Food Growing Your Own Food

I have a ton of peppers this year, my cayenne bushes are out of control. I might make salsa for Christmas gifts again this year.

 

Freezer jam is your answer. Seriously. Go buy some Ball instant pectin.

If you don't have the freezer space, cooked canned jam is stupid easy. Like, seriously. I think people overplay the difficulty of doing it. If you need instructions, I can find some.

 

mmmmmmmmm freezer jam.

 

It's that season again. This year, we have a lot of garden space to fill. Our house has two raised beds and our neighbor has a raised bed that I am going to help him plant. Additionally, we have our two community garden plots to plan and fill. My MIL is out of commission from gardening this spring, so it is up to us to get it planted. Today my plan is to clean up our two beds as the last tenants let them get choked up with weeds and grass. I'm going to basically just shovel out the top levels of soil into a weird dip in our backyard and then refill the beds with new soil and compost. Then they will be ready to plant some of my colder stuff--peas, kale, and chard will probably go into the ground this weekend. I'm pretty sure the last chance of frost is gone here, but the soils haven't warmed up enough yet to plant much else. I've also got several planters to plant with edible flowers.

 

I just spent the last fifteen minutes or so cleaning out one of my raised beds. It had a beautiful layer of leaves over the top, so it made it very easy to weed out, as I did not plant a cover crop. I anticipate having it ready to plant in the next couple of days with cool weather seedlings. Last year, I did a row of peas to shade the greens that will need it as the weather grows warmer, and that worked pretty well. I plan on doing the same this year.

 

Chamomile can be aggressive. Just a heads-up.

 

I picked up some peas, pak choi, and buckwheat yesterday. I'm going to use the buckwheat to help prep the other bed for my warm weather vegetables; since we don't know if we'll still be here or not, it would be nice to leave the beds in a good state for possible future tenants. I wouldn't want them to inherit the beds in the state that I did--covered in grass I planted my peas yesterday, and I am really excited about the cultivar I picked up, Sugar Daddy. It has a spacing of 2"--yes, 2"--and I think it will be perfect for my raised beds. I had some radish and lettuce mix on hand already, so I planted that as well. I love French Breakfast radishes, roasted, or just plain with butter and salt.

I also picked up some companion flowers to plant in the warm weather bed--marigolds and nasturtium.

 

'Tis the season!!!

I hope the people who took over my last place enjoyed the planted raised beds last year I did get to enjoy some of my early cold weather crops before we relocated.

This year, I'm in an apartment, so containers it is.

 

We have not planted anything but basil. I plan to plant some other stuff, just haven't yet. I found my seeds. Thinking of getting them started. We also have a school garden to plant. That will be fun, too.

 

I just wanna go roll around in the dirt.