Homesteading fluffiness: First strawberry harvest, pineapple and kombucha!

I harvested my pathetic strawberries a couple of days ago and more today. The ones from a couple of days ago ripened enough for me to start freezing them so they don't go to waste. As I mentioned in a different post, I have to start harvesting them before they're completely ripe to beat the robins from devouring them. Here's an already posted pic:

These are now being frozen along with a fresh pineapple that John brought home last week. They say to eat the pineapple right away but we lost sight of it on our cluttered kitchen table so it was neglected. But no worries. It just got that much sweeter.  I found it, hacked off the top, cut all of the skin off, chopped it into bits and prepped it to freeze for smoothies, along with the batch of home grown strawberries (which didn't yield very much).  I love pineapples. Along with a lot of other fruits.  I hear that the pulp has extra goodness in it that helps muscles to repair quickly. I didn't throw those bits out. I put them in my high-powered blender along with some harvested strawberries, raw honey, pineapple chucks, and plain Greek yogurt for a quick snack. Yum.

And for the most exciting part of my day, ok, it doesn't take much to excite me... I have read that you can make a starter scoby from a regular bottle of commercial raw kombucha. I have sweet friends that have offered to give me a "baby" from one of their scobys but they live very far away and there is timing to this. It's like jumping rope, you have to jump in at a certain time in order for it to go correctly. I will keep you posted on how this works out. If you don't want to make your own, you can get a kit here http://www.culturesforhealth.com/kombucha-tea-starter-culture.html. If you want to learn, I found a youtube video (along with tons of other ones). You can see this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgi8ZrQM6Ow. Kombucha is a fairly expensive drink and is impossible to find where I live so It's better that I try to make it. It cultivates healthy bacteria in your intestines, like the bacteria in yogurt but a different family, which is excellent for your immune system. I love this idea and HAVE to make it myself :)

This is very fun for me. I'm enjoying every second. I'm hoping for a good harvest.

The rain has stopped. Got some work done :)

I was able to do some more planting and transplanting today, yay! I started off splitting up my dad's basil bunch. They still seemed a little small, so I'm hoping for the best. I planted one with a small tomato plant that I grew from seed. (I grew a bunch from seed, and took the one that was more separate from the rest assuming it would be heartier to do it this way.).  Below are two basil plants that I took from the original bunch that I split up. I will be taking one to keep at work at my desk :) Hopefully it will grow nicely in-doors without too many bugs. One can wish.

Here is a pic of the baby tomato plant with some unknowns. I'm hoping they are flowers. I can't remember! There is supposed to be some cilantro there too but it's not taking very well. I'm hoping those long stalk in the foreground are not grass! I love experimenting. I took some red pepper seeds from a pepper we ate a couple of days ago, let them sit out, then planted some in this pot too. You can see the pepper stem with seeds to the right. I kept that there so I will know that I planted peppers when some foreign green stalk pops up.

I'm a little disappointed that my spinach is barely making it. And now I'm even more disappointed to learn today that spinach is a cooler-weather plant and will go to seed, or what they called it "bolt" in hot weather. Just great. Just in time for summer. :/  In the meantime (before I learned this), today I planted more spinach seeds since it would be good to grow leafy vegetables in stages. Ok, so this pic is a little boring. Sorry.

Here are my planters where I am growing more basil (surprise surprise) from the same seed that my dad used to grow my basil plants. Half of one are those seeds, half are more spinach seeds, and in the other one is a lettuce mix that I got at Marc's. I learned on that seed packet that it's good to thin as they grow, and also sow more seeds throughout the growing season. I love learning. I've also read in this e-book  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D3B16T2/ref=as_li_tf_til?tag=wholesoystory-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=B00D3B16T2&adid=0PHTYC2VGHT26BJMKW7J

that you can grow green leafy veggies in partial shade if you don't have all-day sun. That's promising. 

I've brought these into the garage because it's going to storm tonight and I don't want my seeds splashing out of their new home or getting knocked over and spilling. They're not really considered by me "delicate" at this stage, but it would certainly ruin my work that I've done today.

In another post I will talk about my strawberry harvest that you see with the basil pots.