Preparing the Garden!

As fall draws to a close and the days get colder and colder the garden dies back. Slow at first then faster, till nothing is left. Where your tall green plants where but a short time before there is merely soil. Dirt. Nothing. But beneath the crust of the cold soil, it is not quite as dead as you think. Of course the plants are dead, but the earthworms, the bugs, and the bacteria are alive and happy. They need food and warmth. The are decomposing your dead tomato plants and any other substance they find. To work with them to enrich your garden before spring follow some basic steps...


One. When tilling your garden turn the dead plants into the soil.

Two. Do NOT over till. This is VERY important. Over tilling kills the bugs and worms you need!

Three. Collect Leaves!!! All over your town people are raking leaves. We hitch up our trailer to the 12 passenger and go leaf hunting. It really is thrilling!

Four. Compost through the winter.

More Later...


Jess

Garden post

Well I was planning to go out and photograph our garden today, but the rain came in and put stop to that idea!!! Our garden however is doing really well! Our okra and tomatoes right now are the strongest, but everything else is doing well! Okra loves the heat so it has taken off! This is our first year to have eggplant and cantaloupe in our garden. The years before this we have always tried but never succeeded! However this year both of those plants are doing really well. We have already eaten quite a few melons and the eggplant is coming in! We have learned quite a few facts on cantaloupe. Here is one... All the books we have read say to harvest your watermelon when it falls off the vine. However we have found to harvest it just before it falls off. This is a little risky because you can't be sure, but over all the fruit will taste ten times better!!!

Garden Snacks!!

My dad got this idea from a man he works with...

When your out in your garden and you are feeling rather hungry, you can have a quick, easy, healthy, and tasty snack right then! First take a cherry tomato, then pick a basil leaf, wrap the tomato in the leaf, and pop it in your mouth! I do this all the time and it its so good!

Also something we do for dinner is put cherry tomatoes, basil leaves, and feta cheese in bowls on the table. Everyone gets a toothpick and the spear the different "toppings". This is a great way to taste your garden fresh! No added things. No corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup. Just you and the garden!!!

Peanut Butter!

As if we did not have enough nuts in the house we bought some!!! Just Kidding! Really though we did buy an enormous bag of peanuts at the farmer's market and tried the peanut butter!

1. We first shelled them
2. Then we seperated the chaff and nuts
3. Then in the food processor we did about 2 cups of nuts with... oil, salt, and honey. We found you have to "eyeball it" for the amount if you need sweeter peanut butter do more honey.
4. We found that because our nuts were pre-salted we didn't need to add salt and we needed more honey.
5. When we first started using whole wheat we thought it had a strange flavor, now we think white flour tastes odd. The same goes for this, at first it tastes strange!

Green Gardening Girl's Family!

Our Family Garden

Where souls are gardened with the plants.

Our mom has a love of the outdoors and she married a man with the same love so... the kids love the outdoors! We love working in our garden and our yard. We love the bugs and nature. But the best part is being with your family outside! So heres to being a Green Gardening Family!

Lettuce From Friends!

A gift from our friends the Boyd's was a much needed blessing. They had an over abundance of lettuce and offered it to us. We were more than happy to take it off their hands! We ate the last of it last night and it was so good, it is amazing how much better homegrown food is then store bought! Theirs was tender and sweet while store bought is tough and chewy! 

Thank You Friends!

Our Garden Update!!! - Part Two

Wheat from our backyard. It really is wheat! And we really can eat it. And we really don't know where it came from!

Our bulbs we had to dig up to make room for the strawberries!

One giant sunflower.

Our Rudbeckia garden. It is so beautiful in the fall when it blooms.

Note: The tilled land in the photo above is our neighbor's garden!

Zinnias

Little Zinnias

A long row of flowers ready to burst into bloom.

My (Jessica) herb garden-off to a rocky start, but doing OK now.

More herbs

Onions - soon to be through

Erin's sweet "taters" and "normal taters"

Bean plant and bean pod

 Tomatoes...

And more tomatoes!

Here is the rest of our garden in photos. It is having a hard time right now in the heat, but it's trying! It is a lot of fun to go out in our yard and see all the little plants growing up. Very exciting! We have two banana peppers, cucumbers, and squash. We also have zinnias and bush beans.

Our Garden Update!!! - Part One

Our Tomatoes!!!

Corn and okra

Okra!

Peppers, Marigolds, and Tomatoes

Cucumber bloom

Cucumber

Rachel's Garden

More of Rachel's Garden

Rachel's Beautiful flower!

I don't know what it is!

Ryan's Garden - tomatoes, beans, and corn!

Our lettuce - it is usually bigger, we just picked.

Our broccoli is soon to die in the heat. So Emily is planting tomatoes underneath.

Sweet Emily in her garden. Working hard!

This is our garden update! We have been outside all morning weeding, watering, and planting. I planted another batch of corn and watermelons. They all are doing really well! We have eaten snow peas, broccoli, lettuce, and herbs so far. And tomatoes are not far behind! 

We are working hard at NOT letting the weeds in. It is hard, but we must keep at it.

A Tribute To Our Brothers!!!

I was thinking about my brothers yesterday! About Ryan who is wearing that hot cast and his only complaint is that he can't work anymore!!! And about Michael who is our little blessing! So I challenge our readers to post a "Tribute to our Brothers!" post and leave a comment to let us know you did! What do your brothers do for you? It doesn't matter if you are a girl or boy comment on your brother!!! 

I am posting mine tomorrow!!!

Are we really slaving away??

With summer approaching and the temperature rising we tend to complain a lot. Maybe not out loud, but still our sinful human nature causes us to think complaining thoughts.

 But if you think about it we really don't have that anything to complain about! We have lawnmowers, weed-eaters, hoses, tools made for us, seeds delivered to our door, and a glass of water always in the house! 

Compared to the 18th century when they hauled water, made tools by hand, and cut their grass with a sickle!

So when we think of our hard time planting our "large" gardens think about it and go read Farmer Boy or Little House on the Prairie! They were out planting whole acres of crops! And they didn't complain. Why? Because if they didn't - NO FOOD!! You starved!

posted by jessica

Gardening Souls!

We are truly blessed to grow up in the surroundings we do. We love our siblings, parents, and the one true God. Our parents are raising us to be Plants Grown Up, Polished Cornerstones,& A quiver full of arrows! So heres to our parents who (by God's grace) are weeding and watering their little garden!

Welcome to a country diary of a green gardening girl

This is a nature journal of a mom. I love homemaking more than I ever would have dreamed. As I have fallen more in love with my job, I have learned that we have lost sight of the food part of our role as moms. I am trying to figure out how to reclaim this important but fading art of gardening . My first title was organic garden girl, and I pictured myself in the garden with my sun-freckled children helping me while eating pesticide free veggies fresh picked from my garden.

However, freckles are usually a sign of too much sun and the government seems to have lots of rules for the word "organic". Then I pictured myself being called in by the organic police telling me that sevin dust was a no-no and it was all down hill after that.

So I decided on green. It is a very popular "organic" color, and it is a word for a novice, which I am in a big way.

I thought there are lots of us out there who just don't know that much about food from seeds to canning and grain fed beef to free range chickens. I hope to trace my journey and hopefully learn a lot along the way. Or just laugh a lot.

Come follow me as my family and I learn and grow. Aren't you glad you don't have to be in on that learning part?