New Garden Beds

I sincerely hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving. I certainly did. My husband and I and three of our friends went to spend Thanksgiving with my family in Douglasville. We had a wonderful day, and finished it off with some black Friday shopping at the Tanger outlets in Commerce by where we live. 

Last week my husband built me new garden beds and I am excited to show them off. 

Here is a picture of the old ones before I filled them with compost. As you can see there aren't very big. I believe they were 4' by 2'. 

The new ones he built are a whopping 8' by 4'!

I have so much more room now, and I am excited by being able to plant more vegetables next year. To fill the beds we just moved the existing dirt from the previous beds into the new ones. Then I moved 16 buckets worth of grass clippings and leaves that were in a big pile on the other side of the yard to fill them some more. As more leaves fall we will crush them up with the lawnmower and add them to the beds.

Two of the old beds we moved to the side of the house. I plan on putting up trellising and planting cucumbers and green beans in them next spring. 

In other news, I only have two more weeks of school until this semester is over! I am really looking forward to Christmas break.

Dandelion Green Chicken Broth

I recently read that dandelion greens are very nutritious. As luck would have it, we have lots of them in our yard. What else was I to do but harvest some and see what they tasted like? 

Dandelion greens are a wonderful tonic. They support digestion, reduce swelling and inflammation, and treat viruses. This sunflower relative boasts potent medicinal properties with laxative and diuretic properties. Sounds too good to be true from a weed in your front yard, right? 

Like I said we have lots in our yard and I happily harvested a big bunch of them, and planned to use them in chicken stock.

 I simply cleaned off the greens and placed them in a crockpot with chicken bones from 4 bone in chicken breasts, 2 carrots, 3 ribs of celery, and spices. Then I filled the crockpot to the top with filtered water. 

It cooked for a day and produced a beautiful and flavorful chicken broth. I ended up drinking most of it by itself, and it was extremely delicious. Hooray for free nutritious weeds :).