Do any of you feel like there’s just never enough time? Between the day job and taking care of the garden, taking care of what comes out of the garden, keeping up laundry and the house, oh and cooking some supper and having dishes to eat on, that leaves about 30 min to sleep.
Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but sometimes it feels like it.
Last weekend, I took one day with my grandkids. We played, watched moves and then went to my company party.
Having a snack at the company party.
We had a ton of fun just hanging out and watching movies, brushing hair and just doing “stuff” last Saturday. They always make my weekend, no matter what we’re doing.
That left Sunday as the only time I had left to get stuff done over the weekend.
Infused oils. I love just looking at them.
Calendula infused sweet almond oil
I started by straining the infused oils that were ready.
These oils had sat and infused at least a month and some of them as much as 3 months.
I think they turned out beautifully. Most of the golden ones are calendula and sweet almond oil, 1 pint is calendula and coconut oil and the green one is lavender and coconut oil.
Lavender infused coconut oil.
I’ll make some salves, lotions and maybe some chap stick with these. I’ll probably leave a little bit as it is and use it just as an oil too.
We discovered this year that we really like breaded, fried okra. I grew up with the old boiled okra, and had learned I hated it.
After the boiled stuff, I never had the nerve to try it any other way, until this year.
So this year, we grew some okra for my daughter-in-law and decided we had to try it. Wow, is that better than the boiled stuff.
This weekend we had about 6 gallons of okra that needed to be processed. My plan was to dry some and bread and freeze some for use in the winter.
That way we could just use however much we wanted at a time.
I only have chest freezers so I could only freeze one tray at a time. They need to freeze in a single layer. So that took all day.
Guess what was for supper tonight. Well, at least part of it.
While the breaded okra was freezing, I cut and set some up on the dehydrator. I filled 8 of the 9 shelves in my new dehydrator.
Using the time I had tonight to get a couple more things done.
Making more pickles.
Tonight I made more sweet pickles for my husband’s sandwiches. Boy, did I start something. He loves those things and reminds me regularly when he’s getting low.
From the dehydrator I jarred up a little under a gallon of dried okra.
I now have enough okra to probably last us the winter. But…..it’s still growing. I’ll be giving some of that away this weekend.
This dehydrated okra makes a pretty decent snack. If you salt it a little before you dehydrate it, it’s a nice crunchy snack. My mom would have really like it.
Time or the lack thereof.
Anyway, my point here is, once the garden starts coming in and you have to start putting up the goodies, time runs away from you. It feels like there’s just never enough time.
I try really hard with “to do” list, to make sure I’m not running in circles. I’m even crossing stuff off my list. But it feels like I’m adding as much as I’m crossing off.
I guess that’s just how it goes. Mark off 1, add 2.
Extra days
I’m taking off this coming Friday to catch up on things that I can’t get done on the weekend. I’ve done this several times this year.
It used to be taking vacation time to work, even at home, would have really irked me. But not anymore. These days it makes me smile.
I really enjoy putting it all together, trying to put up more and more of our own food every year. And I really don’t mind just getting stuff done here at home, whatever that might be.
Now if I can find a way to ditch the day job…..
How do you get everything done. Or do you? If you have a secret on how to find more time, I hope you’ll share here. I know there has to be some kind of cool method out there…..maybe.
Let me know what you’re up to in these last days of summer.
I’m really hoping to get back to some kind of trial and/or error next week. Maybe a cracker or maybe even some mustard. I’ve been working on both.
A few things in the garden exploded and we have tomatoes and banana peppers running out our ears. So, I’ve been dehydrating veggies, a lot of them.
Tomatoes and banana peppers.
The tomatoes
We planted a lot of tomato plants this year because we weren’t real sure they would all grow because the seeds were so old. We planted all these plants with the idea some wouldn’t make it.
We were wrong.
Mortgage Lifter tomatoes
These Mortgage Lifters don’t get as big as I thought they would, but they made up for it in sheer volume.
They’re beautiful and really good, but there’s so many of them.
They’re called “salad sized” tomatoes. Too big to eat like a cherry tomato, small enough to cut up for salads, but too small for slicers.
And the perfect size for dehydrating.
We got some cherry tomatoes, but not as many as I expected. I’ve just been eating them from a bowl right off the counter like snack food. They just don’t last long here.
Banana Peppers
Banana Peppers
When we bought these banana peppers, we weren’t sure we liked them. I was pretty sure my husband would, but not too sure about me.
Like the rest of the garden it was an experiment.
After cooking several and just eating them right out of the garden, we both discovered, they’re really pretty good.
