Garden Journal - Monday, May 30

We had a great and productive weekend here around the Davis' house!

I am so relieved to announce that we have all our garden(s) in!

My favorite part of gardening is definently NOT planting. I love to weed, take care of, harvest and preserve but getting the seeds in the ground stresses me out. I think it comes from my OCD/perfectionist side. All rows must be straight and with equal distance apart. My poor husband. It is quite an interesting time putting a garden in with me. But now, all I have to do is the "work" I enjoy.

Here are some pictures for the garden journal:

My container tomato plant. Doing quite well in spite of the winds this past week.

 With the constant rain, the little sun we had caused my tomato plants to thrive. I really think they are enjoying the extremely HOT weather as well!

Hard to tell with all the green but a closer picture.

  Excited for the fruits this plant with bear!

 Side view

  side garden view

 snow peas

 shell peas

 spinach slowly growing

 kale

 cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage trying to survive the squirrels

 beautiful cabbage plant

 beautiful broccoli plant

 more cabbage and peppers awaiting planting

 delicious lettuce needing to be cut for eating

 yummy lettuce blend!

 This brand of lettuce is having a harder time getting going but has such a sweet taste. Lincoln just stands and eats it out of the container!

 Andy worked so hard to get our "new to us" tiller to run. Thanks so much hunny <3!

 Bed of garlic - almost time for harvesting! I will be drying it and dehydrating it as well as using it fresh!

 Before - bed number 2 - I am not very good about cleaning out and preparing beds for the next season in the fall. This is one area that I want to be researching and working on this year.

planting carrots and getting sun burnt! :)

  Trying to make the "perfect" row and spacing!

 Bed number 2 - after - raised bed of carrots!

 Our longer garden that you look out the kitchen sink window and see. I cannot wait to look out and see all the fruits of our labor!

 Loves that even though it's not his favorite, Andy still helps and supports me when I garden! :)

 Seeds planted in order from fence to back door (right to left)

Fence: Watermelons and Melons

(from left to right in row)

7 Crimson Sweet Watermelon

2 Golden Honey Dew

2 Escondido Gold Melon

3 Amish Melon

Row 2: Squash and Zucchini

(from left to right in row)

9 Burgess Butternut Squash 

9 Black Beauty Zucchini

Row 3: Pumpkins

(from left to right in row)

4 Connecticut Field

6 Big Max

6 Galeux d'Eysines

Row 4-5: Beets

Detroit Red

Row 6-7: Cucumbers

Double Yield

Row 8-9: Onions

Yellow of Parma

Row 10-24: Green Beans

(from left to right in row)
11 rows of Blue Lake
1 row of Blue Contender
2 rows of Ideal Market

Getting our marigolds ready to be planted in between rows and plants

 

This year, I am just jumping in (trying to plan ahead a little) but really trying new things and trying to find things that work for us. I'm not sure how some things will turn out but you never know until you give it a try!

How about you? How does your garden grow?

Preparing to Prepare

Preparing to prepare... Sounds a little crazy doesn't it?

Well it is a little crazy... because... I'm a little crazy!

First things first...

I always look into buying seeds and plants first thing. I have got to be comepletely honest with you... It took me a LONG time to be able to grow plants which actually lived and produced fruits... A. Really. Long. Time.

So here are a few questions/suggestions when preparing to buy seeds or plants:

• What kind of climate is your garden going to be in? Is it sunny or maybe shady? Is the area where you are going to put your garden the collector of rain water and will flood out? Where is the best part of your yard to garden or plant?
• Are you a lot like me and really wanted to start plants from seeds but they always died? I wasted a TON of money on seed before I realized that I just needed to master on type of seed at a time. I wasn't a "green thumb" so I had to recognize and not overwhelm or set myself up for failing.
• What kind of seeds do you want? For our family, non-GMO seeds are VERY important to us. We like to know that our food is in it's most natural state. We buy our seeds from Baker's seeds.
• How much do you have budget for gardening? Every year, I do a gardening budget. I like to make sure that growing our own food isn't going to break the bank. It is also nice to see how much you spent compared to how much you saved. It is also important to remember how nice it is in the winter time when you don't have to leave your house if you don't want to because food is already available. So keep track of what you spend in seeds and time.
• READ, READ, READ! There are tons of reviews and sources our there. Read up on plants and planting times.
• Finally, how much time and attention are the plants going to take? If you are a busy person who works a ton of hours and barely has time to take a shower, you are probably not going to want a big garden. Maybe look into container gardening or raised bed gardening.

