When my husband and I first started really looking into our food many years ago one of the first things we looked at was high fructose corn syrup.  We discovered it was really difficult to buy jam without out it so we decided to try making our own.  Since we lived in a townhouse with no yard we became huge fans of U-pick farms. For a few years we would make the trek out to the farm, pick a bunch of berries and then bring them home to freeze, make jam and sometimes dry them.  We stopped making jam about the time we had our second child because life got busy and we started to stray from trying to be more self-sufficient.  When we had our third child we strayed even farther and a few months ago I realized although we were cooking a lot of our own food still, processed foods had crept back into our diet. Our garden is still young and we do not have a lot of mature berry plants so this year I was determined to make all of the major U-pick seasons (strawberry, raspberry, blackberry and apples).

Last weekend we went strawberry picking with the younger kids and we had a lot of fun! The key is to go after a few sunny days so the berries are sweeter and early enough in the day that the fields are not so hot that you are miserable in the sun.  Our three year old is a total foodie and has inherited my love of fruit so she spent most of her time eating everything she picked.  Our son will not eat fruit unless it is cooked in something or comes in pouch form so he wandered around telling me about the plants and watching all of the people. It was great because both kids had fun in their own way and my husband and I were able to pick a couple of flats in a relatively short amount of time.

The farm we went to had a little play area with shaved ice so after we picked our berries we ate a snack and some shaved ice. The kids ran around and played some more which guaranteed a nap for the youngest in the car on the way home. It was a great way to spend the morning as a family.  We are also firm believers in involving our kids in the whole food/cooking process so it was great to have them help with picking berries.  It was still relatively early in the season so the strawberry plants were very full of berries which made picking faster and easier than in the past when we have gone towards the end of the season.

The first thing I did when we got home was slice up our berries and fill the dehydrator.  Dehydrated berries need to be very fresh and blemish free so the sooner you get them in the dehydrator the better.  It also takes 8-12 hours (or more) so make sure you time it so you aren’t having to wake up in the middle of the night to pull them out.  For a long time we used a small dehydrator with a top fan that had been passed down from many people and worked okay but last fall my Dad bought me an Excalibur dehydrator for my birthday and this was my first time using it.  Man, there was a huge difference.  My fruit was much more evenly dehydrated and having a temperature setting with a timer seemed extra luxurious.  I even forgot to rotate the trays until well into the process and they still came out very evenly dry. Our old one you had to rotate every two hours and it still ended up taking way longer to dry out the food no where near as even. I highly recommend saving up for the Excalibur it was a completely different experience for me this time around.  I really wish I had bought the fruit leather trays so I could have made fruit leather as well but maybe next time. There is also a dehydrator cookbook that I would like to try as well.

Our strawberries came out of the dehydrator while our kids were eating breakfast.  It is important to check that they are dry before you put them into long term storage so that they do not develop mold over time.  My kids were hungry so I just put the not so dry ones into a small glass dish for them to eat and honestly they did not last until lunchtime since everyone was snacking on them.  My son actually ate a few pieces of dried strawberries which was a huge win!  I made 5 trays of berries and it filled about 1/3 of a gallon Ziploc bag. We are not huge eaters of dried fruit so it will be enough for us.

While the fruit was drying I cut the tops off of more strawberries and placed them on a cookie sheet in the freezer.  We freeze them this way so that we can take a few out as needed for smoothies.  I leave them in there for a few hours then transfer them to a gallon Ziploc bag. We probably need three gallons of frozen strawberries to last us a year but we simply did not pick enough berries for that this year.  I froze two trays of berries and it made 1 1/3 gallons of frozen berries.  Next year I think we will pick 3, maybe 4 flats of berries so that we have enough to freeze three gallons and make some fruit leather.  It is always a learning process and I am really glad we are figuring out the kinks so that in the future we can know how much we will need.

My kids love smoothies so we have already eaten quite a few of our frozen berries and they were delicious!  With all of the recalls on frozen food I am really glad we have some berries stashed away for future use! About a year ago when Costco had most of their frozen veggies recalled I had to completely change how we bought our vegetables since we eat a lot of frozen peas, green beans and corn.  Every year I want to add to what we grow ourselves so we will no longer be reliant on store bought fruits and vegetables.  Stay tuned for our next post in the series about the delicious jam we made from our strawberries!

What foods are you replacing with your garden this year?

I haven’t posted an update about the garden in a while since we got really busy and I ignored it for a bit…I am definitely paying for it now with weeding and chopping back, I mean pruning, the massive growth on our many ornamental bushes.  I was keeping an eye on the bushes but we had a few days of sun and they seem to have all grown a foot and put out their flowers so I feel pretty bad about chopping those off. I tried to just trim where it was necessary such as along paths and to keep plants from growing too close to the house. This week I focused on weeding the larger weeds, installing soaker hoses in the vegetable beds and trimming back bushes where I could.

The bushes near the front of my house are starting to bloom and it will be gorgeous when all of the white flowers are out.  I started the annual spring trim of these bushes so they don’t completely take over the front of the house but I didn’t get very far since it was so hot. I am hoping to finish next weekend but it will depend on the vegetable garden.

