Hello everyone,
Thank you for stopping by. My name is Kelyee (Kelly.) As a kid, I want to grow my own veggies and herbs for my family. Because nothing tastes better than home cooking with the stuff you grow. And the memories when mom uses to make them, fresh from her garden. Now, I want to follow in her footsteps.
Who I Am
Let me give you a little background of why I’m so passionate about wanting to grow my own herb/vegetable garden. I grew up watching my mother grew everything. She had a green thumb, for me not much. Planting for her was a way of life. That’s what I grew up learning.
When I lived in California the weather was nice and we had rain in the Summer, more like, June gloom, but the weather was never over 103 degrees Fahrenheit. Finding a place to grow things was a little challenging, however, when you find a space for your herb/vegetable garden everything you seeded, sprout. I had never had to worry about IF my seeds will sprout. It always does.
Now that I’m living in the desert southwest of Arizona. Things here are a little different… Okay, make that a major change in my everything in my knowledge of growing herb/vegetable garden, has skyrocketed to the moon. Everything, I had learned while I was in California… just put it on the back burner and don’t even look at it, start fresh.
Why? Omg! Let me emphasize the word DESERT hahaha. Desert! How am I going to plant anything in the desert? It’s hot, dry (dry heat), arid, hardly any rain, and the temperature at its worst is 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the Summer! Everything wilted and died in front of me and there’s nothing I can do about it but watched helplessly, dying a little each time myself.
I went through two years of watching my garden died and I had to replant every year especially my herbs that I worked so hard to keep alive, all gone.
My herbs are perennial. I learn that if I cover them up with sun shades they will live, sometimes thrives during the hot months. I cover them up from mid-April every year until October.
For my vegetable, I knew I have to replant and harvest every year. I have also learned when to plant my collard greens, muster greens, carrots, beets, and lettuces, all my greens. As well as my salsa recipe like tomatoes, leeks, cilantro (coriander), jalapenos, and many others plus my other Hmong herbs.
I had to learn about warm weather plants and cool weather plants. However, over the years I realized that my collard greens, mustard greens, and hot Peter pipper chili peppers plants thrive in the AZ summer heat, uncovered. Wow!
Why Do I Want To Help You
It’s not about helping you it’s about learning together. So that, I can grow as an individual. I don’t want to lose the culture of our ways of living and preserving what has been handed down to us from our ancestors. I have found that many of our younger generations have lost this practice. Some of us haven’t, but many are most of us, we, are either born or raised in the States and most of us had forgotten our native tongue. So, when finding specific herbs for our postpartum chicken diet soup, no one knows the name of any of these herbs.
I have not found a web page about growing the Hmong herbs or vegetables. This website will help the younger Hmong generation find what they need in terms of which herbs to use postpartum and vegetables to grow and why we call them Hmong plants.
For us Hmong, it is very important to maintain a healthy diet consist of only chicken products after birth for 30 days. We call it the purification days and we must use certain herbs for those days. It’s essential because it will not help you now, but, in the long term. I found one website that talks about the care of postpartum but nothing about the usage of the herbs.
Update: July 20, 2018, I recently found a website that’s in both English and Hmong about the usage of the Hmong herbs in the chicken diet soup, however, they don’t have the Hmong herb names in English and I like mine to be the first one to have both. However, I don’t have a Hmong version of my website yet. Maybe in the future.
Since I have learned a lot from my experience and experiment on how to grow in the desert. I would love to extend my knowledge to anyone who is having a problem with growing vegetables. It had worked for me for four years now and I have been in the desert southwest for nearly nine years I have learned and a few things here and there.
I remembered my frustrations when I first started growing my greens and nothing grew and if it did it would not last long enough for a good harvest. The weather and where you live play a part in growing fresh food. (Yeah, I know it’s just common sense.) Not until I screw up a few times. See the learning experience!
My GOAL.
My goals are to help you grow your herbs and vegetables to their potential. Especially in the arid weather or anywhere. Follow my experience for fun and giggles. Take what you want to learn and laugh at what you want. I’m here to have fun. And that’s what it’s all about, FUN.
If you’re not having fun doing the things, you’re passionate about and love to do then it’s no use doing it. I’ll teach you a few things and in return, you may teach me a few things. It’s also about helping each other out. See y’all later. Thank you for coming!
If you ever need a hand or have any questions, feel free to leave them below and I will be more than happy to help you out. Now go take on the day! Challenge the unknown.
All the best,
Kelyee
zbestgarden.com
Certified Master Gardener
P.S Please visit, Wealthy Affiliate platform and visit my profile here. If you want to learn how to build your own website and want to blog as I do. DM me once you’re on the inside. We will teach, encourage, and help each other to grow! Let’s get to know each other better. Learn from the best platform out there. I’ll be your mentor. See you on the inside!
And If you got aches and pain find some information about hemp CBD oil Here! I do with all my gardening. I hope this helps a little.
I believe in you, you can do this. Take this journey with me.
