Food Archives - Page 3 of 7

August 20, 2019August 19, 2019

Homemade Catsup (or Ketchup)

Grilled burger with homemade catsup and grilled banana peppers. — Homemade catsup on my grilled burger with my homegrown grilled banana peppers.

Either way homemade catsup is really easy and really good.

Recently, I’ve been on this theme of trying almost everything I can find homemade. Hint – coming soon, mustard and crackers among other things.

My goal is to make as much as I can from scratch and buy as little as I can from the store.

Just like garden grown veggies have so much more flavor than their store bought counterpart, in my opinion so does homemade condiments like catsup and homemade sweet pickles.

Regardless of what it is if it’s homegrown or homemade, it’s always so much better than what you get in the stores.

And if it’s homemade it’s a bonus, or maybe it’s the point of it, that you know what every single ingredient is you put into it.

Store bought tomatoes or home grown

In this spirit, every homemade catsup recipe I came across called for tomato paste. I rarely have tomato paste since you usually only use a tablespoon or 2 and I end up throwing it away.

But, this year I have a garden and I’m beginning to get a TON of tomatoes.

A batch of tomatoes getting ready to dehydrate. — Tomatoes that I’m getting ready to slice and dehydrate.

And, this year for my birthday, my awesome husband bought me the Cadillac of dehydrators, an Excalibur Dehydrator. I’ve wanted this thing for years, but it costs so much I wouldn’t buy it for myself.

Anyway, this means I’ve been dehydrating tomatoes. I knew there had to be a way to use those for this recipe.

So I searched the net and finally found a ratio method for mixing dehydrated tomatoes to water for paste and for sauce.

Just so you know…..it’s a 1:1 ratio for paste and a 2:1 water to dehydrated tomatoes for sauce.

So now I’m excited. Dehydrated tomatoes take up WAY less space than canned tomatoes. And this means I don’t have to can so many tomatoes….BONUS!!

Okay, back on track for homemade catsup.

To ferment or not to ferment

A jar of catsup with a fermenting lid. — My jar of homemade catsup with one of my new fermenting lid.

Most of the recipes I found said I could ferment them or not. As a general rule, we don’t use a lot of catsup, so I kinda wanted to ferment just so it would last longer.

Recently, I also bought myself some fermenting lids so I could ferment more. So since I had those I thought I would go ahead and give the fermented catsup a try.

From what I was reading, the recipe is no different either way. So, that made it easy.

Homemade Catsup

Making homemade catsup truly is one of the easiest things you could ever make. And best of all it can be made to suit your tastes. As you mix the ingredients, all you have to do is continue to taste it and adjust it to what you like best.

Although I read through about 3 or 4 different recipes, this is the one I settled on. First because I liked the ingredients and second, because I’ve liked most of the recipes I’ve found on her site so I trusted it would be good.

This recipe comes from theprairiehomestead.com. If you haven’t been there yet, you should check it out. She had a ton of great stuff there.

Ingredients:

12 oz or 1.5 cups of tomato paste
3 TBL of maple syrup or raw honey
3 TBL of raw vinegar
2 TBLS of whey or brine from an existing ferment***
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp allspice**

*** You only need this ingredient if you plan on fermenting your catsup. I had just made some sauerkraut, so I used some of the brine from that.

**I didn’t have allspice, so I found a mixture you can use to make a homemade version. To make 1 tsp of allspice you use 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground clove and a pinch of ground nutmeg.

Instructions:

Mix all of your ingredients in a bowl. If you are not going to ferment it, then put it in the refrigerator and your done. I’d let it sit for a few days just so all the flavors blend well.

A bowl full of ingredients to make catsup. — Mix all of your ingredients into your bowl and mix well.

If you’re going to ferment, then put your catsup in a pint jar, cover it with a fermenting lid, an airlock or a regular lid. If you use a regular lid, you need to remember to burp it either daily or a few times a day to let the fermenting gases escape.

Let it sit on your counter for about 3 days and then put a regular lid on it and move it to your refrigerator.

That’s it. It just doesn’t get any easier.

