Michelle Paiva
Bio
Stories (13/0)
Growing the Most Peppers in your small garden
Peppers are one of, if not my favorite, things to grow. There are so many things you can do with peppers and so many different varieties. Peppers are pretty prolific as well, so you will get plenty if you treat your plant well. Continuing on with my series “Small Space Garden”, I am going to go over another one of my suggestions from “11 Best Plants To Start Growing Your Own Food”. If you have not read either of those articles yet I would recommend reading them to follow along or if you are interested in beginning to grow your own food. Whether you have a large amount of space to grow or if you live in an apartment complex the goal of growing your own food can be achieved with just a little bit of creativity. While I believe all pepper varieties are a great addition to any garden, there is one variety in particular that I feel stood out the most to me as a must have when limited on space. That was the Sweet Banana Pepper variety.
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Lifehack
Tips for Growing Your Own Luffa!
Continuing on with my series “Small Space Garden”, I am going to go over another one of my suggestions from “11 Best Plants To Start Growing Your Own Food”. If you have not read either of those articles yet I would recommend reading them to follow along or if you are interested in beginning to grow your own food. Whether you have a large amount of space to grow or if you live in an apartment complex the goal of growing your own food can be achieved with just a little bit of creativity. The one I am going to go over is Luffa.
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Lifehack
Tips for Growing Sorrel
Continuing on with my series of “Growing Your Own Food”, I would like to discuss another one of the eleven plants I discussed in the article and give you my reasons why it is a great pick as well as some tips and pointers that will help you get the most abundant harvest. If you have not previously read my other articles I would love it if you would and share along any tips you have that I may have missed or any tips you learn along the way that may help others. It may also be helpful to follow along if you first read “Growing Your Own Food” and “Small Space Garden”.
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Lifehack
Harvey
I can remember it like it was yesterday. If I close my eyes I can even still feel the cool late October air and hear the light rustling of leaves. I was sitting in the driveway of an old friends house, bundled up in my jacket but shivering because I was wearing shorts and trying to keep my legs warm as I sat legs crossed, deep in conversation with my childhood friend. I know that you were cold too, but I prefer to remember the story as this, you saw me shivering and so you crawled up into my lap to keep me warm. This small beat up ball of fur with gigantic green eyes and a purr box that sounded like a motor boat. I had no idea in that moment all that was to be in store for us. The joy, laughter and tears. They have all been worth it though. Every single step of the way.
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Petlife
Slow Down and Just Live
Do you remember when the biggest stress in your life was whether or not someone else in class was wearing the same outfit as you? If the varsity football player you had a crush on even knew you existed? Whether or not mom and dad were going to let you borrow the car this weekend? Growing up you hear over and over how fast life flies by from “the adults”. You never actually listen to it though. You are too busy just trying to grow up so you don't have to follow the rules of your parents anymore or the stupid rules from school. You think, once you are in your twenties and have it all figured out (eye roll) then you can start enjoying life and not let it pass you by. But then you wake up and you're about to turn 35 and starting to really understand what all those “adults” were telling you about it flying by and fully grasping that you are one of those “adults” now. While being aware of how fast life is passing you by, you are still unable to just slow down and take it all in. Because now the stress is not whether or not you and someone else will wear the same outfit or if the varsity boy you have a crush on notices you or if mom and dad will let you borrow the car. It is instead- whether or not your clothes still fit and if you can afford new ones if they don't, it is will your spouse give you some alone time to think and notice you a little less and if you are going to have enough money to make the payment on your car, or your car insurance-forget gas, your car has been running on fumes at this point. Life so quickly goes from passing you by from living life to the fullest responsibility-free, to passing you by while you are caught up in the stress of adulthood. Life goes from passing you by from not paying attention to your responsibilities to passing you by from being so bogged down in your responsibilities that you forgot to live in the mean time. You just wanted to be old enough to graduate high school, you just wanted to be done with college, you just want to be old enough to retire. You just “want” for so much and in the mean time, life is racing by you. Until one day you wake up and realize, you missed out enjoying on your twenties when you were too wrapped up in waiting to get out of college and feeling sorry for yourself in all your mostly self inflicted hard-times and now you are missing out on life once again while you mourn losing your twenties.
