Garden Recap- PART 2

 July 18th - The tomato frenzy begins!! This is the point where you stay up half the night, every night to can, pickle, freeze, dehydrate etc. It's fun at first. By August, I'm just plain tired! I think I was so caught up in canning, I didn't get a single picture! My Roma tomatoes saved me this year. Years past I couldn't get enough tomatoes at once to can big batches. I finally realized I needed more determinate tomatoes with bear all the fruit in about 3 weeks. Picture of the canning jars in the basement coming soon... For pickles, I did our usual dill, plus a few sweet, and some relish in canning jars. When I was spent, I started fermenting them. Though they ended up kind of squishy (I didn't have any grape leaves to help them stay firm) , they are so yummy fermented. I prefer them now over water bath canned pickles.

Lots of varieties of cherry tomatoes. Black cherry, egg yolk, sun gold (the only hybrid tomato I grow), tommy toe. Each has it's pros and cons. Egg yolk are mild and softer than the others, but lasted the longest. I was still harvesting up until a few weeks ago. Tommy toe is more old time flavor. Sun gold is crazy sweet like candy and early to produce but they were also the first to give up in late August. Black cherry, no negatives there. They are delicious!

 July 25th brought the first watermelon. Orangeglo.

It is sweet though has none of the "tropical" flavor in the seed packet description. We also planted Ledmon, a red variety. Ledmon is the best.

 August 8th - More watermelon

 August 11th

The first Ledmon melon.  They are so good!

We even weighed it for fun. Came in a 31 lbs!

 August 22nd The beginning of the sweet potato harvest.

 My usual helpers ;)

It was a good year for sweet potatoes. They were giants. No nitrogen went into the bed. I did a potassium in the way of greensand.

At this point tomatoes where slowing way down. By the end of August the majority of my tomatoes were done. I had big plans to stagger my tomato planting doing some May 1st and another batch June 1st. It didn't happen. The romas did awesome. I saved and used some jersey devil (an indeterminate paste tomato) seeds from last year. Come to find out those jersey devils had Fusarium Wilt from the seed I saved. I had to rip them out early to keep it from spreading to the others. I had save the seed late in the season and I think that was the problem. Next year, I'll just buy the seed.

 September 9th. Beans. These are Black Turtle. I love them! They are matte black and small but did really well. I planted them right after I harvested my cabbage in that bed, early- mid summer.

Here's what the pantry looked like September 9th. I had yet to do my applesauce (did those in October, 36 Quarts).

Jams-
Strawberry lemon, peach, blackberry, grape

Pickles-
Dills, Sweet, Relish

Tomatoes-
Salsa, Whole, diced, sauce, and pizza sauce

Peaches-
Spiced, Regular light syrup

Dehydrated-
Sweet Peppers all colors
Zucchini
Tomatoes
Chili Peppers
Peaches

Cold Storage-
Beans
Butternut Squash
Acorn Squash
Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes

Still wishing I had more tomatoes at this point in the year (November) we use those often. Especially Pizza Sauce.
We ate through all 60lbs of potatoes minus some for seed.
I didn't count my cans. I should do that next year. We've already eaten enough it wouldn't be accurate. If I had to guess, I would say maybe 150-200? Nowhere near my crazy sister ;)

Fermented-
Pickles
Sauerkraut
Kimchi
Lemons (though not from my garden ;)

Froze-
Green Beans
Corn
Grape extras
Blackberries

I will also be canning cranberry sauce soon. Because store bought cranberry sauce is just not as good :)

Garden Year Recap! PART 1

I haven't been posting much on here because I keep track of most of my garden dates of planting and harvest on Instagram. It's easier than uploading pictures and consequently less likely I forget to document dates. If you have an instagram follow me @shapingthenest. If you don't, here's a recap of the last 6 months or so. I will try and keep the blog updated more so I don't have to do a blog marathon to catch up ;)

 July 1st. We were harvesting, blanching and freezing green beans. 

 July 2nd- The potatoes were ready. I had some really cute helpers.

Potatoes are such a fun surprise and fun to find the buried treasure.

I did white kennebec, molly magic, and yukon gold. White kennebec is an amazing producer for the space. But of course, the others are the favorites for flavor.   It ended up being about 60lbs worth.

When they were digging the kids even found a toad!

These are molly magic. They stay purple even after cooking. The kids love them. Such a beautiful potato, this picture was taken with an iphone and no filter... it's that pretty!

 July 9th- I harvested some of my onions. I took this picture after these purple onions (Cabernet- Hybrid) had cured. They were much smaller but surprisingly are in really good shape even now in November.

I did a lot of trials this year for onions. I did hybrids and open pollination varieties. I was trying to find a good intermediate day onion, which is the correct type for the middle of the country. Oh and I learned that the hard way. But lesson learned, and we had huge onions this year. I grew Candy, Expression, and Valencia. The first two are hybrids, the third open pollination. All did really well. Candy was probably the winner as far as size goes though. I wish I had kept them separated by variety because now a few are sprouting and I'm not sure which variety it is that isn't keeping well. Cameron build me one screen to dry out onions and as you can see they were crowded. He whipped up another thankfully!

July 13th - I didn't have enough room to grow all the tomato varieties I had started so Cam built me this garden bump out cage. I grew Romas, Jersey Devil, and Sun gold in there. I'm big on using the Florida weave and a trellis (as you can see in the picture). By the end of summer the tomatoes are well beyond the 8ft trellis. 

July 13th- The tomatoes we just ramping up. And obviously cucumbers in full swing. Lemon squash- my very favorite for its bug resistance. 

