Gardening Ideas

Do you know what today is? It's the day that we officially reach our last average frost date, meaning that your garden can be safely planted. With our warm Spring weather, you've probably already gotten well into your gardening, but it's not too late to try something new. 

Annette Draper from Skyview Ward passed along some helpful gardening videos:

Container Gardening

Vertical Gardening

Hoop House (Greenhouse)  

Annette found these videos on http://www.simplylivingsmart.com

Thanks for sharing, Annette!

Juice Steamers

Did your grandma have one of these? Mine did! This is a handy item known as a juice steamer. It is used to extract juice from fruit and vegetables. Steamers can be expensive when purchased new, but you often see them at garage sales, estate sales, and on various online sites at a reasonable price. I've also seen them for sale at various hardware stores around Billings.

For years, my neighbor had an apple tree growing next to our mutual fence that dropped apples all over my lawn. It was aggravating--they had to be picked up before we mowed, and they were not great tasting apples.

Then I got a juice steamer, and turned those apples into delicious, fresh apple juice. Wouldn't you know it, the very next summer my neighbor cut down his apple tree.


. The steamer consists of three pots: the bottom pot for boiling water (right), the middle pot where the extracted juice collects (center), and the strainer/top pot where the fruit is placed (left).


Today I'm making rhubarb watermelon juice. I have a large rhubarb growing in my garden,

and a small watermelon leftover from a reunion.


I cubed the unpeeled rhubarb, cut off the rind and chunked the watermelon, and put them in the strainer. You generally don't need to peel or seed your fruit. Watermelon rind is one of the few things that leaves a distinctive flavor I don't care for. You can also add sugar or spices at this point if needed. Add water to the bottom pot and bring to a boil. Put the middle pot on top of the boiling water and the strainer with fruit on top of the middle pot. Do not let the water boil dry. Steam fruit until it appears dry. As the fruit steams, it drips into the middle pot as pure juice.

Now you have juice which you can drink after chilling, or make into syrup, or jelly or jam, or use as flavoring in other desserts. The booklet that came with my steamer has lots of recipes and ideas. Now that I don't have apples falling in my yard, I use my steamer mainly for the grapes and plums from my garden. You can also steam peaches, cherries, berries, tomatoes,--just about any fruit or vegetable you want.

How's your garden doing? -and a garden recipe

Did your garden take a pounding from the recent tornado/hailstorm?

Mine did! I wondered if it would be a total loss.


I've been amazed and delighted to see the way my garden has sprung back to life.


My garden is definitely behind this year--I have only a few blossoms on my recovered squash and the plants are pretty small.



So far I have very few green tomatoes, and only a couple of ripe cherry tomatoes.
I think the plants took valuable time to regrow the broken and smashed leaves and fruit
and everything is going to ripen later this year.
I'm anxious to harvest some garden produce so I can use
one of my favorite recipes. It's a tasty mixture of sweet, spicy, and savory. The recipe was originally on allrecipes, although I haven't been able to find it there for a year or two.

Grilled Vegetables

You need:

2 Tablespoons brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoon basil

1 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

1/2 teaspoon season-all seasoned salt

1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper, or to taste (cayenne pepper)

Mix well.




you will also need fresh vegetables from your garden, such as

zucchini

peppers

squash

potatoes

onion

asparagus

or vegetables from the store such as

mushrooms

or these sweet potato fries, (which are delicious!)

Use your imagination! It is good on any vegetable.


You can mix a larger batch of the spices and keep them handy in your cupboard in

a plastic storage container.

When you are ready to use the grilling spices, slice your vegetables, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with spice mixture, and stir well to coat.

Put on the grill on medium to medium high heat.

Grill for ten minutes.

Yum!
It's a fast side dish that goes with everything.

Gardening Seminar Friday March 26th

A big THANK YOU to Barb Ostrem, Bill Goodrich and Judy Deim for their interesting and helpful gardening presentations. Sister Ostrem brought a beautiful array of seeds and spoke on seed saving and growing techniques. Judy Deim gave us ideas on when to plant and how to lengthen the growing season. Bill Goodrich shared some of his gardening knowledge learned over many years such as how to get rid of yellow jackets, scare off the deer and plant and take care of raspberry plants. And THANKS to all of you who came. We hope to see even more of you this fall when we are planning a harvest time seminar.

Creating a Garden Spot

Do you have the perfect sunny spot for a garden, except that it is currently covered with lawn? You can make it into a garden spot with a little time and very little work.

Start collecting newspaper. Save the part of the newspaper that doesn't include the ads. The ads are generally made out of a different, shinier paper. Regular newspaper uses soy-based dyes, which decompose quickly and don't harm the environment. Ads on shiny paper may contain petroleum-based dyes which don't decompose for a long time and can be harmful to plants and people

Pick a garden spot. Make sure it gets at least 6 hours of sun if you want to use

it for vegetables or sun-loving flowers.

Cover with 4-6 layers of newspaper, and use compost, grass clippings, dirt, or (temporarily) rocks to keep the wind from blowing the paper away. Watering down the paper helps it stay in place, and if it gets snowed on that's fine, too. In six weeks the paper will have mostly decomposed, the grass underneath will have disappeared, and you now have a patch to plant vegetables and flowers in. It works amazingly well and is a good way to recycle your newspaper. If your weeds got away from you last summer, you can use this method to keep them from germinating this spring. Just lay down a layer of paper over the problem spot and new weeds won't grow.

Overwintering vegetables

As the soil begins to warm in the spring, you will begin to notice signs of life. This is a picture of my carrot patch.

