Cardiff Garden Blog

A few years back my friend planted a milkweed plant in his garden box in our backyard.  That plant birthed willow like spores that spread among the other garden boxes.  Milkweed is a favorite food source for Monarch butterflies.  So ever since then we have seen plenty orbiting the plants.   This is a picture of the flowers the plants produce.   The striped caterpillars are all Monarch happily munching away. The plants themselves will recover from their leave stripping.  How many do you count in this photo?   You should then expect to see these guys hanging in different places around your garden. These are the chrysalis to which the butterflies will hatch from.  I actually found one on a house plant I put outside for a week and after moving the plant back inside the butterfly hatched in my living room.   Having milkweed in your garden affords you these great opportunities to get up and close views of the beautiful butterflies.   I helped relocate this gu

This picture illustrates perfectly the lifecycle of a seed.  You can see the change from seed to plant. I use a method of sowing where you leave the seed on top of the soil and cover it with vermiculite to give it an easier chance to open and grow. It also promotes better root growth.  I planted these two days ago. 

I don't claim to make the best salsa (that's something my co-workers claim) but I do like the fresh flavors from making it from my garden ingredients. I want to show you my recipe for fresh salsa.  It starts with all fresh ingredients from the garden that you can source.  Peppers, onions, garlic, cilantro, tomatillo, lime, and salt.   I like to chop them all up in half or smaller and lay on a baking sheet with parchment paper and I place in broiler for 10 mins or until blackened.     Once the peppers, onion, tomatillo and garlic has been roasted, the next step is to blend in the food processor.  After all the roasted veggies are blended, place in pot on stove low heat.  Slow and low the longer it roasts on heat the better.  But you need to constantly sitr.  Last step after it's had some time to cool I add cilantro and lime juice. I like to also add green onions in this stage as well. I use the food processor to blend cilantro and onion into small pieces.