Another thing you’ll notice with this recipe is there is no sugar. I suppose you could use sugar if you wanted to in place of the honey or maple syrup. I wouldn’t know why, but you could if you wanted to.

You can adjust these spices to whatever taste you like. You could even add a touch of hot sauce if that’s something you might like. The possibilities of the different tastes you could come up with are endless.

So there you have it, really easy homemade catsup. I hope you give it a try. I know I’ll not be buying it from the store anymore. You may decide the same thing.

If you find you want to make your own catsup, let me know in the comments below how it turns out. If you change up the recipe, I’d love to hear how. I’d love it if you would post pictures of what you make.

Be sure to subscribe to get something new in your inbox every week. Canning season is coming up, I have a new dehydrator and I have several new recipes I’m itching to make, you won’t want to miss what’s coming.

Until next time-

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

July 16, 2019July 29, 2019

Berry Jam

I love berry jam. Don’t you? It goes good on everything, in my humble opinion.

This is where I found my berries.

Early this year I bought a few blueberry bushes because I eat a ton of blueberries. They’re my favorite.

My blueberry bush with berries. — One of my 3 blueberry bushes.

I’d always heard or read, can’t remember which for sure, that, like strawberries, it would take a year or so to start getting any berries.

Apparently, that’s not true. I was happy to see that these bushes were going to produce lots of berries. They didn’t produce a lot at one time, but as they matured, I harvested them and put them in the freezer.

Then one day I was out walking around the yard and found a mulberry tree. My husband had been hacking at it with a machete for quite a few years trying to kill it. Of course, we all know you can’t kill a mulberry tree, at least where I live. They grow like weeds.

Ripe mulberries in a bowl. — Mmmmmm mulberries.

There’s been a large mulberry tree on the property for years and I never got a berry from it. The birds ate them all before I could get to them. There’s always been purple bird poop on everything, every year.

But, this year, this tree, which is now a bush, continued to survive. And not only did it survive, it was covered in mulberries. Beautiful, ripe, purple berries, that tasted awesome. I couldn’t believe the birds hadn’t noticed this bush!!

So I started picking berries daily. I only got about 1/2 cup of a mix of the two at a time. I collected them, washed them and let them set out to dry overnight and then put them in jars in the freezer the next morning.

Me and My granddaughter discovered frozen berries make a great summer snack. Note to self for next year.

I decided when I got to 5-6 cups of berries I’d make some berry jam. It did’t take too long to collect about 5 cups. That seemed to be the magic number, because at about 5 cups both bushes finished their production.

I’m not complaining, I’m totally happy with what I got from them. Beside the 5 cups worth, I also got to eat some too.

Now it’s time to make some berry jam.

I found a non-pectin berry jam recipe on the Farmer’s Almanac web site. This is what I loosely followed. I’ve looked but I can’t seem to find the same recipe again to post a link.

I say loosely because that recipe used a different kind of berry and didn’t add lemon juice. I wasn’t sure about the acidity level of berries, so I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

Better Homes and Gardens Canning Book. — The canning book I used as a reference for this recipe.

This is one of the books I use for my canning.

I have several, but this happened to be the one I used.

It has a chart that lists the acidity levels for several different types of foods.

If the acidity level is high you can water bath can your jam for preservation instead of pressure canning.

But if the acidity levels are lower you need to use a pressure canner to be sure you kill any kind of nasty bug that may make you sick.

Acidity levels for different types of food. — Acidity levels from the book.

As you can see, lemons and limes are at the low end of the pH levels which you would expect, and the berries are kind of in the middle.

There probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but since I had lemon juice, I decided I’d go ahead and use it.

Since I had the time I still decided to not use the pectin.

All I had to do was cook it a little longer. Actually, I probably cooked it a bit too long, cause it’s really, REALLY thick. But I’m okay with that.

It’s the first time I’ve made jam without the pectin. I wanted to make sure it got thick enough. I’ll call it an experiment instead of a mistake.

So I started with the 5 cups of berries I had been picking and freezing over the past month or so. It was a mix of mulberries and blueberries.

Frozen berries beginning to cook down. — Cooking down my berries.

I poured them into a stock pot and heated them on low until the blueberries began to break and the mulberries got mushy.

