CANNING POTATOES

So I'm going to can potatoes today. I have so many it may take me a few days to can them all. The reason I'll can them is to keep them longer. I did some reading. With good treatment you can keep potatoes for 6 months. But canned potatoes keep for years. I will most likely use all my potatoes up with in 12 months, but I don't want to waste any of what I've grown. I will also be canning tomatoes sauce and zucchini today and most likely tomorrow. And I'm replanting the two beds the potatoes came out of. My garden has really done well this year. Not bad for the first year! The soil was pretty bad, but the straw has really improved it. Over the winter I'll add compost, and ash to continue to improve the soil. Over time it should just get better! And I hope to move the tomatoes into a greenhouse next season. So I'll much more room for the other crops next year. Well that's the hope, it's all according to God's will. You can never count on anything, it's all grace!
We harvested 25 gallons of potatoes today.

Chinese cabbages, tomatoes and zucchini and potatoes

The garden is really starting to produce well. I now need to process what I have grown. Yesterday I made a giant pot of vegetable soup using my potatoes onions, and zucchini. I'll can what we don't eat. I'm also making pickles today. I also have lots of tomatoes, so I guess I'll make some tomato sauce. I need to find a good way to save the Chinese cabbage. I wonder if you can make sauerkraut with Chinese cabbage? Anyway, here are a few pictures of yesterdays crops. I have about this much every other day. I need to dig up all the potatoes now. I think I'll can those too. New potatoes don’t keep well, but they can well.

Finally!

We finally have vine ripened Heirloom tomatoes. This is what I picked today. I have peas, tomatoes, yellow zucchini, and cucumbers and flowers. I don't have enough for the whole world but I do have enough for a few friends. So if you want some fresh tomatoes then let me know. I'm ready to trade!

A good trade

A friend of mine traded me her good berries for our vegetables. Nicole and I picked 5 gallons of mixed fruit (cherries, gooseberries and currants). We are making juice. I'll add a little sugar to the juice, and we will have a very good syrup to have with ice cream or pan cakes. Juergen's mom use to make this berry syrup.

please come pick salad

To my local friends…I really need people to come pick salad from my garden. Please, do not be shy! It's fresh, organic heirloom lettuce. And it's free! We are eating a salad a day but I just have too much. Please come by and get some fresh salad. If we don’t pick the lettuce it will go to seed. It needs to be picked. My good friend Vivienne just came to pick up some salad. We had tea and a nice visit. She is going to teach me how to cook Indian food in exchange for my fresh vegetables. I'm getting the best part of the deal. She is a great cook! Please do not be shy, I have allot of very good salad to give away. I’ll give it away for free… but if it makes you feel uncomfortable I will also trade it for any useful thing or skill. I have so much very good lettuce right now, I would hate for it to go to seed! I even have a few plants to give away. Tomato plants and flowers and peppers. Everything we have started from seeds. I don’t have many plants to give away…so this is a first come first serve offer. It was a cold and wet day, but I just loved sharing a tea with my good friend!

We have lot's of Salad to trade Now

Here are a few photo's of our garden. I bought many small Cactus in Italy for a cactus garden. The larger cactus was something Nicole found in Imperia. It had fallen to the ground. It started to grow roots so she brought it home to plant. We have lots of lettuces’, broccoli, cabbages , onions, potato's and carrots and tomatoes. I'm ready to harvest lettuce for salad. If anyone wants salad come on over. I could use canning jars. I'll trade lettuce for canning jars. I can trade for other stuff too, just let me know. It's heirloom lettuce from England. I'll have tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchini in about a 3 weeks. We will also have cutting flowers around the first part of July. The artichokes are also getting big. And I pulled over 2 wheel barrows of weeds with the help of Sarah. Nicole and I want to make ketchup today. We brought stuff home from Italy to make ketchup. I'm glad to be home! The photo of Juergen is in Italy. We bought him a passion flower for his birthday.

