Holy Jalapenos, Batman!

Today was a crazy day.  Every year, we end up with a frost that sneaks up on me.  Possibly because I'm a little lazy in the fall and I don't harvest my garden like I should.... but this year caught me totally off guard.  So, the kids and I were frantically harvesting each and every item out of the garden.  Tim even drove the van out to the garden to illuminate our harvest with the headlights.
So, we got all of our veggies into the house.  Great.  But, that just means that I need to do something with all this food.  *sigh*

So, I woke up this morning with hardly a clue what I was going to do.  I came into the kitchen and found the veggies, just as I had left them.  There wasn't a veggie fairy that came during the night to help me take care of all this produce.  Before I went to bed last night, I had started organizing the tomatoes.  The green tomatoes went in one section of the kitchen.  The ripened tomatoes went into another section.  And, the orange in-between tomatoes went to yet another section of the kitchen.  If you take just a moment to visualize this, you can probably imagine that my entire kitchen is filled with tomatoes.  That is as far as I got last night.

So, this morning, the veggies were still there.  Staring at me.  Daring me to do something....

First up, Green Beans:

I didn't have a ton of these, so they were easiest to tackle.  Tim got to work washing them and I cut them up.  After a quick little blanch bath, they were bagged up and thrown into the freezer.  Check!  1.5 lbs of beans for the winter.  Mackenzie shelled the peas.  Both she and Tim got hand injuries from their work in the morning.

Next up, Green Peppers:

I still had some sliced peppers in my freezer from last year.  So, I set aside some green peppers to eat fresh. I sold some to my mom, and then the rest I filled with a mixture of bread crumbs, beef, and other spices.  I was too lazy to look up the recipe, so I just made it up.  Check!  10 green peppers stuffed and frozen.

On to ripened tomatoes:

Mrs. Wages salsa mix is my friend.  Peel tomatoes, chop tomatoes, throw into pot with vinegar and packet of spice, cook and can!  It is really easy.  My mom had come to help me, so I had some help in figuring out what I was doing.  It took me a little while to get back into the canning routine.  We made two batches, using mostly San Marzano tomatoes.  By this point in the afternoon, my feet were killing me.  It didn't help that my body was still sore from hauling around all those pounds of veggies last night.  Check!  7 pints of salsa canned and 2 pints frozen.

Next up, eggplant:

Whew.. I was starting to burn out at this point, but Tim and Mom made me keep going.  Tim was cutting the eggplant up so I could blanch it and transfer it to freezer bags.  This stuff looks gross.  I have two gallon bags done now, but I am unsure what I'm going to do with it yet.  I still have 40 eggplant (yes, that is not even an exaggeration!) to do something with.  I can't even give those things away!  Check!  Two gallon bags of eggplant (hmmmmm.....)

Last on the list, green cherry tomatoes:

The Ball Blue Book has a recipe that I had heard about (thanks Linda!) and wanted to try.  Pickled green tomatoes.  I used cherry tomatoes.  Hopefully, I am going to like them a lot, as I have many jars of them.  They were pretty easy to make.  Just a normal kind of pickling recipe... only you use green cherry tomatoes. Let's just say I have green tomatoes coming out of my ears.  So, any recipe using green tomatoes is going to get tried at my house.

I still have a recipe for a green salsa to try, Salsa Verde (I also have tomatilloes to use) to make, and I hope that many of them ripen inside.  We're going to hope... because I sure would like some more salsa and some pasta/pizza sauce!

It's harvest time.... in between vacations

We're back from Walt Disney World.  The weather was glorious (and cooler than in Wisconsin!) and the company was amazing.  Our rooms had great views of a savanna that had lots of great animals in it, including my sister's favorite... the giraffe.  If you'd like to check out where we stayed this year, click here.
Coming back from a vacation always means that the garden is a mess.  I could spend 8 hours a day in my gardens and never get caught up, so my only wish is that the caretaker water the garden and harvest any plants that need harvesting, so that the plant keeps producing.  My father-in-law was so kind to babysit my garden again this year, and he did a great job.  We were in the middle of a drought, so this was no easy task.  I also have a complicated water "issue".  The water pressure isn't high enough to run four sprinklers in succession.  We have an automatic timer set up, but the sprinkler needs to be rotated around the garden so that all four sections get watered.  Well, he did a great job, because the plants (and the weeds) really took off when we were gone!

The tomatillo plants have become WEEDS!  They grow fast!

My pepper plants are loving the heat and the recent rain.  I have a few loaded plants!  My Jalapeno planter is looking great, and I hope that they are ready either before or after our big trip to Yellowstone in two weeks.  I also have MANY Jalapeno plants out in my huge garden (shown above).