My gigantic Hydrangea bushes in the front have a couple of flowers just starting to bloom.  I love these bushes and they were a selling point for me when we bought the house.  I am a little concerned though because last year I spent many, many hours deadheading these bushes and even though I cut it back pretty severely last fall it apparently wasn’t enough to prevent massive growth.  It seems to be extra bushy this year with lots of new branches and each and every one of them has a flower bud on it.

I am also concerned I will have the same problem this year as last year with the blossoms being to massive for the branches to support their weight when it rains.  Most of the branches fell over last year and I had to cut the flowers strategically so that the branches didn’t break. I may have to cut these back even further this year and see how they do.

Our apple tree seems to be doing well. It is leaning a bit which is concerning but it did produce fruit! There are a few apples on a couple of the branches.

I was really excited to see them but I may end up pinching them off so the tree can grow a little more since it was planted only a year ago.

Our raspberries, blueberries and strawberries have quite a few fruit on them and the kids have been checking them periodically to see if they are ripe.  I know once the blueberries begin to turn blue I will have a hard time keeping my three year old from sneaking over there and eating them before they are ripe.  I did a little weeding in the fruit beds and pulled some of the outlying raspberry starts.  There are way too many of them and I was afraid they would crowd the blueberries or the pear tree that is planted next to it.  I may have to rethink my raspberries next year and move them into a planter to keep them from taking over my garden bed.  I don’t have time this year though so that would be a project for fall.

In the vegetable beds we have some quick growing bush bean sprouts and some tiny broccoli starts.  The beans popped up overnight. I took this picture on Sunday night, installed soaker hoses that night, turned them on for an hour and by Monday night the bean sprouts had doubled in size.  I should hopefully be able to thin them this week.

Our watermelon (lower right) seems to be doing so-so. I think I may have left it too long in the cup since it has barely grown. The soil in the garden bed was a little dry so I am hoping that with the soaker hoses the plants will do better, despite my best efforts at watering.

We have flowers on our pumpkin plants! I am hoping the yellow one was pollinated by our busy bees!

Our squash and zucchini are doing well. I was having a hard time watering them without getting the leaves wet and I had to pull a few of the leaves off of them but they still had quite a few leaves so they should recover.  Our cucumbers however bit the dust.  I apparently planted them too early but thankfully I still have a couple of seed starts under the grow lights that I can harden off this week and get in the ground hopefully next weekend.

My lettuce is flourishing in it’s pot and my daughter has been grazing off of it every time we go outside to play.  She will not eat salad but she helped grow this lettuce and has been helping water it for me and now she is actually eating it. It really shows how getting kids involved in gardening will help then expand their palates.

It is kind of hard to see but our asparagus is also blooming.  They have not sent up any new shoots besides the first few in the spring but I think that is because we have kind of neglected them.  They are pretty weedy and I may have forgotten to mulch them at the beginning of the season. I am hoping to at least get them weeded this week and possibly look into a large quantity of mulch to cut down on my weeding time in the future.

I did a rather hasty soaker hose install on Sunday night using rocks to keep my hoses down.  I ordered clips a couple of weeks ago from Gardener’s Supply Store but they have not come yet. I am hoping to plant pole beans, luffa and peas this week so I will be moving the hoses around a bit next weekend to get a better fit.

They seemed to work ok. I ran them for an hour the first night and will try again in the morning. My soil probably needs some mulching in this bed so it will hold moisture better.

I had to get a little creative in the corner and I will have to hand water the marigolds but after an hour the area was pretty well soaked.

Here is a view of the entire set up. It is pretty ugly as is but after I tweak it a bit it should look better.  Overall it worked pretty well. The carrot starts were a little iffy with the water so I may have to continue to hand water those but everything else seemed to get quite a bit.

I am really excited to see my vegetable garden take off in the next few weeks! What’s going on in your garden?

Sunday was Mother’s Day and my wonderful husband ran to the nursery and picked up soil after work on Friday and played with the kids on Sunday so that I could get my seedlings in the ground that were ready to plant.  We spent Saturday prepping for my oldest’s 18th birthday party and then visiting with people until bedtime so I had to get my gardening fix in between visits with my mother and mother-in-law on Sunday. Phew. It was a very busy weekend and I am going to need a few days to recover!

I have been spending some time each weekend walking around the garden looking at how our plants are growing, seeing what needs trimming and planning out my projects for the week.  I am really pleased with how things have finally started growing now that the weather has sort of gotten warmer.  The chocolate mint plant we planted last year is really taking off.  I was afraid we had killed it with lack of attention and a dicey move to a bad spot mid-season last year (and yes we have somehow killed a mint plant in the past) but it is taking over the slope like I wanted it to.  Hopefully it will keep the slope from eroding further.

Last week we spent some time removing everything but the tree from our vegetable bed.  This week we filled our new planter box with soil, filled in the holes from plant removal, made mounds out of the new dirt for squash and planted all of the seedlings that were ready.  I planted cucumbers, spaghetti squash, zucchini, two tomato starts, watermelon, broccoli, bush beans, Hula berries and the remaining sunflowers, pumpkins, and Marigolds.   I am hoping to plant our luffa, green beans and peas next week as well as any remaining squash, cucumber and zucchini plants.