We like grilling them with what we’re having for supper.
The little plants look like they have Christmas light on them, there are so many little peppers on them.
They were slow to start, but once they got started….watch out! They went to town and we have quite a few of them now.
Dehydrating Veggies
My Dehydrator
If you remember from a post or two back my dear hubby got me the dehydrator of all dehydrators for my birthday. And I’ve been using it almost constantly since to dehydrate veggies.
Getting ready to dehydrate my tomatoes.
I’ve dehydrated so many tomatoes and Lemon Balm leaves, I have enough to last several months.
Dehydrating veggies is so much easier than canning. The actual amount of time it takes is probably a little longer, but it’s much easier.
I turn on the dehydrator and walk away.
And it holds so much, I can get a lot done at one time.
Dehydrating Tomatoes
Powdering my dehydrated tomatoes.
I slice the tomatoes about 1/4 inch thick and filled all but 1 tray, using parchment paper on the trays to hold all the juice. This makes clean up a lot easier.
Once they’re dehydrated, they pop right off the parchment paper and are easy to grind up.
I was originally using my mortar and pestle, but couldn’t get them powered enough so I started using my spice grinder.
Peppers & Okra
Sliced banana peppers.
I used the dehydrator from my dad for the banana peppers and a few okra. I was trying to do as much as I could all at once.
I sliced the banana peppers about 1/2 inch thick, the same with the okra.
The peppers and okra are pretty dry and don’t take very long to dry. Dehydrating the tomatoes took about twice as long because of all the liquid they contain. They’re really juicy.
Storing my Dehydrated Veggies
Dehydrating veggies takes up much less space in my opinion. You can seal the Seal-a-meal attachment in canning jars or in the sealing bags. Or you can crush or powder, like I did with the tomatoes.
I’ve dehydrated our garden goodies before, but only had four trays, so it took a while. Now I have 13. YAY!!
Next…
I’ll be canning the pink brandywine tomatoes this weekend. I like choices when I’m cooking.
I’ll be freezing a few things too, like breaded okra. Makes frying up okra this winter quick and easy.
I hope you got a couple of ideas here. There’s a lot of things you can dehydrate to help preserve your garden.
Just last weekend I found a book on dehydrating food and of course, I bought it.
I can’t wait to see what I’ve been missing.
If you have ideas or have tried something I didn’t mention, let me know. I’m always up for trying something new.
As a rule we go outside and check the garden every night, just looking at plants, checking on any veggies that might be ready to harvest and to water if it’s necessary.
Last night we found this guy in the tomato patch. It’s the dreaded tomato horned worm. Now, that’s just not cool, at all.
Horned worm
So far we’ve only found 2 of these guys, but they were plump little dudes. It’s amazing how fast they can eat a tomato plant down to the nubs.
We’ve began searching for them regularly now. With any luck we won’t find anymore.
You gotta know where to look to find these horned worms.
Be sure to check your tomatoes regularly. They’re really hard to see. Their color matches the plant color perfectly and they are always on the underneath side of a leaf.
I find them by looking for where they’ve eaten. You can see here where he had eaten the end of the stem. Those sort of stick out to me.
An eaten off stem.
I found the exact type of same eaten off stem right next to the last one I found.
When I was a kid, part of my summer garden chores at home was to pick off tomato worms, and I did it well. Dad would give me an old tin can and put about an inch of gas in it.
Then I’d use a stick and knock the worms off into the gas. We always had chickens and I’ve often wondered since, why he just didn’t feed them to the chickens.
We’ve heard that you they glow when you search for them at night with a black light. We’ve decided that’s something we’re going to have to try. That would certainly make finding them much easier.
How do you get rid of tomato horned worms? Let me know in the comments below. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would like to hear your answer to that one.
Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessing ~ Tracey
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.
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.
My Pink Brandywine tomatoes. I can’t wait for 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.
Look at all those tomatoes.
Here’s another batch off the same plant.
Cherry Tomatoes
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
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 .
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.
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.
The okra.
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.
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 small pie type pumpkin to me.
This fruit I found near the front side of 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.
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.
The squash plant coming out the back side of the compost pile.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
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.
This is most of the garden.
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.
My mortgage lifter tomato.
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.
My Pink Brandywine tomatoes
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.
This one is about ready to pull.
My baby radishes
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.
Isn’t that burgundy okra stalk pretty? Can’t wait to see what it will look like when it grows up.
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.
My compost cantaloupe. I have no idea what kind they are, but if they’re anything thing like last time, I’ll be a happy camper.
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.
Part of the corn crop.
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.
Most of that is squash.
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.