Thai Dragon Peppers for Ros

Jalapeno Peppers will make great quesadillas this winter!

Mackenzie's favorite thing about the summer garden is the yellow squash.  See my blog post here for Mackenzie's favorite recipe for using yellow squash, eggplants, onions, and zucchini.  Because of the drought, the moles have been more active than usual in the garden.  Between the moles and the lack of water, I'm finally NOW getting yellow squash.

And, the last thing I want to share today is my proudest moment of the summer.  My dill.  Now, you may laugh, but I'm lazy by nature.  So, I'm not the best gardener because I'm pretty lazy.  Stick with me here, because there is a moral to my story...
I was weeding earlier this summer with the help of one of my darling children (I think it actually may have been Alex, which is shocking!) when I pulled out some stray carrot plants.  My helper said that they smelled funny (now that I think about it, maybe it was Kenzie) and I did a little investigating.  Sure enough, it was dill from TWO years ago!  So, we let some of it go wild.  I have to say, it was my best dill plant I've ever grown!  The thing is huge.  So, here's where the lazy part comes in.  Every other year I've grown dill, it's gone to seed and the seeds have dropped and I'm left with only some lousy dill leaves that I had dehydrated.  The really awesome stuff is the seed.  TODAY I went out and harvested the dill heads, BEFORE the seeds all fell off!

Two paper bags full of dill heads!  I'm really happy with the amount of dill I got from two plants that I didn't even purposely plant.

One last thing... peaches!  I bought two boxes of peaches for $70 from tree-ripe.com when they were in town.  I spread them out to ripen on the counter, and in the meantime, I froze the 10 pounds of blueberries that I had purchased.  Then, I got the flu....
But, my super awesome mother and aunt saved my butt!  Long story, but on the day of the Relay for Life (I'm a committee member) and the eve of our big trip to Disney, I could hardly get out of bed.  And, I have 50 pounds of peaches scattered around my house ripening!!!  When I was in a fever induced coma (aka a really deep nap) the dog decided that peaches were super tasty, and I found remains of five of them all over the floor.  Mom and Aunt Dorothy saved the day, and a lot of my money, and saved the peaches from going bad.  They canned peach jam for me (my favorite!) and froze bags of peaches for me to use in margaritas and other fun things later.  I have something special planned for them after Yellowstone... but until then, here's a picture of me enjoying my peach jam on an English muffin for lunch:

Basil Harvest

Lots of great things have been growing in the garden lately!  Even though I got my planting done really late, things are starting to reward me.  

My basil has been growing like crazy.  It likes the warm weather and the watering that it gets on the deck.  Yesterday, I was able to pick a whole bunch of basil and dehydrate it.  I can't wait to use it during the winter months.

fresh basil in a shrimp marinade

I also wanted to share a picture of my Dollar Tree pepper planter.  I was able to put two plants into each hole, for a total of 14 plants.  I had to buy a hanger (also at the Dollar Tree) to provide for a sunny location on my deck.  So, the cost of my planter is:

$1 for the planter
$1 for the hanger
$1 for potting soil to put in planter
$1.29 for Jalapeno seeds

$3 for electricity to start seeds
Total cost: $7.29

We'll see how many Jalapeno peppers I get out of this one planter.  

Lastly, I thought I'd share the recipe I got off All Recipes.com for the marinated shrimp.  I use the All Recipes app on my iTouch.  Alex did not care for this recipe, but the remaining three members of our family LOVED it.  Alex could taste the cayenne in the recipe, but I certainly would not leave it out!  The shrimp would have been very blah without it.

Taking a break!

I love to take breaks.  Sometimes, I just take a break when I haven't really done any work to break from.  Today is one of those days.  It's hot.  I'm cranky.  I can already tell that when I open my mouth, it's not going to be pretty.  Good thing I won't have to see any people until Tim gets home from work this afternoon.  Grrrr...

Anyway, on to talking about my garden!  It rained a little bit on Saturday, and it also rained last night.  I'm really happy about that, as it saves me a lot of work.  Instead of running around with sprinklers and hoses, I can just let the rain water work it's magic.

I'm kind of embarrassed that I have some planting left to do.  I've finished painting an old milk can, I've finished painting the trim on our little shed (future chicken coop) and I've finished a couple of other projects.  But, I still have some plants to get into the ground.  Onion sets, tomatoes, and jalapeno peppers are left for me to plant.  Embarrassing....

