A New Garden Bed for Christmas

 This is my new garden bed that I got for Christmas. It is just like two other garden beds that I have. It is railroad ties filled with leaves, soil and compost. I love it....so, of course, some do-gooder had to come on my facebook post and tell me how they cause cancer. Well honey, guess what, everything thing does!

The facts are they contain creosote and studies have proven that plants do not take this up by the roots so it is unlikely to cause any harm. Not to mention that mine are really old railroad ties and any creosote has probably already leached out. I never see any black on them or get any on me when I touch them (which is pretty seldom). 

So anyway, if you are a do-gooder, you're barking up the wrong tree...so to speak. I plan on putting in at least three more of these beds as the years go on. And you wait and see if we aren't told,  later on. that all these metal beds with their plastic linings cause cancer too and then you can bother those people. 

Just so you all know, I have never had vegetables grow so well as they do here in these beds. Can't wait to show you what I grow in this one. 

Don't Grow What You Won't Eat!

 I watch a lot of gardening youtube videos. They are a great source of information but what you have to remember is that those gardeners are growing for their youtube channel. I see a lot of them waste a lot of garden space growing things they don't eat. 
For instance, I saw one recently that had a whole row of basil. What in the world are you going to do with a 15 ft row of basil? This person mentioned that they had made a lot of pesto from it but just how much pesto are you really going to eat in one year? What ingredients did you have to BUY to go with that basil to make the pesto? Plus when this gardener showed the basil again (going to seed), it didn't look like they had made much from it. This applies to most herbs. People grow them but don't know what to do with them. I grew some volunteer basil this year and I dried and saved a jar full. Probably will pull any that come up next year. I have one sage plant that gives me all the sage I need for the few times I use it in soups. I have an absolutely huge rosemary plant (just one) and I am having to learn new ways to use rosemary. So far I have fried potatoes with it, add it to noodles, on chicken and in my eggs in the morning. We also love thyme on potatoes. Plus I just had some peppermint given to me (it's in a pot) and I probably won't use it a lot but peppermint tea is great when you have a cough. 
Zucchini is another great example. How many times have you heard someone say, "We had so much zucchini, we couldn't give it away." So why did you grow so many? Do you even like eating it? For me one zucchini plant is probably enough. I like yellow and pattypan squash a lot more but even then, I only like it fresh so I am not going to grow more than can produce more than a few a week. 
Peppers is a third example that I see a lot. If you use them, that's great. I don't happen to use a lot of peppers. I especially don't use hot peppers. Anything with heat above a jalapeno is probably hotter than I will ever use. And although we like stuffed peppers, we don't eat them a lot. I planted two peppers this year and have a ziplock bag of them cut up in the freezer and I made stuffed peppers once. Now next year I may plant a few more but it won't be a lot. 
The point is, before you plant something in your garden ask yourself: Do I really like eating this? How much of this can I eat or preserve? This way you won't be wasting space growing stuff that you will never use. For some of us with just raised beds that extra space can come in handy. 

Kale

 

The kale that I grew over last winter has been sitting in the freezer this whole time.  See I don't get to cook much because I work later then my husband so he cooks and he apparently just didn't think that kale would be good to eat. So tonight I was cooking and snagged a bag and put it on to boil and we had it with some homemade mac n'cheese and chicken wings. Oh MY GOD! It was so good. Really mild with no bitterness at all! 
Guess who just ordered more kale seeds?

Cheap Irrigation

 Since my operation money has been tight while trying to get all these different doctor bills paid so there isn't a whole lot left. Watering, however, is something I really hate having to do. Luckily since we have lived in this house we have had plentiful rain and I have only had to drag that hose out a few times. I never really feel that it does a good watering though. And I also feel I would get better germination when I plant seeds if I had some kind of consistent watering.  I wanted something better but needed something cheap. So I did what we all do now. I searched through Amazon and found he cheapest little sprinkler set I could find then found an even cheaper one with TWO sets ON SALE and I bought that one for $14. (I has now gone up in price). 

My knees have gotten very bad lately but I wanted to test it out so slowly set up a row down one side of my raised bed with garlic and then down the next side where the shallots are. Hooked the hose to it and turned on the water just a tiny bit with the last little sprinkler head turned open. Then I opened each one working my way down the line until I got to the beginning. It works great. 

Now, I don't know how this is going to stand up through the winter. It is just cheap plastic parts but I have enough tubing and sprinkler heads and connectors to redo it if I have to. I definitely am going to add to this in the spring and do the other raised beds so they have water as well. It's been a good day already. 

