Getting enough water to your plants is a constant concern for any gardener. Here in the desert, it is a particularly troubling problem. However, after several years of gardening, I feel I am finally getting the hang of keeping my plants happily watered, even in the dead of summer. The key to … Read more
For now, all of the gardening we do in the backyard is in raised beds. I love growing in raised beds. In the front yard, we plant directly in the ground in raised rows, which is nice because it provides more space and the ground tends to stay wet longer, but I … Read more
This was my first year growing buttercup squash and it did wonderfully. We were able to harvest about 20 squash from just two plants. I would call that pretty prolific! Buttercup squash is a winter squash weighing between 3-5 lbs. It has a hard, green skin and tender, orange flesh. Since it … Read more
If you’ve been following along here for any length of time, you know we had a bumper crop of tomatoes this year (and I’m hoping for the same this fall). When we couldn’t keep up with the tomatoes that we were growing, I started freezing them in gallon size bags. The plan … Read more
Although the world is recovering from the pandemic, people have become keener on their health, and diets are becoming nutrient-rich to a certain extent. Despite how fresh and organic grocer items are, you can never be sure about their purity. If you are just as superstitious about getting your leafy vegetables from … Read more
We previously posted about making sourdough bread and now you may have this starter in your fridge and are trying to figure out all kinds of ways to start using it. One great way is to make English muffins. We drew heavily from this recipe on the blog Nourishing Joy. Ingredients Sponge … Read more
You may have noticed the letter NPK on bags of fertilizer or other organic matter in the past. These letters stand for Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium (in that order) and these are essential nutrients for your garden and its plants. Of these three nutrients, nitrogen is often the one that is most difficult to get … Read more
Sourdough bread is a fermented food. I’m just beginning to learn about fermented foods and their health benefits. From everything I’ve read, I can only improve my health by adding more of them to my diet. I am no scientist, but this what I’ve gathered so far. Sourdough bread lasts longer than … Read more
Have you caught on to the fact that it is hot where I live? If you didn’t already know this little fact, then the amount of time I’ve ALREADY bombarded you with this information should have given you a clear picture. So, that being said, it is hot. And if you keep … Read more
There always comes a time to focus on preserving the harvest. You can freeze tomatoes for making sauce later on, freeze pesto and even making refrigerator pickles. With your cucumbers lately and I decided to try my hand at making refrigerator pickles – a good example recipe to check out is Martha … Read more