Many of you know we are avid gardeners and own an heirloom seed company, but you may not know we also have a small farm. Gardening or working with our horses, ducks, and pigs always leaves our hands and body dirty.
We’ve searched for a good, all around soap, but it didn’t seem to exist. All of the bars we tried – and we tried a bunch – either cleaned well while stripping all of the moisture from our hands or left an unsettling film after rinsing. Almost none lasted very long and we had just about given up hope of a non-chemical, non-commercial soap we could use and really enjoy.
Researching what goes into soap opened our eyes – especially commonly used ingredients and processes used to make it. We began to understand why most soaps irritated our skin, didn’t clean well or melted too quickly.
The more we learned, the more we knew we wanted a natural and organic soap – something made entirely from plant-based, unrefined ingredients.
When we found and tried this particular soap, we knew our search was a success. We use and love this soap daily, so it made sense to offer it to our customers!
Just like our seeds, we contract with a small family company to produce the absolute best soap possible. Join us as we explore what goes into a great bar of soap!
A bar of soap appears simple sitting in your hand, but it must balance and maximize its best qualities – creamy fluffy lather that cleans while moisturizing, feels good and lasts well – all in one bar.
This takes work – research, experimenting, and testing – to accomplish. A perfect bar soap is a result of carefully choosing and balancing the various ingredients to boost the bar’s hardness, lather quality, cleaning, and moisturizing ability. For example – moisturizing ingredients don’t contribute much to lather quality, and what makes great lather often dries our skin out.
All soap is made through a chemical reaction where part of an oil molecule attaches to a sodium ion from sodium hydroxide, commonly called lye. This is called saponification.
A properly produced soap consumes all of the lye during the saponification process, eliminating any chance of skin irritation. Superfatting assures that all lye is consumed. This process retains extra skin-nourishing oils in the finished soap. Superfatting won’t make your skin oily, it helps it to maintain natural moisture levels.
Lemongrass Tea Soap
Can Soap be Certified Organic?
The USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) sets the standard for organic production. Soap falls under the “Made with Organic” section – Products made from a minimum of 70% organic content up to 95%. The USDA has set 70% as the minimum percentage a product can have and still use “organic” in its labels and marketing.
So, what does this mean for you?
Organic certification guarantees there are no synthetic fragrances, colors, or preservatives in the soap, as well as that all the oils and herbs were grown and processed according to organic standards (no pesticides, no radiation, and environmentally friendly methods).
To us, this means a soap whose ingredients are plant-based with no artificial substances such as synthetic fragrances, dyes, and preservatives. Our pure herbal soap is scented with essential oils and colored exclusively with organic herbs and plant extracts. 100% certified organic oils make up the soap base recipe.
We feel it’s worth the extra time and effort to meet organic standards and make truly organic products. Your skin will know the difference!
Gardener’s Hand Soap
Why Essential Oils are Better
Essential oils are concentrated plant extracts from the roots, bark, and plant leaves.
Fragrance oils are always synthetic, even though they have perfectly natural names and might contain natural ingredients.
Fragrances smell great initially but quickly overwhelm your nose once you get it home, then it’s not so nice or enjoyable.
Essential oils are less “pushy” up front but retain their appealing qualities throughout the life of the bar, never overwhelming your nose.
Peppermint Soap
How Organic Soaps Get Their Colors
Natural colors can be bright and lively, creating a beautiful bar of soap.
Some essential oils, like citrus oils, have their own color that can be just what certain soaps need.
The easiest way to add or control soap color is with herbs or clays. The desired colors are created near the end of the mixing process by adding herbs, clays or a combination.
Steeping herbs in oil create richer and more vivid colors.
Citrus Lavender Soap
Why Exotic Ingredients Aren’t Included
Don’t be fooled by trendy or exotic ingredients on a label. If you don’t start with a well-formulated base, exotic ingredients won’t produce the soap you’re looking for. For example – palm kernel oil can be a great enhancement, but it can’t fix a poor formulation. Specialty ingredients are most commonly used as advertising hooks or as recipe magic in the hopes of creating a great soap from a poor-quality base. Glamorous ingredients or celebrity endorsements don’t produce extraordinary soap.
Lavender Soap
Try the Most Natural Soap Available
There’s virtue in products as natural as your skin. There are also practical benefits to using essential oils in skincare products.
Read labels carefully. If you see any variation or combination of the words fragrance, fragrance oil, or natural fragrance, don’t be fooled. There’s nothing natural about them.
Purchasing our handmade, organic soap gives you much more than just a great soap that leaves your skin clean. You support our small company and our soapmaker.
They, in turn, support growers for the ingredients of your bar of soap – ethical, sustainable and environmentally friendly methods that increase the soils over time and improves the communities where they are grown.
It turns out that a simple bar of soap can do some real good for many people!
The Shea tree – botanical name Butyrospermum parkii or Vitellaria paradoxa – grows in the dry Savannah belt of West Africa, stretching from Senegal in the west to Sudan in the east.
It has been an irreplaceable natural cosmetic pharmaceutical for people in Western Africa for millennia. Over the past few decades, it has become increasingly important in the skincare industries.
