Popping Corn.

Our entire family loves to participate in gardening.  OK, well we all like the idea of gardening, and we start with great gusto.  Then it usually ends up being Matt's project late summer, and then finally ends with me cursing the carrots because it's so dirty and laborious to dig them all up and wash them.  

That being said, I'm so grateful for our garden.  It's not large since we live on a normal city lot, but we've learned to grow what we will actually eat (and what we've had good success with in the past).

 The harvest our children most look forward to is popcorn!  

It grows just like regular sweet corn, so once the stalks are brown in about mid October we pick all the ears.   Then we hang it all up by the husks and wait for it to dry.  This is about a three month process. -(gardening provides so many lessons in patience)- 

This year, I used the ears to decorate in the fall time, then once it became Christmas season I hid them in the coat closet.  I don't know if I'll do the same next year, as it became a common game to see who would find a popcorn kernel in their shoe!

In the past, we've removed the kernels at Christmas and eaten our popcorn during our family celebration.

This year we waited a little longer and instead took advantage of a snow day when Nathan and Matt were both home and blizzard conditions assured we were all staying in.

We popped some later and it turned out great!

 

We are also going to try to keep some of the kernels for planting in our garden this year.  The only disadvantage with planting popcorn is that you could just buy a bag of popcorn kernels cheaper then what it cost to grow it yourself (because we bought starter plants).  If we can keep and plant our own seeds, then it will make more sense...either way we'll probably keep planting it since the kids like it so much. 

It's fun to enjoy some of the fruits of our garden in the middle of winter.

  -Some people eat canned tomatoes or beans all winter.  Our supplies are long gone (if there were any), but we got popcorn!

Spring is in the Air: Getting Dirty in the Kitchen.

I wish it was beginning to feel like Spring...today was actually bone-chilling cold. Although temps and wind-chills were both above zero so who am I to complain?

Despite the cold temps, last weekend we took a trip to the local gardening and landscape center.  We didn't go for plants but seeds.  We are actually thinking about our garden before May 1 this year (yeah us!), and we're hoping that starting a few tomatoes and bell peppers from seed will be fun, educational and money-saving.  

We got three different seed packets: Red sweet bell peppers, cherry tomatoes (sweeties),  bush tomatoes (ace). 

 

It would perhaps be nice to have more variety, but then it becomes less of a money saver.  Especially for us since we only have space for 6-8 tomato plants and we don't eat a lot of peppers (2-4 plants is plenty).  If you had a large garden then obviously you could buy a bigger selection.  

The most important for me was the full-size tomato since I can can or freeze those.  It also was a priority that all the seeds were heirloom.  Heirloom means that we can save some seed from this year's crop to plant for next year.  Ideally everything we plant will be heirloom and if we are successful, we'll never have to buy seeds again (bwa-ha-ha...that's my evil laugh)!

To start our seeds Matt purchased a greenhouse kit from Menards.  There are 16 cells, so each kid can plant and take care of four.  The cells in this kind that he bought are made of something from a coconut so that we can just plant the whole thing and not worry about upsetting any roots.

He also purchased some organic seed-starting soil and a plant light.  The plant light was the most expensive item purchased at around $5.  Perhaps it will last more than one season though.  Total on everything we spent around $18, but we leftover dirt and seeds.

The process was very simple, but there was something exciting about getting a little dirty and planting some tiny seeds!  There was a bit of a Spring buzz in the air!

 Evelyn planted 4 red pepper plants, Addie planted 3 cherry tomato and 1 regular tomato plant, and Nathan and Ella each planted 4 tomato plants.

Matt was involved so everything was done very carefully.  He made a hole the correct depth for each seed, covered the seeds back with dirt, and then tamped it down a little (with a plastic spoon).  

(I would have just pushed it in with my finger and called it good.)