The challenge for this week is to think about and research what size and type of garden you want and if you want to try and start plants from seeds. Then, look into what seeds you are interested in. Come back Wednesday for the next step I take in preparing to prepare!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Do you know what I am actually good at and REALLY enjoy? Gardening and perserving our food through the summer.

It's hard to believe that it is time to start prepping already, but it is!

I am going to spend a lot of time bringing you ideas that have helped me in various areas of my adventure in gardening and being a good steward of what the Lord gives us from it.

Join me in discussing these five areas:

Preparing: Your home, Your kitchen and Your garden for the planting.

Gardening: All the tips and tricks I have learned.

Harvesting: What's worked for me and my family?

Giving: In my personal opinion, the most important part of the garden.

Preserving: We are going to be trying some new things as well as sharing same old family tricks and secrets.

Come on back and learn some of the joys and defeats of growing your own food!

GratiTuesday - A Grateful Year in Review

Before I get into just how blessed we were this year, I want to share with y'all the Christmas letter we sent out. I hope it conveyed to our friends and family AND conveys to you all the message of how God has abundantly blessed us this year!

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Merry Christmas from the Davis Family!

I have to be honest with y’all; I did not want to write a Christmas letter. I didn’t want to take the time to try and figure out what to say. This year has been pretty uneventful and we have been blessed… Hey there, wait a minute! I should write and tell how we have been blessed beyond belief this year… God has been faithful!

Lincoln is getting so big. He is going to be two years old in April. I cannot believe a year ago we were running around trying to find why he wouldn’t gain weight. We went to the pediatrician this week and he is on track and healthy. Praise be to God! He is a handful and he definitely has his Mama’s spunk! I love him so much! He is into everything that Dylan and the cousins are into. He wants to hang with the big boys! He doesn’t talk yet (except for Mama! :)), but why should he when Mama and Dylan fill everything in for him!

Dylan is also getting so big! He is so tall (110 percentile to be exact!). He is going to be five years old in June. It is so hard to believe the little boy (don’t tell him I called him little) that saved my life is already getting so big. It seems just like yesterday! He loves to play outside and with superheroes! I am homeschooling him right now and we are both enjoying our time together. If you would have told me it would be going this well, I would have laughed at you. It is truly God’s work! He is such a blessing and I love and enjoy every minute of being around him. He has a heart of gold and I cannot wait to see what the Lord has in store for him!

With this crazy economy, we are blessed that Andy is still working at Evenflo. There have been quite a few lay-offs and he’s still there and working his way up to doing new important parts of the business. We have been blessed!

I spent the summer gardening and preserving food. We were blessed in abundance. We were not only able to put up enough food for ourselves but also for friends and family that were in need. Blessings, blessings and more blessings! God is faithful!

We hope this letter finds you and yours healthy! We love you all and you are in our prayers!
Andy, Jodi, Dylan and Lincoln
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Through GratiTuesday, I was able to write a lot of posts about what I was grateful for. Here is a quick explanation and if you click on them, they will take you to the post itself.

• As always, I am so thankful for a Savior that found me worth His dying on a Cross and taking on my sins AND then He continues to forgive me for my sins and shortcomings! Also, the Lord always knows our hearts and knows and hears our needs and communicates what we need to hear and believe.
• I am so blessed to be a help-meet to a Godly husband and father.
• Everyday (good and bad) I give the Lord thanks for two special boys that He has thought me worthy to raise. They make me so proud, they teach me lessons and I learn from teaching them, Dylan is beginning to help out around the house, and lastly that they love each other so much.
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  We not only have a roof over our heads, we have worked hard to make our home a haven from the troubles of the World.
  
  
  
• I am extremely grateful that I have a husband that has a steady and sufficient income so that I can stay home and take care of our home and children.
• This year I began home-educating Dylan. It has been such an incredible bonding experience and the memories we have made will be forever engrained in us.
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  This year, we were blessed with a plentiful harvest from our garden that not only provided food for us and our family but others that were in need.
  
  
  
• I didn't say a whole lot about it but back in August, I was in a serious car accident. I was only slightly injured but my car was hurt badly. Not only was I not seriously hurt but in the car behind me was my mother and my children. If they would have been in the car, they would have been seriously hurt or killed (mainly my mom in the passenger seat). I was also very thankful we had car insurance.
• In January, we went on a cruise with my family to celebrate my Grandparents 50th wedding anniversary.
• Andy and I have great friends that hold us accountable and are always there for us!
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  After a lot of praying and debating, I am grateful that the Lord has directed me on the type of blog He wants me to share and I am grateful that He has choosen me to be His messenger.
  
