Garden 2016

I decided that we will try a garden again this year, on a much smaller scale.  At this point I'm only sure that we will grow tomatoes, however I'm also leaning towards lettuce and squash as well.  I guess it will depend on what organic and non-gmo seeds and plants I can find.

I'm moving everything over to the half of the garden that we didn't use as much 2 years ago in the hopes of preventing blight by re-planting in the same area.

Little late in the garden season

I finally got outside and did some digging in the garden a couple weeks ago.  I ended up getting a storage tub and a bucket full of parsnips, carrots, celery, and potatoes.

First attempt at dehydrating herbs

 We dehydrated a bunch of fruit this week. We tried kiwi, peaches, several types of apples, pears, mango... Basically all of the fruit that we could find in a local farmers market store.

The watermelon was attempted, but I'm not sure how good it really is.  A lot of it was still pretty soft even after 24 hours.  I think the oldest will eat it all within a day so at least it won't be wasted completely, and lesson learned.

Happy Mother's Day

This year for Mother's Day, I decided to make sure I got something good, so I made myself a raised flower bed.

This was the bed after I put together the lumber and filled it with the soil I had on hand.  I had bought a few perennials to plant in it as well.

Creative Garden Labels

I needed something to label the areas of our garden but this year I needed something that would stand out more.  Last year we painted rocks, but the paint began to peel and the rocks weren't large enough so they eventually were buried by the dirt.

This year I was trying to find something that would be more of a sign and then I cam across these cutting boards in a dollar store.

There isn't anything in the garden yet, but having the labels out is already helping the boys and I to remember which rows are for walking and which are for plants.

Only minor progress

We got out in the garden again today but didn't get too much done.  I re-tilled the entire garden, finished getting the deer and chicken fence all set up, and then was able to stretch and tie a few guidelines for the first few rows before we ran out of bright pink string.  

The rows that were marked off were where the tomatoes, onions, lettuce and cucumbers will be going along with a few other things that we can't plant just yet.  But at least those areas are ready for when we can plant them.  The newspapers are for weed  prevention.

I will need to grab some more string to finish marking off the rows, as I'm determined to stay organized this year.  Then I can get started planting the few things that are able to go into the ground before the last frost.

Greenhouse by the house

I bought a little greenhouse a few weeks ago and finally got it put together today.  It was raining outside, rain that would occasionally turn to beads of ice, but inside the greenhouse it was a decent temperature so we moved most of the seedlings out to the greenhouse and crossed our fingers.

I couldn't decide on a flat location that would get enough sun AND be sheltered enough that it wouldn't blow away with the wind and then I thought of this little cove area.  It fits in there perfectly, it's flat enough with the help of some little bricks in the back corner, and I used some stakes to hold it down.

The test now is to see if the chickens will stay out and if the plants were survive.





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Spring is almost here

I picked up the tiller from the shop yesterday and turned it on for just a minute when I got home.

We had to run out to get gas this  morning, but came right back and got to work.

Sprouting up

We are finally starting to see more seeds sprouting up. We still have quite a few that haven't started so I will probably use those cups for the next round if seeds this weekend. 

Tomatoes, sunflowers, basil, cabbage, and bell peppers are showing progress.

Green!

I've been starting to worry about my seeds growing.  I haven't seen any signs of them growing and I've had a hard time keeping the soil moist even though I go down twice a day to water.

And then last night I saw green! 

The cabbage and the bell peppers had sprouts popping up. Now if only my tomatoes would start doing the same.

The garden is started

I'm a couple weeks late on my start time, but I finally got a bunch of seeds planted in the basement with two lights set up.  Tomatoes, onions, chives, cabbage, parsley...  I even threw in some sunflower seeds and some basil that were left over from last year just to see if they would grows. 

We planted everything in toilet paper rolls, egg cartons, some left over planting pots from last year, and even some egg shells that I read about online.  My fingers are crossed that I start to see some green sprouts in the next few weeks so that I know this worked.

Purple Potatoes?

When I purchased potato starters last spring, I had seen a box for purple potatoes.  I'd never even heard of such a thing but decided to plant them.  We harvested them a week or two ago and today I finally cooked some of them.

They tasted a little different from the other potatoes, but not enough for me to be able to describe it.  We'll definitely plant more next spring if I see them again.

Here are pictures from when we harvested them:  Harvesting the fall garden

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Sweet Potato Pie

We've had frost the last two morning and the tops of all of the sweet potato plants had turned black.  I knew I had to harvest the sweet potatoes soon so I went out and dug them up today.  I've never grown sweet potatoes before and have never seen them harvested, so this was a learning experience.

We managed to get a 5 gallon bucket full of them.  Many were small, but there were some large ones too.  Next year I'm going to plant more of them and I'm going to find a way to contain them from spreading so much as I'm sure there are many still in the garden that I didn't find since they'd spread so far.

I think this only makes me want a root cellar even more so that I can properly store these long term.

The end of the garden season is near

Unfortunately the garden has been neglected over the last few weeks with me going back to work and being overwhelmed with that, their activities, and volunteering at the youngest's school.  So tonight I thought I'd go out just to grab the tomatoes that were all over the tomato plants.

