A Glimmer of Hope

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Our beautiful Avocado Tree died this year. We are devastated. 3 years we have babied this plant. Bringing it inside during winter, making sure it did not get too much afternoon sun in the summer. It grew big, healthy and strong. Until we brought it in for the cold weather this year.

We refused to give up hope.. Until the top little limbs grew dry and snapped easily. Our little tree was lost. Refusing to be defeated, we decided to try again. Zoey began saving seeds from avocados. Our theory to the dead tree was that perhaps it had outgrown the container it was in. We were hoping the tree would only grow to the capacity of the planter, staying that size instead of growing into a large tree. Where we live is prone to very mild winters, however, it is not uncommon to have short bursts of freezing cold temps. It it got too big, we would not be able to bring it inside and protect it. The last ones that were in the ground died when we had icy weather.

We finally took our little, sad, dead tree back outside today. I figured it was gone, but did not have the heart or the time to pull it up out of the planter. While we were cleaning up some carrots from the garden, I looked over at the tree, sighing... but look!

Just when we thought all was lost with our little tree ... a little glimmer of hope came up through the ground! All is not lost!

We can apply this to life.

1. Things are not always as they seem.
2. Sometimes things do not go according to plan. Do not give up.
3. Try and try again!
4. Always have a back up plan.

Read how we got our avocado started by clicking the pic!

Maybe we will have avocados yet!

Disclosure: This post contains no affiliate links, However, 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. 

Trying Potatoes.. AGAIN!

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     After killing almost every potato bucket we have ever tried growing and having last years ground potatoes washed out from under the ground from a flood, we have decided to try again. Yes, we may be a glutton for punishment, but we eat a lot of potatoes! 

     We went to a local feed store, bought Red Seed Potatoes, cut them so each piece had an eye, let them dry for a couple of days. We made deep trenches in the garden and laid the potatoes about 6 inches apart along the bottom of the trench row. We only covered them with a few inches of dirt. When they started to grow and leaves started to show, we would pull a few inches of dirt over them from the side of trench. In a couple of days, when the leaves would pop through the dirt again, we would cover them a little more. Finally, all the dirt from the trench side was mounded up on top of plants. I plan to do it one more time. That way it insures my plants run deep and we hopefully will get more tators this way! Hopefully.. 

     Sorry we didn't get any pictures of the process, I just didn't think to blog about this until I saw they were doing so well. We also have volunteer potato plants popping up all over the garden from the skins of potatoes we have eaten and put into the compost. The compost was tilled into the garden this year. Apparently, it was not all composted. Hubby surprised me for Valentine's Day with a freshly tilled garden! <3 Best present ever! I am going to let the volunteer plants stay where they are and grow through out the garden. Hopefully we will get some Russet Potatoes as well. 

Want to read about our other Tator Adventures?

Click the Pic! 

     Do you grow potatoes? In the ground? In a bucket? Hay bails? Let us know how it turned out for you, or perhaps how we can NOT manage to kill them again! ;) We love your comments! 

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. 

Green Beans!

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     Green beans.. grown in our garden, hand picked by us, no pesticides, insecticides, or chemicals of any kind, and Pressure Canned by us! I feel like running around singing that Flashdance song, What a Feeling. (Seriously, especially after I looked it up!)
     Remember last week, when I found Zoey reading our canning cook book? Well, that night we took the plunge and finally opened the box to our Pressure Canner. I had gotten it for Christmas from my mom, and never opened it. I didn't want to can store bought produce but now we had finally picked enough of our home grown green beans to be able to can our very own. 

     First we washed, trimmed and cut our beans into the length we wanted. Then, we followed the easy steps in our pressure canning cookbook, The Organic Canner by Daisy Luther.  Daisy's cookbook is easy to follow and follows all of the technical guidelines, with out all the technical talk that intimidates most newbies. It reads as if a seasoned canner is talking to you and sharing their recipes. (The background story for her recipe "Renegade Taco Sauce" is pretty funny too!) This book covers her favorite recipes from fruits and veggies, to sauces, meats and meals in a jar. We love this book. :)

Okay, back to canning.. Here are some photos.

It took a lot longer to cut and prepare the beans than what we thought. 

Forgot to get photos of us filling the jars, but here is how they looked in our canner. 

We squealed a lot at this point.

Look how excited she is! We started this project around 7, but by the time we got everything prepped and ready, it was well after 11 p.m. She took a shower while we waited for the steam to build up in the canner. 

We only had enough green beans for 5 pint size jars. We used 2 water filled jars to fill the canner the rest of the way.  

All finished! What a beautiful sight! 

ISSUES:

     The only 'issue' we had with the recipe, (and really, it was not a big issue) was how much salt to add to the jars. Daisy says to add salt if you would like, but she didn't say how much. We did some online research for recipes, and decided to add 1 tsp. It made me nervous that we might have added too much. We would just have to wait until we ate a jar to find out. 

So How Did They Taste? 