Our carrots have started to come up in nice neat lines although I was not able to get a close up picture of them. I planted a couple of rows of bush beans in the right half of the box that I will be massively thinning when they come up.  Last year we had pretty good luck with our bush beans so I am hoping this year will be the same.

In the new planter I put our remaining two tomato plants, a couple of marigolds and a couple of rows of broccoli seeds.  I am a little nervous about direct sowing but luckily it rained right after I planted so hopefully the squirrels weren’t watching me and will go dig up all of my seeds.  I am probably going to start a few more broccoli seeds inside in a few weeks to do succession planting with.  We love broccoli in our house so ideally we would grow it into late fall.

I planted the two remaining sunflowers and moved the first one closer to our pest control fence.  I wanted them right up against it since they will not shade the garden there and they do not take up too much space.  I might start more of these inside next week so that we have them all summer long. I know that my kids will love seeing them once they realize what they are.  I picked the biggest variety I could find for maximum impact.

Here is how I laid out our remaining pumpkins, the watermelon plant, sunflowers and marigolds.  I did not plan well when I planted the first few pumpkins but this year is all about seeing what fits where so next year I will know to move the rows farther away from the fence. I put the marigolds into the pot so that they will be taller than the vines and still receive enough light.  I left one mound of dirt for another watermelon plant but I doubt they will germinate.  I put our only watermelon under one of my makeshift greenhouse containers since I didn’t really harden the plants off and my daughter will be extra disappointed if we lose our watermelons again this year to the evil slugs.

Here is our lonely watermelon plant.  I am really hoping we get at least one semi-decent fruit out of it.  My eventual goal is to have a greenhouse where I can grow these babies long term since watermelon is my favorite fruit.  I would love to have a supply straight from the garden but in the Pacific Northwest our growing season just isn’t long enough for many varieties.

Another view of the new pumpkins and the marigolds.  Hopefully they won’t be too cramped along the fence.

I made two long mounds along the length of the garden and planted zucchini on the left and spaghetti squash on the right.  We all love spaghetti squash so I am hoping to have a bunch grow.  I put one of the zucchinis under a makeshift greenhouse since it was small enough to fit and so that maybe it would do better.

This lovely patch of bare dirt is where the peas and green beans will hopefully go sometime soon.

A pot of marigolds near the squash.

The cucumbers got planted in between the tree and the fence.  I figured they might climb the fence a little but they also should have enough room to grow along the ground as well.  Maybe next year I will try a cucumber trellis.  Vertical gardening is very intriguing to me.

A view of the layout of the planter boxes.

We crammed a lot of vegetables into a small space so hopefully it will work out.  I love experimenting with the placement of things and I am already excited for next year and trying to figure our where I will be putting things.  I am happy with what we have done so far this year and I hope everything has enough room to grow.  It is our first time growing many of these plants so we are not familiar with exactly how big they will get.

A view from the top.

Our lettuce continues to grow.  It will need thinning soon but I am really happy with how healthy it is.  Right after I took this picture the puppy knocked over the planter but thankfully the top layer remained intact and only the second layer of lettuce dumped out. My husband filled it back up and thinned it so hopefully the lettuce will recover. If not I can always reseed.

During my tour of the garden I stopped to look at the blueberry flowers.  Despite being small they are very pretty and I was pleased to see that our bushes are covered in them.  Our kids will definitely be sneaking over to this section of the garden to eat them all summer!

I planted the Hula berries in this empty spot behind the blueberry bushes and sort of near our pear tree.  It is full of weeds but I pulled the biggest ones and hopefully the Hula berries will do ok there.  I plan on mulching this area eventually but we are still waiting on our trees being cut down.

Our Asian pear tree looks a little sad still.  The leaves are still coming out and it looks to have flowered a little bit but there is not much growth on it.

I am not sure what this flower is but every time I walk down the south side of the house I am struck by how beautiful the pink blossoms are against the dark green leaves.  It is definitely a plant I will be keeping!

This bush is by far my favorite secret find from the previous owners. I have been eagerly waiting for it to flower and it looks like it is getting close.  Luckily the previous owner left the tag on it and it is some sort of Korean lavender.  When it blooms the sweetest most wonderful smell permeates the yard for about a week and it is heavenly.  I can’t wait for it to be in full bloom!

After I worked outside I went back in and checked my seed starts. They were doing well and I found a few surprises!

Lo and behold a lone ground cherry seedling! I was beginning to give up on these but it looks like leaving them under the lights has possibly paid off.  We have one super tiny ground cherry start and hopefully it will grow big and strong!

I also discovered my luffa plants are beginning to sprout.  This is the first one and it looks like a couple of others are starting to break through so hopefully in a couple of weeks we will have several strong plants.  I am really excited about these since if they are successful I will be able to give them as gifts or possibly sell them at a profit.

We got a lot done in the vegetable garden this week and hopefully by next week we can get the beans and peas in with new trellises.  I am going to try and make a pea tepee out of branches found in the woods so hopefully there are a bunch the right size for the job.

Happy gardening everyone!