It’s been almost five years since we bought a house. But now, my family may be moving, so we’ve been looking — and because we started gardening five years ago, our housing criteria have changed.
Of course, in the past five years, gardening isn’t the only thing about our family that has changed. We’ve [...]
If you’ve never picked okra, you’re not missing much. The funny-looking vegetable known as a chief ingredient in gumbo grows on a plant with leaves that are itchier than any I’ve ever encountered. Last night I picked a bucketful of okra while the kids played in the garden, and because I forgot to bring gloves [...]
Gardening is a lot like parenting; they both involve guilt. More than once this summer, I’ve left a couple of tomatoes or cucumbers on the windowsill above my kitchen sink to ripen, and before I know it, I’ve neglected them until they’re overripe, brown and spotted, and have to be thrown away. I’ve been too [...]
Several weeks ago, I wrote about our experiment to see if caged tomatoes or free-roaming tomatoes would yield more fruit in our garden. We’ve been harvesting tomatoes for a few weeks now, and I thought I’d give an update.
The results are unscientific, and we’ve gotten fewer tomatoes this year than usual anyway, but I [...]
It’s the height of garden season, and every day there’s weeding, hoeing, harvesting and food preparation to be done. Along with work, parenting and everything else going on in the summertime, gardening can become a chore.
Case in point: last Tuesday. My husband was out of town and I took the day off work to take [...]
One industry that’s beating the Great Recession is the business of selling seeds, specifically vegetable seeds. As I’ve written in this blog before, growing numbers of families are starting gardens, learning to grow their own food to save money and eat healthier, more trustworthy fare.
And to grow our own food, we all start with the [...]
If you use pressure canning to preserve fruits and vegetables, don’t forget to take your canner top in for an annual checkup before you start using it this year. Think of it as a pap smear for canners — nobody wants to do it, but it could save your life. Seriously.
If your pressure canner [...]
Everyone’s in search of the perfect tomato. Even before vegetable gardening got groovy again, it seemed like just about every other household had a few tomato plants in pots on the back porch. I’ve heard plenty of non-gardeners passionately argue the benefits of Better Boys, Early Girls, or some other favorite tomato variety.
And just as [...]