Fall Update

 I am trying to do a little fall gardening this year. I got some Louisiana Evergreen Shallots from LazyDogFarm (they have great youtube videos) and they came up great and are doing well. Then I tried turnips and beets which didn't come up well. As a matter a fact none of the beets came up and only a couple of the turnips so I planted some in the greenhouse and they all came up so something is happening to my seeds in my fall raised beds. I don't know what but I will just plant fall crops in the greenhouse and then transplant them to the beds from now on. I also have some fall squash out there an we'll just have to wait and see if they do anything before we get a frost. I also planted some cucumbers in pots just as an experiment and they are growing really well but haven't produced anything yet. I started garlic chives in pots in the greenhouse, took cuttings from my rosemary which only two of rooted but they are in a pot in the greenhouse and I cut a bunch of rosemary to dry and put in jars to use in the house. 

Today the shade cloth came off the greenhouse and it's vents by the roof have been blocked with insulation. I believe we are cool enough now to not need the cloth any more and the plants will benefit from more sun and heat right now. I don't want to turn on the heater until absolutely necessary. 
Garlic also got planted in the garden today. I am trying a large bulb from the grocery store and a sampler pack from SeedsNow! I have never planted garlic so we'll just have to wait and see how it goes. 

I work in a daycare just down the street here. I have the after school children ages 5 and up. This year we got to have a little kiddie pool they bought for me for a "garden". We planted beans and zucchini in it and the beans just died when it got hot but the zucchini kept going and produced just a few zucchini for us. I took those and made the kids zucchini bread since they had never tried it. My 5 year olds had mixed reviews but the 6 and up kids all loved it. 

That is about all that is going on here as far and the garden goes. Hope everyone's fall gardens are doing well. Let us know in the comments. 

Spaghetti Sauce

 I have never actually made spaghetti sauce at home but we still had a lot of tomatoes and I know the basic idea so ....I winged it. 

I used my old Presto strainer. It is so easy to use. It takes out the seeds and skins and just leaves you with the sauce. I added some onion, a few small banana peppers, basil, and oregano from the garden, salt and pepper, and some minced garlic. 

Then I just simmered it for a couple hours until it looked thick enough. It maybe isn't as thick as store bought but we tried it out and it was pretty good. It only made enough for maybe 3 meals but that is three jars of spaghetti sauce that I don't have to buy and it used up most of the tomatoes. 

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes...

 So far my 9 plants have produced 62 tomatoes and the plants are still loaded with green ones. They don't all ripen at once and a lot of them are still on the windowsill getting their last bit of red. I am picking them a little early this year because there is a caterpillar (or worm of some kind) making holes in the red ones. 
Now we have used several in salads (along with the garden lettuce and cucumbers) and on hamburgers but that still leaves a lot and I wait until I have a decent bunch and cook them up for Phil. We usually buy canned tomatoes because Phil likes them in his spaghetti and mac n' cheese and a few other things. Of course, the fresh ones are just so much better.

So you start by putting them in boiling water for a few minutes and getting the peel off. Peeling tomatoes such a messy job! 

Then I added a little salt and cooked them in the pan until they were nice and juicy but still had some form. Our tomatoes this year are mostly Roma with a few Homestead. The Roma's worked really well and I think we will stick with those from now on. 

That's pretty much all there is to it. Let them cool a bit, put them in containers and pop them in the fridge. 

Yes, just three containers this time but that is 3 cans of tomatoes that I didn't have to buy at the store and those tomatoes sitting on my island didn't go to waste. I imagine by this weekend I will have so many tomatoes that I will have to do it all again. I love putting up things from the garden even if it is just three containers of tomatoes.

Remember make the most of what you have. 

What's Growing?

 So you would think that we wouldn't be able to grow as much here in town as we did out in the country but that hasn't turned out to be the case. We have a nice sized corner lot with yard area on all sides of the house. The raised beds are in the back yard and so far there are just the three. The two big ones that we made out of the railroad beams that were here and then a small metal one. Our backyard, although surrounded by trees gets a LOT more sun than our yard in the country did and it is more of a sandy soil so no red clay to deal with. Things just grow so much better. Last year there was summer squash, tomatoes and peppers and this year there are tons of tomatoes, cucumbers,

a few cabbage, lettuce and hopefully there will be squash (I got is started later because I had a rather major surgery to deal with this year). There are also two metal tub planters that I am keeping herbs in. he oregano has gone to flower but the sage is looking great 

 

and there is some lemon grass and the huge rosemary has taken over one corner of one of the raised beds. Basil came up on its own from where it had seeded last year. 