Most Americans know Shea butter as a highly touted skin care ingredient in a variety of soaps, lotions, balms, and butters.
Few realize the Shea advertised in the majority of cosmetic products in the US is nothing more than another highly refined food grade oil churned out of an industrial plant, regarded as just another commodity.
Pure hand-crafted Grade A Shea butter is a world apart from this!
Real Shea butter is wild-crafted, hand harvested and handmade
Shea butter has been known as “women’s gold”for centuries for its light golden color but also because it’s historically been the work of women to harvest and produce Shea butter.
Millions of women across Western Africamake their own incomes and are improving their lives producing traditional Shea butter.
Women-owned and organized cooperatives harvest the ripe Shea fruits from wild growing Shea tree forests. Fermentation removes the fruit, then the nuts are sun-dried, crushed and lightly roasted, concentrating the Shea butter.
Finely ground Shea nut powder is mixed with warm water and constantly stirred until it thickens. Warm, liquid Shea oil is collected from the surface, then strained and slowly cooled to form Shea butter. After packaging it is sold at the local markets or exported.
It takes approximately 44 pounds of fresh Shea fruit to produce 3.3 pounds of pure Shea butter.
Fair Trade certification is awarded after meeting certain standards, similar to organic certification. There are benefits and challenges, just like with the Certified Organic label.
This adds to the overall cost, but there are benefits most consumers never know about.
Beyond Fair Trade – Partnering with the Producers
We – our supplier and ourselves – work as closely as possible with women’s cooperatives to keep the quality high, and also to pay them fairly.
Working directly with the cooperative and the Fair Trade organization, we eliminate as many profit-taking intermediate layers as possible while having a larger positive impact than we could by ourselves.
For example – currently, Shea nut harvesters earn 15 cents per pound and the women’s cooperative we work with want to pay the harvesters 25 cents per pound, only 10 cents more but a whopping 66% pay raise.
However, it isn’t as simple as just paying them more.
Regional and local politics, combined with existing laws, are making it difficult to simply give the harvesters a raise, so the Fair Trade organization is working with our women’s cooperative to change this.
A Shea nut harvester might earn $60/month, which allows her to live in a straw-thatched hut with no power in a communal village and walk up to a half mile for water at a common, communal well.
A 10 cent per pound pay raise will give her and her family a solid walled, roofed apartment with running water and a community generator for electricity.
Shea processors – who actually turn the nuts into Shea butter – make about $175/month, and the women’s cooperative is working to raise that to $225/month.
The additional income almost always paysfor schooling, whether it is getting all of their children into schools, or enrolling them in full-time private charter schools with a full curriculum.
The Virtuous Cycle
Buying your Shea butter from a company engaged in direct, positive impact on the local producers gives your purchases a much larger effect simply because much more of each dollar makes it to those producers. This is exactly how one person makes a difference!
The standard commodity approach to Shea butter has so many layers – traders, intermediaries, transportation expenses, and investors – between the Shea butter producers and the US consumer that not even one penny of each dollar spent on a commercial Shea-labeled product reaches those in Africa.
According to The New York Times, a survey of a Burkina Faso village by USAID in 2010 found that every $1,000 of Shea nuts sold generated an additional $1,580 in economic benefits, such as reinvestments in other trades for the village. Shea butter exports from West Africa bring in between $90 million and $200 million a year, according to the article.
Much like the disproportionately large positive effects of spending your money at a Farmer’s Market instead of the grocery store, purchasing pure, unrefined Grade A Shea butter from a dedicated company partnering with a small producer ensures a better life for those making it.
Ethically sourced Shea butter heals our hands and skin while healing the lives and villages who make it.
Las Vegas is often thought of for its glittering lights and heady atmosphere of the Strip. That’s exactly what lost me about its appeal, even though Cindy and I had visited numerous times for gardening trade shows along with a few personal trips.
A few times down the Strip and we started looking for something other than the glitz and glam.
We found Ethel M and its unique botanical garden that focuses on cacti and species from the Southwest US and other countries with a similar climate. Cindy searched for something interesting and relaxing after the bustle and noise of a garden trade show and came across this treasure.
Ethel M chocolate factory – as in Ethel Mars – is part of the Mars family with the factory store housing the botanic garden in Henderson, NV just a few minutes south of Las Vegas. The self-paced tour runs along the dedicated viewing aisle next to the factory floor, then we sampled some excellent chocolates and had an unexpectedly good cup of espresso. Afterwards, we were ready for some botanic garden exploration.
We visited during an afternoon in early May with temperatures hovering around 100°F – not the best light for photos and I had left my usual camera at home, not anticipating a photo opportunity. Armed with my trusty cell phone and a couple of bottles of water, we ventured out into the garden, not quite knowing what to expect.
Impressive beauty and peace
Bee in Prickly Pear Flower – Ethel M Botanic Garden
Over 300 species of cactus, desert-adapted ornamentals and succulents are spread over 10 acres. Artfully arranged in intriguing and enticing groupings, the pull from flowers to cactus to trees made us feel something like the numerous bees and hummingbirds we saw.