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Journal
4 Best Tips To Growing Basil In A Small Space
In this article I will go over the things that made me grow basil the most successfully in a small space. Basil is great when you have a limited amount of space because it doesn't really require much from you at all. I have successfully grown it out of cans, mason jars, in ground, in pots, and in the Aerogarden. The fun thing about basil is it will also grow in just water, so when I notice my plant is beginning to die off, I take a few clippings and place them in water, wait for roots to form and start over! I love the fresh flavor basil adds to any dish especially soups and salad. I add in a few fresh sprigs to my soups and I love the flavor of chopping up a few leaves and adding it to my salad as well. There are tons of varieties of basil, but my personal favorite is one called “lettuce leaf basil”. I found these on Baker Creek's website (rareseeds.com). They produce large leaves that contain the original basil flavor we all love. They make a perfect edition to salad, so I even toss a few seeds in my salad mix grow bag I mentioned in my article “5 Tips To Growing Your Own Salad Greens”. This is another list I will do my best to keep as short as possible.
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Lifehack
My 5 Best Tips For Growing Radishes and Kholrabi
I really do not have a lot to share as far as root veggies go, I am as I said before, still learning and using this as a tool to get the information out there as I learn it. I garden in a small urban home and am trying to find the best ways to maximize my production in the least amount of space possible. Everything that I chose for the original article “Growing Your Own Food”, I have tested growing in pots as well as in ground to make sure that even someone in an apartment would have access to growing these. Of course even in an apartment some things will be harder even in pots since not all apartments have porches. You may have to utilize table space up against a window that gets the most light in your apartment. I did notice less light does cause the plants to produce a bit slower, but I also noticed that even with less light, while producing slower, they still produced food. Once you start to grow your own food, you will pick up tricks that work the best for your individual situation. The most important part of it all is that you try, even if you failed in the past try again. For this article I am going to group both radishes and kohlrabi from the original article that I promised these tips from, “Growing Your Own Food”. If you have not read that one yet, I would recommend you read it so you can follow along with the tips and the outline I am giving for how I have had the success that I have had growing as much food as I have. It will also be much appreciated if you did! So here are, in my experience, what I found to be the 5 most important things when growing radishes and kohlrabi (and quite frankly with any root vegetables like carrots, onions etc. etc, but not potatoes- those have some different rules all on their own and I highly suggest doing full research on potatoes before growing on your own as they can be poisonous if done incorrectly or harvested too early or too late).
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Lifehack
5 Tips to Growing Your Own Salad Greens
In continuation of the tips promised from my previous article “Growing Your Own Food”, here are my tips for growing your own lettuce or salad greens. This one is going to be short and only 5 tips. I am in no way a professional gardener and so I always recommend to do your research and also check what garden zone you live in. I live in zone 9b, and these are tips that have worked for me. I have grown lettuce and salad greens both indoor, in ground, in pots and in dirt bags. I highly recommend an Aerogarden if you would like to grow indoor. It will not get you to where you are eating salad greens daily, but it will get you to a point where you are at least eating them once or twice a week. They have different options for how many pods you can buy, so you could potentially do more than the 6 pod Aerogarden and possibly get greens more than once to twice a week. They also have kits for growing tomatoes, peppers and herbs in them and are definitely worth checking out. OK, so lets dive into the five tips for growing your own salad greens.
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Lifehack
10 Tips that helped me Grow the Most Tomatoes
In my last article, “ Growing Your Own Food”, I promised to do an article for each of the plants I listed with tips I have learned that have helped me when growing them in my small space garden. I chose each of the varieties on that list because I was able to successfully grow them and get a decent harvest from each of them whether they were planted in the ground or in a pot. Some of them I even was able to successfully grow indoors. I will include all of that info in each of the articles for each of the varieties. I also mentioned some recipes that I have used to change it up a bit and keep it interesting, and those will come in separate articles as well. Each article will contain my top 10 or fewer tips that I found that made gardening with those particular plants the easiest. I chose to only do the most important 10 or fewer because when I was starting out gardening too many facts would become information overload and I would end up forgetting most of them and becoming frustrated. I remember growing up as a child when I would garden with my mother, she was like a fountain of knowledge and I could literally ask her anything and she seemed to know everything. Now that I am older, she has taught me that the information really does not come out of a book, but from experience. You learn as you go, it is the hard experiences that stick with you the most. So remember, if you kill a plant and you know what you did wrong that caused it, you are on your way to becoming a fountain of plant knowledge as well. Do not get discouraged, like I mentioned in my last article, I have even managed to kill off all my seedlings (story for another article, another day), every “failure” is really just an opportunity to learn how not to do things. Grab that bag of seeds, or re purchase that plant start and start over!
