It's that time in the gardening season when you look at your garden and wonder, " What the heck am I gonna do with all those ____________?" Could be tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini. However you fill in the blank, discovering ways to use all that delicious homegrown goodness is challenging. Several years ago, I asked myself this question while staring at hill of huge jalapeno peppers. And that's how my family formed an addiction to jalapeno pepper jelly. Jalapeno plants are highly productive and if you don't have a plan, in the garbage or compost bin they go. Unlike my husband, I don't eat them like apples. Food pantries are a good option, as are neighbors, but spicy peppers are not a universally desired food. This is the moment water bath canning entered my world. A quick search of ...
Search Results for: jalapeno
What To Do With So Many Jalapenos?
I'm not going to pretend to be a canning pro. If you're looking for advice on that, please look elsewhere. For me, canning is a problem solver and, this early in the game, an experiment. I have more homegrown vegetables than I know what to do with! We should all have such problems, right? But, more specifically, I have more jalapenos than we can possibly eat. Unlike the cherry tomatoes they pop in their mouthes passing through the kitchen, the kids aren't reaching for the jalapenos. My husband, however, is a different story. You say "hot pepper" and he starts salivating much like I do when I hear "chocolate." He's a heat addict and until recently, would eat them like one would a banana. His tolerance blows my mind and I grew the jalapenos just for him. The problem is, his stomach ...
Raised Bed Garden Glow Up Part 2: Staining
Thanks to Vermont Natural Coatings for partnering with me on this post. All thoughts and opinions belong to yours truly. When it comes to staining my raised beds, it's gotta be clean. If you go to any home improvement center looking for exterior wood stain, you'll find shelf after shelf of options that will do the job. Very few however, offer the reassurance I require of anything I use in and around my home. The thought of chemicals invading the soil in my organic garden and infiltrating the fruits and veg I grow for my family creeps me out. I've always been conscious of the foods we eat, especially so following the diagnosis of my daughter's digestive disorder in 2017. I became an even bigger food snob. Quality of life comes down to lifestyle and clean food is a huge part of that ...
Taking My Backyard Garden Skills to Navarro Farm
The expression "Go big or go home" resonates these days. I had been looking for a job this last year. Something full-time. Little did I know I'd find myself managing the largest raised bed garden on a farm in Illinois. Twenty years of freelance writing and photography done ten feet away from my bedroom has taken it's toll. I've wanted a little more distance between my work life and my home life. With the girls away at school, there's no need for me to stay here doing something that no longer brings me joy. A quiet house gets lonely, fast. The idea of returning to full-time employment both thrills and scares me. When you're a work-from-home mom, you're the boss. You get used to it. The schedule, the errands, the flow. Transitioning to someone else's schedule is slightly daunting. ...
Vegetables Have Beautiful Flowers, Too
I'm not sure why this hasn't occurred to me until now, perhaps it's because I'm spending so much more time in the vegetable garden. Truth is, and I'm embarrassed to admit it, I've never really paid much attention to flowers in the vegetable garden. At least not until this year. I've been so focused on the end result - juicy tomatoes, hot jalapenos and crisp cucumbers - that the flowers just seemed more like a means to an end more than something to admire like one would a zinnia or dahlia. I'm in love with this space, made new by the raised beds we built to replace the old ones. Connected by a hog panel arched between the two beds that's now covered in bean blossoms and twisting vines, it feels like a gateway into another world where I get the pleasure of observing the changes that ...
Soak Seeds to Speed Up Germination
I live in the Chicago area, which more or less means I could start the day in a bikini and end it in a snowsuit. Case in point...on April 25, it was 73 degrees F, on April 27 it was snowing. Yes, snowing. On April 28, the rain was relentless and the thermometer barely reached 45 degrees F. Bitter. My growing window is unpredictable and I often don't set anything out until at least Mother's Day. Even then, I'm leery and hold some things like tomato seedlings until the last week of May. Direct sowing tomatoes, jalapenos and ground cherries (some of our favorites) is impossible here. A narrow growing window means the time it takes directly sown seeds to germinate, produce flowers and finally fruit brings me to the first fall frost and zero chance of enjoying my hard work. So I resort to ...