Then I added the 3-3/4 cups of sugar. The recipe I found said 3/4 cup of sugar for every cup of berries. That seemed easy enough to remember and it’s less sugar than some of the recipes I’ve got for jam. I cooked this slow and stirred a lot so the sugar didn’t burn at the bottom. It won’t take long to melt.

Mashing cooked berries. — Mashing the berries as they cooked.

Cooking berry jam. — Cooking the berries.

Then I mashed them with a potato masher. You can mash these down as much as you want. I like the larger chunks so I didn’t worry too much about it. I knew the blueberries would cook down to pretty much juice, but the mulberries, which are sweeter, didn’t break down so much.

The recipe I read said without using the pectin you needed to cook it about 1/2 hour to 45 mins. I decided to go about mid way and cook them about 40 min on low. Next time I’ll probably just cook them about 25 min, maybe 30.

Make sure you stir a lot. I couldn’t get my burner down low enough, in my opinion, so stirred it almost constantly.

Now it’s time to can the berry jam.

Sterilizing canning jars. — this is an easy way to sterilize your jars. Put them over the water in your canner while you wait for it to come to a boil. I just put the lid on it and let it go.

I began by boiling water in the water bath canner. Then I put the jars in the canner while the water boiled to sterilize them.

Once the water boiled and the jars were sterilized, I filled each one.

Filling jars with berry jam. — Filling the canning jars.

While I fillied the jars, I boiled the canning lids. I’ve heard recently that that is a step that you don’t have to do anymore.

I’m not sure if there are new lids that don’t require boiling or if Ball just changed the rules. But since my lids are older, I’ll continue to boil them until it get new ones that read that it’s not necessary.

Cleaning the jar rim. — Make sure the rims of your jars are clean.

Once your finished filling the jars, you want to make sure the rims are clean. This will ensure there is nothing to obstruct the sealing process.

Then add the lids and rings. You don’t want to crank down the rings. Just finger tight. When you add them to the canner you want about an inch or 2 of water to cover your jars.

Jar of jam ready to be canned. — My canner has a rack in it. I set the jars on the rack and then I can just lower the rack into the boiling water.

I waited until the water was at a rolling boil, then I lowered the jars into the canner. You can add them sooner, but you don’t want to start your timer until your water is at a rolling boil.

Then I processed them in the boiling water for 15 min.

Now they’re done.

Now you can turn off the heat, and raise your rack.

The best part about this is hearing the lids seal. They’ll begin to ping one at a time. In my opinion, this is the best part. Makes me smile every time.

Now you just wait for them to cool and you have preserved berry jam.

I put one of them in the fridge without processing it, so I could have some berry jam to eat now. I wanted to try it out. Then I labeled the rest and put them in the pantry.

If you have the equipment canning your own jam is really easy. Do your research and be sure to follow the best safety rules when canning. They are listed in all the canning books. Don’t be afraid to it a try. It’s really not as scary as it sounds.

If you have canned your own jam, let me know what kind. I’d love to hear what you’ve been preserving. Add your pictures to the comments.

Be sure to subscribe and comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time –

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

July 9, 2019July 9, 2019

A Growing Garden Update

So here’s a garden update.

We’ve continued to have more rain than usual and in some cases I think it caused a little bit of problems. But with the warmer weather we’ve been having it’s not been too bad and things are beginning to get big.

A Garden Overview.

Let’s look at all the goodies and how well they’re growing. You’ll also note that the weeds and wheat are growing pretty well too.

An overview of the garden. — This picture was taken on 6/30. It’s amazing how fast this garden is growing.

You can go back and look at the garden in my first garden post here. This will give you an idea of how much everything has grown.

Here are the various tomatoes I’ve got planted in the garden.

Pink Brandywine

The Pink Brandywines I have planted are now tied to the trellis and they are actually growing in and around the trellis. I’ve even got some fruit growing, although in this picture you really can see them.

Mortgage Lifters

The Mortgage Lifters seem to be growing the best. I’ve been trying to keep it pruned, but it grows almost faster than I can keep up.

