Blog

Life is full of surprises! With this pandemic my family and I are staying home. Thank goodness we are well stocked and we are thankful that delivery people are hard at work. There are many first time gardeners this year. We had some nice warm weather mid March and were able to till some of our garden and I sowed lettuce, spinach, beets, dill and peas. It looks like almost every seed germinated. Then the weather turned very chilly and we had snow, sleet and even some hail. I am... Read more →

We have been blessed with a fantastic harvest this year! Every year, of course, is a little different. The weather, bugs, critters all influence our crops. Well, the fence kept all critters away, the weather was accommodating and the bugs were quite manageable. About a month ago I sowed a third crop of beets, spinach and lettuce. The beets will probably not mature before frost but the green tops will be delicious. The spinach is ready and the lettuce was a bit of a challenge. The first planting never germinated,... Read more →

Last week I finished shucking my last half bushel of beans. These are some of the beans that were harvested from last years garden.We are enjoying the canned vegetables and fruit that we put up last Summer. Next month I will be sowing cabbage, broccoli and pepper seeds. I start them in my kitchen under grow lights. By keeping them close by I can keep a watchful eye on them. Spring will be here before you know it but for now we sit by our wood cook stove well fed... Read more →

Imagine this scenario: You are planning for an emergency situation, so you purchased a collection of open-pollinated vegetable seeds. Saving seeds from year to year was your goal. You need to feed your family so this is serious stuff. You plant and care for your garden and have a good crop. Now it comes time for seed collection. You carefully harvest and fully dry seed for next year's garden. "All set", you think! Next year, you plant and oh no what happened?! You have some of the oddest tasting and... Read more →

All Summer long I have been busy putting up food. I have canned many quarts of vegetables, fruit, pickles and relishes. Some of which I have entered in County Fairs.That is a lot of fun!The last part of August I planted a second crop of lettuce and spinach. It has been very dry here so that needs to be watered twice a day.My dill and millet have been harvested when totally dry. I seperated the dill seed from the plant and stored it in a cool dry location. The millet... Read more →

According to Suzanne Ashworth, in her book Seed to Seed, Flint corn will retain a high germination rate for up to 10 years and sometimes much longer. This corn, when ground into meal, makes delicious corn bread, pancakes and muffins. Flint corn is not difficult to grow or harvest. No wonder it has been a life sustaining crop for centuries. Read more →

Native Americans all across the USA planted these three crops for a very good reason. By combining them in there diet they had a base of complete nutrition. It is not just any kind of beans. corn and squash. You need to grow mature dry beans, corn as a grain and winter keeping squash. String beans, sweet corn and summer squash will not do. Neither beans or corn develop protein until fully mature and dry. Summer squash has almost no calories and not that much in the way of vitamins.... Read more →

If you are saving seeds to plant in next years garden you do! For example - All squash varieties are outbreeding which means they are insect pollinated. Squashes are divided into 6 different species and different varieties within the same species will cross readily. Crossing however does not occur between the different species. So what in the world does that all mean? O.K. say you plant Buttercup and Hubbard squash in your garden, you carefully save the seeds from each variety and plant them next year. Ouch what is that??... Read more →

I like both pumpkins and squash as Winter vegetables because they keep without canning, drying or freezing. Only a cool dry room is needed to store them. Use our Small Sugar Pumpkins first, they keep past Christmas. Waltham Butternut Squash keeps here into the early Spring. Combined you have dark orange colored vegetables for six months of the year. Squash and Pumpkins are not hard to grow in large hills. You should harvest at least eight to twelve fruit from each hill. Most families would get sick of eating... Read more →

Once you have your place to garden or homestead, there are a number of kinds of food you can harvest from beds or plantings which are relatively permanent. For example, I have been cutting asparagus shoots for weeks now, and the rhubarb is ready as well. Dandelions grow wild in our lawn and fields, but if they did not we could establish a small bed just for them. You could do the same for Cow Slips if you have an area wet enough. I grow strawberries in a garden... Read more →