Love's Urban Farm Inc.

Love's Urban Farm Inc. Love's Urban Farmstead is a small urban garden located in the city of Erie, Pennsylvania. We aim to promote urban gardening and improve the Erie community
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04/27/2023

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The life cycle of a blackberry. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

(via Greenpeace UK)

04/12/2023

🌿🌼🌿 Dandelion is our Herb of the Week! 🌿🌼🌿

Volumes could be written on the many uses of dandelion as food and medicine– indeed they have been! This common w**d is often hated and poisoned by those preferring a “w**d free” lawn, while those of us in love with dandelion and its many uses happily support it taking over our lawns.
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This plant was purposefully brought to North America by Europeans not wanting to leave this valuable resource behind. Every part of the dandelion can be used as food or medicine, making backdoor herbalism simple and easy, as it should be.
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When the first spring leaves pop up out of the ground they can be harvested heavily and eaten fresh with salads, made into a delicious pesto, or dried for tea. Dandelions are amazing growers and spreaders, but please be careful and leave plenty for the bees.
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Dandelion leaves are highly nutritious, containing large amounts of vitamin A, calcium, potassium, and many more vitamins and minerals. The French call this plant pissenlit, which alludes to its strong diuretic properties. A tea of dandelion leaves is a great way to flush excess water from the system.
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When eaten with meals, the bitter taste of the leaves helps to promote digestion by stimulating bile to relieve indigestion and other digestive disturbances.
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Dandelion root is a great ally for the liver. It can be tinctured or eaten fresh in a variety of recipes. Dandelion root can help clear up acne and other skin disruptions with the root cause being a stagnant liver. Most herbalists agree that long-term use of dandelion is needed for best results.
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The flower can be eaten in salads, or fried up as fritters. An oil made from dandelion flowers is warming and can be applied externally to relieve arthritis and other aches and pains.
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Click the following link for my Dandelion Pesto and Marinated Dandelion Flower Buds recipes, as well as more dandelion-as-food tips: https://bit.ly/2UWq5DU

03/24/2023

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03/24/2023

Here are some interesting facts about the dandelion flower:

The dandelion is the only flower that represents the 3 celestial bodies of the sun, moon and stars. ☀️ 🌙 ⭐️. The yellow flower resembles the sun, the puff ball resembles the moon and the dispersing seeds resemble the stars.

The dandelion flower opens to greet the morning and closes in the evening to go to sleep. 😴

Every part of the dandelion is useful: root, leaves, flower. It can be used for food, medicine and dye for coloring.

Up until the 1800s people would pull grass out of their lawns to make room for dandelions and other useful “w**ds” like chickw**d, malva, and chamomile.

The name dandelion is taken from the French word “dent de lion” meaning lion’s tooth, referring to the coarsely-toothed leaves. 🦁

Dandelions have one of the longest flowering seasons of any plant.

Dandelion seeds are often transported away by a gust of wind and they travel like tiny parachutes. Seeds are often carried as many as 5 miles from their origin!

Animals such as birds, insects and butterflies consume nectar or seed of dandelion.🐦 🐛 🐜 🦋 🐝.

Dandelion flowers do not need to be pollinated to form seed.

Dandelion can be used in the production of wine and root beer. Root of dandelion can be used as a substitute for coffee. 🍷 🍺

Dandelions have sunk their roots deep into history. They were well known to ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and have been used in Chinese traditional medicine for over a thousand years.

Dandelion is used in folk medicine to treat infections and liver disorders. Tea made of dandelion act as diuretic.

If you mow dandelions, they’ll grow shorter stalks to spite you.

Dandelions are, quite possibly, the most successful plants that exist, masters of survival worldwide. 💪

A not so fun fact: Every year countries spend millions on lawn pesticides to have uniform lawns of non-native grasses, and we use 30% of the country’s water supply to keep them green.

Bee Happy Gardens 🐝

Read more: http://bit.ly/3Lseaoa

03/24/2023

"Grounding...."

03/18/2023

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03/07/2023
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02/18/2023

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10/16/2022

Some information

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09/15/2022

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A garden …

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08/07/2022

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The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies

Nature’s medicine ♥️❤️
07/06/2022

Nature’s medicine ♥️❤️

The most important thing that I would like to show you, and that many books lack, is how to correctly identify these plants.

We teach it ALL here at Love’s Urban Farm !❤️
07/05/2022

We teach it ALL here at Love’s Urban Farm !❤️

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05/21/2022

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Happy Global Youth Service Day!  Thank you so much to these amazing young people and their volunteerism!  Shout out to o...
05/01/2022

Happy Global Youth Service Day!

Thank you so much to these amazing young people and their volunteerism! Shout out to our VP Trista and her lovely ladies 🗣 Also thank you to the Youth Leadership Institute of Erie for sending us some extra help as well!

04/22/2022

Happy Earth Day 🌎
From Love’s Urban Farm!!!

