Category Archives: Square Food Garden

Sunday Garden Update

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The garden has required some extra time and energy over the last week. Fortunately it continues to provide a decent harvest each day!  Here is today’s harvest

One of the things we did in the evening last week was to harvest the potatoes. I have already mentioned that it was a HUGE disappointment for me.

Matt has been working on a new bed to replace the old barrel and buckets that we were using. He made it specially so it would be easy to dump the dirt and find the potatoes. It turned out awesome but I am just no longer sure that we need to attempt potatoes again.

Good news is that our cantaloupe plant has taken off in the front. I counted at least 4 nice size balls.

I am continuing to be amazed that the production of our “volunteer” tomato plant in the back of the deck. Other excitement is the fact that we have several watermelons that are forming on the vine as well.

The waxman pepper plants that I struggled with to get started are producing nicely!

Finally for some beauty!

5 Things Friday- 5 Days of the Week

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I anticipated that this week would be fairly busy as it is between two vacations. The garden has produced as well.  What I did not anticipate was that I would drive to Mocksville to pick up a haul from the local farm stand. See below for details.  I am also listing things I did for “Every bits Challenge” as well. This is typical for the month of August but I return to work so that limits my abilities to do some things everyday. I will use these two weeks as the two final weeks of August. This is different but I hope it is helpful.

Monday- We arrived home, picked about 5 gallons of tomatoes and I spent a good couple of hours outside pruning and working on the tomato plants.  I was exhausted!

Tuesday- I decided to work on stocking prepared meals. I made 4 taco pastas and froze 3 for future use. I made the first double batch of Salsa, so excited to use all the ingredients that we already had.

Wednesday- Braxton and I harvested another pint of blueberries and several tomatoes. I also pulled some weeds. We planted some corns in our new planter box and also harvested potatoes. This was a disappointment as we harvest around 5 pounds of potatoes. I also made sourdough bread.

Thursday- After looking at what produce we had, I called and ordered 50 pounds of tomatoes. Braxton and I drove and we purchased a $10 box of cucumbers as well as peaches, green peppers and a watermelon. After picking up this produce, I have been very busy getting things in jars. Another loaf of sour dough bread.

Friday- working on canning and preparation all day. See the final list below. I attempted to make sub buns for meatball subs. They needed to be a bit smaller.

Every Bit Counts Challenge
Salsa 10 quarts and 17 pints
Pickles – 10 quarts of Spears and 12 pints of chips. Spears are a bit salty on first taste, hopefully this improves with time.
Spaghetti sauce -5 quarts and dinner on Friday

Prepared food
4 Taco pastas
4 Million dollar Spaghetti.

Garden Update

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This week has been both a struggle and exciting in the garden.  But the sunflowers have not disappointed!

With the excessive heat warning for most days, I planned to get up and out in the garden before 7am. I spent I think 4 mornings in the garden, catching up with weeding and harvest for between an hour and an hour and half each day. The blueberries are awesome, we have been able to freeze approximately 2 gallons.  More good news is that we have several watermelons that are growing and we have started the slow trickle of tomatoes coming in. Unfortunately, I dont think we will be able to harvest enough tomatoes for making all the salsa we need.  Some of the romas are already dying out. I even tried treating for blight.  We are also losing the majority of our peppers.  We lost our first 3 squash plants to squash bugs but I am hopefully that I was able to save a couple of our zucchini plants. I do have a second wave of squash plants in front of the sunflowers so that we may get another harvest by the end of June. I also planted a couple more zucchini plants but I am not sure if we will get any more of those.  We did start to make improvements to help things out, first our drip irrigation is just not working. The parts were several years old and just is not doing it. We decided to purchase a sprinkler. It arrived today and I will let you know how it works.

Another change is we decided to purchase a 3rd green stalk planter. This year, I have attempted to start more pepper seeds and it will have 30 pepper plants. My thought is that we can move the layers to the green house if needed toward the end of the season to give us up to an additional month of growing time.  Of course it was purchased on sale!

Food Preservation
I did mange to get some things preserved this week. On Monday, I canned 4 pints of green beans from our garden. We already have 2 quarts frozen. With this addition we should have a year supply. I also have both bush and trellis green beans still growing which is exciting.
I cooked 8 packs of chicken thighs which became 4 broccoli chicken rice casseroles, 3 are in the freezer for quick meals during the school year. I also made a batch of chicken broth which was 5 quarts and 1 pint.  This is exciting!
My main focus of the week has been to clean out and organize our kitchen and pantry. For the first time since February everything has a permanent home and is not on the floor!

5 Things Friday “How I Spent my Day”

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  1. We have been under a extreme heat warning all week. This means that the heat index is at least 101*  The only way that I am able to keep up with the garden is by waking up super early aka 6:30am and spending at least an hour in the garden. This morning I ended up around an hour and half. I was able to get a second planting of crops done. Pumpkins in the bed in front of the office, cucumbers to replace the ones that did not survive and cantaloupe in place of the bush green beans.  I also finished the chore of wedding all the beds, collecting a 5 gallon bucket for the chickens.  I dead headed our white rose bush, collected the small harvest and heavily watered the beds.
  2. 2 loads of towels were washed, dried, folded and put away.  With everyone enjoying the pool and working, it is not uncommon for most of use to take 2 showers a day.
  3. I have got the third load in the dishwasher, I am working on getting rid of any food that has gone bad. I also packed up everything in lunch containers, made desert and have started working on sour dough bread for the weekend. I have no doubt this third load will be ran tonight.
  4.  In my effort to use the food we have I ended up chopping up 4 items for a Big Mac Salad for dinner, lettuce, red onion, cucumbers and tomatoes.  I found a recipe for Big Mac sauce and then cooked a pound of ground beef in steak seasoning to use.
  5. I was able to pressure can 5 quarts of chicken broth that I made from the chicken thighs that were processed yesterday.

