The Garden

By now everyone's garden is well underway (hopefully). This was our first year of starting heirloom seeds inside. Unfortunately, many of our tomatoes and cabbage plants died once we planted them outside, but luckily my friend was closing up her greenhouse for the season. I was able to purchase 3 flats of heirloom tomatoes, roma tomatoes, cabbage and broccoli for $9.


This year is probably the biggest and best garden we've put out yet. We usually put out about a 1/2 acre garden. This may be just a little bigger, it's hard to tell, since the trees are maturing on our property, it shades areas too much, so we actually have several garden patches.


This is the first year we have actually kept up with the weeding of the garden, too. How much easier it is to get those pesky things when they're little.


This is a favorite poem of mine, taken from our church bulletin several years ago. I don't have credits for it, so thanks to whoever wrote this sweet poem.

The Garden

For the garden of your daily living:

Plant three rows of peas:

1. Peace of mind
2. Peace of heart
3. Peace of Soul

Plant four rows of squash:

1. Squash gossip
2. Squash indifference
3. Squash grumbling
4. Squash selfishness

Plant four rows of lettuce:

1. Lettuce be faithful
2. Lettuce be kind
3. Lettuce be patient
4. Lettuce really love one another

No Garden is Without Turnips

1. Turnip for meetings
2. Turnips for service
3. Turnip to help one another

To Conclude our Garden, We Must Have Thyme

1. Thyme for each other
2. Thyme for family
3. Thyme for friends

Water freely with patience and cultivate with love.

There is much fruit in the garden because you reap what you sow.

Paper Pots for Indoor Planting

As I've shared before, we put out a huge vegetable garden. To the tune of a half acre garden. We are trying to start seeds, but we ran out of recycled trays from the greenhouse. I absolutely refused to buy the seed starting trays in the store because they are too expensive.


Making them is simple. Just find a food can. I used a tomato paste can, the smaller the better. Cut newspaper or ads into pieces about the size of the can. Use 2 or more sheets (thickness) per pot. Roll around can, secure with scotch tape. Then, fold the bottom like you would if you were rolling coins in wrappers to deposit.

It was sooo easy to make these that my 7 year old joined in the fun. She said we were like assembly line workers. I wonder where she comes up with this stuff!

We are keeping ours in a plastic tote until planting. At planting time, just plant the whole thing the paper is bio-degradable.

Thanks Kendra for the original idea.

Frugal Landscaping

I just read this about frugal landscaping. Maybe a better title would be Edible Landscaping. You can read it here.

My husband and I were just talking the other day about trying to learn more about wildflowers and herbs. You know God gives us many plants for our health, but we consider them to be weeds. Take for instance, dandelions. Every part of dandelions are edible. From the leaf greens to boiling the roots for tea. Raspberries are the same way. We have a gazillion of them growing on our property.

I think if we learn more about what we have that we can forage, it will save on next year's grocery bill.

Do you have any ideas for edible landscaping or foraging for food? Please share.

Preserving the Harvest

Please excuse my brief bloggy break, as you can see, God was faithful and gave us a huge bounty this year.

We did tomatoes. (The girls even helped for about 5 minutes!) LOL! I canned 21 quarts and 6 pints of tomato juice. I will probably have enough ripe to do again Monday afternoon.

I also canned green beans and made Claussen style pickles. I hope these turn out because those are the only pickles my family will eat and they just went up another dollar a jar at Kroger.

I dried some zucchini for winter use in soups and such and shredded some for quick breads. I chopped peppers and froze for salsa that I'll make later this week and for over the winter use.

Shayla and dad harvested the pumpkins. It's hard to believe they came from the same packet of seeds. They are all different sizes!

Today we picked some more grapes and apples. I will probably be making juice with them, maybe apple cider vinegar for cleaning, too, but tomorrow's another day......

We're already planning next year's garden. Were planning on making it much larger. We're trying to figure how much we need to plant to last our family a year.

What do you put up for your family? Do you have any time saving hints? Please share if so because I just can't seem to find time for everything that needs to be done.

Gardening

I sat down last week and was trying to begin an annual menu plan. Yes, I said annual. I think that we could really save alot of money with an annual plan.
I recently read an article in Nancy Campbell's Above Rubies magazine discussing the importance of a garden. BTW, if you don't yet receive this magazine, it is a very encouraging read for Christian women. Go here to sign up for the magazine, it is by donation.

I had been thinking about how important our garden is, too. It provides a lot of organic produce for our family. I know that we're not going to get e.coli, or any other disease from its produce. It's also hands on science for our family. From dropping seeds to harvesting.

The Bible also talks about the importance of the garden. Proverbs 24:27 says: Don't build your house and establish a home until your fields are ready, and you are sure that you can earn a living.

Although my garden is not beautiful, it is functional. I can approximately 600 quarts/year. I hope to make next year's better so I'm already starting to plan.

I put together some numbers for our family. For example: We will need about 1500 lbs. of rice, 1500 lbs. of flour, 78 dozen eggs, 365 gallons of goats milk, 1040 lbs. potatoes, 52 lbs. carrots, 52 lbs. beans, 98 quarts of tomato products (ketchup, pasta/pizza sauce and tomato juice. That's alot of food!

Anyway, I have several questions maybe you can help me with. Does anyone with a milk allergy have any experience using goats milk in place of cows milk. More specifically, has anyone on a strict GF/CF diet tried using fresh goats milk?

The second question is does anyone know if there is a way of figuring how many plants you would need to plant to get the numbers of carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, etc. that we need?

Tis the Season

Canning season has officially started for us. This is the second batch of green beans I have canned. We've already eaten quite a bit of fresh beans for dinners.

I will be picking fresh blackberries from our backyard this evening. I hope to can some berries, maybe make blackberry jelly and of course, blackberry muffins.

We are also enjoying fresh leaf lettuce, zucchini and hopefully the tomatoes and corn will be ready soon. The pumpkins are getting huge and the grape vines and apple tree are full of fruit this year

I usually can about 600 quarts of produce per year. This really helps our budget alot because it is all organic food.

We're also hoping to stretch our food budget farther by my husband getting a deer, our chickens should be laying soon, and I hope to getting second plantings of lettuce and peas in.

Heirloom Seeds

We plant a huge garden every year. I can about 600 quarts of produce from our garden each year. Several months ago, when I organized my pantry, I thought we would be downsizing our garden this year. It seemed that the only thing we really needed was tomato juice and peas. Then we heard about the worldwide food shortage. This, in addition to rising gas and grocery prices changed our minds. We have once again started the garden.

This year we purchased heirloom seeds. These seeds are more expensive, but you're supposed to be able to save the dried seeds for planting next year, and on and on. I've bought these in the past, and I'm ashamed to say, I got lazy. I did not save the seeds.

Does anyone have any experience with heirloom seeds. What's the best way to store them so they can be reused? Any suggestions?