04/20/2022

We are so excited for Global Youth Service Day Saturday April 30th! our local youth from YLI of Erie will be volunteering for the day to help get our garden ready for the growing season !

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03/04/2022

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Planning your garden is one of the most essential steps towards a successful harvest! Be sure to understand companion pl...
03/01/2022

Planning your garden is one of the most essential steps towards a successful harvest! Be sure to understand companion planting!

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Most people plant their gardens with little thought as to what plants grow well together. The secret to an amazing garden, though? Companion planting! Companion planting not only takes nutrient uptake into consideration, but it also brings into account crop protection, pest management and positive h...

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02/27/2022

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Yes, we could.

Nature’s nutrients ❤️
01/18/2022

Nature’s nutrients ❤️

WE CALL THEM WEEDS, BUT THEY ARE HEALTHY

Some w**ds that we are always worried about in our yards and Gardens are actually good for you, and can be delicious if prepared properly. Be sure to identify the w**ds correctly (The ones described here are easy to spot.) Avoid harvesting from anyplace you suspect pollution — such as from vehicle exhaust, lawn pesticide or doggy business. And remember that edible does not mean allergen-free. Here are 9 good ones:

DANDELION
Dandelion is one of the healthiest and most versatile vegetables on the planet. The entire plant is edible. The leaves are like vitamin pills, containing generous amounts of vitamins A, C and K — far more than those garden tomatoes, in fact — along with calcium, iron, manganese, and potassium.

The leaves are most tender, and tastiest, when they are young. This happens in the spring but also all summer along as the plant tries to rebound after being cut or pulled. You can add them to soup in great abundance. Or you can prepare them Italian style by sautéing with a little olive oil, salt, garlic and some hot red pepper.

You can eat the bright, open flower heads in a lightly fried batter. You can also make a simple wine with the flowers by fermenting them with raisins and yeast. If you are slightly adventurous, you can roast the dandelion root, grind it, and brew it like coffee. It's an acquired taste. You might want to have some sugar on hand.

PURSLANE
If you've ever lived in the city, you have seen good ol' Portulaca olearacea, or common purslane. The stuff grows in cracks in the sidewalk. Aside from being surprisingly tasty for a crack dweller, purslane tops the list of plants with omega-3 fatty acids, the type of healthy fat found in salmon.
If you dislike the bitter taste of dandelion greens, you still might like the lemony taste of purslane. The stems, leaves and flowers are all edible; and they can be eaten raw on salads — as they are prepared worldwide — or lightly sautéed.

You should keep a few things in mind, though, before your harvest. Watch out for spurge, a similar-looking sidewalk-crack dweller. Spurge is much thinner than purslane, and it contains a milky sap, so you can easily differentiate it. Also, your mother might have warned you about eating things off the sidewalk; so instead, look for purslane growing in your garden, or consider transplanting it to your garden from a sidewalk.

Also, note the some folks incorrectly call purslane "pigw**d," but that's a different w**d — edible but not as tasty.

LAMB'S QUARTERS
Lamb's-quarters are like spinach, except they are healthier, tastier and easier to grow. Lamb's-quarters, also called goosefoot, usually need more than a sidewalk crack to grow in, unlike dandelion or purslane. Nevertheless, they can be found throughout the urban landscape, wherever there is a little dirt.

The best part of the lamb's-quarters are the leaves, which are slightly velvety with a fine white powder on their undersides. Discard any dead or diseased leaves, which are usually the older ones on the bottom of the plant. The leaves and younger stems can be quickly boiled or sautéed, and they taste like a cross between spinach and Swiss chard with a slight nutty after-taste.

Maybe that taste combination doesn't appeal to you, but lamb's-quarters are ridiculously healthy. A one-cup serving will give you 10 times the daily-recommended dose of vitamin K; three times the vitamin A; more than enough vitamin C; and half your daily dose of calcium and magnesium.

PLANTAIN
Plantain, like dandelion, is a healthy, hardy w**d as ubiquitous in the city as broken glass. You know what it looks like, but you might not have known the name.
Part of the confusion is that plantain shares its name with something utterly different, the banana-like plantain, whose etymology is a mix of Spanish and native Caribbean. The so-called w**d plantain, or Plantago major, was cultivated in pre-Columbus Europe; and indeed Native Americans called it "the white man's footprint," because it seemed to follow European settlers.

Plantain has a nutritional profile similar to dandelion — that is, loaded with iron and other important vitamins and minerals. The leaves are tastiest when small and tender, usually in the spring but whenever new shoots appear after being cut back by a lawnmower. Bigger leaves are edible but bitter and fibrous.

The shoots of the broadleaf plantain, when green and tender and no longer than about four inches, can be described as a poor-man's fiddlehead, with a nutty, asparagus-like taste. Pan-fry in olive oil for just a few seconds to bring out this taste. The longer, browner shoots are also tasty prepared the same way, but the inner stem is too fibrous. You'll need to place the shoot in your mouth, clench with your teeth, and quickly pull out the stem. What you're eating are the plantain seeds.

