gardening

7 Quick Takes: May 28, 2010 (Vol. 40)

~ 1 ~ Quite a while ago, Eric suggested to me that I might like a cordless mouse.  I’m a creature of habit and told him it wasn’t a big deal, and I preferred my wired mouse.  I came around to the idea recently though, and he surprised me with a great Logitech optical wireless [...]

Buying Garden Plants Before Planting Season

I have been gardening for a few years now.  Each year, as our official planting day gets very near (or sometimes right on the official planting day), we head out to the locally owned greenhouse, as well as some of the larger chains, and we pick out our plants for that year’s garden. This usually [...]

Flash Freezing Fruit to Save Money and the Environment

Forgive me, but I should have posted about flash freezing before our weather went to flash freezing in the blink of an eye.  However, I got to think about it while cleaning out my freezer and coming across cherries and blueberries.  So, I decided to go ahead and post about it right now anyway. Why [...]

7 Quick Takes: August 14th (Vol. 11)

~ 1 ~ Okay, so fight the urge to hit me. But, I actually have already bought a Christmas gift. Sure, some of you may have already bought all of your gifts. In that case, I’ll have to fight the urge to hit you. Not only did I already buy a gift, but I already [...]

7 Quick Takes – July 17th (Volume 8)

~ 1 ~ I have been thrilled to be harvesting from our garden quite a bit lately! On Thursday while I was making a cake for Jack’s birthday, Eric went out and picked a mixing bowl worth of lettuce, three or four cucumbers, one zucchini (we’ve had quite a few), and about three yellow squash. [...]

7 Quick Takes – June 26th (Volume 7)

~ 1 ~ This week, we enjoyed our first zucchini from the garden. It was so good! We enjoyed it sauteed along with some fresh basil that was also from the garden. We are hoping that we will be able to enjoy a lot more fresh zucchini as the season continues. ~ 2 ~ Speaking [...]

13 Uses for Homegrown Tomatoes

If you have a home garden, or live close to someone with a home garden, chances are that, later this summer, you will have a pile of tomatoes sitting on your counter. And, while you may love having BLT sandwiches everyday for lunch, you may still have mountains of tomatoes just waiting to be used. [...]

7 Quick Takes – May 29th Edition (Vol. 5)

~ 1 ~ My preschool co-op class will be performing at our end of the year social to the song “Octopus” by Charlotte Diamond. We have listened to it during almost every one of our classes this year. Even though I’m a stickler for correct song titles, I have always called the song the wrong [...]

7 Quick Takes – May 22nd Edition (Vol. 4)

1. Thursday was our very last homeschool co-op meeting of the school year! I love going to co-op and seeing everyone, and my class is really good group of kids. But, I’m super excited to have a few months off! 2. Speaking of time off, as of this moment, we have completed 179 days of [...]

Our Backyard Garden Transformation

This is our fourth year of gardening, and it again found us making some kind of changes to our garden. The first year, Eric built an 8′ x 8′ raised bed plot. The second year, he added a second 8′ x 8′ plot right next to it, growing our garden to a 16′ x 8′ [...]