Straw mulch and compost tea

This morning I had a dream that the straw I had ordered came. Sure enough it did. So Nicole and I put a fresh layer of straw mulch over the potatoes. We also put mulch on the vegetable beds. It will help preserve the moister in the beds. If it rains allot, the mulch will soak up the extra water. If it's dry, it will release water to the plants. And the soil will not dry out. For the potatoes, it helps keep the ground dark. I'll also add some sawdust or something to help keep the area dark. If potatoes get exposed to the sunlight they turn green. Green potatoes are poisons to eat. Another thing we did is add the compost tea to water, and we watered all the plants. It really stinks. I started making the compost tea about 5 weeks ago. It has soil, weeds, peels from vegetables, fish bones, coffee grounds and egg shells and lots of water. It really smells bad! It's been sitting in the sun cooking for weeks. We added a small amount of this tea to the watering can, then more water. All the plants got feed. I hope it helps encourage good growth! I may cover the grass and all the flower beds with this stinky tea. The videos I've seen on you tube say compost tea will really help the plants grow. I just had to give it a try. Right now everything we are doing is a theory. We have never done these things before. It's all theory. But so far everything is doing pretty good. The only thing that hasn't done well in the garden is the pumpkin plant. I think it got eaten by something? It's dead. but I have new pumpkins starting from seeds. So we will see if we can still get a pumpkin crop this year. It's hard to believe this garden is only a few months old. We will get a pretty good crop for the first year! And in time, as the soil improves, it will only get better! I love it! It really makes me happy to grow some of my own food!

40 new heirloom tomato plants

I just planted another 40 heirloom tomato plants. We now have around 60 plants. Some already have flowers on them. We should have tomatoes in a few short weeks. There will be a steady supply of tomatoes all summer and into the fall (God willing). Most of these plants were started from seeds. I don't know about you, but I love vine ripened tomatoes! I could eat them like candy! And we planted the cucumber and pumpkin starts. The sunflowers are also growing strong. And the cabbages and kohlrabi will be ready to harvest in a month. So Nicole and I potted a half a dozen trays of new plants. They should be ready to plant when I harvest the spring crop. I am going to need some more canning jars. It will not be long until we have our first harvest. We also planted summer flower seeds. They can replace the gladiolas when they are finished flowering. I imagine we will have cutting flowers in another month too.

jumbo garden sacks

I had 2 jumbo sacks in my garage. Today I used those to build 2 more high raised beds in my garden( we now have a total of 6). And because they work much better then the low raised beds, I won the bid for 5 more jumbo sacks on eBay. So I hope to have 11 high raised garden beds in my vegetable garden. I may even find room for more. I'm already harvesting lettuce and onions from my high raised beds. Everything seems to do very well, with so little effort. I realize they are not as good looking, but they are very productive. So in the end, I may replace all my garden beds with these jumbo sacks. I got the idea from an African sack garden. Then I improved the idea by taking these over sized plastic sacks supported in wire compost cages. The results last year were awesome. And this year the results are also great. Here are photo's from last year. I’ll get new photo's soon.

My garden today

Planting

I got my "Ballerina" roses in the mail today. I planted them right away. So now I've got 7 rambling rose bushes. It will take awhile before they look like anything more then branches. My whole garden is planted with small plants. We planted 25 lavender plants yesterday. They are tiny little things. Most of my plants are small. I saved money that way. But I can just imagine what it will look like in a few years. Right now the dandelions are the biggest plants! I also bought 6 heirloom tomatoes, 2 egg plants and 3 peppers to replace what was lost when we had that last frost. I moved some cabbages from my sack garden to make room for the tomatoes. I also planted 4 poppy plants. They are yellow, orange, white and red. I placed them near the pond. Poppies don't like to be moved. I hope they feel good in their new place. I'm nearly finished with the planting. I'm going to need to move forward with maintenance. Like pulling out those weeds! That's not nearly as much fun!

I lost my plants

Last night's frost killed my tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. I guess I was just too anxious to plant my garden. Now I need to wait, and plant again. It will probably be safe in a month. I even had the tomatoes covered, but they froze. I lost 10 beautiful Heirloom tomatoes. So sad!

Plants coming to my garden

Schwarze Fledermausblume, Bat plant

Sonnenblume - Lemon Queen

Beliebtes, scharfes Chili für Salsas

Sonnenblume - Red Sun

Alte, seltene, purpur-pinke Fleischtomate - Cherokee purple

Tigerella - rot-gelb

orange Russian