F1 hybrids. E.g A good tasting parent is combined with a disease resistant parent to create an appealing fruit. The fruit resulting from this seed would probably throw some good tasting fruit that aren’t disease resistant, or disease resistant fruit that taste like crap.

Seeds

• In a flower, ovules develop into seed and the ovary develops into fruit.
• Pericarp is the tissue that surrounds the seed. It can be fleshy, or hard and dry.
• Fleshy examples: Tomato, citrus, rosehips, apples, watermelon, stone fruits.
• Dry examples: Poppy, kowhai, lily, dandelion, sunflower, bean, cone, maple and nuts.

Seed collecting:

• Try to leave the seed on the plant for as long as possible
• The colour usually changes to brown
• Too early and the  seed may not be viable

Seed dispersal:

• Explosion: Gorse and Broom
• Wind: Pohutukawa, Dandelion, Maple, Swanplant
• Animals (external): Pittosporum, Cleavers
• Animal (internal): Elderberry, Rowan

Dandelion seeds (achenes) can be carried long distances by the wind. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Conditions for good seed germination:

• Water
• Light
• Oxygen
• Appropriate temperature

A germinated seedling (Eranthis hyemalis) emerges from the ground (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Seed storage: For dry seed storage (opp to seed germination):

• Low moisture
• Cool temp
• Air tight (ziplock bag within an envelope)
• Low light (dark)

Fell free to pull me up on any of the above…

Related articles

• Annual, Perennial, and Biennial Flowers (proflowers.com)
• Increased Growth and Germination Success in Plants following Hydrogen Sulfide Administration (plosone.org)
• Perreni-al, Annu-al, Bienni-al and Any Other -ial You Can Think Of (davesyardbarber.wordpress.com)
• Indoor Seed Starting (gardeninginsubherbia.com)

I’ve decided to create something a little different for my daughter’s room. I think I’ll sand down and repaint the body of the drawers a gloss ‘off white’. For the drawers, I’ve found some great ideas on Pinterest. (Oh, Pinterest, hours of my life…)

Please, feel free to let me know what you think.

I love the chalk board idea, ( I might do something like this in my son’s room), but some funky girly wallpaper would be more fitting for the drawers in the top picture.

Hmmm… now to find the right wallpaper.

Recipe

In the morning:

• Heat oven to 250 celsius. Put bolar roast, fat side up on to a rack in a dish, turn oven down to 200 celsius and roast for 30 mins.
• While roasting, chop up an onion, half a carrot and roughly chop up about half a garlic bulb. Place into the bottom of a slow cooker with a bay leaf, about eight peppercorns and a dash of sea salt.
• Mix together 2 tsps of cumin, 1 tsp of tumeric and 1/2c tsp of cayenne pepper.
• Place the roast in the crockpot with approx 0ne cup of water and sprinkle the spices on top. Cook on low for 6 – 8 hours.

In the evening:

• Cut up about three cups of sweet potato (kumura in these parts) and potato (skin on). Place into a roasting dish with 2 tbsps of coconut oil, about three tbsps of real maple syrup, a sprig of fresh rosemary and a dash of sea salt. Roast for 20 mins  at 200 celsius.
• While the veg is roasting, cut up about a cup and a half of pumpkin and throw into the roasting dish. Roast for another 20 mins or so.
• While this is roasting, fry an onion for about 7 mins on a very low temp. Add two finely chopped garlic bulbs. fry for about three minutes. Turn the heat up and add two chopped courgettes. Fry until golden and caramelised. (Not crispy and blackened…)
• Put one and a half cups of couscous, one tsp of tumeric and one and a half cups of water in a pot. Heat until the couscous has absorbed all the water. Take off the element. Stir in a tsp of butter coconut or olive oil. Break up the couscous and stir over a hot element for a further minute.

Combine:

The couscous, onion, courgette mix, roasted veg and some chopped meat. Add about a quarter of a cup of chopped fresh mint and a cup of the juice in the bottom of the slow cooker.

Throw on some crumbled feta and eat. Yummo. The kids loved it.