Harvest your Garden

Borage - leaves chopped up and added to green salad, taste like cucumber.
Flowers used to decorate cakes or fruit salads.
To preserve them, pick the blue flowers when in full bloom with a bit of the stem.
Spread them on a clean towel and shake gently.
Place the flowers on a fine mesh cake rack or a piece of screening, pressing each stem through so that each flower will sit on top of the screen.
With a small camel’s hair paint brush, coat each flower carefully with egg whites that have been beaten enough to lose their slippery texture.
Sprinkle the flowers gently with superfine sugar using a shaker or a fine sieve.
The flowers should dry in a cool place for 48 hours.
Examine to see if any part of the flower is uncovered, repeat the process.
They keep longer when treated 2 times.
When thoroughly dry set them next to each other, on cotton wadding in a shallow box.
Cover the box with transparent plastic wrap and over this place the lid of the box.
Place in a cool place for 6 months.
Chives - snip off the tops and new shoots will then appear.
2 handfuls in a blender with 2 cups of water.
Strain it.
Add 1 quart of water.
Kills red spider mites on the plants.
Garlic - 3 ounces of chopped bulbs
Soak in 2 tsp. of mineral oil for 24 hours.
Slowly add a pint of water in which 1/4 ounce of oil based soap (Palmolive) has been dissolved.
Stir well
Strain and store in glass.
Dilute with 1 part to 20 parts water.
Use against your worst pest.
Horsetail - dried and cut.
1 1/2 ounce boiled in 1 gallon of water for 20 minutes.
Cool and strain.
Makes a spray for fungus on plants.
Blossom - picked and ground.
Add water and spray on infested plants and ordinary flies
Nasturtium - use the flowers, leaves and seeds.
To make a relish, pickle the seeds by pouring hot vinegar on top of them.
Add 1 tsp. of sugar to each cup of vinegar.
Cover and let seeds ripen 1 month before using.
Flowers usage:
Borage - float in drinks, decorate cakes and salads.
Calendula - color butter, cheese, sauce, soups, stews and tea.
Chives - add onion flavor to salads, eggs ect.
Geranium - leaves for oil, ulceration of stomach, and upper intestines.
Marigolds - rice, soups, and stews
Nasturtium - peppery flavor, salads, butter (leaves and flowers).
Rose Petals - decorate cakes (remove white edges).
Safflower - coloring butter, rice, chicken gravy, and stew.
Saffron Crocus - cheese, butter, rice, noodles, gravy, soups, and cookies.
Violet - jams, jellies, candid, drinks.
Passion Vine - leaves as an sedative, nerves, headaches and sleep.
Periwinkle - as an astringent and nerviness.
Poppy - seeds for baking, or crush seeds is a substitute for olive oil.
Sunflower - seeds for coughs, colds, whooping cough.
Roots for snake bits.
Leaves are astringent, herbal tobaccos, malarial fever.
Flowers - yield a yellow dye.
Pith of the stalks - to make paper.