Prickly Pear Detail – Ethel M Botanic Garden
The peace and quiet after the noise and crush of crowds was a very welcome respite. Plantings are slightly elevated, inviting an easy look into the details of the life growing there.
These early prickly pear cactus buds are mathematically gorgeous in their symmetry, blushing with an indication of their rich colors to come.
Flower Closeup – Ethel M Botanic Garden
Abundantly blooming flowers were generously spread across the entire garden, with some reaching out with colors and others beckoning with aromas from 20 or 30 feet away.
We weren’t paying attention to the nameplates or descriptions of the flowers or plants but focused instead on the experiences of colors, textures, and aromas drawing us in.
Blooms – Ethel M Botanic Garden
Some plants and their flowers seemed as though they would be right at home as an attraction on the Strip, such as this one!
Given how close the I-515 freeway is the quiet and peace were impressive. The garden had a number of people in it but it never felt crowded.
Flower Blooms – Ethel M Botanic Garden
This flower group had a sweet, perfumed aroma drawing us in from two plantings over. The trumpet-shaped flowers had dozens of small flying insects and bees attending them.
Flower Blooms – Ethel M Botanic Garden
Colors ranged from white to purple with a lot of orange and reds represented. It was high season for blooms as very few plants lacked flowers.
Ethel M Botanic Garden
The surrounding city disappeared from certain viewpoints, giving the illusion of a private estate garden or an undiscovered, undeveloped patch of exotic forest somehow forgotten.
We came away relaxed and refreshed, completely surprised by how wonderfully juxtaposed the experience was from the busy city just down the street. The rest of the day was just as enjoyable, and we realized that this was the best trip to Las Vegas we remembered, simply because of a visit to a garden.
We’ve learned to search a bit deeper for those unexpected garden treats like this!
Arugula might just be the perfect aromatic cool-season salad green for the home gardener – beginner or advanced. Usually seen in the specialty greens section of the supermarket in small cellophane bundles with prices to match the “specialty” label. Sometimes sold as baby arugula, its always found in the salad greens mix called mesclun.
If you are looking to spice up your salad or add a tangy, peppery zest to dishes from soup to pizza and sandwiches, you might just be searching for arugula and don’t know it. Young leaves are tender, sweet-and-tangy with just a hint of the spice they will have once mature. Chefs have depended on its adaptability and flavor punch for the past two decades, but it is even more popular again with the rise of fresh greens.
Arugula has ancient roots even though it’s modern and popular today. Romans called it Eruca – the root of its scientific name – and Greek medical texts from the first century mention its restorative properties. The Romans used both seeds and leaves. The leaves in a green salad with romaine, chicory, mallow, and lavender, while the seed was used to make flavorful oils.
Costly to buy in the store with a bland, washed-out flavor, arugula is easy and fast to grow from inexpensive seed. Sowing seed to the first harvest takes about 3 – 4 weeks, which is about as close to instant greens as possible, making it a perfect choice for fall and winter gardening as well as early spring.
Wild Italian Arugula
Growing
Growing arugula is incredibly easy and is one of the most complex and delicious greens known. An unknown but huge bonus is the flowers are stunningly beautiful while being one of the tastiest edible flowers available. The younger leaves are more tender and sweet-tangy, so start picking them at about 2 inches long. As the plant matures and flavors sharpen, you can use it as a cut-and-come-again, or simply pull the entire plant out and re-sow seed once it becomes too spicy.
Wild Italian Arugula Flower
Using
Arugula is very versatile in the kitchen as an herb, salad green, and a leafy green vegetable. Use it both raw and cooked; the lightly cooked leaves have a milder flavor afterward. Showcase grilled seafood on a leafy bed of arugula, or chop and sprinkle on top of pizza and pasta just before serving, or mix into a salad to liven it up. Adding a couple of whole leaves to grilled cheese sandwiches or a BLT will give it a completely new dimension of flavor.
The sharp, spicy flavor contrasts well with the rich flavors of roasted beets, pears, olives, tomatoes and robust cheeses such as goat, blue and Parmigiano-Reggiano.
The flowers are the best-kept secret – they aren’t as spicy while being a little sweet. Flowers appear after the plant has matured and the leaves are too bitter to eat. Harvest by clipping them off the stem, then scatter on top of a salad, a plate of appetizers or an open-faced sandwich for an unexpectedly beautiful, delicious treat.
Now you know more about this versatile ancient yet hip herb-vegetable, plant some and invigorate your fall, winter, and early spring dinner table!
https://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Arugula.jpg478850Stephen Scotthttps://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Survey-Header.jpgStephen Scott2017-10-04 17:40:162024-04-30 17:34:00Arugula – the Wild, Ancient, Hip and Versatile Green
Gardeners are sometimes baffled when thinking about a cool season garden – either Fall and Winter or early Spring. We’ve put together this quick checklist to help you see the abundance that can be grown both before and after the traditional Summer garden.
Asian or Mustard Greens are always a success among fall vegetables, and are as easy to grow as lettuce. Sometimes used as edible cover crops. 21 days baby, or 45 days mature.
