A video on vanilla beans

I wanted to share a video about vanilla beans. 

I'm pretty new at doing videos so be patient, I hope you find it helpful.

Here is the link:

http://youtu.be/kxPpNVOu-Cg

I Have Fruit!!!

Today is a great gardening day because every gardener loves to see their work progress and little fruits , even green ones give us then "sticktoitiveness" we need to commune working diligently. 

   I love to see progress, especially when I got such a late start this year.

    When I came home from vacation my garden, which I labored intensely over , and grew plants from seeds etc, had died do to neglect. (My garden tender never watered it once in 24 days!).

   Non gardeners do not understand the amount of work and time that goes into it, because he thought he had put as much work into it as I had because he helped me twice in the garden.... He helped move some dirt to beds and plant some plants and was a great helper but had no ide of the work that was done when he was absent. The germination and buying seeds from several countries, and building beds etc.

   Guess who my garden helpers are this year? And he is learning a lot. But most of all he isn't hating it. (Except for mosquitoes, we all hate them, and they love him!)

   I think he is turning into a great gardener and he is going to feel so wonderful when he sees these beauties.

Taking cuttings

   I admit it, I'm a pruner. Maybe more of a butcher If you ever say the green I leave behind for the compost pile. But the rain has been really constant here and the plants were showing signs of fungus and blight so it was a necessary evil. I do it anyway because I don't need branches and excessive foliage that don't grow buds. But sometimes while staking or trimming it becomes by accident, or necessity , good branches get broken or cut. I try to make them useful, I put them either in a bucket of water or dip the tip in rooting compound and put them in the ground or a pot. The ones I put in the ground always seem to look droopy. The ones I root in water seem to do better. Here are the ones I have recently done and you can definitely tell the ones that had roots from the ones that didn't, the droopy ones have been in for 4 days and haven't died but they look like its a struggle, but they will probably make it ok.

It's a very thrifty way to extend your garden, and it's nice to have extra plants to produce more fruit. These are a bit late in starting but if they get a nice start they can still produce. I plan on moving some to large pots to go in my greenhouse this year and hope they can go for en extended growing season if I keep the frost off. But eventually they will stop because here in Ohio the temps will drop and tomatoes like it above 70.

Late start in garden

   I actually thought I had it beat this year, my habit of always running behind I mean. 

   I had just about everything in the ground by May 21st because we were leaving on vacation. I had arranged for my oldest son, almost 24 to water it while we were away for 24 days. Everything peachy right?

I started my beds.

 I planted my seedlings I grew from seeds, a lot of which I ordered from far away countries and were very rare, others my regular favorites like lettuce, peppers and beans Etc.

But when I returned home from our epic vacation across the YSA I found it had not been watered at all. And sadly most was dead or dying.

   Which left me starting over in the middle of JUNE!

   Now in less than 30 days I am pretty happy with the progress even with very little sunshine in the last month. I have to admit the nearly constant rain has really helped my garden.

Even my grapes are doing well.

These are my quickie pallet beds I threw together when I started running out of space.

I was able to replace most of my lost plants with a lot of volunteer plants I wasn't even aware of from last year's gardens. This year I went much smaller and hadn't checked out the neighboring lots I was using last year. But I was able to come up with DOZENS if tomato plants!!! I was able to buy cucumber plants, and my green beans have grown very fast. My peppers survived but did need nursed along. From June 16 to July 11th I managed to pull a garden together after all, and I really feel hopeful now. I can't wait to see what I can harvest because I have very little idea of what sort of tomatoes I ended up with! So this will be my surprise garden I guess. 

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.