Celery Scrap Gardening

 This post contains Affiliate Links.

      I have heard of scrap gardening, but we never really thought to try it. We bought celery about a month ago, and I kept looking at thinking... What if? What if I put it into a bowl of water? What if I didn't put it in with the scraps to go out to the compost bin? What if I didn't throw it into the food scrap bowl to feed the pig? What if.. What if it grew? 
     So I asked Zoey, "What if?" and she said, "Let's do it!" and guess what it did... 

IT GREW!

And it Grew!

 To the point we thought, "What if... we planted it?"

 Zoey went out to the yard for the good gardening soil. We got out a Terra Cotta pot. She filled it half way with soil. 

She put the celery plant in the pot and then used the rest of the soil to cover up the rest of the plant. 

  Suddenly, our big celery plant, did not look so big. But that is okay, because it grows larger every day.

 We sat our celery plant in the kitchen window where it is nice and sunny, even in winter time. It has already grown bigger since we took this picture. Now we wonder, "What if it grows large enough that we can eat it?" :)

We are working with these onion ends now. Hmmm... What if? 

Want to see what else you can grow from scraps in your kitchen? Check out this article on 25 Foods You Can Re-Grow Yourself Using Kitchen Scraps. 

Have you tried this before? How did it work for you? 

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Save The Seeds!

"All the gardening knowledge in the world will be of no use, 
if you do not have seeds to sow." Kamay Flemens

     For years we have saved seed packets from various stores. Just recently choosing to buy heirlooms to grow and save. Heirlooms are seeds that have been grown, harvested, and saved from generation to generation. However, seeds bought in packets, do not last forever. My endless thoughts of 'what if there were no stores' prompted me to get serious about saving our own seeds from the garden. Because I believe in teaching and learning as a family, we researched how to save seeds, picked the best fruits, and harvested them together. (Although, my daughter actually did most of the seed harvesting for us. I assisted and took photos. :) )
     I heard once, when saving seeds, to use the best of the best. Best plant, best producer, best tasting fruits and vegetables. We did not harvest seeds from our mini plants because we never want mini plants again! We still have plenty of the cherry tomato seed packets, so we did not save those either. We also choose plants we knew we would eat or be able to use for trade or barter. There is no point saving seeds from plant varieties your family turns their noses up to unless you have another use for them. 
     Here is a bit of what we saved. Not everything was photographed...




Okra- Carefully split the okra length wise, being careful not to cut the tiny seed balls. Use your thumb to gently pop the seeds out. When finished, make sure all green plant material is removed. Set aside for a week or two to insure full dryness. I am interested to see if this worked. They looked nothing like what I used from my store bought seed packet. 

 They dried all wrinkly and I don't remember the seeds in the packet looking quite like that. This photo is before they dried fully. 

Field Pumpkins- Carve open pumpkin top and remove all seeds. Rinse seeds in a strainer and make sure all pumpkin pulp is removed.  They sat in the strainer for a few hours so that most of the water dripped away. Then, we placed the seeds on a plastic plate and moved them around often to insure even dryness and to keep them from sticking together. 

Cucumbers- While making pickles, we had tons and tons of seeds left in the bowl from cutting the cucumbers. My daughter just collected them from the bottom of the bowl and took out all the seeds that had been cut in half. She used a strainer to wash them and make sure there were no pieces of flesh with them. Just like the pumpkins, we let them stay in the strainer for a few hours to make sure the excess water had time to drip off. 

Jalapenos- Although we do not eat these much except for in salsa and for spicy pickles, we saved the seeds from some jalapenos we used for a FAIL at cheddar poppers. While we cored them, we dropped the seeds into a bowl. They dried in the bowl for a couple of weeks.

 (When harvesting seeds from any spicy pepper, please use gloves! USE THEM! The seeds and the core are spicier than the green flesh. Even though I washed my hands thoroughly, and my hands did not burn, everywhere I touched on my body after that BURNED LIKE WILD FIRE! I just so happened to be suffering from allergies and had itchy eyes. It was brutal! If you do happen to get burned by the oils in the jalapenos, milk helps. I used a washcloth to scrub my hands and face with the milk. Raw milk from any source is better. Raw sources include cows, goats and even humans. Yes, booby juice works too, or so I hear.. no booby juice around my house anymore.)

Cantalupe- A friend of mine brought a cantaloupe to me from her father's garden. It had a lovely texture and was sweet and juicy. After digging out the seeds from the center, I placed them in the strainer and washed all the goo away from them. They drip dried and were placed on a plate to finish the drying process.  

Bell Peppers- They have been a test this year. They were not as big as a store bought bell pepper. I am not a big fan of them, but I wanted to use them in salsa. I never got the chance. We did not have the tomatoes we needed at the time to make salsa with them. When we had tomatoes, I had already cut up the bell peppers to save seeds or had given them away. We did test eat them raw. It is not something my family enjoyed. They will be good for trading and bartering if needed. 

