I finished my pickle relish today. Here is the recipe that I used. I got this about 20 years ago from a friend who was in her 70's at the time. Thanks Helen!

Homemade Pickle Relish Recipe

6 lbs of pickling cucumbers  abt 3 quarts chopped finely
6 medium peppers chopped fine: 3 red and 3 green
6 medium onions chopped fine
Helen used to put in 1 jar pimento chopped fine. I did not
I added a few yellow banana peppers chopped fine

Mix with 2 quarts boiling water and 1/2 cup canning or pickling salt. Let stand for 2 hours. Drain. Make Syrup.

Syrup

1 pint vinegar
5 cups sugar
1 tbs cornstarch
1 tbs mustard seed
1 tbs celery seed
1 tbs turmeric

Pour syrup over vegetables and simmer for 30 minutes. Can. Water bath pints 15 minutes. Makes 8 pints.

#homemadepicklerelishrecipe  #picklerelish

Canned acorn squash tonight. Had a lot of seeds that looked too good to just throw away. So I looked up a way to roast them.

This is the before picture:

Directions:
Rinse them off
Put in a bowl and add 2 tbsp. olive oil and 1 tsp salt for every 1 cup of seeds.
Bake in 275 degree oven 40 minutes. Stir occasionally. If you dry them first then you can shorten the baking time to around 15 minutes. I just threw them in wet.

Or you can experiment with different spices to add a little pizzaz!

And this is the roasted after. Yummy and crunchy!

A very nutritious snack:)


#roastedwintersquashseeds  #roastedseeds   #healthysnacks

Tonight I canned vegetable soup. A neighbor told me how she has done hers for years (she's in her 70's) so I tried it last year and we loved it.

You can put whatever kind of veggies in the quantities you want. I used green beans, carrots, onion, zucchini, tomatoes, green peppers, garlic, parsley.

I put everything in a pan and covered it with water and boiled it for about 5 minutes. Then sealed it in quart jars at 10 lbs pressure for 15 minutes.
 

Canning this soup is a real time saver. I just open it up pour it in a pan, add a jar of beef, add noodles, or barley or rice or whatever I want and it's done in a few minutes.




#vegetablesoup  #canningsoup

Not bad for a night's work!  21 quarts of soup and 10 pints of sweet pickles and 7 more quarts of green beans.

OK so I hate waste. I admit it:)  Here's an experiment I thought I'd try. Dehydrating beet stems and leaves to use later as vitamin supplements in soups, stews, roasts, etc.  Anyone else tried this? I'd love to hear how it turned out and how you used them in your cooking.

I just cut them off the beet, rinsed them and laid them in my dehydrator.

I'll keep posted.


#beets  #dehydratingfoods

Pole beans are up.  I planted 2 rows of beans right next to each other and then put my fence down the middle of the row utilizing both sides of the fence and maximizing my space. Unfortunately I had a bunny guest the night after I took this photo...ate a lot of the leaves off.  So, I took chicken wire and just lightly encased the beans to see if that would help.  In past years once the beans were climbing the bunnies didn't seem to pay any attention to them.  This bunny was brave, however, as I walked right up to it in the morning as it was munching away. It only ran when I nudged it.  I was thinking maybe it was one of the babies from the nest in my garden last year. A mother rabbit made her burrow under my onion row. I removed them to a box and of course we had to snuggle them some and feed them with a dropper before giving them back to mommy. (We thought mom wouldn't come back for them.) I did notice the babies and mom hanging around and getting real close to me when I gardened last year. Maybe they still recognize my scent.  This could be trouble for the garden:)

One whole day to work on the garden without rain.  I knew that was all I needed and now I can say that everything is planted!  I have almost half of the garden covered in newspaper and grass.  In the next 2 mowings I should have the whole garden covered.  Thanks to all who donated newspapers:)  Absolutely no weeds yet in the areas that are covered.

Lots of strawberry blossoms!  We will be adding another bed at the other end of the garden.

My goal is to have a weed free garden without weeding. Usually I put grass clippings in the rows to keep the weeds down and that works pretty good. But a friend of mine takes it a step further and claims she doesn't have to weed. She covers the ground with newspapers and then grass clippings to hold the paper down. Air and water can get through but not sunlight so the weeds don't grow. Here are my 9 cabbage plants in the coffee cans. I only plant cabbage every other year to make sauerkraut.

This is a place that gets a lot of weeds throughout the season.  I have laid my paper down and weighted it with some stones until it's time to cut the grass again.

I planted 14 tomato plants today.  I sprinkle crushed egg shells in the bottom of each hole and then put the tomato plant in on top.  This is especially important if you are gardening in a spot that has not been a garden before.  The egg shells supply calcium to the ground and plants.

Rhubarb is ready. I did my first cutting today.  We only have one hill but it seems to be enough for us.  I can it and use it for baking...our favorite is rhubarb upside down cake...good with vanilla ice cream:)

One of my favorite flowering bushes is the lilac.  We were fortunate when we bought our home to have a lilac border in our back yard. Beautiful sight and smell.

Even though I started my plants so late this year they are growing strong and will soon be able to be set out in the garden. Every year I dry seeds from plants that produced good fruit. I just lay the seeds on a paper towel on the window sill for a few days and then store them separately in glass baby food jars. Here is my tray of broccoli plants.

Above are some of my tomoato plants.  As the tomoato plants grow I fill in more dirt to help their stems grow straight. I learned this from my neighbor.  I started cabbage, tomoatoes, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, green peppers, and hot peppers insode this year.  It would be great to get ideas from others on how they save seeds and start plants.

After al the spading I actually planted 54 hills of potatoes. I plant in rows about one foot apart. I had small potatoes left over from last year's garden to plant. All the potaoes I planted today were stored in the kitchen and they kept unitl now.  It got too late and I'll have to wait to get more in the ground.

The above picture shows all the hard work completed for this portion of the garden.

Finally a beautiful day to be outside!  Being an Urban Farmer one of my goals is to not have to buy and vegetables from the store for the year. Last year the drought made gardening difficult  but I'm hopeful for this season.

This is the 5th year I have gardened this plot. Prior to that is was grass. Lots of clay so we built up the soil by adding tons of leaves in the fall and compostable kitchen scraps like vegetable leftovers and eggshells. We've always had the garden tilled but this year I decided to spade it all instead.  I got half of the garden spaded today.  Sore muscles but it's a good tired!

This is what I'm starting with.  You can see all the leaves. This is the potato section so it's very hilly from digging potatoes last year.  The picture below shows the same area as above after I spaded it. Not bad!