The leaves of the equally ubiquitous narrow-leaf plantain, or Plantago lanceolata, also are edible when young. The shoot is "edible" only with quotation marks. You can eat the seeds should you have the patience to collect hundreds of plants for the handful of seeds you'd harvest. With time being money, it's likely not worth it.

CHICKWEED
One of the not-so-ugly w**ds worth pulling and keeping is chickw**d. Identified by purple stems, fuzzy green leaves, and starry white flower petals, this w**d is a fantastic source of vitamins A, D, B complex, and C. It also contains minerals like iron, zinc, calcium, and potassium. Chickw**d (Stellaria media) has a cornsilk-like flavor when eaten raw, and tastes similar to spinach when it is cooked. [1]

Chickw**d nourishes the lymph and glandular systems, and can heal cysts, fevers, and inflammation. It can help neutralize acid and help with yeast overgrowth and fatty deposits, too.
Additionally, chickw**d can be finely chopped and applied externally to irritated skin. Steep the plant in ¼ cup of boiling water for 15 minutes, and chickw**d provides benefits similar to dandelion root. Speaking of dandelion…

CLOVER
Other than the occasional four-leafed clover hunt, this common lawn w**d goes mostly unnoticed, even though it is becoming popular as a lawn replacement altogether. Clover is an important food for honeybees and bumblebees, and clover leaves and flowers can be used to add variety to human meals as well. Small amounts of raw clover leaves can be chopped into salads, or can be sauteed and added to dishes for a green accent, and the flowers of both red and white clover can be eaten raw or cooked, or dried for tea.

MALLOW
Mallow, or malva, is also known as cheesew**d, due to the shape of its seed pods, and can be found in many lawns or garden beds across the US. The leaves and the seed pods (also called the 'fruit') are both edible, either raw or cooked, and like many greens, are often more tender and palatable when smaller and less mature. The older leaves can be used like any other cooked green after steaming, boiling, or sauteing them.

WILD AMARANTH
The leaves of the wild amaranth, also known as pigw**d, are another great addition to any dish that calls for leafy greens, and while the younger leaves are softer and tastier, the older leaves can also be cooked like spinach. The seeds of the wild amaranth can be gathered and cooked just like store-bought amaranth, either as a cooked whole grain or as a ground meal, and while it does take a bit of time to gather enough to add to a meal, they can be a a good source of free protein.

STINGING NETTLES
It sounds like a cruel joke, but stinging nettles — should you be able to handle them without getting a painful rash from the tiny, acid-filled needles — are delicious cooked or prepared as a tea.

You may have brushed by these in the woods or even in your garden, not knowing what hit you, having been trained all your life to identify poison ivy and nothing else. The tiny needles fortunately fall off when steamed or boiled. The trick is merely using garden gloves to get the nettles into a bag.

Nettles tastes a little like spinach, only more flavorful and more healthful. They are loaded with essential minerals you won't find together outside a multivitamin bottle, and these include iodine, magnesium, potassium, phosphorous, silica and sulfur. Nettles also have more protein than most plants.

You can eat the leaves and then drink the water as tea, with or without sugar, hot or cold. If you are adventurous — or, you can collect entire plants to dry in your basement. The needles will eventually fall off, and you can save the dried leaves for tea all winter long. Info by Christopher Wanjek

Please visit our THE SEED GUY website when you get the chance. We have 9 Heirloom Seed Packages on Sale Now, Non GMO, still hand counted and packaged, like the old days, so you get the best germination, and fresh from the New 2021 Harvest https://theseedguy.net/15-seed-packages

We also have All of our Individual Heirloom Seed varieties in stock.

You can also Call Us 7 days a week, and up to 10:00 pm each night, at 918-352-8800 if you would like to Order By Phone.

If you LIKE US on our page, you will be on our list for more great Gardening Articles, new Heirloom Seed Offers, and healthy Juice Recipes https://www.facebook.com/theseedguy Thank you, and God Bless You and Your Family.

GARDENING TIP OF THE DAY:Up cycle old tires into planters!Place an old tire in the desired location. Next fill the botto...
08/09/2021

GARDENING TIP OF THE DAY:
Up cycle old tires into planters!

Place an old tire in the desired location. Next fill the bottom with organic material such as cardboard or rotting wood or wood chips. Finally fill the remaining space inside of the tire with a rich mix of compost and topsoil!
You are now ready to plant either perennials or annuals in your new up-cycled tire gardens!

We chose to plant chives and other perennial herbs in ours! Let us see what you do with yours🧐🧄🥬🍇🌾🌱🌸

Let it pour!❤️
07/02/2021

Let it pour!
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06/17/2021

See the action live as your Erie Express Football takes on the Pittsburgh Buccaneers!

Herbs = Nature’s medicine ❤️❤️
06/16/2021

Herbs = Nature’s medicine ❤️❤️

06/16/2021

Today we extended our main garden to provide room to grow even more of Love’s Urban Produce and Herbs!!!

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Erie, PA
16503

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