Green Beans

Yesterday I had a few toddler free hours and got to snap and can a few pounds of green beans to put up for the fall. Green beans are Papas favorite so I was really miffed when ours decided not to sprout this year. We think it was bad seed because we tried two different times and nothing came up even though the rest of the garden did in the same conditions. In addition to canning green beans yesterday I tilled and planted a part of the garden that wasn't being used and put in some green beans for the fall. We won't get as much as a spring crop would have brought but it's better than nothing. We'll have until mid to late October before we get a frost so we'll have a few months of growing, I don't think we'll harvest enough to make it through until next spring but some is better than none.

Putting Up Our Bounty

This year has been excellent for zucchini and cucumbers for our family. This is partially due to rain and partially due to TinyPerson deciding to spread cucumber seeds all over the garden while we were planting this year. We have my neat 10 foot row trellised up and then TinyPerson's dozen vines spread out here, there, and yonder producing like crazy.I've trellised them as best I can but I tried to keep them low because she loves to go check her vines and see what's growing.

Cucumbers
We've been harvesting about 10-15 pickling cucumbers a day and so far I've made about a dozen quarts of pickles, another dozen pints, given away baskets full and I still have another 6 quarts worth waiting to be pickled tomorrow when TinyPerson is with grandma. I've also pickled beets, green beans, and jalapenos this year, we'll have a fine relish tray this fall! I use the dill pickle recipe from the Ball Blue Book but occasionally I'll add extra crushed red pepper or garlic depending on how I'm feeling and I also use apple cider vinegar and white vinegar interchangeably.

Zucchini and Yellow Squash
This year for Mother's Day I was gifted with 4 zucchini plants and they've been very productive this year. I've found myself using all manner of food preservation to save the harvest in addition to throwing it in everything! I've been freezing, dehydrating and .I attempted pickling but it wasn't the greatest so I don't think I'll be trying that again.  When I freeze squash I generally slice and bread it for frying later and with zucchini I'll shred it and freeze it in 1/2c. portions for baking in the fall. I love fried squash but with it being so hot in the kitchen during the summer I prefer to save it for the fall when the house could use some warming up. The dehydrated squash and zucchini gets tossed into soups and stews over the winter to fill them out a bit and add some extra flavor and fiber.

Fall Gardening
Our tomatoes are huge and green on the vine and we're just waiting for them to turn red to harvest them. It got hot a little faster than usual so they're having a hard time turning in the heat. TinyPerson and I got seeds yesterday from our local seed store to plant for our fall garden so I'm going to start that tomorrow. Our green beans didn't come up the first go round so we're going to try them in the fall garden and see how many we can get. In addition to green beans we're also going to be putting in potatoes, carrots, turnips and onions, a pretty typical fall garden for these parts. The potatoes and onions are stored in the basement and we're going to try the same for some of the carrots and freeze and can the rest. If the carrots store well in the  basement we'll store the majority of them like that next year, I just don't want to risk a large portion of the crop with experimental storage.

How is your gardening going? What's your favorite thing to grow?

Homesteading Skills: Gardening

This year we planted a small garden in the back yard. It measures 12' x 30' and this is photo is from our second day of putting in our seedlings. Papa is currently in the process of putting a fence around it to keep out bunnies and yesterday I mulched it all with hay to cut back on our need to water. The last 3+ summers we've had drought conditions so we positioned our garden to get morning sun (~7a-11a), be shaded by a tree for the hottest part of the day (~11:30a-2p), and then get afternoon sun until sunset. Hopefully this will prevent scorching and lessen our need to water. We have two rain barrels set up and are looking at getting a few more, so hopefully that will take care of our watering needs. This year we planted 18 tomato plants (12 heirloom Cherokee Purple and 6 Roma), 12 bell peppers (6 red, 6 yellow), 6 crook neck squash, 5 zucchini (Baby got to one seedling!), cabbage, Blue lake green beans, pole beans, cucumbers, onions, potatoes, and watermelon. We've also got a small herb garden going and some wild blackberries on our land that I'm hoping to make preserves out of. Ideally I'll be able to can quite a few things out of our garden, I'm really looking forward to having fresh produce and then putting some food by. We'll be saving seeds from this year to plant next year, and hopefully expanding next year to include more of each plant as well as some corn, collards and turnips. We garden for two reasons, firstly being because we enjoy having the fresh food and the security that comes with it, and the second reason being that in the event of a disruption in the food chain we'll be better prepared to handle it. Do you have a garden? Tell me about it in the comments!

Water storage

Storing water is a very important part of preparedness that seems to intimidate a lot of people. Admittedly, this also intimidated us and we weren't really sure how to start. Our house doesn't have a lot of storage, we have two closets, both of which are not original to the house, and a very small kitchen.  We decided to tackle our water problem by breaking it down into 3 steps:

1. Decide where to store it.
2. Store enough for a seasonal power outage.
3. Store non-potable water for the garden and other uses.

Once we had a mini plan, water storage seemed a lot more manageable and we were able to get started.