Arugula or Roquette has a wonderfully mild flavor, becomes large and leafy and rarely bolts when grown in fall.
Endive grown in the fall garden has big, crisp hearts, and taste less bitter compared to spring-grown crops. 40 days baby or 60 days mature.
Beets germinate quickly in the warm soil of late summer or early fall. 35 days to greens, 50 days mature.
Broccoli stays sweeter, richer and produces longer in cooler weather. Choose from the traditional head type or the “shoots and leaves” for some variety. 40 days, may be cut again.
Cabbage should be both direct sown and transplanted after sprouting to extend the harvest. The transplants will mature first, leaving room for those started from seed a couple of weeks later. 60 days from transplanting.
Carrots need a moist seed bed to sprout but will become extra sweet as the soil cools off. 70 days.
Cilantro bolts in hotter weather, but will produce over a much longer time in the fall. Cut and come again.
Cucumbers sweeten up as the weather cools off. Hot, dry weather and lean, poor nutrient soil make them bitter. 60 days, frost sensitive.
Kale is incredibly cold tolerant, yet highly productive and easy to grow. Very nutritious and tasty on a cold fall or winter evening. 30 days baby, 60 days mature.
Lettuce really prefers a cool season and benefits from both direct seeding and transplanting to extend harvests. 60 days, or 30 days from transplanting.
Mache (Lamb’s Lettuce) is a miracle green that grows strongly through winter with minimal protection and fills your salad bowl first thing in spring. 40 days baby, 60 days mature.
Peas are very often overlooked but are a cool season crop that does well in the fall garden. Use an early maturing variety. 50 – 70 days.
Radishes grow well in fall including the familiar salad radishes, huge Daikon, and radish blends.
Spinach can be planted or harvested 3 times. Start seedlings indoors and transplant for an early fall crop, direct sow once soil temperature is below 70F and grow a third crop under a row cover or low hoop house until the coldest part of the winter. 30 days baby, 45 days mature.
Swiss chard is both heat and cold tolerant but produces richer flavors once the first frosts set in. 30 days baby, 55 days mature.
Turnips will give you both tasty greens and crunchy roots that will store for several weeks. 40-50 days.
Spend some time browsing these and making notes on what you like to eat and what varieties do well in what dishes you like to cook – pretty soon you’ll have a mouth-watering list to plant!
https://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Cool-Season-Vegetables.jpg478850Stephen Scotthttps://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Survey-Header.jpgStephen Scott2017-08-18 16:00:322024-04-30 17:34:00Cool Season Vegetables to Love
Soil Builder vs Garden Cover Up Mix – which is best for your garden?
Both of our cover crop mixes give you multiple benefits in the soil and above it. You can’t go wrong with either one. The Garden Cover Up mix is a general use cover crop, while the Soil Builder mix is more specific toward improving the overall condition of your soil.
Cover crops improve soil in a number of ways. They protect against erosion while increasing organic matter and catch nutrients before they can leach out of the soil. Legumes add nitrogen to the soil. Their roots help unlock nutrients, converting them to more available forms. Cover crops provide habitat or food source for important soil organisms, break up compacted soil layers, help dry out wet soils and maintain soil moisture in arid climates.
It’s always a good idea to maintain year-round soil cover whenever possible, and cover crops are the best way.
Let’s look at how cover crops work overall, then we’ll see the differences of each mix.
Most cover crop mixes are legumes and grains or grasses. Each one has a different benefit to the soil. Legumes include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, soybeans and peanuts. Well-known grains are wheat, rye, barley and oats which are used as grasses for animal forage.
Legumes help reduce or prevent erosion, produce biomass, suppress weeds and add organic matter to the soil. They also attract beneficial insects, but are most well-known for fixing nitrogen from the air into the soil in a plant-friendly form. They are generally lower in carbon and higher in nitrogen than grasses, so they break down faster releasing their nutrients sooner. Weed control may not last as long as an equivalent amount of grass residue. Legumes do not increase soil organic matter as much as grains or grasses. Their ground cover makes for good weed control, as well as benefiting other cover crops.
Rye Cover Crop
Grains or grasses
Grain or grass cover crops help retain nutrients–especially nitrogen–left over from a previous crop, reduce or prevent erosion and suppress weeds. They produce large amounts of mulch residue and add organic matter above and below the soil, reducing erosion and suppressing weeds. They are higher in carbon than legumes, breaking down slower resulting in longer-lasting mulch residue. This releases the nutrients over a longer time, complementing the faster-acting release of the legumes.
This pretty well describes what our Garden Cover Up mix does, as it is made up of 70% legumes and 30% grasses.
Our Soil Builder mix takes this approach a couple of steps further in the soil improvement direction with the addition of several varieties known for their benefits to the soil structure, micro-organisms or overall fertility.
For example, the mung bean is a legume used for nitrogen fixation and improving the mycorrhizal populations, which increase the amount of nutrients available to each plant through its roots.
Spring Sunflower
Sunflowers are renowned for their prolific root systems and ability to soak up residual nutrients out of reach for other commonly used covers or crops. The bright colors attract pollinators and beneficials such as bees, damsel bugs, lacewings, hoverflies, minute pirate bugs, and non-stinging parasitic wasps.