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Lifehack
11 Best Plants to Start Growing Your Own Food
Currently, I reside in a small home with a small back yard in the middle of town. I fortunately have a decent sized back yard for living in such an urban setting, however it is still not quite enough to reach my homesteading dreams or my goal to grow all my own produce to feed my whole family. About 3 years ago, I decided that I would find a way to still be able to grow a good portion of my own food and that I would learn how to do so in a small space and share that information with others who are wishing to do the same and, like me, are still stuck in the urban setting- dreaming about an off-grid 20 plus acre farm of their own someday. There are so many things you can do to begin growing your own food even if you live in an apartment or rent a room in someone's home. In this article, I am going to lay out for you what in my opinion are the 11 best starter plants when you begin to grow your own food. I chose these because they are all prolific producers that will not only encourage you to grow your own food more but they will also help lighten your grocery bill. All have also done well in pots for me as well as in the ground which is why I chose them. Among the many hard lessons 2020 taught us, learning that we cannot rely on the grocery stores always being stocked have brought many people to the gardening world. More people than ever now are interested in growing their own food! It is so exciting to see so many people interested in it like never before. These 11 plants that I will list will definitely be a great start even if you choose to only do a couple of them. If you have space to do more, but don't like one of the ones listed, you could always consider growing it and trading it with someone who may be growing something you do like, or bringing it to a food pantry to help a family in need. I will also be doing a separate article for each of these giving some tips and advice that I have found along the way that really helped me to grow and harvest even more from each variety. I will also explain how to grow each in small containers as well, that has worked for me in the past. I also still highly encourage that you also continue your research for tips because there are many highly talented gardeners out there with much more experience and tips than me.
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Feast
Small Space Garden
There is something so beautiful about a garden. Whether it is a garden of flowers intentional for beauty or a garden that is beautiful that will eventually produce food. Have you ever looked outside at the beauty of nature and just had your breath taken away? How beautiful the leaves on trees look swaying in the wind, how the sunlight just seems to dance off the leaves of plants while butterflies and bees bounce on top the branches pollinating them. In the morning , as the sun comes up, I love to just look out and see the dew shining like diamonds on the plants as the sunlight begins to touch it, I love to see how alive everything looks, ready for the day ahead, the flowers open up and the plants begin reaching for the sun as the night turns to day. When I began my journey to grow my own food, it was very much powered by the drive to eat food that tasted the way it should. If you have ever grown your own food you will know what I am talking about. The store bought fruits and vegetables not only provide less nutrients and unknown chemicals or pesticides but they also provide much less flavor. In the beginning of this journey, I also wanted beauty in my small urban yard. I needed to be able to trust that what I was eating was not hindered in anyway with growth hormones or harmful pesticides. I knew I could achieve all those things by growing it myself. What I did not expect was to gain healing. I am sure many of you have heard of gardening being a way to mend anxiety and depression, as did I, but did any of you believe it? I sure didn't. When you battle anxiety and depression on a day to day balance it is hard to believe anything that is going to require so much of your time and energy could do anything but cause more anxiety and in turn more depression. Waking up is a task all on its own, making yourself go to work, or to the store or even to visit a friend or family member is so grueling, so how could adding more responsibility not do more harm then good? While I have no idea how it did it, I can stand to testify that it certainly did more good than harm. And yes, it is not a miracle answer and it may not help everyone, and I definitely had and still have days where I am bogged down by the depression and anxiety and unable to get out to the garden. However, for the most part, having this garden has provided me something to look forward to, something to bring a smile to my face when it seems impossible, something to focus on when my anxiety is doing its very best to make me focus on all that is wrong around me. A quiet place to go, free of judgment and free of pain.
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Motivation
Guide to Giving in a Pandemic
This year has certainly been a tough one for many people. If you are among the fortunate that are able to purchase gifts for loved ones, small businesses should be your first stop. It is no secret that our small businesses have been hit hard in this pandemic and most are probably hanging on by threads to stay open. The best part about buying someone a gift from a small business is that it will most likely be a unique gift that you will not have to worry about someone else purchasing a duplicate of or getting them something that they already have. Sometimes you can find a small business that specializes in one item, such as candles or coffee mugs or even a food type item. You could look into what they charge for a bulk purchase and give everyone on your list whatever that specialty item is. Facebook is another great way to see which businesses are running holiday bulk gifting deals. Many businesses offer discounts if you mention seeing their post on Facebook or if you like their page or follow any of their social media. It can also help to use Facebook as way of finding local or small businesses that are near you. If you are having trouble finding small businesses in your area, your town hall or business bureau is a great way to get a directory of small businesses. I always like to check American Express' website that sponsors the “Small Business Saturday” every year because it will cater your search to your location and it provides the companies name, address, phone number and even a link to the companies website. Just a general search for “small business Saturday” on your favorite search engine should bring the page right up.
By Michelle Paiva3 years ago in Lifehack