Maybe I'll pick some berries instead :)  Last week, I picked the strawberries that were ready to go.  I need to do that again today.  Instead of talking about it, I should just go do it.  I took pictures of the steps, and got a pretty good sized container in the freezer for the kids to enjoy when they return from Houston.

This week, I also need to pick the wild berries.  There are black caps and mulberries that are ready to be picked.  Of course, it's almost noon, and I'm not sure that I want to be running around out there at the hottest part of the day.  Don't these look delicious?

The last thing I want to post is a picture of my old metal swing that I used to swing on.  It can get kind of windy around here, and during the first year that we had this swing, the top awning blew off.  So, I was forced to sit out in the sun, but it was still so comfortable and nice to swing in it.  Next, the seat cushions got all ripped up and nasty.  There was still the fabric bottom of the swing, though.  So, though not very comfortable, I made due.  After about four years, we decided to retire the swing.  It sat in the junk pile for a long time, until I got the idea that it might make a good trellis!  So, Mackenzie and I drug it out of the junk pile and gave it new life!  This picture is after I first got it in the garden and planted some seeds around it.  I'll try to update pictures as it grows.

Keeping Up

Keeping up with the garden is really hard when you decide to go away for a week.  I am now behind in my planting.  I'm lucky that I have a few things that are growing all on their own, so I don't have to feel awful about not having any plants.

My Strawberry Bed
Shredded Paper Mulch

Today was a fairly productive day.  We had a lot of places that we needed to be, but on the way home from our last commitment of the day I stopped for some potting soil.  I need to plant some more lettuce and spinach in my special salad planter.

The empty lettuce planter sits.... lonely...

Well, as we were walking into the store (to buy potting soil, remember) I started to think about the party I'm throwing for my grandma.  She's turning 90, and I'm having a party for her next weekend.  If people are coming over to my house, I'd better make sure I have a pretty garden for them to enjoy, right?  It's almost like a graduation party!  So, I started buying flowers.  $76 worth of flowers.

My deck planters are going to be more functional this year.  I am planting an herb or veggie plant in almost every planter.  Here is one of my favorite planters, with a tomato growing:

The planters are all ready for plants!

My finished planter, complete with a tomato plant!

I also took a picture of my shade garden today.  I can't believe how huge it grew in just one year.  My hostas have all filled out, and are keeping the weeds down to a minimum.  It literally took me less than an hour to weed my garden this year!  I'll include both a before and after picture.

My shade garden in its infancy...

The same exact garden, this year!

I am also getting little fruits growing all around my yard.  The rhubarb is huge (and for sale!!), I have baby cherries on my tree, and a blossom on my blackberry plant.  My favorite, though?  The strawberries have baby strawberries!!! I will have berries by June, I am sure.  Mackenzie mulched with shredded paper, so the weeds are not even an issue right now.

Blackberry Blossom

Baby Cherries

Today we planted our deck planters, two hanging baskets, garlic, and five tomatoes.  We have a lot to do, still.  I hope we'll be able to get more done tomorrow morning... but the threat of rain makes me nervous!

I planted hanging baskets for my deck...
now if I could only remember to water them!

Last year, I made this cucumber trellis out of stuff I had around our house.
It works really well, and as soon as I relocate the strawberries to the left, I'm planting my cucs!

Blooming Madness

So, it was hot.  Really hot.  85 degrees in March hot.  Then, it got cold.  Frost cold.  It's not good for blossoming trees and plants.  But, we lucked out!  We have some baby cherries!  Mackenzie was the first to spot them.  The cherry tree has only a few on it.  I wonder if it is because it froze when the tree was in full blossom...

We started a few new projects today.  The first was to get the strawberries in a "happy place."  This means, we want to just pick and eat strawberries.  We don't want to do lots of work, weed, or worry about rotten berries.  We just want to eat them!  Some of them, we might want to dip into chocolate (thanks for some great ideas, Pinterest!).  But, we don't want them to be a lot of work.  Something I've read about strawberries is that they don't like touching the dirt.  They rot faster, according to the books.  So, Mackenzie spent a couple of hours today mulching our berries.  This year, we used shredded paper, soaked in water for a while.

We have loads of blossoms, and some little berries, too!  It's going to be fun to see what we get this year.  We've also been selling our berries! I'm so excited to say that we've made $110 from berry sales, and we've almost outfitted Mackenzie for the upcoming hockey season.

Out other project that we're working on is taking care of a planter around a big pine tree in our yard.  This tree has a cinder block ring around it with hostas and lilies.  It was very difficult to weed around, and the lilies were choking most other plants out.  So, we decided to use the cinder blocks in another place, and clean up the bed.  I think we're just going to mow there, now.