 

Once planted, we watered the seeds.  We used a water bottle so that it would be more gentle, but I'm sure there are other methods that work well too.  We put the plastic cover over the top, so the greenhouse effect could take place.  We made sure to put them near a window, but there's not a perfect place for them.  So far they've just sat on our kitchen table.  Once they all sprout, they can move to the basement and they'll have the plant light.  Although our basement is a little chilly, so we may have to rig something up down there or come up with a secondary location.

Upon entering the kitchen later, I found that Aerial and Cindy were on duty protecting our newly planted seeds.  Having them face different directions is good strategy...

So, if anyone has experience or knowledge in this department, we are always open to advice.  Like most everything we do, we're learning as we go!

update:  We planted the seeds on Sunday 2/08/15.  One week later on 2/15/15 we have 8 sprouts!

Autumn Beaut(ies)

 One more Fall post before I have to admit that Winter is here!  

Raking is a still a great time at our home.  All the kids enjoy raking and helping out, and if they get tired of it they climb a tree or play in the leaves.  We lost half of our mature trees in a storm two Springs ago, so the load is lighter, which also helps!

I love the Fall; it's crisp and gorgeous.  Once the leaves are down though, it's hard to deny that the weather is changing.  Winter is definitely a beautiful season in its own way, but I'm thankful we could enjoy the Fall weather one last time!

 

 

Fresh Squeezed.

I spent yesterday trying to work through what I affectionately call "tomato tangle". We only have six plants, but they're all over each other.  We haven't picked a tomato in a long time, and so I'm trying to encourage some air flow or something so the tomatoes can ripen yet this year.  Thankfully the weather has been beautiful this week, but there are still about 50+ green tomatoes out there!

There was a time however when we had a few tomatoes sitting on our counter.  Not a lot, but more than we could eat....which also means fruit flies.  I can't stand fruit flies.  They make me feel like my whole kitchen is disgusting.  Anyone relate?

 

 

I came upon a rare morning however when Matt and Nathan had already left, I must have had my Bible study finished (or so I would like to think), and the girls were still in bed.  So, I decided to take care of the few tomatoes (and the fruit flies).  I have canned tomatoes before, but didn't have enough tomatoes or time to start that, so I decided to try freezing them.  I've never frozen tomatoes before, but it was very simple!  The preparation was the same as if canning, but then instead of filling jars and waiting while they sit in a water bath, you can just put them in an air-tight freezer bag.  I'm not going to write the steps of how to do this here because it would then make it seem like I know what I'm doing.  However, I love pickyourown.org and get all my information for freezing and canning anything and everything there.

The above tomatoes produced this:

 

 

 Two bags with about 3 cups of tomatoes each.

Not super impressive, but I think my time in the kitchen was only between an hour and an hour and a half.  Better than rotten tomatoes, and better than having fruit flies!

 

The issue I have when processing tomatoes is the amount of liquid that you lose.  The instructions said you could just drink the tomatoes juice...

 



 Gross, right?  I am not a tomato juice fan.

(we don't always have a world map on our table, but this day we did)

 

However, I've never had fresh tomato juice.  It was actually, genuinely good!

Don't get me wrong, if you don't like a fresh garden tomato you're probaby not going to like the juice it produces.  But, don't knock it until you try it. 

 

By this time the girls had awoken and were ready for breakfast.  My girls don't have many reservations about trying new foods, and Adeline and Evelyn love tomatoes, so I offered them some juice.

Ella politely tried it, but was not interested in having more than a taste.

 

Evelyn and Addie really liked it though.

 

Here's Evs with her tomato juice.  She perhaps does look a little unsure...or maybe that's a grin.

 

And of course, nothing complements a yogurt beard better than a tomato stache.

 





And here's Addie, loving' it up.

 





 

So, here's hoping the beautiful weather continues, we can gather a late harvest, and make some more tomato juice!



First Fruits.

Since I just archived about the garden, I might as well update on our edibles in the front yard also.

In the front we have an apple tree and three blueberry bushes.  The apple tree we planted last Fall and the blueberries we just planted this Spring.