I’m really hoping to get a good sized mess of tomatoes canned this year. We are completely out of home canned tomatoes from our last crop a few years ago. I miss having them around the house.

A mortgage lifter tomato plant with tomatoes growing in my garden. — Look at all those tomatoes.

Mortgage lifter plant with tomatoes growing in my garden — Here’s another batch off the same plant.

Cherry Tomatoes

Large cherry tomato plant growing in my garden — My Large Cherry Tomato plant

There’s about 3 bunches of these cherry tomatoes on the plant. I don’t think you can see them all, but trust me they are there. Can’t wait for these either.

We’ll just put these in a bowl on the counter and eat them like snacks. I’m really hoping to get enough to dry them too.

The Surprise Compost Tomato

A roma type tomato plant growing in my compost pile — They look like a roma type tomato to me.

Now here’s the big surprise. Remember the tomato plant I found in the compost pile with the squash plant. Well, I think I’ve determined what kind of tomato it is and I’m real excited about it. This thing is COVERED in blooms and there are a LOT of small fruit on the plant. I’m so excited.

It looks like we are going to a huge crop of these. Since the roma type are usually a lot more meaty than your regular slicing tomato, I’m really hoping to have enough to make some good tomato sauces.

What you see here is just a small amount of what is really there. YAY!!!

It’s the small things that make me happy.

The Peppers

Next up we have some peppers. There’s really not a lot to show here so I’ve only included the one picture .

A Bell pepper plant growing in my garden — This is the bell pepper that almost wasn’t. Something ate this plant down to the stalk. Now it’s the best looking pepper I have.

We’ve gotten 2 banana peppers so far, but it looks like there’s only going to be, maybe, one more. The 2 we got were really good. We tasted the first one raw and the 2nd one we grilled with some pork chops we had for supper. It was was so good.

I’m not sure what happened here with the peppers, but that’s something we’ll have to work on to figure out. We really would like to have a lot more of the banana peppers.

We still have about 3 bell pepper plants growing, 1 with an actual pepper and the other 2 have a few blooms. I’m anxious to see what they do.

The baby radishes aren’t babies anymore, and you can see the carrots now.

My radishes aren’t babies anymore. I actually pulled one and grilled it with our pork chops along with the 1 remaining banana pepper. These radishes are going to be huge.

A row each of radishes and carrots growing in my garden. — Radishes and carrots.

One thing you’ll note when you look at this picture is the radishes in the back are way bigger than the ones nearer to the front of the picture. The only thing we can figure out is the amount of water that they got during that real wet period (called May). We think the ones at the back drained faster than the smaller ones up front. It’s just a guess, but there’s really no other differences.

We’re happy to say you can actually see the carrots now. They need to be thinned, and we’ll get to that, but we’ll give them just a bit more time.

My husband LOVES his carrots and doesn’t want to pull too many. I’ll let him do those honors.

Okra

Remember the tiny okra plants from before. Well they aren’t so tiny anymore.

These are about a foot tall now. I just can’t wait to see the blooms. Okra has such pretty flowers when they bloom.

The burgundy ones have gotten redder so they’re really pretty now too.

The Chinese yard long beans are growing!!

The tiny little Chinese Yard Long Beans have grown. They’re now beginning to grow up the trellis. A few of them have a tentacle reaching up about 4 feet.

Chinese Yard Long Beans growing in my garden — Here are the beans climbing up the trellis.

I only had to tie one. It just kept reaching the opposite direction from the trellis. The rest found the trellis all by themselves.

The compost squash.

And remember that squash that was growing in the compost pile? Holy Smokes, I had to give up my compost pile for the year. It’s taken over. I’m also noticing there’s more than one kind of squash in that mass of plants.

So far I’ve found 3 fruit and none of them look alike.

This is the one we transplanted from the compost pile into the garden.

Looks like a pumpkin pie pumpkin growing in my garden. — Looks like small pie type pumpkin to me.

This fruit I found near the front side of the compost pile.

A young type of squash growing in the compost pile. — This one is about 4-5 inches in size right now.

And this one is growing on the outside of the back side of the compost pile.

A type of squash growing outside the compost pile. — This one is just a touch smaller than a soccer ball.