No wonder I am tired~

Sunday Garden Update

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I know I said there would be less pictures but I could not resist adding these! These sunflowers are gorgeous!   I am waiting for the ones outside the deck to catch up.

Next up is a volunteer tomato plant. I have now discovered it is a cherry tomato plant but I don’t think i have EVER saw some many blooms on a plant.

.And we even have some tomatoes forming

 

Last but certainly not least I did meet my goal for the week. To can one item and to add one item to the freezer for future meals.  I was able to can 9 half pints and 4 pints of Taco meat. 2 half pints did not seal. We used one to finish up dinner and one will be use for Totachos this week.   I was able to freeze 7 prepared baked ziti this week as well!

We are harvesting squash, zucchini, a few cucumbers, peppers and green beans! I LOVE THE SUMMER!

 

5 Things Friday

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1. Lily purchased a new car. I was emotional support only!

2. I am trying to start and keep a routine of spending time first thing in the morning, out in the garden. Yesterday, I spent and our harvesting and tying up the tomatoes. This morning I spent another hour, trying to get our volunteer tomato and watermelon bed organized and productive.

3. Our pool is finally open. That means that Kendall and Zach are both working. They both are eager to make money this summer, so they picking up extra shifts. Zach worked every day but Wednesday this week and Kendall worked every day but Thursday. Kendall is also picking up extra shifts at the YMCA as well.

4. My end of school gift to myself was to have the house cleaned on Wednesday. I am so excited and will be trying to keep things clean as we go now.

5. In July we have vacation plans for 2 of the weeks. So I am working to get things prepared ahead for the school year. The garden is also very time consuming at this point as well. I am not going to make official goals for the summer but do plan to try and get meal both frozen and canned every week when we are home.

Sunday Garden Update

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I am declaring it Summer! Why? Because I have a sun burn from the swim meet yesterday and with two days of work left this is close enough! With that being said, it will also signal a change in my Sunday Garden updates. Basically less pictures and more description of what I am actually doing with the things that we are harvest!

But first check out this Sunflower!

almost 8 feet tall and red!

Here is a picture of the harvest we have been getting this week

And last, we decided to go ahead and pull out the flower bed of Cosmos which started out looking like this

The reason is that the squash bugs are winning.  We are at our wits end, even using seven dust to try and stop them. I am fairly certain that within 2 weeks they will have total destroyed our current squash plants. I have not been able to get as much of either squash or zucchini as I wanted so I decided to try and plant these and get some more.

I am using the paper as mulch to suppress the weeds and other cosmos from attempting to grow.  The chickens enjoyed the cosmos plants and if they don’t eat it all it will become a part of future compost for the garden.

This week I was able to get a start on stocking our freezers, I made salsa chicken for dinner which also became 3 pans of chicken enchiladas for future use. I also make a huge breakfast bowl this am and put 8 breakfast burritos in the freezer as well.   A decent start at least!

5 Things Friday

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  1. I have 2 days left before summer vacation! Unfortunately, we are still in limbo with the pool opening. Zach and Kendall have been able to pick up a couple of shifts at other pools but it is stressful trying to get everything arranged. I can’t wait for summer break to start!
  2. I am super excited about the garden this year! We are already getting a harvest and I am planning to continue to plant so that we can continue to get more of what we want. We have gotten peppers, green beans, a couple of cucumbers, dill and a bit of basil, squash and zucchini so far. We will definitely have tomatoes very soon as well!
  3. Matt and I are currently spending around 30 minutes a day in the garden. This is going to increase this weekend for sure.  I am planning to do some replanting and changing this week. First I am going to cut down all the cosmos from this bed.   It is large and pretty but I want to plant another round of squash plants as the squash bugs are winning in the back gardens. When they finally win or when this planting starts to produce, I am going to pull out the squash plants and plant a “row” of cucumbers in the middle of the bed. I really want to harvest and can an abundance of cucumbers this year. On July 1st, I am planning to pull up the spinach and plant pumpkins in the bed in front of the office.  I am also planning on adding a couple of green beans in the empty slots on the greenstalk planters and one additional zucchini in a bed in the back that has not successfully grown anything so far.
  4. I have already started to work on filling up the freezer. This week I was able to get 3 chicken enchilada meals in the freezer. I am also planning to start restocking our breakfast burritos as well. My goal will be to can one item and make ahead at least one item a week. Next week I am hopefully to get chicken, broccoli and rice casseroles made up and frozen for future use.

5. We leave for our “adult cruise in 3 weeks!

Five Things Friday

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  1. Today is Zach and Kendall’s official last day of school.  Neither one has been to school over half a day this week. Nor has either one gone every day this week.  I have 7 days left but really only 6 as I have appointments next Thursday so I am taking that day off.
  2. We have been getting a small harvest from the garden everyday.  I have been able to freeze a couple of bags of shredded zucchini and 4 more bags of squash casserole. Zach was able to pick blueberries but they did not make it inside the house.
  3. The weather continues to be strange and on top of that our pool (community) is currently not functioning and we have yet to have a swim team practice.
  4. We have been able to obtain some wooden platelets with goals to build a garden box to grow potatoes with easy opening/dumping door. Increase the height of the greenhouse by 2 feet to allow Matt to use comfortably and as the structure for a hydroponic growing system.
  5. Lily has decided that she wants to pursue a certification that will allow her to work with immigrants. This is an answer to prayer and exciting and scarey all  at once.