At the Folden house we are busily planning our summer garden.  We will be purchasing and putting up a privacy fence around part of our yard in a couple weeks.  This will enable us to simply open the back door to let the dogs out rather than having to leash them up and take them out - separately since they are both BIG! 

Gardening

Putting up that fence will enable us to remove the kennel we have in the backyard where we let them run right now and expand our garden space.  Yea!  We will be able to more than double to amount of space for our garden. 

Since we live right in town and have a small yard to begin with, we don't have a very big area that we can use for a garden.  The space we are using is 38 ft x about 8 ft.  and runs from the shed behind our house out to the run beside the house.  We use the Square-Foot Gardening method and right now we have 2 blocks that are each 5 foot by 5 foot.  Once the fence is up and the kennel removed we will expand to 5 blocks - which means 125 sq. feet of garden space. 

Now we are trying to decide just how we want to use all of that space.  Every year we plant various things that we like to eat in salads.  There is nothing so good as a salad you just picked from your own garden.  Delicious!  We also started planting things to can last year.  We are also going to try growing a few things we haven't tried before - cucumbers for pickles, corn, squash, swiss chard, and cantaloupe.  We'll see how well that works out. 

Canning

I received a brand new pressure canner, canning tools, and Ball Blue Book from my grandmother last year as a gift - just because she believes that canning your own food is better for you than buying canned food from the store.  So, we planted and canned our own green beans, salsa, and tomatoes last year.  We made blackberry jam the year before but didn't do any more last year, and made and canned apple butter with a friend this year.

Next year we will be canning all of the same things as last year but we are going to try pole beans rather than bush beans this year.  I'm also hoping to do blackberry jam again - or maybe jelly since my son didn't like having the seeds in the jam. 

I'd also like to try applesauce and peaches but I don't know if I have all the right equipment for applesauce and I haven't found a good source for the peaches yet.  Those may have to wait until next year. 

• Post A Comment! • Send to a Friend!