Favorite vegetable of the summer

This is by far my favorite new variety for the garden this summer!  It's been such a fun thing to grow and everyone gets such a kick out of it when I show it to them!

This is an eight ball zucchini!!!  The plants are quite prolific--you can pick them at golf ball size up to a softball size---this one is probably in between.  They are beautiful and delicious. Between these and my regular zucchini, I have about 14 cups of zucchini frozen and shredded in the freezer, plus the plenty we have eaten already.  We just can't get enough zucchini around here!!!  Can you imagine stuffing one of these for dinner???  I'm going to do it!!!  I'll let you know how it turns out!

What new varieties are you growing???  Have a great weekend...I'm still behind in posts because I have so much to blog about, but we've got an exciting weekend planned so I'll have to tell you all about it next time!  Have a beautiful weekend...blessings!!!

Recycled Jean Quilt is Finished!!!

So much has been going on the last two weeks that I don't even know where to start!  I will keep this post to this quilt.  I had worked on getting it quilted and I really had to hurry because I have a daughter who was entering an apron in the county fair (that is going to be a whole other post!).  I hate having to recalibrate the machine because it took me forever to switch everything over to sew on the denim.  But lo and behold, it is finished!!!!  This is our summer picnic quilt.

There are six of us in the family and every one of us has jeans in this quilt.  The sweltering heat made it really uncomfortable to sew this behemoth!!!  It weighs about seven pounds and I was sweating while I was quilting it on my machine. At one point, I had to go outside with my machine and set up in the shade because it was over 85 degrees...in my house!!!!  I like how it turned out...because I used some stretchy jeans, some of the corners do not match perfectly...OH WELL!!!  This is one of those workhorse kind of quilts so I'm not too worried about the imperfections...that's the whole point of this quilt.  It's all been recycled and getting new life.  

The quilt laid out in the driveway.

Detail of the center...again from jeans we had! (sorry, bad picture)

I hope you are all having a productive summer.  I can finally check one project off my list!  How about you???  Blessings to you, and may you keep cool in this heat!!!

Garden happenings

Cilantro
I don't know about your garden, but one of my self-seeding plants in the garden is my cilantro.  I can seriously consider it a weed because it grows everywhere!!!!  Every year, I let it flower because it is so inviting to all the beneficial insects and then it goes to seed (which I try to control) and then it's growing season is over while everything else starts ramping up...like tomatoes.  I always make salsa and can it and you have no idea how infuriated I am with myself because I have to buy cilantro...from the store...and it's not very cheap...and I had pounds of it weeks before!!!!  Well, no more, my friends...I picked half a pound of it today and I could still get a lot more...I'll keep picking as this week progresses.  I'm freezing it so that I have plenty when it's time for salsa making or if I want to make Chipotle-style burritos!!!  I saw a blog where they clean the cilantro, take off stems, barely put olive oil on it so that everything gets an extremely light coat of it, then I bagged it up and stuck it in the freezer.  I am so thrilled!  Here's what half a pound of cilantro looks like:

The salad spinner I have the cilantro in is not a small one--it's a pretty large hefty one that can really hold some greens!  (I got it at the thrift store for around $5...this brand usually runs around $30...it's already earned it's keep around here!)

Other homestead updates

The garden is just swinging along.  I have my own personal army of ladybugs...it's been so exciting to see that because it helps me feel that the garden is in balance. The lacewings are out, too, so the beneficials are really working hard this summer season.

 I will probably have some yellow squash and zucchini by the end of the week.  We've had some beautiful salads lately and we are just chomping at the bit for the zucchini!!! The peas are prolific and tomatoes are forming left and right.  All in all, it's been a good growing season so far.  

The chickens have been so fun to watch and feed.  I give them tons of garden scraps and I never knew chickens could "honk" like geese.  It's the funniest thing.  Here is something I found on clearance at our local grocery store.  I wanted to do a rooster stencil on our chicken coop, but the bargains never cease to amaze me.  This is the before...

It's a rooster chalkboard.  I paid $3.59 for it because it no longer came with it's stand.  No problem.  I didn't want it as a chalkboard anyway!  Here's where it is now!

This is actually the door of our chicken coop.  We painted the rooster white like the trim, and I hardly had to put any effort into it!!!

Here's the actual full coop pretty much finished.  I have one more thing I have to do with it if I get some time, but it is fully functional and complete!  My husband did such a nice job!!!  The flowers on the front give it a nice touch, too.