Safflower has an exceptionally deep taproot reaching down 8-10 feet, breaking up hard pans, encouraging water and air movement into the soil and scavenging nutrients from depths unreachable to most crops. It does all of this while being resistant to all root lesion nematodes. Gardeners growing safflower usually see low pest pressure and an increase in beneficials such as spiders, ladybugs and lacewings.
Now you see why you can’t go wrong in choosing one of our cover crop mixes! Both greatly increase the health and fertility of the soil, along with above-ground improvements in a short time. Even if you only have a month, the Garden Cover Up mix will impress you for the next planting season.
For a general approach with soils that need a boost but are still producing well, the Garden Cover Up mix is the best choice. Our Soil Builder mix is for rejuvenating a dormant bed or giving some intensive care to a soil that has struggled lately. Both will give you a serious head start in establishing a new growing area, whether it is for trees, shrubs, flowers, herbs or vegetables.
Let one of our cover crops go to bat for you and see what happens when you play on Mother Nature’s team!
https://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Cover-Crop-Mix.jpg478850Stephen Scotthttps://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Survey-Header.jpgStephen Scott2017-06-28 17:41:502024-06-23 15:20:33Which cover crop mix is best for me?
Handmade Organic Soap
How We Clean Up After a Hard Day’s Work
Many of you know we are avid gardeners and own an heirloom seed company, but you may not know we also have a small farm. Gardening or working with our horses, ducks, and pigs always leaves our hands and body dirty.
We’ve searched for a good, all around soap, but it didn’t seem to exist. All of the bars we tried – and we tried a bunch – either cleaned well while stripping all of the moisture from our hands or left an unsettling film after rinsing. Almost none lasted very long and we had just about given up hope of a non-chemical, non-commercial soap we could use and really enjoy.
Researching what goes into soap opened our eyes – especially commonly used ingredients and processes used to make it. We began to understand why most soaps irritated our skin, didn’t clean well or melted too quickly.
The more we learned, the more we knew we wanted a natural and organic soap – something made entirely from plant-based, unrefined ingredients.
When we found and tried this particular soap, we knew our search was a success. We use and love this soap daily, so it made sense to offer it to our customers!
Just like our seeds, we contract with a small family company to produce the absolute best soap possible. Join us as we explore what goes into a great bar of soap!
Unscented Soap
What Makes a Great Bar of Soap?
A bar of soap appears simple sitting in your hand, but it must balance and maximize its best qualities – creamy fluffy lather that cleans while moisturizing, feels good and lasts well – all in one bar.
This takes work – research, experimenting, and testing – to accomplish. A perfect bar soap is a result of carefully choosing and balancing the various ingredients to boost the bar’s hardness, lather quality, cleaning, and moisturizing ability. For example – moisturizing ingredients don’t contribute much to lather quality, and what makes great lather often dries our skin out.
All soap is made through a chemical reaction where part of an oil molecule attaches to a sodium ion from sodium hydroxide, commonly called lye. This is called saponification.
A properly produced soap consumes all of the lye during the saponification process, eliminating any chance of skin irritation. Superfatting assures that all lye is consumed. This process retains extra skin-nourishing oils in the finished soap. Superfatting won’t make your skin oily, it helps it to maintain natural moisture levels.
Lemongrass Tea Soap
Can Soap be Certified Organic?
The USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) sets the standard for organic production. Soap falls under the “Made with Organic” section – Products made from a minimum of 70% organic content up to 95%. The USDA has set 70% as the minimum percentage a product can have and still use “organic” in its labels and marketing.
So, what does this mean for you?
Organic certification guarantees there are no synthetic fragrances, colors, or preservatives in the soap, as well as that all the oils and herbs were grown and processed according to organic standards (no pesticides, no radiation, and environmentally friendly methods).
To us, this means a soap whose ingredients are plant-based with no artificial substances such as synthetic fragrances, dyes, and preservatives. Our pure herbal soap is scented with essential oils and colored exclusively with organic herbs and plant extracts. 100% certified organic oils make up the soap base recipe.
We feel it’s worth the extra time and effort to meet organic standards and make truly organic products. Your skin will know the difference!
Gardener’s Hand Soap
Why Essential Oils are Better
Essential oils are concentrated plant extracts from the roots, bark, and plant leaves.
Fragrance oils are always synthetic, even though they have perfectly natural names and might contain natural ingredients.
Fragrances smell great initially but quickly overwhelm your nose once you get it home, then it’s not so nice or enjoyable.
Essential oils are less “pushy” up front but retain their appealing qualities throughout the life of the bar, never overwhelming your nose.
Peppermint Soap
How Organic Soaps Get Their Colors
Natural colors can be bright and lively, creating a beautiful bar of soap.
Some essential oils, like citrus oils, have their own color that can be just what certain soaps need.
The easiest way to add or control soap color is with herbs or clays. The desired colors are created near the end of the mixing process by adding herbs, clays or a combination.
Steeping herbs in oil create richer and more vivid colors.
