My First Attempt at Canning Pickles

This week I tried my first attempt at canning pickles. I've got a ton of them in my garden. I only planted 3 small plants, but I'm getting lots of small 3-5" pickles. They were specifically for pickling.

Okay don't get all impressed.  I used a packet of seasonings that I bought last year in clearance. It didn't have an expiration date, so I gave it a try.

It's pretty easy. Start with a bunch of cucumbers. Size doesn't really matter. Smaller sized cucumbers are easier to fit into the jars and fill small spaces.

Cut them up into slices (crinkle cut if you can). You can also cut into length-wise strips as well. It's your preference really.

Next start putting the cut up cucumbers into clean, sterilized jars. Any size jar will work. I had pint size jars on hand so that's what I used.

Now it's time to make the liquid that will make the cucumbers taste like pickles. I used the package of seasoning mix, but you can follow any recipe you wish. There are lots available for free on the web. Mostly it spices and lots of white vinegar.

Once your liquid is complete according to your recipe's directions, add the hot liquid to the jars full of cucumber slices. I found it much easier to use a funnel (which can be found in most dollar stores). Leave 1/2" from the top of the jar with no cucumbers or liquid.

After you add the liquid seasoning, be care because the jars will be hot. Wipe the jar with a dry towel, especially around the top rim. Add a dry, clean and sterilized lid and ring and tighten.

Add all the jars to a canning pot. Once the water is boiling, let the jars remain in there for 5-10 minutes or however your recipe calls for.

After the jars were boiled for the designated time remove them to a towel on the counter.  Let the jars remain their for 24 hours to cool thoroughly. You may hear them pop as they cool.

My recipe said they were ready to eat after 24 hours, but we waited 2 days to try them. Let me just say- Yummy!!  Next time I will try sweet pickles, because I still have a ton of cucumbers growing. We will be eating pickles forever! LOL

Feel free to leave a comment with your pickling stories.

My First Harvest of the Year

I just started my garden in June, but I've already gotten delicious home grown veggies.  Okay so not a lot, but one bell pepper and 2 cucumbers. To be honest, I started my garden a little later than I normally do.

I don't mean to brag. I'm totally excited - I love free veggies!

It's really not too late to put a couple plants in the ground and start a garden of your own.  Especially a faster growing plant like cucumbers.

It's really easy. Put seeds in the ground, cover with dirt (preferably miracle grow potting soil) and add lots of water every day. Then let the sun do it's work. Just be warned cucumbers take up a lot of space and the vines grab hold of anything to spread out.

Perfect Gardening Space For Kids

Today I wanted to share a guest post with you. It talks about one of my favorite topics - gardening! Enjoy and see you tomorrow.

Perfect Gardening Space For Kids
By Amanda C Smathers

As a child some of my fondest memories were in the garden. Our family kept about an acre of land that was dedicated to a yearly garden. We kept everything from corn, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, strawberries, cucumbers, green beans, potatoes, and onions. We would spend hours outside watering, weeding and picking fresh vegetables. Now grown up and living the suburbs the space for a large garden is not available but I still want my daughter to be fascinated with the growth of plants.

If you want to experience a garden with your children without all the work involved of a large garden then try one of these ideas that work great for small spaces. Gardens come in all sizes. A simple flower bed along a house can be a great place to grow vegetables. Large pot planters can be perfect for growing peppers or tomatoes on a patio. Or create or buy raised garden beds that can be 4 x 4 feet or 8 x8 feet.

To have success with your garden, you should start with good soil. If you are lucky enough to have good topsoil then you need to do very little except rototill your soil. For small areas a shovel and rake will work fine. If you live near the beach or in very dry climates you may need to purchase top soil at a local store or by the bucket at a mulch center. Moisture Control garden soil is great for first time gardeners. If you forget to water the plants daily the soil will still be moist because of the time release.

Container gardening only works if there is proper drainage. Drill additional holes if the water does not drain quickly after each watering. Raise the container at least an inch off the ground. Use a fertilizer for vegetables once every seven to ten days. Five gallon window boxes work great for most vegetables. Opt for 5 gallon pots or bushel baskets for larger plants such as tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, squash, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and carrots. Potato plants will grow in stacked tires filled with soil. Plant on top and the roots and grow the potatoes.

