Garden 2020

I made 4 pints and 3 quarts of refrigerator dill pickels today.

I still have a mound of cucumbers to deal with in some way.

It has always been a goal to be able to store up some of the food we grow in our small garden. A couple of years ago I bravely jumped in and canned strawberry preserves. It was our second year growing strawberries and we had too many to eat. I had never canned anything in my life but I decided if my ancestors could figure it out without google and modern technology and conveniences, I could figure it out too.

I followed that with peach preserves.

I grew tomatoes one year with the grand plan of making my own tomato sauce and ketchup. That never happened.

But this year I have 4 quart bags of diced tomatoes and 1 quart bag of spaghetti sauce stored in the freezer for future meals.

Pickles was new this year too. They aren’t shelf stable so we won’t be eating pickles from the garden in January, but it is a start.

We have plans to expand the garden this fall. I was going to fall garden, and I still have space around the pool deck where I can experiment with a fall garden. This reminds me I need to sit down and really measure and plan out what we want and use what we have learned from the last 4 years of gardening. The goal is more food. I want to preserve and store more of our own thing but I also like sharing with my family. I would love to be able to share with friends and neighbors some day too.

Learning to dry herbs is on the list of things I would like to learn too.

We have had a really good garden this year. My philosophy to gardening is to not fuss too much. I overseed and plant earlier than “suggested”. Then I see what happens. Most of my seeds hit the ground in late February. I usually have to cover them up once or twice, but the benefit to living in Texas is that we don’t get many freezes and when it does freeze it doesn’t last long.