Wordless Wednesday- Sweet Potatoes

Posted on October 8, 2014 by Sheila

Our sweet potato harvest for 2014! Hope they are as good to eat as they were fun to harvest!

Saturday Yard Work

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Sheila

Today brought more beautiful weather to North Carolina. I had already decided that we needed to spend some time outside doing some yard work. I spent most of the day, trimming our iris and pulling weeds from the flower beds. However the yard work that was most exciting was the “reworking” of our square foot garden.

I was so excited to start this year as I had great plans to get the most use and some yummy veggies to use all year. That was a plan that did achieve it’s greatness. First of all the weather has been strange this summer. We have not had our typical hot (90plus) temperatures and also have lacked some in the rain department as well. We have been enjoying tomatoes all summer in addition to lots of green peppers the last couple of weeks. We discovered several nice size watermelons, however the last 3 have rotten before they ripen so I knew we needed to make some changes. First, was a new bed over to the right side in the picture. This will be for squash as they grow really large and take up a lot of sun! Next, Matt added another back stop to use with cherry tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes have been our best and most enjoyed treat this summer so I definitely want to have more of these next year. Finally after some discussion, we moved out watermelon and cantaloupe planters from the back of the deck to the front with the rest of the garden. We hope this will allow them to grow, spread and ripen in the future. I am so proud to say that with all these additions we have not spent any more instead we have used some recycled work. We will need to purchase or hopefully find a piece of wire to complete the backstop. So our only purchase next spring will be some additional dirt to replenish and fill the new and improved beds!

I will admit this was a lot of work so I plan to enjoy a restful day tomorrow.

Weekend Rambling

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Sheila

I have enjoyed 4 full days off work in a row! I am excited and feeling accomplished that I just had to share all that we have been up to.

Both Friday and Saturday, we spent over 5 hours enjoying the pool. I can finally say that I have a tan now!
The weather has been awesome, much cooler than in the past week and much cooler than I expected, temperatures have been in the mid 80s by day and even some 50s at night.
Because of the nice weather, I was able to spend several hours working not only in our square foot garden but also working in the flower beds around the house. I am very pleased with the results!
The square foot garden continues to provide us with fresh vegetables daily, our cherry tomatoes are awesome! Hopefully by the end of the week, we will have some full size tomatoes to go with our cucumbers and squash. Because of the really hot weather, I am not sure if we will be getting any more beans this year but the kids loved planting and picking so they will be repeated next week. My most exciting discovery this week has been that we have 4 watermelons and 2 cantaloupes growing! I can’t wait to eat these.
I have been grabbing some good deals at both CVS and Food Lion this week. I will say that I was most disappointed to find that Diet Coke was not on sale at Food Lion after being told it was by 2 different people.
Both the little girls are really enjoying swim team. Lily is now able to swim all 4 strokes but needs to work on her endurance. Kendall is able to swim the back stroke and freestyle without stopping. Kendall has also been working on the butterfly but I am not sure she will be able to compete in this stroke this year.
Our new dryer arrived on Saturday and we were able to dry a load of towels in less than an hour!
One of the best deals I got at Food Lion was ground chuck for $2.67 a pound, this afternoon in less than an hour, Matt and I put together 5 meals. We decided to combine the ground chuck with venison that we had previously purchased. All the meals were frozen because we are still eating leftovers from Kendall’s party. We packed 2 bags of cooked ground beef; these will be used for Hamburger Helper or other meals such as pizza that started with cooked meat. I made a meatloaf and cheeseburger pie and finally Matt made a container of Taco rice that we plan to take to the beach as a meal in August.
On Friday, which was the Fourth of July, Amanda came and took Kendall shopping for her birthday. She purchased a dress, 2 complete outfits, a pair of shorts and a couple of Disney shirts. Kendall is so excited to have new clothes to wear! Haley decided to spend time with us as well. She actually went to the pool. The little kids absolute LOVE when their big sister spend time with them!
Tonight, all three of the little ones are attending Vacation Bible School at my brother’s church. I am excited and surprised because Zach wanted to go and did not even get upset when we left him eating with his cousin. I hope they all have a great time. This is the first time that Zach has been able to stay somewhere without either of his parents. He will sometimes stay at the child watch center at the YMCA but other time he refuses so for him to want to stay is AWESOME! I hope the trend continues all week!

Square Foot Garden Update- June

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Sheila

I am so totally excited to be able to pick and enjoy vegetable from our garden. I can say without a doubt that this year, we are getting the most and best veggies that we have ever grown.

