SALSA INGREDIENTS! The season is starting to wrap up with cooler temperatures and shorter days. No sign of frost yet this early October; so things are still growing but at a slower pace. I have harvested an incredible amount of tomatoes this year – around 100 pounds, the most since I started this garden 10 […]
I have been very busy!! Harvest time of year is great but a LOT OF WORK to manage all the fruits of my labor. I am very diligent about using everything somehow; nothing goes to waste. Actually, all the waste from processing the produce goes into the compost bin (future blog)! Mid July started with […]
Tomatoes are one of my favorite garden vegetable/fruit (fruit has a ripened flower ovary). There are SO many ways to eat and prepare tomatoes: BLT’s, cut up with oil & vinegar, caprese salad, pico de gallo, fresh and canned salsa, sauce, etc. I usually grow about 40 plants of different varieties for different taste, texture […]
Garlic is sometimes called the “stinking rose” due to its strong odor from one of its components called ‘allicin’. It is native to South and Central Asia and has been around for several thousand years moving further west until the Renaissance when it became widely used for cooking. Historically it has also been used for […]
All kinds of animals visit us on our 1.4 acre property including bears, mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, deer, fox, rattlesnakes, rabbits, skunks and birds and mice! When we built the garden, we had a good plan for fencing all these animals out, especially the rabbits and deer that just love the greenery. We started with […]
The season has finally taken off with real summer weather! I have already been harvesting asparagus, spinach, green onions (planted last fall), arugula and lettuce. The snap peas & regular peas are starting to produce fruit with tons of flowers for more to come! The remaining summer veggies will be ready to pick in a […]
(Aerial View of Garden After Snow) I directly sowed my warm weather vegetables – cucumber, cantaloupe, black beans, edamame and zucchini on May 9th. They started poking their heads out in about 7 days. I also took my tomatoes and peppers and placed all 7 trays (with 18 plants each) on one of the beds […]
Soil amendments were added last fall. We turned a half a ton of steer manure into all the boxes of soil, added nitrogen and potassium so things were ready to be planted first thing this spring. The first weekend in April the soil temperature 50 degrees and weather forecast showed no sign of spring […]
[Cover photo from the book The Vegetables Gardener’s Bible ] “Good soil is not just “dirt”, according to Edward Smith (The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible), it is a repository for a wide range of nutrients like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium plants need for truly healthy growth along with organic matter (remains of plants […]
Garden Site/Weather So, while the pepper seeds are germinating in the house under grow lights, let’s talk about the garden site here in Morrison Co. The United States has 11 growing or hardiness zones which are arranged according to the average lowest temperature. This helps gardeners know which plants are most likely to survive […]