I’m having a terrible time with squash bugs too. I’d never seen those nasty little things before this year. They can decimate a plant pretty quick from what I’m seeing too.

Even with the squash bugs, this plant is taking over.

Large squash plant growing out of the compost pile. — The squash plant coming out the back side of the compost pile.

Large squash plant — The front of the compost pile. This thing is reaching out in all directions.

I’ve been mixing Neem oil and spraying the plant. I’m hoping to just hold them off as long as possible. I can’t get into the plant in the compost pile well enough to spray it completely so I think that’s going to be a problem in getting rid of them.

Lots of Weeds And Wheat In the Garden

The one thing you will note is that the wheat and weeds are growing rather well. We mulched with straw, so the wheat is growing like crazy. Since wheat is an annual, we’re not too worried about that as long as we don’t let it head.

The weeds are another story. We’ve been working at weeding and I’m going to have to get my Cobra Head in there and get some work done. It’s just too much for hand pulling.

We just got back from 3 days out of town and in those 3 days, everything exploded. We have a lot to do now.

What’s Next

I still want to plant some more for late summer and some other stuff for fall, so we still have a lot to do to get the other side of this garden ready. We’ll be using a weed barrier on the new parts of the garden, that I didn’t have when we started this side of the garden.

I’m interested to see how much easier it is to take care of with the weed barrier down.

Lessons Learned

One thing we learned with this garden is to not give up on a plant that doesn’t look good. A few of the plants I thought were toast, have come back to look really great and begin to produce.

I’m sure there will be more lessons. Like I said, this is an experiment, so I’m excited to learn a ton of lessons for next year.

Let me know what you planted in your garden and how it’s going. Leave a comment or a picture below. If you have any good advise, I’m all ears too.

Until Next Time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

June 25, 2019June 24, 2019

Homemade Sweet Pickles

A quart and a pint of homemade microwave sweet pickles

I came across this new recipe for how to make homemade sweet pickles just in the last few weeks. These things are AMAZING, if you like sweet pickles anyway.

Quart of homemade sweet pickles — A quart of my homemade sweet pickles.

We had a Memorial Day party and my cousin brought these to share.

Sweet pickles from the store can’t hold a candle to these homemade sweet pickles. This is a cucumber and onion mix with a simple mix of spices and sugar poured over them and then heated. The best part about this recipe is that it’s a 10 minute recipe. You just can beat it.

They have such and awesome flavor and they make such crisp sweet pickles, you’d never believe it only took 10 minutes to make.

You can make these pickles a sweet and spicy mix too if you like by just adding some jalapeno peppers. I’m not real keen on spicy, but I know several people who would love that.

It’s deceptively easy and amazingly fast. You’ll be pleasantly surprised, I promise.

Measuring cup with the spices needed for these homemade sweet pickles. — What you see here is all that’s needed for this easy crispy sweet pickle recipe.

Mary, my cousin, sent me a photo of the recipe she uses. From what I can read, a lady named Esther submitted this recipe in a contest to something called “Cooks Connection”. I couldn’t find anything local relating to Cooks Connection so I’m not real sure what that relates to. I couldn’t find a date on it either, so I’m not real sure how old it is or who to credit it back to.

So, in lieu thereof, I’ll credit my cousin Mary for this fabulous recipe.

I hope you all enjoy these as much as I did. I’ve made several batches since then and so far they have been a hit with everyone I’ve shared them with. I plan to make many more in the future.

Homemade Microwave Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

2 cucumbers, thinly sliced – not peeled
1 onion also thinly sliced. I’ve actually used 2 onions before just because they are so good in this recipe.
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Tumeric. A note on tumeric….it stains everything. My bowl stays yellow for a while after using it. Just keep that in mind and don’t spill it.
1/4 tsp Mustard Seed
1/2 tsp Celery Seed
1/2 cup Vinegar. I also used my Apple Cider Vinegar in this recipe. You can find out how to make that here.
1 cup sugar

Instructions

Mix the salt, tumeric, mustard seed, celery seed, vinegar, and sugar in a large microwave safe bowl.