Citrus Lavender Soap
Why Exotic Ingredients Aren’t Included
Don’t be fooled by trendy or exotic ingredients on a label. If you don’t start with a well-formulated base, exotic ingredients won’t produce the soap you’re looking for. For example – palm kernel oil can be a great enhancement, but it can’t fix a poor formulation. Specialty ingredients are most commonly used as advertising hooks or as recipe magic in the hopes of creating a great soap from a poor-quality base. Glamorous ingredients or celebrity endorsements don’t produce extraordinary soap.
Lavender Soap
Try the Most Natural Soap Available
There’s virtue in products as natural as your skin. There are also practical benefits to using essential oils in skincare products.
Read labels carefully. If you see any variation or combination of the words fragrance, fragrance oil, or natural fragrance, don’t be fooled. There’s nothing natural about them.
Purchasing our handmade, organic soap gives you much more than just a great soap that leaves your skin clean. You support our small company and our soapmaker.
They, in turn, support growers for the ingredients of your bar of soap – ethical, sustainable and environmentally friendly methods that increase the soils over time and improves the communities where they are grown.
It turns out that a simple bar of soap can do some real good for many people!
Shea Butter Heals Hands While Healing Lives
A Short history of Shea Butter
The Shea tree – botanical name Butyrospermum parkii or Vitellaria paradoxa – grows in the dry Savannah belt of West Africa, stretching from Senegal in the west to Sudan in the east.
It has been an irreplaceable natural cosmetic pharmaceutical for people in Western Africa for millennia. Over the past few decades, it has become increasingly important in the skincare industries.
Most Americans know Shea butter as a highly touted skin care ingredient in a variety of soaps, lotions, balms, and butters.
Few realize the Shea advertised in the majority of cosmetic products in the US is nothing more than another highly refined food grade oil churned out of an industrial plant, regarded as just another commodity.
Pure hand-crafted Grade A Shea butter is a world apart from this!
Real Shea butter is wild-crafted, hand harvested and handmade
Shea butter has been known as “women’s gold”for centuries for its light golden color but also because it’s historically been the work of women to harvest and produce Shea butter.
Millions of women across Western Africamake their own incomes and are improving their lives producing traditional Shea butter.
Women-owned and organized cooperatives harvest the ripe Shea fruits from wild growing Shea tree forests. Fermentation removes the fruit, then the nuts are sun-dried, crushed and lightly roasted, concentrating the Shea butter.
Finely ground Shea nut powder is mixed with warm water and constantly stirred until it thickens. Warm, liquid Shea oil is collected from the surface, then strained and slowly cooled to form Shea butter. After packaging it is sold at the local markets or exported.
It takes approximately 44 pounds of fresh Shea fruit to produce 3.3 pounds of pure Shea butter.
Shea Tree Flowers
What is Fair Trade?
Fair Trade certification is awarded after meeting certain standards, similar to organic certification. There are benefits and challenges, just like with the Certified Organic label.
This adds to the overall cost, but there are benefits most consumers never know about.
Beyond Fair Trade – Partnering with the Producers
We – our supplier and ourselves – work as closely as possible with women’s cooperatives to keep the quality high, and also to pay them fairly.
Working directly with the cooperative and the Fair Trade organization, we eliminate as many profit-taking intermediate layers as possible while having a larger positive impact than we could by ourselves.
For example – currently, Shea nut harvesters earn 15 cents per pound and the women’s cooperative we work with want to pay the harvesters 25 cents per pound, only 10 cents more but a whopping 66% pay raise.
However, it isn’t as simple as just paying them more.
Regional and local politics, combined with existing laws, are making it difficult to simply give the harvesters a raise, so the Fair Trade organization is working with our women’s cooperative to change this.
A Shea nut harvester might earn $60/month, which allows her to live in a straw-thatched hut with no power in a communal village and walk up to a half mile for water at a common, communal well.
A 10 cent per pound pay raise will give her and her family a solid walled, roofed apartment with running water and a community generator for electricity.
Shea processors – who actually turn the nuts into Shea butter – make about $175/month, and the women’s cooperative is working to raise that to $225/month.
The additional income almost always paysfor schooling, whether it is getting all of their children into schools, or enrolling them in full-time private charter schools with a full curriculum.
The Virtuous Cycle
Buying your Shea butter from a company engaged in direct, positive impact on the local producers gives your purchases a much larger effect simply because much more of each dollar makes it to those producers. This is exactly how one person makes a difference!
The standard commodity approach to Shea butter has so many layers – traders, intermediaries, transportation expenses, and investors – between the Shea butter producers and the US consumer that not even one penny of each dollar spent on a commercial Shea-labeled product reaches those in Africa.
According to The New York Times, a survey of a Burkina Faso village by USAID in 2010 found that every $1,000 of Shea nuts sold generated an additional $1,580 in economic benefits, such as reinvestments in other trades for the village. Shea butter exports from West Africa bring in between $90 million and $200 million a year, according to the article.
Much like the disproportionately large positive effects of spending your money at a Farmer’s Market instead of the grocery store, purchasing pure, unrefined Grade A Shea butter from a dedicated company partnering with a small producer ensures a better life for those making it.