For raised beds choose your favorites or keep a garden only for salads. Several raised beds allow for more plant types. Squash and cucumbers need to be planted in multiples in order to self fertilize and grow.

This year my three year old and I planted two raised beds of salad mix with leaf lettuce, spinach, grape tomatoes, and orange sweet peppers and herbs. Spinach is nice because unlike leaf lettuce you can freeze and can it to eat during the winter. My daughter loves eating ripe tomatoes and helping to collect the salad greens. She is also becoming a big help with the up keep by watering and weeding. The garden can be seen right outside the window so she enjoys watching them grow.

Enjoy your home vegetable garden!

Amanda is the owner of http://www.babysnuginbed.com. We have gifts for new moms, babies and toddlers. Customized Diaper Cakes are available as gifts and for baby shower decorations in your theme and colors at great prices. Also like us at http://www.facebook.com/Babysnuginbed.com.

Article Source:  Perfect Gardening Space For Kids

My Garden is Finally In

A little late, but my vegetable garden is finally in. It's not as large as I usually have, but I'm happy with it.

Each year I plant a garden. Nothing terribly big, but I grows enough to feed our family of 5 with plenty to can for the winter. That saves us big bucks on veggies throughout the year.

This year I have 5 tomato plants (Early Girls), 4 hot banana pepper plants, 1 sweet banana pepper, 3 cucumber plants (Boston Pickling), 2 green pepper plants, and an assortment of seeds that will hopefully grow.

I chose a really sunny spot. It gets full sun from 11:00 a.m. till 4:00 p.m. Sorry for the crappy photo - you really can't see much from that distance, so I took some close-ups.

In the back row along the lattice are my tomatoes and in the front are my cucumbers. My youngest is really hoping for lots of little cucumbers to make into pickles.

On this side I planted all the different types of peppers. The blank spots are where the seeds are planted. I even planted my daughter's lima bean seeds from her plants from school. You can read that post here.

Here's hoping I will have lots and lots of canning to do this summer. I can't wait :)

Growing Lima Bean Plants from Seeds

A few weeks ago, my youngest daughter came home from school with a science experiment her class had done. They were learning how to grow sprouts from seeds. It's a wonderful science lesson for any age.

Basically my daughter's teacher bought dry lima beans at the store. Soaked them overnight in water. Then during class the kids took 2-3 beans, wrapped them lightly in a damp paper towel, and stuck it in a clear sandwich bag.

Now some websites I've read said to hang the bag near the window. Little miss's was in her locker a couple days before she brought it home. It still worked though I wouldn't recommend it. Just make sure that paper towel stays damp not soaking wet.

Within a couple days it had sprouted and about a inch and half by the time she brought them home.  Being a garden enthusiast, I couldn't just throw away perfect good veggie plants. I put some soil from our back yard into a little pot and transplanted the spouts.

Then we placed the pot with the sprouts by a window sill with lots of light. She loves getting up each morning and watering her growing plants.

Here is what they look like 5 days after the first picture. We divided up the plants because they were growing so fast.

We hope to move them to our vegetable garden when the weather warms up.

Still Gardening in October

Believe it or not my garden is still flourishing. Crazy I know for the mid-Atlantic region. It's October and just starting to get cooler, but I continue to get veggies.It was a dry summer and a pretty wet fall so far.

With all the rain I've been getting a bunch of good sized and still tasty tomatoes. Though I'm a bit confused about my onions. You see I pulled out all my onions, and new ones have started to grow in the same spot. This is my first time with onions, so I'm wondering is this normal???

This summer my garden has produced lots of veggies. I canned lots of tomatoes. My hubby has canned lots of banana peppers and I even canned 2 jars of carrots. Not to mention lots of radishes early in the summer.

The canned goods come in really handy over the winter in addition to throughout the summer and fall. I use the tomatoes in spaghetti sauce and to make stewed tomatoes. One of my favorite dishes.

The radishes will be put in salads, and the carrots will be used in roasts.

The banana peppers won't make it very far into the winter because my youngest and my hubby are constantly eating them.

I love gardening and already can't wait until next year. It's so fun deciding what to plant and watching it sprout and then bloom. And you can't beat shopping from your back yard.

Coming up in the next week or two I will need to clean up and turn over my garden. I enjoy seeing my yard neat and full of beautifully colored plants. On to the fall and the pretty multi-colored leaves.