A large bowl with sliced cucumbers and onions and the mixed ingredients to be poured over them. — The ingredients are mixed and the cucumbers and onions are sliced.

Slice the cucumbers and onions thinly and add to the bowl. Mix well to cover all the slices with the mix above.

Sliced cucumbers and onions with all the ingredients poured, mixed and ready to make sweet pickles. — Pour your mix over your sliced cucumbers and onions and stir well to cover every slice.

Microwave uncovered on high for 5 minutes.

Remove and mix well, again making sure you stir well to cover all the slices.

Mixed cucumbers and onions with the mixed poured over them for sweet pickles. — The beginning of best sweet pickles you’ve ever made. This is after the first 5 min.

Return the bowl to the microwave and heat again, uncovered, for another 5 min on high.

Remove from the microwave and let cool. Once they’ve cooled, refrigerate until cold. Now they’re ready to eat.

This recipe makes about a quart of pickles. I wasn’t able to get all the liquid in the quart jar along with the pickles. So I filled it all the way to the top and just added as much as I could

A quart and a pint of homemade sweet pickles ready to put in the refrigerator. — This recipe of sweet pickles had an extra onion added to the mix.

If you add an extra onion like I did, you’ll probably need another pint jar. With the extra pint jar you can get all the liquid into both jars.

Some people may think a cup of sugar is just too much. And that can be true, depending on your taste. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ll be adjusting the amount of sugar and spices just out of curiosity in future batches. I’m curious to see how they turn out.

That’s really all there is to homemade sweet pickles.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did. If you do, share it with everyone. This is just too good not to share.

Do you have a simple recipe for pickles? Did you try this recipe and adjust the ingredients a bit? Share in the comments below, I’d love to know. Or if you tried it just the way it is, leave a comment and tell me what you think. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks for coming by.

Until next time.

Health, Wealth & Blessing ~ Tracey

June 18, 2019June 14, 2019

Growing A Garden

We’re growing a garden for the first time in several years. It’ll only be a small portion of the food we’ll eat this summer, but a little is better than none.

In the past, we’ve had a garden and grown tomatoes, a few peppers and some sweet potatoes, but it’s been a while, if ever, that we’ve actually made a full blown garden like the one we have now. I’m excited.

When I was a kid my dad always had a garden and grew all kinds of vegetables that mom would freeze or can. I remember having to water and weed the garden during the summer. I think those jobs were mostly to keep me out of trouble during the weekday. But it was a way to make me responsible for something at a young age too. And while I hated having to do it, I’m glad they made me do. I did learn a thing or two, even if I would have never admitted it to them.

I also remember sitting on the back porch snapping bean and shelling peas with mom. While I wasn’t terribly fond of messing with the beans and peas, I did enjoy sitting out there with mom and dad on the porch. Those are good memories.

But, sadly, I didn’t appreciate the garden back then and missed the opportunity to learn a ton of lessons from my dad.

But, I’m learning now and I know that would make him happy.

If you’ve ever eaten a homegrown tomato, you know how much better it is than a store bought tomato. It has so much more flavor, you can’t even compare the two.

That holds true for everything I’ve ever had out of a garden.

We have a compost pile too, but it’s not nearly big enough for the size of our garden. We’ve covered what we could with the compost we had and then bought some organic cotton burr to work into the rest.

Only half of this garden plot is being used because we haven’t been able to amend the soil in the other half yet.

We didn’t get the entire garden planted this year because we weren’t able to get the amendments we wanted worked into the soil over the whole garden before planting season and because we got 30 inches of rain last month. There was so much mud you just couldn’t get in it to do anything.

What We’re Growing In Our Garden

We did get several different kinds of vegetables planted, but not near as much as I’d like. But our ground is heavy clay and we have to get the rest of the ground amended in order to plant the rest. I hope to have that done in time to plant a fall garden.

Here’s what we have planted for this season.

Tomatoes

I started tomatoes from seed this year. That’s the first time I’ve ever done that. I actually only germinated them to see if they were good. The seeds were so old I really didn’t think they would be viable. Apparently, I was wrong. It was so cool.