Ethically sourced Shea butter heals our hands and skin while healing the lives and villages who make it.
Ethel M Botanical Cactus Garden
Chocolates with a Side of Cactus Garden?
Las Vegas is often thought of for its glittering lights and heady atmosphere of the Strip. That’s exactly what lost me about its appeal, even though Cindy and I had visited numerous times for gardening trade shows along with a few personal trips.
A few times down the Strip and we started looking for something other than the glitz and glam.
We found Ethel M and its unique botanical garden that focuses on cacti and species from the Southwest US and other countries with a similar climate. Cindy searched for something interesting and relaxing after the bustle and noise of a garden trade show and came across this treasure.
Ethel M chocolate factory – as in Ethel Mars – is part of the Mars family with the factory store housing the botanic garden in Henderson, NV just a few minutes south of Las Vegas. The self-paced tour runs along the dedicated viewing aisle next to the factory floor, then we sampled some excellent chocolates and had an unexpectedly good cup of espresso. Afterwards, we were ready for some botanic garden exploration.
We visited during an afternoon in early May with temperatures hovering around 100°F – not the best light for photos and I had left my usual camera at home, not anticipating a photo opportunity. Armed with my trusty cell phone and a couple of bottles of water, we ventured out into the garden, not quite knowing what to expect.
Impressive beauty and peace
Bee in Prickly Pear Flower – Ethel M Botanic Garden
Over 300 species of cactus, desert-adapted ornamentals and succulents are spread over 10 acres. Artfully arranged in intriguing and enticing groupings, the pull from flowers to cactus to trees made us feel something like the numerous bees and hummingbirds we saw.
Prickly Pear Detail – Ethel M Botanic Garden
The peace and quiet after the noise and crush of crowds was a very welcome respite. Plantings are slightly elevated, inviting an easy look into the details of the life growing there.
These early prickly pear cactus buds are mathematically gorgeous in their symmetry, blushing with an indication of their rich colors to come.
Flower Closeup – Ethel M Botanic Garden
Abundantly blooming flowers were generously spread across the entire garden, with some reaching out with colors and others beckoning with aromas from 20 or 30 feet away.
We weren’t paying attention to the nameplates or descriptions of the flowers or plants but focused instead on the experiences of colors, textures, and aromas drawing us in.
Blooms – Ethel M Botanic Garden
Some plants and their flowers seemed as though they would be right at home as an attraction on the Strip, such as this one!
Given how close the I-515 freeway is the quiet and peace were impressive. The garden had a number of people in it but it never felt crowded.
Flower Blooms – Ethel M Botanic Garden
This flower group had a sweet, perfumed aroma drawing us in from two plantings over. The trumpet-shaped flowers had dozens of small flying insects and bees attending them.
Flower Blooms – Ethel M Botanic Garden
Colors ranged from white to purple with a lot of orange and reds represented. It was high season for blooms as very few plants lacked flowers.
Ethel M Botanic Garden
The surrounding city disappeared from certain viewpoints, giving the illusion of a private estate garden or an undiscovered, undeveloped patch of exotic forest somehow forgotten.
We came away relaxed and refreshed, completely surprised by how wonderfully juxtaposed the experience was from the busy city just down the street. The rest of the day was just as enjoyable, and we realized that this was the best trip to Las Vegas we remembered, simply because of a visit to a garden.
We’ve learned to search a bit deeper for those unexpected garden treats like this!
Arugula – the Wild, Ancient, Hip and Versatile Green
About Arugula
Arugula might just be the perfect aromatic cool-season salad green for the home gardener – beginner or advanced. Usually seen in the specialty greens section of the supermarket in small cellophane bundles with prices to match the “specialty” label. Sometimes sold as baby arugula, its always found in the salad greens mix called mesclun.
If you are looking to spice up your salad or add a tangy, peppery zest to dishes from soup to pizza and sandwiches, you might just be searching for arugula and don’t know it. Young leaves are tender, sweet-and-tangy with just a hint of the spice they will have once mature. Chefs have depended on its adaptability and flavor punch for the past two decades, but it is even more popular again with the rise of fresh greens.
Wasabi Arugula
History
Arugula has ancient roots even though it’s modern and popular today. Romans called it Eruca – the root of its scientific name – and Greek medical texts from the first century mention its restorative properties. The Romans used both seeds and leaves. The leaves in a green salad with romaine, chicory, mallow, and lavender, while the seed was used to make flavorful oils.
Costly to buy in the store with a bland, washed-out flavor, arugula is easy and fast to grow from inexpensive seed. Sowing seed to the first harvest takes about 3 – 4 weeks, which is about as close to instant greens as possible, making it a perfect choice for fall and winter gardening as well as early spring.
Wild Italian Arugula
Growing
Growing arugula is incredibly easy and is one of the most complex and delicious greens known. An unknown but huge bonus is the flowers are stunningly beautiful while being one of the tastiest edible flowers available. The younger leaves are more tender and sweet-tangy, so start picking them at about 2 inches long. As the plant matures and flavors sharpen, you can use it as a cut-and-come-again, or simply pull the entire plant out and re-sow seed once it becomes too spicy.