Digging around, I find their are several carrots still left. Did you know these carrots are still yummy? Carrots are cold weather crops and do quite well in the soil over the winter, even in our cold winters. If you have a place in your garden with carrots left, now is the time to dig them up and eat them.

You can dig carrots up any time over the winter that the weather is warm enough, but they need to be dug up before it gets to much further into spring for best quality.


Another crop that is good to keep over the winter is winter squash. These are squash that have a harder outer shell such as acorn, spaghetti, butternut, etc. At the end of the season last September (and before the first frost) I picked all of my winter squash and put them in a cardboard box in a corner of my garage and covered them with a heavy blanket to keep from completely freezing. Even though my garage got below 32 degrees, the thick blanket protected my vegetables.


Now, almost 6 months later, the last few acorns are still good and waiting to be eaten. Be sure to sort through them from time to time to remove moldy ones. Don't store summer squash (such as zucchini) in this way.

As you plan your summer garden, make a spot for these vegetables that provide fresh vegetables all winter long.

Recipes from the Garden

The garden is fading quickly and if you have tomatoes in your garden to use,

here is great recipe from Jodi Gorham:

Need something to do with a bumper crop of tomatoes? Try making jam. It sounds weird, but it's tasty, easy to make, and relatively inexpensive. My kids eat this jam and like it, of course I let them believe that it's Raspberry Jam; they have no idea that it's mostly tomatoes. Allrecipes.com has some recipes that are similar to this one (Budget Berry Jam and Green Tomato Raspberry Jam) that call for green tomatoes. That might be interesting to try too. Happy jamming!
Tomato Jam

4 C peeled tomatoes in a small dice
1 Tbsp lemon juice
4 C sugar
1 large box raspberry Jello
To make peeling the tomatoes easier, put 2 or 3 tomatoes in very hot water for about one minute so that the peel will just pull off:

Boil for a minute until you see the peel split.

The tomato peel will slip off easily at this point.

Take the hard core out of the peeled tomatoes (and the seeds if you want). You'll end up mainly using the outside flesh of the tomatoes. Dice the tomatoes. Stir together all ingredients but the Jello. Boil for 20 minutes. Take mixture off of the heat and stir in Jello. Stir until dissolved. Pour jam into hot jars and seal. Water bath them in boiling water (water should cover the tops of the jars by about 1 inch) for 15 minutes.

garden photos

Many sisters in the Stake have been busy in their gardens this summer. These are just a few photos of some of them. We would love to share a picture of yours and hear about your gardening experiences this summer.

Linda Davis tried square foot gardening. One in the backyard with peas, lettuce, onions and tomatoes. The front yard box has beans, carrots, peppers and tomatoes. I was very pleased with the results and hope to enlarge my garden next summer.

Joan Larsen tried a square foot garden for the first time. She also has a large raspberry patch.

Ro and David Hein have had a large garden for many years. This year she built a square foot garden out of cinder blocks. She's hoping to compare the results of her square garden with her tradtional row garden. She planted a little late this year but once the days started getting hot her garden really started growing and catching up.

Norma and David Olson have a beautiful garden. They plant vegetables and flowers in both the back and front yard. When asked how she grew such beautiful onions she said, "I just watch them grow!" The Hollyhocks in the front yard are at least 8 feet tall!

Skyview Enrichment

A recent Skyview Ward Enrichment focused on Gardens.

"Our 'Parade of Gardens' was a success. We toured 6 gardens and saw a lot of good ideas. We ended at the Snizek home for kid swimming and garden green smoothies for the adults. MMMMMmmmmm -- much to the surprise of some."
I wondered what is in a "Garden Green Smoothie". Here is what Skyview reported:

"We collected kale and lettuce from the gardens. We added some sunflower seed greens, bananas, frozen strawberries, a little ground flax seed, a few mixed sprouts and two cups of water."

Sounds like a great activity! Thanks, Skyview, for sharing!

Controlling Weeds in the Garden

...cursed is the ground for thy sake...thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee...

Genesis 3:17-18

Weeding the garden is a necessary but ongoing chore. Like painting the Golden Gate Bridge, just when you finish it is time to start over again. There are several tricks
to making weeding easier.

One trick is to plant things close enough to cover the space. Weeds need sun to grow, and if they are prevented from getting sunlight they will not thrive. Remember that healthy plants need breathing room, so don't plant things too close together.

Tools are a good way to make sure you get the root of the weed. Pulling the top of the weed and leaving the root ensures that you will be seeing that same weed in a few days.

Make sure when you weed that the ground is wet but not muddy. There is nothing more difficult than pulling weeds out of dry soil.

Use one of the many products available to keep the weeds from sprouting up to begin with. Lay down gardening fabric, cutting an "X" for your plant. Garden fabric keeps weeds from growing while keeping the soil moister and warmer.

In time, your plants will cover and hide the garden fabric.

You can use other things as ground cover. Newspaper is great for this purposed, but don't use ads. They are made of a different kind of paper, have too much colored ink, and don't decompose like regular newspaper.

Grass clippings make good, free mulch. Don't use grass that has recently been treated with weed killer. Don't cover the plant. Some plants such as squash and melons will suffer from stem rot if covered with mulch. In the fall add dead leaves, saw dust, or straw in equal parts, and mix into soil. Grass alone leaves the soil with too much nitrogen. Equal parts "green" and "brown" materials make a better mix. By next spring, you will have a nice, composted soil.

A produce like Roundup is perfect for some spots, such as the cracks of your cement.

A garden that is weeded on a regular basis has fewer and fewer weeds as time goes on. Without old weeds to germinate new weeds, the number of weeds decreases. Spend some serious weeding time early in the summer, and you will have less to do as the season goes on.