I only have 1 mortgage lifter tomato, but it’s so pretty.

Peppers

I did the same with peppers and it worked for them too. But then something ate them, completely. So, we had to buy new plant starts if we wanted peppers this year.

We have 5 pepper plants, but this is my first bloom.

Radishes

I remember as a kid mom and dad putting raw radishes on the table at every supper. I never liked them. Mom and dad loved them. But, recently we were watching a video on YouTube and a lady who grew them talked about roasting them being a game changer.

So, I thought why not, and we gave it a try. They were awesome!! So, needless to say, we’ve planted a couple of rows of radishes. Let me tell you roasted radishes are completely different than raw ones.

We started the bigger radishes quite a while ago and have been eating them already. So we decided to plant a few more rows for later.

We didn’t have a great germination rate in the first batch so we planted more of them the second round. Of course they all germinated this time.

Okra

We also planted a few kinds of okra. I’ve never been an okra fan but my daughter-in-law recently discovered she liked them, so I planted some for her. My husband and I decided we’d give them another try too.

I planted two different kinds. One is the burgundy okra, shown above. The pictures I’ve seen show them to be very pretty plants. The other is the Crimson Spineless which is what I heard a lot of people talking about. Since I didn’t know anything about them, I decided I would start with what others liked best.

Most of the okra came up too. I’m pretty happy to see that. I really hope we like it too.

Cantaloupe

Several years ago a cantaloupe grew in an old compost pile we had. I got about 12 cantaloupes from that plant and they were so good and juicy. So I saved the seeds out of the last one I had. This year I planted three of those seeds. They are all growing. I’m so excited for those.

Green Beans

They have a ways to go yet, but they’ll get there. We have 7 of these.

We both like green beans and have recently discovered these new beans (to us, at least) called Chinese noodle beans. I found something a little different called Chinese Yard Long Beans.

The people who talk about them rave about the taste.

They’re pole beans, so we’ve planted them on a trellis. I can’t wait for them to grow up the trellis and give them a try when they’re ready.

After Thoughts

As an “after thought” we decided to try a few rows of corn and a row of carrots. My husband loves carrots and I wanted to try the baby corns, which he loves too. The corn has just begun to come up, but we only planted 2 rows, so I’m not real sure if they’ll pollinate correctly and actually produce ears. We’ll see.

My husband planted 3 different types of carrots. All the seeds were from 2013, so I wasn’t hopeful, but 2 of these 3 types have germinated and started to grow. We’re both pretty excited about those.

See those tiny pieces of green? Trust me, those are carrots.

We found this growing in the compost pile too. As you can see, it’s taken over and neither of us have it in us to kill these beautiful plants. We pulled one out and put it in the garden earlier. Our plan was to remove the rest of these once the one we took out started growing. But, the one we transplanted didn’t grow. It hasn’t died, but it just won’t grow. So, we decided to leave the these.

There’s a couple of tomatoes in there too. Everything is volunteer, so we’ll let them go and see what happens. This means, of course, we won’t be turning the compost for a while. I guess, that’s okay too.

See that tomato up under that squash and what I think is a sunflower.

Here’s the other tomato, smack dab in the middle of all that squash, with a nice spread of lambs quarter right next to it. I think I’ll pull the lambs quarter out though.

Later in the year I’ll start planting for fall. We’ll plant things that like the cooler weather like leafy greens, peas and hopefully some broccoli. We’ll just see what grows.

My husband and I have decided to make this garden an experiment. We’ll try things and see what happens and next year we’ll adjust.

In my opinion, this is one of my best DIYs yet. I can’t wait for everything to begin producing. I love the taste of homegrown food. It’s funny how things change as you grow up and get older. I hope my grandkids learn it sooner than I did.

As our garden grows more, I’ll update with new posts. I hope you’ll come back later to see what it looks like.

Are you growing a garden this year? What did you plant? What’s coming up? Do you have pictures, post them below. I’d love to see what your garden looks like. If you’re not growing one, I hope I’ve inspired you to try. Experiment, see what you can grow. You can build on it more next year. Let’s share some ideas so we can all try something new next year.

Thanks for coming by. Until next time –

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey