We finished the potato harvest.
This is only the first basketful, but we considered it a nice start, and these only took a couple hours to dig. We had planted the plants closer together than normal, under cardboard and sand, in a regular garden plot. They mostly grew well, and it must be said that we already [...]
Archive for the ‘Gardening and Plants’ Category
Potato Harvest
Posted in Gardening and Plants, Home Schooling/Unschooling, My Life and Family, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, tagged garden, gardening, harlequin beetle, harvesting potatoes, potato, potato harvest, potatoes on October 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
First Snow Fall
Posted in Celebrations, Gardening and Plants, My Life and Family, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, tagged Autumn, bird, cardinal, cardinals, Fall, fall gardening, first snow fall, first snowfall, garden, gardening, green tomatoes, snow, winter on October 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It definitely didn’t look quite this romantic, but it did snow today for the first time this fall.
We are supposed to have snow for the next three days, off and on. We’ll see.
My mother is taking time today to yank the rest of the garden things – beans and peppers, the last of the tomatillos, [...]
Homestead: A Buckeye Nut Tree
Posted in Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, Wildfoods and Foraging, tagged buckeye nuts, buckeye tree, buckeye trees, chestnuts, jewelry, nut, nut varieties, nuts on September 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
You know that unkown nut tree on the property we hope to buy? It turns out it’s a buckeye. The nuts are maturing now, and they are beautiful.
Will picked up some nuts, still in the husks, that had fallen from the tree, and days later, they split open on their own, revealing the pretty-as-jewelry nuts.
We [...]
“How Did I Miss That Squash?”
Posted in Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, tagged cooks garden, Gadzukes summer squash, giants squash image, Italian summer squash, squash, squash image, squash varieties, squashes, summer squash, summer squash image on August 31, 2009 | 2 Comments »
This is a “Gadzukes! Zucchini Summer Squash”, raised from seed bought from The Cook’s Garden.
I was impressed with the size and shapes of the first few from the huge, prickly, jungle-ey vine.
Then their production seemed to dry up. I was at a loss to figure out why the few squashes that did mature had rotted blossom ends. [...]
A Summer Squashes’ Delightful Shapes
Posted in Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, My Life and Family, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, tagged cooks garden, garden, gardening methods, rain, squash, squashes, summer squash, Tromba D'Albenga Squash on August 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I am having a lot of fun with my garden this year. The extra rains have made it easy to care for, as compared to watering in the afternoons, and since I used a new method (to me) of laying down cardboard boxes and old feed sacks to keep the weeds at bay, weeding has [...]
Homestead: Growing Things
Posted in Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, Home Improvements, Inspirations for Life and Projects, My Life and Family, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, tagged briars, Catmint, Catnip, cedar trees, cottonwood trees, day lilies, drunken berries, elm trees, forage grasses, lichens, moss, rose bushes, roses, sunflowers, vines on August 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Elm trees, and loads of catmint.
Moss, moss, everywhere…and lichens, too. That bit of weed bud hanging out in space is caught in the web of a barn spider…aka catface. They were expected residents.
”Drunken berries” grow all over, including over the cistern and pump jack. I don’t know if there is a more scientific name for these [...]
Tomatoes and Peppers…Pretty First Fruits
Posted in Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, tagged bell pepper, bell peppers, Carnival Bell Peppers, Casspian Pink tomatoes, Cold Set tomatoes, green bell peppers, peppers, purple bell peppers, tomato, tomato jam, tomato jelly, tomato preserves, tomato varieties, tomatoes, yellow bell peppers, Yellow Pear tomatoes on August 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Today I got my first (late) Carnival Bell Peppers and tomatoes, both Yellow Pear and Cold Set. I have rarely had tomatoes do well outdoors, so this is exciting to see the plants so weighed down with fruit. My prayer is that the frosts hold off long enough to let the crop finish well.
Here is [...]
French Green Bean Harvest
Posted in Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, My Life and Family, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, tagged bean filet fin des bagnols, dilly beans, French filet beans, garden, gardening, green beans on August 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The green bean harvest almost got away from me this year. But I managed to track it down and catch it.
I tried three varieties of green beans this year…well, one is a yellow wax. The other two were varieties of French Filet beans, which are known for their intense flavor, delicate snap, and prolific habits.
They [...]
Growing Ginger: My First Successful Experiment
Posted in Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, tagged fresh ginger, fresh ginger root, fresh gingerroot, ginger, ginger plant, ginger root, gingerroot, growing ginger, how to grow ginger, how to harvest ginger on August 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I have tried growing ginger several times. Each time my project failed for one reason or another. But this time was different. I finally broke down and bought a bit of gingerroot from either The Cook’s Garden or Gurney’s Nursery (neither one is coming up with ginger online just now, though) - a piece which was [...]
My First Canning Project of the Season
Posted in Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, My Life and Family, tagged canning, cherries, cherry trees, fruit, pie cherries, sour cherries on July 20, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Last Saturday, Will helped the children and I pick cherries at a neighbors. They have two lovely cherry trees, but have no interest in taking time to use their bounty.
So they give it to us.
Last year, I only took time to pick one day, and had all I could do to get that batch pitted [...]
A River Trip with My Husband
Posted in Celebrations, Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, My Life and Family, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, Wildfoods and Foraging, tagged 4th of July, bald eagle, black berries, boat, cottonwood trees, ducks, fish eggs, frog eggs, heron, Independence Day, river, Southe Platte River, thistle, waterfowl, wildlife, willows on July 5, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Courtesy of: http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/images/401/Magnoliophyta/Magnoliopsida/Malpighiales/Salicaceae/Populus/P_deltoides/Cottonwood_tree_MC.JPG
Yesterday was the best 4th of July I’ve had in years…possibly the best since the years described in the post below, with the wild antics of my brother and his best-friend cousin.
My husband proposed a river trip, from the bridge near town, to five miles as the crow flies, to a friend’s ranch. This [...]
When a Decorative Cattail Gets Worn Out
Posted in Gardening and Plants, Uncategorized on June 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Here is what happens when large cattails expire. This one was several years old, and finally decided to let go, in despite of coatings of hair spray.
By the time I removed it, it had become a fluffy, beautiful curtain clear down to the shelf…amazing, I’ve never seen the like before or since.
Wild Gardens
Posted in Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, Inspirations for Life and Projects, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, Wildfoods and Foraging, tagged cooking, eating, food, foraging, garden, gardening, weeds, wild foods, wildfoods on May 29, 2009 | 2 Comments »
For years I’ve tried to keep a garden in my back yard. Nearly always, it has as good as failed for this or that reason…usually not lack of work.
Finally, I decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble here – especially after hearing that the only way my husband’s grandpa ever grew a garden there was [...]
Collecting Cattails, and Smiles
Posted in Food and Recipes, Gardening and Plants, Home Schooling/Unschooling, My Life and Family, Traditional and Self-Sufficient Skills, Wildfoods and Foraging, tagged abundance, cattail flour, cattails, creation, deer, deer rifle, food, German Shepherd, German Shepherd Dog, gun, hunting, K-10, nature, November, rifle, self-sufficiency, Thankfulness, wildfoods, working together on November 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
We had a glorious time together on the evening of the 3rd. It was still, and had been pleasantly warm most of the day. So we went on an outing.
After we tried a couple cattail fuzz recipes, and liked them (except hubby), we decided we’d better collect a lot more – enough to last until next cattail season, at [...]