Before I even made it to the tomatoes, I was pulling up some carrots.  The oldest left the gate open last week and the goats got out, and then got into my garden.  They ate the tops off at least half of the carrots so I thought I'd try to pull up what I could.

Then I pulled up one parsnip.  The tops look really good, but the parsnip was pretty small so I'm going to do some reading.   I think they don't get harvested for another month.

And then there was my celery that doesn't look like celery.

I finally made it to the tomatoes and quite a few were split open.  I'm guessing we dipped below freezing one night this week.

I figured while I was out there, we might as well knock the potato cages over and see what we could find.

Purple potatoes!  Really!  Even when we cut them open, they will be purple inside!

We hosed them off before we headed inside and I laid them out on the counter, along with a couple onions I pulled out of the pot by our door.

I suppose I should be happy to have gotten this much, but it really feels like so little.  I've been planning the garden for next year for the last month or so.  As long as each year gets bigger and better, I suppose I can't get too mad at myself.

Family Canning Event

Yesterday we picked 95 pounds of tomatoes.  

Yes.  95.  Ninety-Five.  NINETY... FIVE.

It was a busy day so when we got home in the afternoon I took a nap and just didn't have the energy to start working on them.  So this morning I woke up and started getting things organized.

Luckily, the boys were more than willing to step up and help.  I decided not to question their motives and we had an assembly line across the kitchen counter. 

I dropped the tomatoes in the pot to boil for a minute and then dumped them into the cold water in the sink.  The youngest would pick them up and peel them, then I would cut the cores out, and then the oldest would scoop out the seeds.

We got about 40 pounds of tomatoes done this way.

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 I was able to start the pot for spaghetti sauce.



Then I realized we had a lot of seeds, juice, peels, and core pieces that were going out to the chickens.  Too many.  So I did some research and saw that I could dehydrate the seeds and peels and use them in recipes later so I started doing that.




I was also reminded that I could dehydrate tomatoes to make sun-dried tomatoes so I decided to use a bunch of the small ones for that purpose and I sent the oldest out to the garden to grab the few small tomatoes that I'd seen growing.

The youngest got one tray organized in an artsy pattern while the oldest disappeared outside.

 And then the oldest walked back in.  I guess we didn't just have a couple tomatoes in the garden.

We ended up with three trays of tomatoes to dry, some were peeled and some weren't.

We ran out of space in the dehydrator and I didn't want to waste anything so I poured the tomato juice and seeds into jars and put them in the refrigerator.

We also have two containers of tomato peels waiting to be dried.  And even with the plan to find ways to use those parts of the tomatoes, we still had 8 cups of core pieces that we blended up and took out to the chickens.

And that is only from about half of the tomatoes.  I estimated that we used about 40 pounds of tomatoes, which leaves 55 pounds to still work on this week.

What's left for this week

 The tomatoes look almost done in the dehydrator and the spaghetti sauce looks and smells great since I ran out to the store to buy the other ingredients to add to it and it's been cooking all day.

Once I had the spaghetti sauce completely ready to cook all day, we took off to spend a few hours at the pools.

I'm excited to get this canned this week and to finish with the rest of the tomatoes, but the task does seem a little daunting as well.


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Amazingly pickled

When I made the next batches of pickles last week, I was a bit nervous.  We hadn't tried the first batch of pickles since they needed to wait four to six weeks, and I'm a bit picky about how I like my pickles.  What if I made this second batch and then when we tried them in a few months, they tasted horrible?  What a waste that would be.

I decided yesterday to crack open a jar from the first batch.  It had been seven weeks since they were made and I figured if they tasted bad, I wouldn't make any more.

I passed a pickle to each of us.

I have to say, they were some of the best darn pickles that I've ever had.  My reaction was "Darn, we should have made more pickles...." and I started wondering where I could get larger jars and more pickling cucumbers.

The oldest agreed with me that we need a lot more jars of pickles to line the basement walls.

Canning peaches, berries, and pickles

A couple days ago I went to a local farm and picked raspberries, blackberries, and peaches.

The next day I got to work on some of the berries and peaches.  I made blackberry pie filling first and then froze a tray of blackberries.

Then I got to work peeling and slicing some of the peaches to can.

I ended up with 2 jars of blackberry pie filling and several jars of peaches in medium syrup.  Amazingly, things went smoothly, all of the jars sealed, and the kitchen was not a complete disaster area.

So today I decided to get to work with the rest of the peaches and berries because they were starting to go bad and to take care of the cucumbers from our garden.

Once I got the peaches and cucumbers sliced up, I realized that there were probably a few more cucumbers that had grown so I went outside to get the few I should add to my batch.

Twenty minutes later, I had pruned the tomato plants and collected all of the produce that was ripe.

Finally another zucchini, and those are yellow tomatoes :)

I ended up making a bunch of jars of pickles and three jars of peaches in light syrup.  I also got the rest of the raspberries and blackberries frozen in trays and I poured the left over peach syrup juice frozen in ice cube trays because I heard it can be used to make drinks later.

The small jar is a gift for someone

I just can't figure out why my back hurts more from working in the kitchen all day than it does when I work outside all day.