With the Corona virus shutting down schools for the next month, online learning has jumped to the forefront allowing teachers to deliver many school oriented activities at home. Being homebound also gives me the opportunity to tempt Mother Nature by planting the Backyard Garden early. Even though the weather is warm now, we know how fickle weather can be.
However, presented with the stay at home orders and shelter in place mandates of the past weeks, that can only mean one thing to me. Let's get started preparing and planting the garden, even if we are 2-3 weeks early.
Peppers Cucumbers- Basil
Eggplant
It was what we call BRRRR cold last night 25 degrees. However, we are still picking broccoli and a few peppers for roasting.
During the winter our garden activities range from maintaining current beds to creating new beds in preparation for the upcoming spring. This weekend we are busy at work. We created a new bed and enhanced and enlarged two existing beds. It was good to be outside and dig in the dirt again even if it was soggy from the past two days of rain.
Check out the new additions below.
Less than 3 months till planting time arrives!!
!!
Ever wonder what we do in the winter in the Backyard Garden? It's much the same as the summer but on a smaller scale. Westin, our youngest son, gave us a book on canning for Christmas which is full of exciting recipes. Of course we found several we wanted to try. First in line is Habanero Pickled Onions. We picked a half dozen of our overwintered habaneros, bought some onions, pulled out the canner and we were ready to go.
See the pictures below.
We also discovered our first broccoli ready to pick. Both look good, can't wait to try them!
Happy New Year!!
This time of year, we are busy selling what we have created out of our backyard garden. It's always exciting watching our customers react with joy after tasting some of our new creations. Thanks so much for supporting us in this endeavour.
The weather has been cold and wet but we are also overwintering about a dozen pepper plants protecting them from the frosts. Plus we are growing mustard greens and carrots in the garden.
Good eating for sure.
We moved from the heat of the summer, to the cool of October, to the cold of November.
We always love the cooler temperatures, as do the peppers and okra, but it's always sad to see the growing season come to an end. Now the task is figuring out which plants to overwinter and which to leave to the freezing temperatures. We'll pick everything that's out there, including the kiwis which is always exciting because we pick those once a year. We picked close to 400 last year and this year should be another bountiful harvest too.
We had a blast at the Deer festival on Saturday. We had our best day ever and there had to be 2000 people in attendance. We were so busy at times we barely had time to check out the other 150 booths. It was a long day, wake up time was 4AM to start setting up at 530AM. We ended up getting home around 630PM.
Special thanks to Mandy Tanner of the Chamber of Commerce who must have been everywhere that day because everything was organized perfectly and went very smoothly.
While this was our last out of town event for the year, we are still open for business and are actively filling Holiday orders from regular customers, friends and coworkers. We have added new items to the products we sell too.
Just click on the tab on the right side of the blog and email me what you'd like.
EAT LOCAL!