  
  
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  I am very grateful that this year after many years of silence, the Lord has prompted me to begin to open up and share the birth story of my first son Dylan (part 1 and part 2. I promise I will pick it back up soon in the New Year. It truly is a hard topic for me.)
  
  
  
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  I am so grateful for my sisters and friends that I have made in the blogging community. Who knew some of your best friends could come from the internet?
  
  
  
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  I am sorry but this just has to be said... I AM SO THANKFUL FOR MY JARS!
  
  
  

This year has been a year full of blessings. We were continually shown God's faithfulness! I cannot praise Him enough!

For more incredible stories of God's greatness, go check out Heavenly Homemakers!

Organic Garden Carnival

I know that I really should not be taking part in this carnival this week, I just have so many posts going out but I wanted to share my gardening experience with you all from this past summer.

This was the first summer we had a "sizable" garden. My grandparents offered us a plot of their land. The only catch was that if it wasn't taken proper care of, they were going to plow it under.

Here are the vegetables we planted:

• potatoes
• carrots
• beets
• broccoli
• green beans
• tomatoes
• cucumbers
• peppers
• onions
• various herbs
• corn-- family combined and did multiple acres and divided work.

And here are a few things I learned this year:

• Potatoes-1)I need to put my potatoes in earlier. I didn't get them in until around July. By the time it was starting to really get cold and wet around here, they were not as big as I would have liked. 2) Do not dig as closely to the potatoes. I speared a lot of them when I was trying to dig them out. 3) When harvesting them, do not stack them on top of one another (if one goes bad, all that are around it go bad).
• Carrots- Weeding is vital especially in the beginning. The weeds suck the nourishment right out of the ground. Also, plant with radishes in between. I don't like radishes so I kept telling my Grandpa "no", but it would have been oh so much easier to see them.
• Beets- See carrots.
• Broccoli- I really needed to use nets. The broccoli got some kind of bug/worm in them. I tried soaking them in salt water but by the time I was done (and there were STILL inhabitants), I was so grossed out, I couldn't even eat them.
• Green Beans- I really don't like to put anything on my garden but the Japanese beatles were eating my green beans alive. I went to Lowe's and though it's not organic, I bought Sevin-5. I sprinkled it as lightly as possible, actually I used hardly any at all, and the insects RAN as fast as the could. I've never seen anything like it.
• Tomatoes- OH tomatoes... I bought out too many tomato bushes. The lesson I learned this year, don't put out as many and take better care of fewer. I put out 47 plants. That is way too many to stake and they fell and they rotted and I was so upset. I still got a lot of tomatoes off but I just felt so wasteful. So next year, I am being more choosy with my variety and I am taking better care of less. Here is a post on how to easily cook-down tomatoes.
• Cucumbers- Cucumber plants bear a lot of cucumbers. I would say cut back on the number of plants (I had 9). I have way too much relish and pickles.
• Peppers- I never have much problem with peppers. I would like to put more out next year.
• Onions- I did not plant enough (believe it or not, I didn't plant enough of something!). I would have liked more onions to keep for through winter but I just didn't plant enough. Maybe next year?
• Various herbs- I am still learning and could use a lot of help in this area. Any takers? :
• Corn- We got our own corn planter so next year we will be spreading the planting out. This year all the family rushed to put out like 4 acres of sweet corn in like three weeks. It was raining like crazy. We had our big ol' rubber boots on and were tromping through the mud. I think that was the three most unhappiest weeks I've ever seen from my children. Oh does anyone want to sure how to get all those blasted silks off corn?!? UGH!! I'm still finding silks everywhere!!

I have shared here and here how blessed we were by our garden. We not only put up a ton of food for ourselves but were able to give to others in the family(a lot of our family has been laid off) and others in the community who cannot afford fresh produce. It was truly amazing!

Now I am going to re-run some pictures from this summers canning. If you've seen them all, go ahead and "hit the x". :)

Here are just a FEW of my jars, click here to see them all.

For more hard-earned wisdom, head over to Stephanie's blog.

GratiTuesday ~Garlic Festival

We took a family field trip a couple of weeks ago to the Garlic Festival. My Grandma and my Mom and Dad accompanied us. We had a great time!

I learned a ton about garlic types and how to plant it and harvest it. However, it should be in the ground right now and I have been too busy and too sick to prepare my garden and get them planted. Ugh!

Not the greatest picture (sigh!) but at least they both were in it.

Lincoln enjoyed being pulled around like a prince.. :)

My mom and Dylan taking a break and looking at the water.

I thought I would pose for y'all! Take two!

Mission accomplished...

This is linked to GratiTuesday!