My metal raised bed started out with just two strawberry plants in it but is quickly growing runner after runner and I expect the bed will be full in no time. Now I just have to figure out how to keep the strawberries from the ants. There is also a little raspberry plant in there that my daughter gave me an I didn't know what to do with so it is in there for now. 

My daughter gave me a pomegranate bush and I myself bought two small blueberry bushes. 

I also just bought another Meyer lemon. I read my post from before about buying one but I have no idea what happened to that one. I do know that I never got any lemons from it that I can remember. Hopefully this one will do better. 

So I think that is most of what is growing food-wise here. I have lots of flowers and houseplants has turned into a little business but I'll leave that for another post. Here are pictures of my tomatoes. I have two windowsills full already. There are just 9 plants out there, mostly Roma but a few Homestead. 

Sauerkraut Day

 I haven't made sauerkraut in a very long time but my little garden produced four cabbages this year and while we LOVE cabbage, my digestion doesn't love it as much so I eat it on Saturday because I don't go back to work until Monday. This week I had a nice big cabbage harvested but we had a lot to do Saturday and we just didn't get around working it into our meal. So today it started its journey into becoming sauerkraut. 
The recipe link is there on the right under No Crock Sauerkraut or you can just click here. Making sauerkraut in a jar is simple and easy. There were no pictures of me making it on that link so I decided to take some this time. 
So here is our cabbage fresh from the garden with the outside leaves stripped off. 

Here it is all cut up. I, for some reason, could not find my grater anywhere so ended up having to use my old Oster meat slicer. Seriously it worked great and I probably would do the same next time. 



This is where the salt is added and the cabbage is allowed to rest for about an hour. Then it is just put in the jars add cold water and put on the lids and leave it for 6-8 weeks before you can it. I got 8 jars from just one cabbage. 

I was going to can some carrots I had as well (leftovers from a barbeque we had) but I am out of jars at the moment. Maybe I'll run to the store. Never can have too many jars. 

The Greenhouse Part 2

 

Painting is not my favorite task and I only intended to paint the greenhouse once but SURPRISE Kilz Ultra Bright White is actually a cream color....sigh....I'm not a real picky person but I kind of wanted my greenhouse to match the house and the shop which are WHITE and so I painted again....

And while I was painting Phil was working on the water catchment. It is basically a gutter that runs into a small plastic barrel and a line runs through the wall to a small faucet with a hose on it so that I can fill a bucket inside the greenhouse and have good rainwater to water the plants with. 

He also built me a potting bench inside along the back wall. I have shelves for the sides ordered but UPS lost them the first time and I am trying again to get more.  

After that we chalked all the cracks between windows and boards. I still have to do some chalking around some of the older window panes but for now it is pretty weather tight. I have taken my hardier cacti out there and they are doing fine. When we got down to freezing for a few nights, we ran a cord from the shop so I could have a heater in there. 

This summer ventilation will be more important. The spots at the roof line are filled with insulation and those can come out, the window on the front door can be opened and I bought these solar powered fans that I can put in those open roof line spots to help get the heat out. I tested them out today and they work great. Whenever sun hits the solar panel they stay on. The fans also have a manual on/off switch that I like. 

I plan on started my vegetables for my raised beds this year. I feel like I am a little behind on some of them but right now I am having some back issues and will get it done when I am better. Looking forward to a great growing year this year now that I have my dream greenhouse!

The Greenhouse Part 1

I have wanted a real greenhouse for a long time. The one I had at the old house was made of wood and plastic. Nothing wrong with that but I have always wanted a...well...nicer one. I brought up the subject with Phil about making one from old windows and he liked it and we started searching for our windows. The windows were all found on Facebook Marketplace for various amounts. Some were $5 each, some were more and some were bought in lots of 20-30. 

 

He put the first side together to give him an idea on what size to build the other sides. 

Then it took some figuring to get the other sides right and we had to get more windows before it was all over. 

The door is a storm door from Marketplace. I wanted one that I could open so that we could use it for ventilation and a storm door was the perfect thing to use. 

I'll say now that this was a tremendous amount of work and even for my small greenhouse the walls were incredibly heavy. 

It's finally altogether here. In Part 2, I'll get it painted and the water catchment system and a few other things.