The yellow flowers, calibrochoa, I picked up from the store, and just peeking up in the back is one of two agastache (will be purple) that I started from seed indoors.  They should be a striking combination!!!  

I hope all is growing well in your part of the world.  To all my fellow Americans, happy Fourth of July!!!  Be safe and God bless!!!

Canning on the Homestead

First Canning Session of the Year
What to do with all those radishes???

With the several pounds of radishes I have harvested, I had to figure out something to do with them.  Only my husband and youngest daughter really like them, so I decided to make some radish relish so I can preserve them so they will last.  The recipe I used is here.  I have a feeling my husband is really going to like it.  He tried it with all the raw ingredients and said it had good flavor.  I'm sure it will only get better as time goes on and it has time to mellow out.  It gets such a pretty pink and rosy color.  I made two batches and got about 10 half-pints of relish!

This is a nice recipe because you have to let the whole concoction sit for three hours so you have time to get all your jars ready or do other things.  Once that is done, you boil the ingredients for awhile and then jar them up and process (again, see recipe link).  I look forward to seeing how this will taste in a few weeks, but I can rest knowing that none of the radishes went to waste!  Plus, all the tops of the radishes were fed to the chickens.  They loved them and get so excited when they see me coming!  They have been so fun...hopefully, after this coming weekend, I can show you the finished coop!

I hope your gardens are growing beautifully!  Have you started canning anything???  Happy preserving and blessings!

Chicken and garden updates

Wow...time sure does fly when you're gardening! I've got a bunch of updates so I will start with the chickens.  Here's the progression of our coop.

The coop with our salvaged window from a neighbor.

Hubby working on the run and the door has been added on.

Chickens already using the run!

Hubby is still finishing up the coop.  He's got to put on the chicken wire on the back ventilation and he's finishing up the floor.  The chickens are seven weeks old so they really needed some sunshine.  They stayed in the run all night and since it's warm, they have fared very well.  I couldn't sleep because I was so worried about a fox getting his paws/claws through the chicken wire...tonight we'll have them locked up in the coop!  I really need some sleep, haha!  The only supplies we bought for this coop are the screws and hinges, the chicken wire, shingles for the roof (I bet I could have found these but we really needed them now) and the paint (hello, $5 oops paint at Home Depot that normally runs over $37 for one gallon--who can afford that???)  My husband did a great job and we need to put up the trim and finish painting.  I can't wait until it's finished.

The garden is coming along well!  I've had my battles though.  Flea beetles are now prevalent in my backyard and they love the radishes!!!  I think I will continue to sow radishes so that the flea beetles will only bother them...a trap crop.  This is the first year I've grown radishes and they have turned out beautiful (minus the holey leaves!). 

They truly are the jewels of the garden and are so lovely to photograph!

The greens are coming on strong as well.  We had our first garden salad last night with the radishes.  My spinach has turned out really nice this year.  I've kept them spaced properly and they have just flourished.

I am up against the insects, though.  The ants have gone crazy and now I have the flea beetles.  It's an ongoing struggle, and I've found aphids, too.  I've spied a few ladybugs so between me squishing and the ladybugs devouring, we may stay on top of things.  Here's one last shot of the garden from an "aerial" perspective.  This is taken from my bedroom window.

I've laid down hay as a mulch between the boxes.  I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet, but I consider it the cheap man's pathway.  I would love to put flagstone or brick or pavers down, but that's not in the budget any time soon, so we'll see how this works for me.  It gets quite windy sometimes so we'll see if the hay is still there in a few weeks.  I hope your gardening and homesteading is going well.  Let me know how your garden grows and happy homesteading!  Blessings!

Recycling in the Suburban Homestead Garden

I haven't been posting much because of all the spring preparations.  It's been nothing but seedling and seed-starting "carnage" around here.  There are a lot of ways to recycle common household items that would normally get thrown away to use in seed-starting.  Here are some things I do:

I reuse disposable aluminum cooking containers.  Whether I do bulk cooking or acquire them through friends after an event, I have plenty to use for my seedlings.  The aluminum helps reflect the sun's warmth and light.  I start my heat-loving plants, like squashes, this way.  In the middle tray are my sunflowers.  I've never started sunflowers early before.  However, this year, I really want some bohemoths that grow 16 feet tall so I'm going to see if this works.  What do I do with the sunflowers now?  It's still a bit early for them and we've had tons of rain so I gave them each their own cozy little greenhouse.