I liked reading this. I think it is great that you are following in your mom’s footsteps and growing your own herbs and stuff. I live in Florida, and though we are not in the desert, I do believe that the heat probably puts us in the same category as where you are, as far as how to make things grow. Only difference might be our humidity. But I did grow up in the desert and just recently moved here to Florida, and the plant life is very much the same. So I have bookmarked your site, and hope to learn and get some help with starting a garden of my own 🙂
Thank you Matt’s Mom for stopping by! Yes Florida’s weather is excellent for a garden. Because of its humidity your vegetables doesn’t dry out and constant watering. In fact they thrive out there. I have seen my FB friend’s garden and it’s so green. I was envious 🙂 but you have to make due where you live. Thanks again for stopping by.
So fun. I have wanted to garden, but have held back because I don’t want the same experience you have in having my crops die off. I am in a more arid environment as well so I would have to be more intentional about watering my plants consistently as well. I am excited to read how you found victory after your planting challenges!
Hi Hi, thank you for stopping by. I tell you what it was not easy. Took me a few years to get it going. I was about to give up and forget it. But I’m also very competitive with mother-nature. I’m not letting her stop me from growing my veggies hahaha. I put my garden on a drip system every other day in the cooler months for 15mins. For hot months everyday 10mins mornings and evenings.
Kelyee, we have a pretty solid base of Hmong people here in Tasmania. Every Saturday they sell wonderful fruit and vegetables at the big Salamanca Markets. People leave with huge baskets of produce.
I see you have had a great climate challenge but it looks like you are working well with it. I lived in Queensland for a while and I know how challenging gardening in a hot climate is. Instead of mounding rows of veggies I had to plant them in the hollows. This worked until the rains came. And boy did they come! But they were so heavy no method would have outlasted them.
I have also read a bit about mulching. Did you know that in areas such as Egypt some people mulch with stones. And I tried that to find it really works.
Happy travelling with your gardening and keep up the great articles.
Ciao
Helen
Wow mulching with stones! I need to read up on that. Would it be a certain type of stones or any? Hmong people in Tasmania! The other day I was surprised to learn about the Chinese Hmong and the language is … sounds like Chinese. You almost have to listen carefully to understand and when you think you understood it’s completely wrong! Lol. Thanks for the comment was a pleasure for you to stop by.
I can only guess the stones were roundish and reasonably flat with a large surface area. But I could be wrong!
Hi Kelyee,
I was wondering if you sell Hmong herbs by chance? I live in North Carolina so I’m no where near my family and am missing Hmong chicken soup. Your blog was the first one I found that actually names the herbs so THANKS SO MUCH! I hope that I too can start cultivating my own herbs.
Hi There P. Yang. I myself don’t live near any Hmong vender, that’s why I plant my own. I’m sorry but I do not sell any Hmong herbs.
I did extensive reasearch into the names of these Hmong herbs and I am happy to share it with anyone who wants to know the name of these herbs in English and Hmong.
I don’t know if you know about the fb page here: https://www.facebook.com/hmongPH/ They sell Hmong herbs.
Tell your frinds about my website https://zbestgarden.com/herbs. I hope this will help the Hmonglish people 🙂
Thank you for stopping by I appreciated
Hi Kelyee, I’m so happy I found your site! It’s been so hard trying to figure out the English names for some of these herbs. I am wanting to plant these in my garden here in California as well. Do you know where I can find some of the seeds for the postpartum herbs online or through a vendor? Thanks so much.
Hi, Xia welcome to my site! I don’t know anywhere in Ca. to get seeds. However, I have a link you can go to for buying some sprouted Hmong herbs. You can contact them and ask questions.
https://www.facebook.com/hmongPH/
Don’t forget to tell your friends about my website. Thank you for visiting. Have a great day!?
https://zbestgarden.com/herbs
Hi Kelyee, thank you so much for creating this site! I’ve been inspired to learn the different types of Hmong herbs and how to use it in my daily life. My Hmong isn’t the best but it’s not stopping me from learning 🙂 I’m so grateful there are already sites like yours to make my learning process more easy.
Nyob zoo os Sheng. Hi, Sheng, this is the very reason why I have created this website for people like you and I. I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for visiting my website.
I too is Hmong illiterate in my own native tongue so I had a lot of help from my mom. Lol. However, I can read a little and write a little.
Please browse around and if you have any questions please feel free to ask.
Once again thank you for visiting. ?
Hi! I’m trying to revive the mysterious plant my mother in law dropped off a few months ago. I’m very glad I found your blog. I hope to learn more from you because you are right, we younger generations are in trouble because we don’t have the same knowledge and wisdom as our elders. Thank you. I hope you update and post more.
? Hi Yer,
I’m so glad you find my website useful. Thank you for understanding. What plant are you trying to revive? You can send a picture to our team at support@zbestgarden.com we will review it and let you know.
You can follow my FB group 3H2G Hmonglish Hmong Herbs.