Making cheese

I scoured the internet and found making cheese was easy! So as a school project I figured it would be a breeze !

   Not so much!

   I found a proclamation of "Make cheese in 20 minutes" and we did it.

4 HOURS later we had cheese!

I suppose it's not very expensive. Once you have the rennet and citric acid it will last forever and isn't very expensive at all. About $5 for them both. A gallon of milk (yes a whole gallon made that small wheel of cheese) and some salt which I already had for canning. Cheese cloth is easy to find during canning season but good luck after that! I found it at the dollar store.

Let me add that I totally loved the fact my son enjoyed the cheese. So it was worth it. But I lost my helper about 30 minutes in to the project.

If you have time and milk that isn't ULTRA PASTURIZED and these few items I would suggest you try it! Flavor it with chili powder or tomato or garlic or whatever you choose to liven it up. (unfortunately my helper is not a try-er of new things) but wanted it plain! 

   It was still a yummy experiment and we had fun.

What to do with those pesky skins?

Tomato skins are everywhere and I hate throwing them away! So I dehydrate them and grind them down to ies as instant tomato paste or as flavor for soups or chili or even fry coating. You will be surprised at the amount you get when dehydrated and then sadly amazed at how little it is when ground down to powder.

  Once you realize how easy it is you will wonder why you didn't do it before now!

Garden produce

Right now my garden is producing like crazy. I can't keep up with it. My green tomatoes that I was so worried I was going to be stuck with have been turning red every which way.

No what are you doing with all this produced? How do you save it from being wasted away and doing nothing but becoming that glarb in  the bottom of the garbage can that attracts all the fruit flies?

  

 You can make jams or preserves or conserves, can it, pickle it, dry it or freeze it. It's really all up to you. But don't forget the best choice .... EAT IT!

  This year I have found dehydrating is easiest, but I have done just about all of the choices.

   But making dehydrated veggies let me make a veggie powder I could smuggle into even the finickiest of eaters.

   So I dehydrated loads. It's also a space saver. And I can vaccu pack the results into jars for use later.

   However you choose I preserve your bounty, make sure you are doing it safely.

What they don't know might be healthy.

I have this in a finicky eater. I don't mean just turned up his nose at one or two things. I mean this kid will not be anything except food that is on his preapproved list. Clear soup broth is his favorite soup, spaghetti with no sauce, pizza with no sauce, of course he likes french fries, and his staple is chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese. And not the homemade kind! 

   He didn't see this coming!

I dehydrated veggies and made veggie powder. A pound if veggies grinds down to a few spoon fulls of the powder that can be hidden even in cookies, cakes, and brownies! 

These are brownies.

If you look really close you can see the granules.

But not one granule shows after they are baked! Not a trace of taste either!!! ( I tried to detect even a hint of the veggie powder knowing it was there and couldn't) and my finicky eater declared they were so good they didn't need frosting!

I figure this is a win, score 1 for Mom!

Dehydrating Zucchini

STUPID OLD GROUNDHOG!!!

I have a stowaway . He is sort of cute and furry and one of many creatures that seem to think my garden was put here just for their pleasure.

   He must be very big because he has been taking single bites out of the bottoms of my tomatoes and throwing them aside when he is displeased with their ripeness, or lack of ripeness in most cases.

   However now that we are getting some color in our beautiful babies he is no longer casting them aside. 

   Now he is knocking over the plants and their stakes!

   I had them all staked up like good little soldiers and he has knocked the majority of the plants over. 

Now that is enough to make any gardener grouchy!

My Bounty.

I have been extremely lucky this year in spite of the colder temps and abundant rain.

I have already harvested many items from my garden.

My peppers are large and numerous.

I have filled many buckets already with many things. 

I have kohlrabi bigger than softballs and cucumbers longer than my arms!

I have tomato and cucumber plants standing taller than I am! My cucumber plants are trying to escape to my neighbor's yard, thank goodness they are patient and accepting cucumbers as bribes.

 

I have started harvesting some tomatoes but most of them still need time because of the colder temperatures we have had this year. 

I am so excited to be this close to harvesting the majority of them it's difficult to wait!

Squash!