That's right--more recycling!  These are two liter soda bottles that I've been collecting and cut up to house my seedlings right in the ground.  If it gets too warm, I can unscrew the lid or take the whole thing off.  This will keep the soil around them warm until they can get established and the air temperature finally warms up around here!  It's supposed to be near 75-80 this weekend so I'll be sure to pop these off so they don't get fried.  (You can do this with virtually any large plastic container you have:  milk jugs, juice containers, etc.)

When you're out shopping and checking out clearance items, look at things that you can use more than once.  I was out a couple of weeks ago and they had Easter candy on clearance.  Look at this container:

These were filled with delicious gummie candies for $0.20 each.  I was not interested in the candy (although we all loved them); it was the container I wanted!  It's perfect for soaking seeds--you can use both the lid and bottom for this.

Here are some Morning Glories ready to go out.  (Remember to nick their hard seed coat before you soak.)  These were the perfect size so I soaked all my morning glories and sweet peas this way!  Perfect containers--plus, I can save seeds in these later in the summer.  Here's another scenario:  you're shopping and you get the family a rotisserie chicken for dinner.  Cook up that carcass for stock, and don't throw out the plastic container the chicken came in.  It is perfect for housing those little peat pots and comes with it's own lid!

Back to two-liter soda bottles:  here's a pumpkin I started early.  I cut the two-liter bottle two-thirds of the way up, and then I use the top by inverting it to keep the greenhouse effect.  Once it's warm enough, you won't need the lid and you can transplant.  

Again, you can use pretty much any plastic container you have around.  I also use yogurt cups for seedlings, and in some of the pictures I have plastic cups that I fill with seed starting medium.  I put most things under lights in my basement, but I have quickly run out of room and one of my lights has blown out (argh!).  So, I am trying to get things rotated through as fast as I can to get them out in the garden.  The weather is still a bit shaky around here, but I am trying to keep up the best I can.  My whole point of this post is to show that there are so many things we can recycle to suit our purposes.  I hope this inspires you to get planting or get creative.  

I'd love to hear some of the innovative ways you start your seeds.  Until next time, happy gardening!

Blessings to you!

The Backyard Chicken Coop

Much has been going on here and there's just not enough time!!!!  As I said in an earlier post, my Mother's Day and birthday gifts this year would be a nice chicken coop.  I have been scouring Craig's list and everywhere looking for free lumber so we could build it for CHEAP!  No such luck.  So that changed things a little.  I wanted a free-standing coop in the back of the yard, but with no free lumber, the budget wasn't going to allow for it.  Plan B was to convert the bottom of our kids' fort-style playground.  My youngest is 9 so she's really the only one who plays under there.  It is 4' x 8' under there and would have made a fine coop...I just didn't like it being so close to the neighbors.  So my husband and I head off to Home Depot.  I turn my head and show him the new townhomes being built by us, and ta da, there are three ginormous trash dumpsters full of scrap lumber! Oh, how the Lord provides!!!

My husband and I started filling up the car.  Someone from the complex turned us in so the property manager came to see what we were doing.  The fine man told us the dumpsters were all fair game so we continued on. I walked home because the car was full (we literally were about 3 blocks from our house) and then my hubby went a second time with my son for more.  My son even found a box of nails in the dumpster.  It was amazing what we got for free!  Here's a couple of pics of the amazing wood we found.

Our pile of free plywood!

Can you believe this was all free???

We feel so blessed!  My husband proceeded to start some of the framing and got the base done.  It was scorching hot outside (which makes me so happy), so the fellows were drained.  Here's what they got done so far:

Those square bases that elevate the coop were also free.  They are made of wood and I imagine they are used for columns or some sort of support.  They came in three feet lengths and are really strong.

More will get done this week, I'm sure, and I will keep you posted.  We kept the coop dimensions the same...4 x 8.  

On another note for Mother's Day, I hope you all had a beautiful day.  Here's what my children made for me: garden signs!  Pretty simple and practical and a whimsical little touch for the garden.

Aren't they cute?  My two others busy working...

And here's the final product:

We may end up adding a bit of color to the background because the white is really white, but we'll see.  The kiddos did a good job and it will be a lovely addition to the garden.  I hope you are all doing well and having a lovely spring!!!  Blessings!