Tomatoes- Now this one I will go into more depth on in another post. They are a huge staple in my household and I believe we could nearly live off of them. My whole family loves tomatoes. Before we got serious in seed preservation and looked up how to save tomato seeds, we tried a couple of ways to dry the seeds. First, we took the seed pulp from a tomato we cut and placed them on paper towels. The seeds stuck to the paper towel as it dried and they were not very nice looking. I tested one to see if it would germinate, and it did. Then we brainstormed ideas on how to do it so they would come out cleaner.. but that is all in THIS  post. :)

     Now at this point, can you imagine what my kitchen looked like? There were plates, cups, bowls, and paper towels all over the place. It drove me nuts! I don't have very much room in our house. There is no pantry, laundry room, spare room at all to store all of the drying seed containers we had at this point. I finally got smart and gathered every small container we have and put all of them in a casserole pan. Safe, secured, compact storage! It took a few weeks to actually feel they were all sufficiently dry enough to store away.  We used a variety of different small recycled packages to store our seeds in. A variety, because, we couldn't eat enough Tic Tacs fast enough. We are all about FREEcyle! :D 

     Have you tried seed preservation? 

Save The Seeds!

     
More great seed saving advice and FREE PRINTABLE SEED PACKETS at 104 Homestead. 

For a great definition of heirlooms, hybrids, organics and all the other seed lingo, check out Underwood Gardens post. 

Want to start your own vault of survival gardening seeds without preserving them yourself?  Survival-Seed-Vault-
     

This post contains my Amazon affiliate link to a survival seed vault. Although, I have not ordered from them, it is something I would like to purchase in the future. If you happen to buy one, let me know what you think of it!

Why We Prep As A Family: Part 2

   

  

Knowing is not enough: we must apply.

Willing is not enough: we must do.

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

     If I had to feed my family from what I grew in my garden this year, we would have starved. It just was not a good year for us. I have read thousands of articles and web pages about gardening. We researched, prepped, learned, asked questions... and still it was not enough. 

     We tilled, weeded, watered and hoed. Still could not keep up with the grass and weeds in my garden. My daughter and I fertilized, hand pollinated, and pruned. Still our plants would not flourish. It wasn't all bad... sort of. 
     Although my best producer this year was cucumbers, I was only able to put back about 20 jars of pickles. We ended up eating half of them already. (Well, the hubby and kids did at least!)
      I dehydrated some zucchini and was able to put up one jar. Sadly, our zucchini did not grow anymore after that. 
          Water Melons and yellow squash grew to be mini fruits. (I'm including photos just in case you think I am exaggerating..) Oh ya, the corn only produced about 6 ears and they too were pretty small.

     Out of 3 tomato plants, I got a total of one tomato. It was strangely shaped and looked as if it had worms in it. Cherry tomatoes did okay. However, they only ripened a few at a time and were pretty much eaten off of the vine. 

      Onions were fabulous, but I stored the other half of the bulbs I did not plant in the freezer and they were mush when I pulled them out to plant a second round of them. 
      My lettuce was too bitter for the family to enjoy. It became treats for the livestock. Spinach and carrots were eaten by the moles. Okra is growing slowly but surely... but only enough to have as a side dish once a week. 
     We also lost one of our fruit trees we planted last year. It was growing great, had fruit developing, and then suddenly, it was dead. I can only suspect that maybe the moles ate the roots? 
     
What did go good? Jalapenos. (Insert WTHeck face here)

     The animals on our farm are about the same as our garden. We added rabbits. Too small to even try to have as a meal. They will be our 'mommys'  instead. We added a buck just last week. It will be a month or so before we know if he figured out what to do. Now honestly, I am not really even sure I can butcher a rabbit. So we will be selling the kits instead. At least for now. 

       Chickens... What can I say about our chickens... Out of 2 FFA chickens, 3 store bought, 4 hatchlings from the school, and 2 bartered Jersey Giants, we have 5 hens. Maybe 2 of them are laying and not on a daily basis. I have 5 roosters to send to freezer camp. It has been so hot, I have not even wanted to attempt it. I have found chicken butchering to be a very stinky job in the summer. If I had to do it, I could. Right now, I do not have to.

     We actually managed to NOT get attached to our feeder pig. He will be heading off to the butcher in about a month. Hopefully. I have still not made an appointment. I need to get on that asap. 

     What have we learned this year? Being a farmer is not as easy as it seems. We believe our soil needs a lot of amendments before we try to plant again next spring. We also need to build an area for a compost pile. We have a bin right now and it is full to the gills. We also need to do some more research on the fruits and vegetables we want to grow.  
     Understand though, it does not matter how much research or book learning you cram into head. You have to put your knowledge into practice. There are so many things that can go wrong; even if you are knowledgeable. Things happen. If we had an emergency this year and had to rely on my preps and gardening to feed us, we would have starved. At least right now, I have time to fix things. Practice more. Try new things. I am grateful for these learning times. 

What are you doing this year to 'walk the walk?'