Yesterday we harvested our first major amounts. For the last several weeks, we have been picking squash and a few random cherry tomatoes. But yesterday we harvested 2 green peppers, squash, several cucumbers, several cherry tomatoes and enough green beans to cook and have as a side dish. So far I have frozen around 8 packets of squash for casseroles and given away at least that much. I can’t wait till we can restock our tomato sauce. I have not bought any tomato products in 2 years but my freezer is empty of these so I hope to get a huge harvest in by the middle of July.

We have decided to make one change for next year, I will be adding an additional bed on the side for just squash. This should allow us to have more cucumbers as these are our current favorites.

Finally a sample of what we are getting..

Square Foot Garden 5/26/2014

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Sheila

I am excited about how well our square foot garden is growing this year.

: View from side, can you spot Lily’s cabbage?

: They just make it cuter!

: Squash in the front

But even more important is that we have harvested our first thing…a small squash!

I discovered last night as we were watering but left until this morning so the kids could help with the harvest!

Lily has been growing a cabbage as part of a school assignment since March. This plant has survived 2 ice storms but wow look at it!

Square Foot Garden

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Sheila

The weather has final decide to allow Spring for at least a few days! So we have spent several hours a couple of evening planting our square foot garden. This year we have added two additional pieces. The middle one that does not have a grid is for sweet potatoes, I forgot to save one to start with this year and have searching at several stories, I discovered that these plants will not be available until May. We are hoping to double our crop from last year! Otherwise we are using a combination of starting from seeds and purchasing plants this year. Hopefully this will be the last year that I have to purchase soil to use in the garden. I don’t plant to add any additional boxes but instead we are looking at eatable landscape.

We have a separate bed for our cantaloupe and watermelon on the back side of the house where there is no shade at all. I was able to start the canto loupe from seed this year so I am really excited to see what we get.

Upfront we have tomatoes (started from seeds pear and beefsteak, cheery tomato plants were brought), squash, cucumbers, cabbage, broccoli (started from seed only one surviving), green peepers, a spicy peeper, dill, cilantro, chives, basil (all herbs from seeds).

We have spent a total of $300 on soil and $60 on plants. This is around $100 more than if we joined a coop but the cost next year will be significantly lower. In addition to cost saving the kids really enjoy this activity.

Finally a couple of pictures….

Wordless Wednesday- Square Food Garden Additon

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Sheila

We almost doubled the space we had by adding two new beds to our square foot garden. The front one will be for squash and the middle for sweet potatoes. We saved huge on this project by re-using wood. Most of this wood was from the deck I had replaced ten years ago. I ended up never getting around to burning it. So it has been in the very back of the yard for years. We have gradually pulled out and used most of it! Total cost is $7.00 for the box of screws!

Oh My Sweet Potato!

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Sheila

Just because I thought it would be neat for the kids, I picked up a small 6 pack of sweet potato plants this spring. Over the spring and summer, both Matt and I have commented on how beautiful the flowers were. In fact, I liked the appearance so much that following the principle of beauty of square foot gardening, I was going to add a small bed up front for next year to grow again. Matt was not all that impressed and wanted to wait to see how much we were able to produce.

This week, we have had several night of freezing temps and our beautiful sweet potato plants were dead, even black, from the cold so I knew I need to dig up and see what we have……

I am truly amazed, for $1.68 we grew almost enough for several meals! I actually have most of the small ones in the oven baking right now so we can enjoy for dinner! I am so excited as this is the most veggie with the least amount of work!

Zach and Kendall helped to dig up the potatoes. next we made an assembly line for washing and sorting them. It took almost an hour to complete the process but both of these guys LOVED it! Now sweet potatoes are a definite for our garden next year!

Square Foot Garden

Posted on August 10, 2013 by Sheila

I haven’t written much about our Square foot garden this year but we have been enjoying cucumbers, a few green peppers and tomatoes. I have even been able to freeze some of the extra tomatoes to use during the winter. This year we tried something new and moved our watermelon and cantaloupe to the back side of our deck. I was hoping that this sunny spot would work well. It has! Above you can see our first harvest! We are so excited to eat these.

After the success of this year we are already making plans for bigger and better next year. We will be adding a box for squash only as they take a lot of room and I would like to be able to freeze some for use in squash casseroles. We also will be spreading out the watermelon and cantaloupe plant as the watermelon have really overtaken so this will allow both more room to grow. The plan is to replace the 3 spots for squash with more tomatoes plants.

If you recall we did not participate in the co-op this year and have not really missed the extra vegetables as we have received several gifts of produce in addition to our garden.

I do have quite a supply of zucchini from last year so this was not a big deal either. We are continuing to clean out and re organize our freezers which should help with decisions as to what to plant and plan for in the future!