Lemon-Gingerade Green Tea Recipe

As promised yesterday, here is the recipe to make a delicious and healthy green tea lemonade with fresh ginger root and honey.

1. Add three small green tea bags to one cup of boiling water.
2. Add one ounce of raw honey to the hot tea and stir to dissolve. (You can substitute stevia for sweetener.)
3. Squeeze the juice and pulp from two fresh lemons (or equivalent of Real Lemon juice).  Add to a small pitcher with one quart of cold water.
4. Grate one inch of fresh ginger root. (I use the smallest-sized side of the grater.) Add to the pitcher of lemon water.
5. Stir the hot tea and honey mixture into the pitcher.
6. Chill and serve over ice with a sprig of lemonbalm.

It's not only delicious, but very healthy.

Herb Gardening

Early in the spring this year I completely renovated our garden hardscape and created an herb garden. I have bee balm, lemon balm, oregano, stevia, dill, parsley, basil, onion, garlic, chives, and cilantro. All of it is doing quite well except the cilantro. (I think I got it into the ground a little too late.)

 To the left is a still shot of my herb garden earlier this year. I'll post it in case you don't have time to watch the short video clip above.

I'm going to plant some ginger now that I've learned that it can be grown in a pot in Zone 6 and carried indoors during the winter months. See http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/herb/growing-ginger.htm for how-tos on growing ginger in your area.

I harvested some stevia today to use as a natural sweetener for ginger lemon tea. I'll share the recipe in the next post. But for today, here is a link to where you can learn how to grow and harvest and use stevia: http://lafermedesourrou.blogspot.com

Straw Bale Garden Week 6

Snapshots of our straw bale garden about six weeks after putting the plants into the bales. We have lost two squash plants because the bales are breaking down too quickly and the soil is disappearing as it composts. I think next year we will simply cut 1-gallon pot-sized holes into the bales and add potting soil and use the bales as containers rather than using high-nitrogen fertilizer to prep the bales.