July 14th- I just finished canning peaches. The peaches came from a local farm stand but unfortunately not from Arkansas. We had a late freeze this year and all the blooms froze. I did regular peaches in sugar syrup, then spiced peaches with honey, spiced peaches with coconut sugar, and peach jam, no added pectin. I like to experiment. My spiced peach recipe was whoa, really spicy! It called for a half cinnamon stick in each jar. By the time we started using them a few months later that cinnamon was too strong. Note to self to find another recipe next year!

 July 14th. A strangely formed tomato. These are cherokee purple. A new variety I tried. They are oh so delicious! Not prolific, but an excellent slicing tomato.

 Here I am thinning out my strawberries. I planted Flavorfest, a variety that is suppose to be good for organic growing. I snuck a few, even though it was the first year. They were really good. They are also crazy vigorous and send runners in a million directions. I pruned them 4 times because I only wanted mother plants.

 July 14th - The first of my corn. Silver and Gold hybrid. I grew two kinds this year. Silver and gold wins again. They are early and I usually end up harvesting before corn earworms do any damage.  Though not a supersweet variety they are so good.

An look into the garden. July 14th. Lots of GREEN!

A few Garden Pictures from the past few weeks

 I harvested our garlic right at the end of May. We were just about to leave on vacation and it ended up being the perfect time. They dried in my bedroom while we were gone with a fan on them. By the time we got back they were ready to braid and store in the basement.

 The kids in early June. This is right after we got back from our trip. The blueberries were ready and they were out eating them all!

 I was actually worried at the beginning of this year. My kale and my napa cabbage didn't turn out as well as last years because of a snail and slug infestation. I learned something though and that is not to plant my cabbages so close together. The red express cabbage came out well though!

 Corn is growing as fast as someone else I know! I actually need to update this picture our corn has tassels and is growing husks now.

June 14- the first ripe blackberries

 June 16- Harvesting a good amount every few days but it still wasn't enough to keep up with the kids. We went to the local you pick to get enough to freeze for the year.

This one is from last Friday- I love having fruit in the mix! It did take me a few hours to harvest everything though. Whew!

Whats going on- Powder Room

It's been a while since I've posted on here! The last 6 months were too crazy busy to do anything other than what I considered necessities at the time and this blog wasn't on my list. So be prepared for a lot of posting to update over the next few weeks.

I don't have too much as far as house projects go... Which is the other reason I haven't posted. The slow amount of progress is very depressing!

We still have an half finished kitchen. Cam did put the open shelving up so at least we are functioning in there.  Midway through the kitchen project Cam decided to pull off the bathroom wallpaper, which led to me doing what I actually wanted in there on the wall, wainscoting half way up. If you have boys you understand why wipeable walls is a must :) Then once the wainscoting was almost done, I realized the floors had to go. It was a total domino effect! I didn't think the floors were that bad until the walls started looking so good! And then I wanted a new vanity too. I know. It's bad.
So Cameron said he could build the vanity and he did. Where we are at now is that I'm waiting patiently (or not so patiently) for him to paint it with the paint sprayer (which I why I haven't done it myself). And lay the new tile on the floor. And finish the wainscoting. And then put everything else back together. When it's done I will show pictures. But for now here is some before and halfway pics...

 This is the best before I have. The bathroom is super tiny. I'm not quite sure how to get a good picture! Just take my word that the wallpaper was hideous. Even though you can't see it much in this picture above.

This is post wallpaper removal. We have primer and wainscoting part way up now. But no pictures of how it looks now. I promise it's not much to see... yet.

A Year of Homegrown Food and a New Goal for January

Around new years last year, I made a goal to grow all of our vegetables from the garden for the year. May 2017-May 2018. So far, I'm at about 90% veggies from our garden and 10% from the store.  It has been so worth it to learn lots of new things.

[Little Gem lettuce on the left. Turnips on the right] November 27 2017

I think the main thing I've learned is to be a better steward of all the life, plants and animals, that God has given us. I waste way less food than I did before. I realized all the labor and money that went into every plant. We butchered our rooster this year and ate the meat. Butchering our own chicken helped me to be more conscious where the meat comes from and I think I naturally started to eat less meat in general. (Someday I hope to do more meat chickens but our current location won't allow for it)

[May 20th 2017]

Another bonus of eating our own veggies only has been savings on the grocery bill. We are consistently saving $700 a month from last years average grocery bill. That is no exaggeration.  Even though using our own vegetables helped us lower the spending, going to the store less (twice a month) was a major savings. We didn't have a chance to impulse buy. The other thing that came out of eating homegrown food is I cook way more from scratch and that cut down the grocery budget as well.

[Arugula November 27 2017]

Even though gardening is fun, another huge motivator for me is health. I still struggle some health problems, acid reflux being one of them. Conventional medicine barely makes a difference in the pain level but consuming more veggies and less processed food seems to be helping. 

As long as my hoop tunnels hold up, I think we'll make it to spring (2 degrees is the low tonight!). 

[Mulching leaves to put in the garden. Noelle was happy to come along for the ride! December 4th 2017]

[December 2 2017]

I really like having a goal to strive for and because I'm not crazy enough, I decided to do a no grocery shopping month for January. My sister Amy has done this many times before and I haven't been brave enough to try it until now. We don't like going without fresh food- especially fruit! But since I'm already halfway there not shopping for veggies, and I have lots of canned applesauce and peaches, plus frozen fruit, I figured why not give it a try. We haven't been to the store since before Christmas so if I make it to the end of January it will be extra cool!

Fall Garden

 One last picture before our first frost (which was last Friday night)

Salad makings!

 

 Me scrambling to get all my frost prep done last week. This was the first half of the tomatoes and peppers. Also, I dried some of my thyme and oregano.

Good mother stallard beans. These are really good in soups. They were about double the size of the other types of beans I grew. I'm a sucker for the pretty pattern too.

Winter food storage