Life on the Farm
You can make homemade tomato paste by cooking down the liquid from fresh tomatoes until you get the consistency of paste, then process the results in canning jars. But here’s a much easier way to make your own tomato paste....
Our summer garden always produces more vegetables than we can possibly eat and preserve. We share some of the surplus as treats for our chickens. Our goats also get a small share of the bounty. But during the summer they...
Everybody loves a treat, and chickens are no exception. Fed in moderation, garden treats for chickens add variety to their diet. And they don’t contribute to obesity or dilute nutrients provided by layer ration. Summer Treats Chickens eat to meet...
Learning how to pick a ripe watermelon is an important gardening skill. Picking a fresh melon in anticipation of its juicy sweetness, only to discover the melon isn’t nearly ripe, is a disappointing and frustrating experience. Doubly so, because unlike...
Consult three different charts on how long garden seeds last in storage and you will find three different sets of answers. That’s because the longevity of stored seed has not been definitively determined. Too much depends on variables that include...
The method for preparing garden seeds for storage depends on whether they dry on the plant or are surrounded by moist pulp. The easiest way to start seed saving is to save garden seeds that naturally dry on the plant....
Judging from the number of published books on the subject, you might get the impression that saving and storing seeds from crops growing in your garden is a complicated affair. That’s certainly the impression I once had. But over the...
An herb that grows in the garden and can be used as a sugar substitute sounds too good to be true, so of course I had to try it. Naturally sweet stevia has now taken its place on my list...
Ginger seems like an exotic spice from a faraway place. I used it for many years before realizing how easy it is to grow ginger in your garden. My moment of epiphany occurred one year when crystallized ginger inexplicably became...
An editor once asked me if I was interested in writing a book about gardening. I replied that I didn’t see the point, since everything there is to know about gardening had already been written in great gardening books. At...