Wild Italian Arugula Flower
Using
Arugula is very versatile in the kitchen as an herb, salad green, and a leafy green vegetable. Use it both raw and cooked; the lightly cooked leaves have a milder flavor afterward. Showcase grilled seafood on a leafy bed of arugula, or chop and sprinkle on top of pizza and pasta just before serving, or mix into a salad to liven it up. Adding a couple of whole leaves to grilled cheese sandwiches or a BLT will give it a completely new dimension of flavor.
The sharp, spicy flavor contrasts well with the rich flavors of roasted beets, pears, olives, tomatoes and robust cheeses such as goat, blue and Parmigiano-Reggiano.
The flowers are the best-kept secret – they aren’t as spicy while being a little sweet. Flowers appear after the plant has matured and the leaves are too bitter to eat. Harvest by clipping them off the stem, then scatter on top of a salad, a plate of appetizers or an open-faced sandwich for an unexpectedly beautiful, delicious treat.
Now you know more about this versatile ancient yet hip herb-vegetable, plant some and invigorate your fall, winter, and early spring dinner table!
Cool Season Vegetables to Love
Cool Season Vegetables for Your Garden
Gardeners are sometimes baffled when thinking about a cool season garden – either Fall and Winter or early Spring. We’ve put together this quick checklist to help you see the abundance that can be grown both before and after the traditional Summer garden.
Spend some time browsing these and making notes on what you like to eat and what varieties do well in what dishes you like to cook – pretty soon you’ll have a mouth-watering list to plant!
Which cover crop mix is best for me?
Soil Builder vs Garden Cover Up Mix – which is best for your garden?
Both of our cover crop mixes give you multiple benefits in the soil and above it. You can’t go wrong with either one. The Garden Cover Up mix is a general use cover crop, while the Soil Builder mix is more specific toward improving the overall condition of your soil.
Cover crops improve soil in a number of ways. They protect against erosion while increasing organic matter and catch nutrients before they can leach out of the soil. Legumes add nitrogen to the soil. Their roots help unlock nutrients, converting them to more available forms. Cover crops provide habitat or food source for important soil organisms, break up compacted soil layers, help dry out wet soils and maintain soil moisture in arid climates.
Let’s look at how cover crops work overall, then we’ll see the differences of each mix.
Most cover crop mixes are legumes and grains or grasses. Each one has a different benefit to the soil. Legumes include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, soybeans and peanuts. Well-known grains are wheat, rye, barley and oats which are used as grasses for animal forage.
Crimson Clover
Legumes
Legumes help reduce or prevent erosion, produce biomass, suppress weeds and add organic matter to the soil. They also attract beneficial insects, but are most well-known for fixing nitrogen from the air into the soil in a plant-friendly form. They are generally lower in carbon and higher in nitrogen than grasses, so they break down faster releasing their nutrients sooner. Weed control may not last as long as an equivalent amount of grass residue. Legumes do not increase soil organic matter as much as grains or grasses. Their ground cover makes for good weed control, as well as benefiting other cover crops.
Rye Cover Crop
Grains or grasses
Grain or grass cover crops help retain nutrients–especially nitrogen–left over from a previous crop, reduce or prevent erosion and suppress weeds. They produce large amounts of mulch residue and add organic matter above and below the soil, reducing erosion and suppressing weeds. They are higher in carbon than legumes, breaking down slower resulting in longer-lasting mulch residue. This releases the nutrients over a longer time, complementing the faster-acting release of the legumes.
This pretty well describes what our Garden Cover Up mix does, as it is made up of 70% legumes and 30% grasses.
Our Soil Builder mix takes this approach a couple of steps further in the soil improvement direction with the addition of several varieties known for their benefits to the soil structure, micro-organisms or overall fertility.
For example, the mung bean is a legume used for nitrogen fixation and improving the mycorrhizal populations, which increase the amount of nutrients available to each plant through its roots.
Spring Sunflower
Sunflowers are renowned for their prolific root systems and ability to soak up residual nutrients out of reach for other commonly used covers or crops. The bright colors attract pollinators and beneficials such as bees, damsel bugs, lacewings, hoverflies, minute pirate bugs, and non-stinging parasitic wasps.
Safflower has an exceptionally deep taproot reaching down 8-10 feet, breaking up hard pans, encouraging water and air movement into the soil and scavenging nutrients from depths unreachable to most crops. It does all of this while being resistant to all root lesion nematodes. Gardeners growing safflower usually see low pest pressure and an increase in beneficials such as spiders, ladybugs and lacewings.
Now you see why you can’t go wrong in choosing one of our cover crop mixes! Both greatly increase the health and fertility of the soil, along with above-ground improvements in a short time. Even if you only have a month, the Garden Cover Up mix will impress you for the next planting season.
For a general approach with soils that need a boost but are still producing well, the Garden Cover Up mix is the best choice. Our Soil Builder mix is for rejuvenating a dormant bed or giving some intensive care to a soil that has struggled lately. Both will give you a serious head start in establishing a new growing area, whether it is for trees, shrubs, flowers, herbs or vegetables.