We just purchased our first home in a small, quaint and charming little town in northern Wisconsin. Let the fun begin! While raising our six blessings, we are going to attempt to revitalize our cozy Dutch Colonial Revival home. Follow along and see what we learn, discover, and overcome in the process. It is sure to be a houseful of laughs!

Monday, September 17, 2012

Green Tomatoes

Living in Wisconsin with our wonderfully unpredictable weather patterns has made gardening interesting this year. First, we had a very late spring, with killing frosts followed by an unseasonably hot summer resulting in a severe drought. We are so thankful that we used the Back to Eden garden method this year! And now, we are anticipating near freezing temperatures at night. Due to our concerns about the temperatures, we decided this past Saturday to pull all of our tomato plants and harvest all the green tomatoes. The final result? More than 26 gallons worth. These have all been bagged in brown paper grocery store bags to ripen over the course of the next week or two.

We are also anticipating a rather large crop of watermelons and so we have been experimenting with some new recipes (new to us) for watermelon syrup and hopefully, watermelon jam. My first batch did not work as anticipated, hence, the seven pints of watermelon syrup. It tasted really good - it just didn't jell the way we hoped it would.

We also have several peppers and some new flowers on our pepper plants. I am anticipating picking the last of the peppers as my bags of tomatoes turn red. All of our peppers have been incorporated into our spaghetti sauce and soup this year. Out of everything that we planted, we hit the balance just right with our green peppers!

Our wonderful neighbor next door has shared some of her Concord grapes with us, too. So, I will be making a small batch of grape jam here shortly.

Finally, we have been inundated with fruit flies ever since we processed our pears. Nothing we did seemed to get rid of them! Until now....


We took a budding meats container and punched holes into the top using a Pampered Chef vegetable holder. We then put some fresh fruit inside (in this picture, there are grapes and watermelon). And then we just let it sit. Man, do those annoying fruit flies love it! Even better, once they are in there, they are not able to get out. After a few days, we stick the container in the freezer to kill off the flies and dispose of them and reset the container. It has worked awesome! Prior to this, we tried different things involving apple cider vinegar, and a variety of containers, covers, etc. None of them worked except for this! Just thought we would share!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Getting Buried In Produce - A Back to Eden Garden Update

Our Back to Eden garden is definitely keeping me busy, especially now that the tomatoes are coming in, literally, by the brown bag full. I know that seeing is believing and so I thought I would show a small timeline of photographs for you.



This first picture was taken on August 27th, about a week before Labor Day weekend. My husband's parents had come to visit us, so we had intentionally skipped a day of picking so that we could share the joy of harvesting with them. And what a harvest it was - the largest that we had picked to date. We picked cabbage, carrots, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, and two bowls of tomatoes.


 We continued to harvest throughout the following week, mostly cucumbers and tomatoes. By labor day, we needed to pick even more - butternut squash and sweet corn - in addition to the usual cucumbers and tomatoes. Two days later, the abundant harvest continued.

 

This past Wednesday, in addition to tomatoes and cucumbers, we picked carrots, green beans, and our first red and ripe watermelon. Oh, what a sweet and juicy treat the watermelon was! And, the harvest still continues. Each day, we pick at least one brown bag full of tomatoes, which I am now processing in two stock pots at least twice a week in an effort to keep up! For those on the fence regarding this type of gardening, I highly recommend it! As you can see, we have been truly blessed by God's provisions.