It's all good for my patience.  There's not a lot of rewards or fruits of our labor.  I wish I could fast-forward them twenty years...but I'll wait.

The tree we planted is a Honeycrisp apple tree.  If you're at the tree lot and all the trees are the same price, you might as well get the best tasting, most expensive apple!

We were told it would be three-five years until it would bear any fruit.  We didn't expect anything this year, but did get one, perfect little apple.

 

 

Our tree looks better photographed up close because the deer got to it earlier this Spring.  We get to see lots of wildlife, like deer and turkeys, out our front window, and it's fun for the kids.  The deer especially are beautiful to watch, but are just really big pests!  So, our apple tree is completely enclosed by 4 foot (maybe taller?) wire.  Once the tree is more mature we should be able to take that down.

The kids loved to check the apple everyday.  We've see a gazillion apples before, but this one was our apple and so much more special!

 

 

We sliced it open and cut it into sixths for dinner one night.  It wasn't much, but it tasted wonderful!  Crisp, sweet, juicy, and warm off the tree.

 

 

The blueberries are young and still also not fruitful.  Because of the deer they are completely enclosed by wire...we are taking no chances!

I'm excited for when they are bigger.  Not only will they hopefully gets lots of blueberries, but their leaves are beautiful all year.  You can see here that they are changing for the Fall.

Blueberries are not native to this area, and so we do have to amend the soil.  We don't do it often, but we have a solution with ammonium sulfate in it, and we mulched the bushes with pine needles.  I just read that you can add coffee grounds to the soil as well.  I'm going to try this instead of just throwing those away every morning! 

 



 

Like with our apple tree, we had one blueberry this year!  In hindsight, we maybe should have plucked this off right away.  Blueberries have shallow spread out roots, and it's apparently good for them to focus on building their roots (and not growing fruit) for the first three years.  But, like I said before we are learning as we go!

We were trying to figure out how we were going to share one blueberry amongst 6 (or at least 4), but as we were talking about it Adeline picked it off and ate it.  The report is that it was good!



Weed it and Reap.

We recently read a biography picture book about Clara Barton titled Clara and Davie by Patricia Polacco.  It was a beautiful book that depicted Clara Barton's childhood.  In the book it talked about how she had a gift for both healing and making things grow.  Even as a child, neighbors would bring her their livestock to mend, and she was famous locally for her flower gardens.

(side note:  if you don't know Patricia Polacco's books, you should.  She is one of my favorite author/illustrators of children's picture books. FInd one of her books at the library, there's lots of them.)

 

 I admire that.  I would love to watch things flourish under my care.  I would love for people to admire my garden and ask my advice, I would love to be noted as one with a special gift and care for growing things.  I do know people like this.

I am not like this.  Matt and I enjoy gardening, and every year we have a harvest.  But, every year we make mistakes learn something new.  That is the point of this post.  I'm hoping to have a place for myself to look back next year so we can remember what went wrong and maybe what went well.  Year by year we'll keep working at it, and hopefully some day we'll get there!

 

Last Spring we removed all the river rock from behind our house.  We wanted to have a space for a garden, and figured this was as good as any.  It is shaded for part of the morning because of the house, but is in full sun from noon until the sun goes down.  It's obviously a pretty convenient location also.  Every year we continue to fertilize.  Next year we may also want to add more compost and vermiculite.
We planted: tomatoes, basil, sweet peppers, rosemary, popcorn, carrots, green beans, sugar snap peas, red onions, broccoli, cucumbers, watermelon,and cantaloupe.

These photos were all taken somewhat recently, about mid-September. 

As we were planning our garden, Nathan and Ella wanted watermelon and popcorn.  I said "yes"!
You can see our popcorn along the back of the garden.  It did okay.  I think each stalk (six total) got one year of corn.  I'm not sure what we were suppose to expect!  It's currently drying on our counter for three months.  It should make a fun Christmas treat! 
 