I have been so lucky with squash this year! It's been very rainy and cold and tomatoes just have not been very happy so far. I have lots of squash and cucumbers though. It has been difficult weather for Powdery Mildew and I have sprayed a fungi side  this year to help with all this damp weather.

My cucumbers and squash have just about pulled over my trellises! 

A tribute to Grandma, Mildred Mayer

   This is my Grandma Mildred. She died many years ago, but I think of her more and more often. 

   I think the  words that I would use to describe her  would be, capable, effective and resilient.

   All these years later as I know she crosses my mind more and more often for reasons I am not even sure of, because I never thought of us as especially close at the time, and she often made me help her do things she never made the other kids do, it was usually some sort of chore I didn't like to do so I always assumed she lived the other kids more. Now I see what I learned from those things she took the time to teach me and realize the value of those moments we spent together.

   She thought me how to forge for food and pee in the woods, how to grow and appreciate things and I hope after all the begrudging help I gave her nearly 40 years ago, I now hear her coaching me in my head frequently. I think she would have approved of my unconventional gardening ideas and my community garden. 

   I often wish she was here to add to my ideas or help me figure out what to do in the garden.

    Grandma had what she called a rock garden and always had hundreds of different flowers and bushes and trees.

I think she would have loved the bag garden and no dig beds.

Such a delinquent blogger!

I am so sorry I have been so delinquent on blogging. Our life here has been so full if the unexpected and unavoidable for the last few months. My husband has had to have 5 surgeries and was hospitalized for a few weeks and then released only to have home nurses and follow up appointments and another surgery... But u was able to get a garden in, although I was terribly  late at it.  But here is a few things I have been doing that I wanted to share.

This is one if my bag gardens, there are a few other unconventional things I am trying out. There is also a bottle garden I recently started behind the bag of zucchini as well.

This is more bag gardens and a pile if grass cuttings on a piece of cardboard made an unconventional no dig garden.

These are my no dig beds with a few unconventional trellises I use. Also at the bottom you can see all the wilted tomatoes are cuttings I pruned from else where. They are struggling but hopefully some will make it.

This is a watermelon bush I am growing in a bag. It was started very late but is doing well.

  

   The house we recently bought we affectionately refer to as "The Big Ugly" was previously a run down and abused apartment house. It still ugly but we are trying to improve it as we go and it is a work in progress.

   The previous tenants felt the need to have various fire pits in the back yard and there   are also some buried stumps in the yard as well so I have been working to do what I can to help these areas. 

   I did a no dig bed over a stump that someone was apparently trying  to burn out by making it a fire pit.

   It has baby watermelons in it now but may end up with more things added soon.

    I have been busier than it looks, with family illness and a home schooled child and a full time job and the community garden I'm trying to get off the ground, so far all the gardeners have disappeared except for 2 ladies. We started with about 15 people. They have all discovered that they are "too busy" a few wanted me to till their ground (and I did) and I have them free seeds and plants and tilled and they still couldn't be bothered to plant. So my garden for bigger and bigger! 

   I am hoping to get it going enough to catch attention for gardeners for next year. I don't want to be a quitter! I think gardening should be available for anyone willing to so it even with limited time or mobility. And it should

Make people happy.

   Except of course unless you are the Grouchy Gardener!

   

More Garden Drama!

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My green house has flying ambition!

Finally tucked back into place and with a sigh of relief I am able to move on to my next adventure!

Plants Plants Everywhere!!!

  

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My porch is a complete disaster!

   My family is tired of all the plants lying around and all the gardening supplies and buckets and watering cans left out.

We didn't have our last frost until the late  may last year and it has been so wet I haven't been able to get outside  much.

I wanted to hedge my bets and have plenty but some plants are not ready to transplant yet anyway.

Some of my tomatoes are still not ready and haven't gotten their true leaves.

 

My Chayote squash are past ready and I am just not sure where to put them.

My Tennis ball lettuce is nearly full grown but my Tom Thumb lettuce is acting like it quite, I planted it before the Tennis ball by over a week.

I am so busy with work and my community garden and broken rorotiller I just haven't been able to plant anything other than my strawberry plants in my own garden beds yet. I need some extra days off with out thunder storms.