     Oh my goodness! They were amazing. I think we will only add a 1/2 teaspoon of salt to them next time though. We like to add Lawry's Garlic Salt to our green beans and after we did, it was a bit too salty for my taste. Kids loved them though. Zoey and I have told everyone we know. WE CANNED OUR OWN GREEN BEANS! AND they tasted and looked like regular canned green beans! I know that is odd to say, but when you are raised on Green Giant green beans,  and rarely eat fresh.. you want your family to recognize them and want to eat what you canned! 

Will We Be Pressure Canning Again? Was it worth it? 

      Oh yes! AND YES! Actually, we have already pressure canned another of our garden goodies. I will show you that one later. The satisfaction and joy of taking a little seed, making it a home in your garden, watering it, watching it grow, mature and produce FOOD and then preserving that food for later use by your family, is one of the greatest feelings we have ever felt. Well worth it!

So excuse me while I end this post and go on singing... 

~Take your passion

And make it happen

Pictures come alive

Now I'm dancing through my life~

What a feeling...

Book Review Info: Daisy Luther sent me her book for a review but also, really so my daughter and I could learn to pressure can. I was not paid for this review and all of my opinions and statements are purely my own. We honestly love The Organic Canner. 

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.

(Not So) Wordless Wednesday #1

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     I was going to try to do one of those "Wordless Wednesdays" you see on other blogs. You know, when they post one picture and it pretty much explains it all. No words needed. Sometimes there are pictures and other stuff I would like to share with you, but they really do not equal a whole blog post. But.. Apparently, I am not a wordless type of gal! :D 

     I do want to share my salad for lunch today with you. Although, I used a bagged salad mix, (lettuce just refuses to grow for me, and when it does, it is bitter) the sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes are fresh from our garden! We are not getting a whole lot of peas, (I think it is the crazy Texas heat) but we have gotten several snacks from our plant. 

     The cherry tomatoes have produced like crazy and we have enough to munch on while walking about the property, AND we have a small bowl of them sitting on the counter. Zoey gathers them for us every other day. Do you remember my cherry tomato plant that was in the 5 gallon bucket? It got so big we had to transplant it into the ground. It is not so big and beautiful anymore, but it still produces yummy tomatoes! 
     So that is about it! While I go eat my salad, I am going to head on over to the Homestead Blog Hop and see what's happening! Come join me! 

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.

Starting The Garden

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     It is that time of year again! Spring is my favorite time of year. All of the new plants and flowers coming up. The birds are returning. Days become longer and warmer. Everything is just green and sunny and perfect! Time to start our garden seeds! 
     We started by going though our mess of a seed bag. All of our seeds we have been buying have been randomly thrown into a gallon size baggy and stored in the freezer. It was stuffed full of individual packets, (some new, some opened) and all of the random packs we created last fall when we harvested our own seeds. I did not realize how horrible this picture was until I tried to load it on here, but as you can see, we have many seeds. This is after we started to sort them. 
     Then we made a list of all the plants we wanted to grow this year. The whole family got involved and created the list. When planning a garden, I have found it is better to grow what your family will eat. AND in quantities that will be easily eaten or preserved. One year I had 10 zucchini plants. My husband will not eat it and the kids only in moderation. After a few weeks, kids were tired of it and I had no way to preserve it. Most of it was wasted, (thinking I could do something with it, but never getting around to figuring out what) or given away. Then, last year I only got a few tomato plants to grow. When we ran out of tomatoes, which was often, my amazingly awesome neighbor Bree kept us supplied with her juicy mators as much as she could. There was never enough.  Better to sit down as a family and decide what and how much needs to be grown. Okay, back on topic! Now that we had our list, Zoey and I selected the seeds we wanted from our sorted pile on our table. Then they sat there... till we got out of the hospital after my husband's accident. 
     Wouldn't you know it.. I forgot to get pictures of us starting our seeds! We mixed in some of our composted wood dirt with some of our garden dirt, potting soil we had left from last year, and the oven baked egg shells I make to feed back to our chickens. We placed the mixture into the 9 pack containers (kinda like THESE) some plants came in and I saved from a few years ago. Pickling cucumbers, regular cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, jalapenos, and bell peppers were started in these trays. We already had started tomato plants, a new bucket of potatoes (white bucket), sugar snap peas, and onions. 

     
     Do you see the orange bucket with the big tomato plant in the back? That is my tomato plant I have been babying all winter! It grew but never produced any flowers until I got it out into the sun. I feel like I am WAY ahead of the curve on tomatoes! :D Only, guess what? It is not a regular tomato plant. It was a volunteer plant I got from my Amazingly Awesome Neighbor, Bree. It came up on the side of her grandma's house. She gave it to me, I grew it all winter.. and it is a CHERRY tomato plant. Kind of bummed about that. Thought we would be making salsa soon. On the bright side of things, at least my salads will be yummier soon. Just look at my cherry tomatoes already growing! 

     In the mean time, my son, Alex, tilled the garden. My husband did it last year, but since the accident, there was no way he could do it this year. My tiller is old and is a beast of a machine. I suppose if I had to run the machine myself, I could. But, with a big strong teenager around, why would I. ;) 
     
Have you started your garden this year?

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.