If you check out earlier posts in my blog, you'll see some pictures of our shade garden project.  There is a picture right after we brought in the black dirt.  We hadn't even planted anything yet.  I thought I'd share an "after" picture that I took today.  Tim even stopped and commented that he thought it looked pretty good.

I'll leave you with some pictures of our beautiful blossoms that we're enjoying.  The irises are in full blossom, and we have Clematis blooms!

A Fruitful Earth Day

Yes.  I know that April 21st was a beautiful day.  But, instead of doing the work around the house that I needed to do, I took off for a day of Geocaching.  I enjoyed nature, but in a less than productive way than if I had stayed home and worked on my garden.
That being said, I did have a productive Sunday.  We had to leave home at noon for some hockey festivities, so everything I was to accomplish needed to be done before then.  The whole family pitched in!

• There were blueberries to plant and mulch.  We had one die on us last year.  Gurney's sent me two new bushes this year to replace the one that died last year.  We got those in the ground and mulched and weeded all of the blueberries.  Alex collected grass clippings and Mackenzie mulched with a layer of newspaper and grass clippings on top.

• I decided that I wanted a bigger compost pile that would be easier to open and turn.  We had three old pallets from our wood pellets, so we got a fourth one from the neighbors burn pile and made a second compost pile.  Tim built the new "bin" last weekend, and Mackenzie worked hard to shovel equal parts green and brown into the new compost pile.  Thanks to my dad for collecting up his leaves this spring so we had some brown to work with.

• Tim, Alex and Mackenzie worked hard to plant the 13 little Fraser Fir trees that we bought from the Columbia County Land and Water Conservation tree sale this year.  Thanks to my brother-in-law for dropping them off to us, thus saving me a trip to town!  Tim still has 25 domestic apple trees to plant this coming weekend.  We have a huge decision ahead of us.... where to start our new apple orchard!  We also were excited to discover some buds on our Honeycrisp apple tree.  Last year, it was a beautiful tree, but had no buds or apples.  We have buds this year!

• We also have lots of blooms on our strawberries.  Mackenzie decided to try and sell the plants this year, so she could earn some money to play on expensive all-girls hockey team this year.  So far, we've raised $28 for her!  She's excited to sell tomato, pepper, eggplant, and cucumber plants this spring, and she plans on having a "produce stand" as the summer progresses.  We'll see how that goes!

• My dad is amazing!  He got out his old Ford tractor and a rusty old disc, and went to town on my garden.  It looks amazing!  We'll be able to start planting next weekend.  I owe him something awesome for him riding around in circles for a good hour.  I think I'll treat him to several jars of homemade salsa, as a big thank you.  I'd better get these tomatoes in the ground so I'll have plenty to can with this fall!

Our mulched blueberries have newspaper as a weed barrier and then grass clippings to hold moisture in.

Priorities.... Mackenzie decided that it's time to get the hammock out.

Spring has a way of sneaking up on me!

I've been taking pictures, but not finding a time to write about them...


Project #1: Seed Starting Central
The cheapest way to grow a garden is to buy seeds and start them yourself.  Now, I'm a lazy person, and forgetting to water the seedlings can render an entire flat useless.  This year, I put watering in my calendar that I check frequently.  I've still had a couple of days that I've forgotten, but the seedlings have become little plants, and they are pretty happy looking!  Because I was horrible at keeping up at blogging (too busy playing in the dirt!) I'll date the pictures.  What did we do before digital photography put a digital date stamp on photos?

March 18th

On March 18th, I had finally spent enough money at Menards to start my seeds.  I needed some new plastic flats this year.  I also use seed starting medium in my flats.  It happened to be on sale this year.  I used some Miracle Gro from last year and some of the Schultz.  The Schultz was much harder to work with, as it takes a long time to absorb the water.  A really long time.  However, as time has passed, this has proven to be a plus.  When I water the flats, I can pour water on the edges and it doesn't uproot the seedlings.  It was much cheaper, and I forgot to mark which flats were which, to compare growing success.  Whoops!

March 18th

Last year, Tim had made this grow stand for me.  It was made using lumber and supplies that my father-in-law had around, and it's wonderful!  The light is provided by regular fluorescent fixtures that we got for $9 each at Farm and Fleet.  I have a before picture and an after picture.  There was a lot of work in between the two!

Most of the seeds that I started this year I was given by someone who saved them out of the dumpster.  I bought two packages of jalapeno seeds (those things are so expensive to buy in the cold winter months!) and one package of cabbage seeds.  Aside from the extra electricity cost of running the grow lights and the seed starting medium, there wasn't a lot that I needed to buy this year.  That makes for a happy husband!

March 25th