Own seeds of portuguese kale

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This year we will enjoy the old spindly kale to sow seeds of their own. After all, we have the seeds ... and is simple to remove the small pods after completely dry. If we succeed, we will of course do our own crops.

Has always been our option to purchase these vegetables to plant in the garden here, to private producers in the area.

They can have larger stalks, be more open or closed, with leaf more or less dark ... I believe that much of the population does not exempt the Portuguese kale, above all, cooked with cod.
To protect the kale seeds from the wind we involve the pods with a kind of net so they don't be destroyed.

Bordeaux mixture preparation

The formulation below is to make 10 liters, to make other quantities just keep the proportions between the ingredients. The "bordeaux mixture", calda bordalesa, is made of a dissolution of copper sulphate and lime water.

a) Dissolution of copper sulphate(1 liter):

The day before and four hours before the mixture’s preparation, dissolve the copper sulfate. Pour 100 g of copper sulfate within a cotton cloth, tie and dive into a plastic container with 1 liter of warm water;

b) Lime water:

Pour 100 g of lime in a bucket of 10 liters capacity. Then add 9 liters of water slowly.

c) Mixing of the two ingredients:
Add gradually and always stirring, the copper sulphate solution (1 litre) into the lime water bucket.

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d) Test of the knife:

To see if the final mixture is not acidic, we dive a clean knife made of common steel for 3 minutes in the final mixture.

If the blade is dirty, which means it acquired a brown color when removed from the mixture, indicates that the solution is acidic. It should be added more lime in the mix, but if not dirty, the “bordeaux mixture”(calda bordalesa) is ready to use.

Hydrangea

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Known by the name hydrangea or hortênsia, it is native from Japan an China but now is cultivated as an ornamental plant in all temperate and subtropical regions. There are different species presenting blue flowers or pink ones depending on the soil PH, in acid soils there are blue flowers but in alkaline soils are pink ones. My hydrangeas are pink so it means the soil is alkaline. You can have a multicolored field of hyndrageas (hortênsias) if you control the ph of soil in different areas. Hydrangea can be shade or semi-shade plant. It is very difficult to have beautiful hydrangeas on a dry environment, hydrangeas only can survive on a hot and sunny climate if it has high humidity. Attention to winters too, they can't be too cold, temperatures lower the -3ºC the hydrangeas can freeze and burn because of it. They can recover just with a heavy pruning. In colder environments we can protect the stems with leaves wrapped in plastic from the late spring frosts. Thankfully in Portugal, this winter wasn't too cold and it was full of rain so we'll have beautiful hydrangeas because the well is full too for the summer.

Parsley beneficts

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When the Summer arrives and we all want to go outside, for meals in the garden, with salads, soups and herbs that can turn beautiful any dish. Many times we neglect the nutritional value of some green food as parsley.

It has powerful properties as it is a strong diuretic don't give suficient value to the treatment of fluid retention, rheumatism, gout, bladder infections and gallstones, is regulating menses and relieves spasms.

While in the other hand it stimulates the production of breast milk and tones the muscles of the uterus. It is very relaxing, relieving depression and fatigue in menopause. It helps relieving flatulence and colic. For the colic in children, you give them a slight infusion of the leaves which you give them to drink two or three scoops after meals.