 

Our tomatoes did pretty well this year.  We still have a lot of green tomatoes out there that we may have to pick before it freezes.  Next year though I would like to have more supports for them so they aren't all over the place.  Perhaps Matt can make something like this.  We also could add more plants. This year we had 5, including one cherry tomato plant.

 

 

The kids though this one was pretty neat.  It's three tomatoes that grew into one big tomato.  You can imagine the eight year-old boy humor that followed.

 



 

Next to the tomatoes we had both a basil and rosemary plant.  The basil plant did great and was very bush-like.

 

The rosemary actually did well too, but was completely covered by the tomatoes and basil.  I'm not sure what to do with it over the winter. I may dig it out and keep it inside...or it may be okay outside.  All I know is it's an evergreen.  Next year I may plant more rosemary because I love it so much.  I also want to plant cilantro next year since we use it all. the. time. 

 

 

We also planted two sweet bell pepper plants: one red one purple.  For reasons I can't explain these also did well.  We had  4 red peppers and 5 purple peppers, just from those two plants.  We're not crazy pepper people, so this was the perfect amount!

 

 

 

 

Along the front of our garden we have carrots and zinnias.  The carrots look good, though we honestly have only picked a few.  The zinnias look good now, but they were pretty puny most of the year.  Next year I would like something with a little more "pow".

 

 

We also had green beans in this mix.  They seem to be a nice staple for us.  They did get eaten by bunnies also, but we were able to get a decent harvest.

 

 

Since this is about sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly, let's move down the garden.  Our yard is sloped and Matt did terrace the garden this year, but as you move downward things get not so good.

Our biggest issue was rabbits.  We left for almost a week over 4th of July with no fence around our garden.  The result was a 24 hour bunny buffet.

 

This is what the broccoli looked like in September.  Needless to say, we didn't get any broccoli to eat this year.  It got eaten down so many times it hasn't really had a chance.

 

The cucumbers too were eaten down, but climbed back for the last couple of months.  The plant was small though and I think we only got about six cucumbers to eat off of two plants.

 



You can see from these photos that we put up some chicken wire fence (though not until mid-July.  It definitely helped, but the little stinkers can run under our deck to get to the garden.  There is trellis there, but we'll have to cover that with chicken wire, or something better, next year also.

 



Here, I give you the peas.  Poor little things, the rabbits love them.  I think a handful of peas total off of all the plants.  We've never had success with peas.  Perhaps we'll save the space next year and just buy these at the farmer's market!

 

The onions too were a bust.  I didn't take any photos, but I think some of the onions I picked were actually smaller than the bulbs I planted...is that possible?!

 

Last, (and perhaps least), is the end of the garden.  Maybe next year there will be additional space, but we'll see.  As you can see, there are more carrots planted here.  Our mantra seemed to be if nothing else works, throw in some carrots.  We originally planted watermelon here.  But, forgot that the rain runs off the downspout from the house and hits like a freight train right in this spot.  So, watermelon got washed out.  Nathan really wanted to watch watermelon grow from seed, but instead we went out and bought a plant.  However, the greenhouse was out of watermelon, so we bought a cantaloupe.   We planted this before we left for Wisconsin in July.  When we came home it was gone.  There was no sign that there had even been anything planted.  So, apparently rabbits like melon too.

 



The carrots are doing fine though.  I think next year we'll try potatoes here.  Matt has always wanted to plant potatoes and I've been reluctant since potatoes are so cheap.  But, I saw they were on the dirty dozen list, so why not try it out.

So, that is garden in review 2014.  It really is one of our favorite family pastimes, even if it isn't always super productive.  It's such an easy way to show our children the majesty of God as they watch a tiny seed grow into a fruit-bearing plant.  We get to participate in this wonder and care for His creation, but ultimately just sit back and watch His splendor as things grow and blossom (or don't)...and we can watch visitors like these:

 



 

Love it!