Sooner or Later…

We have been working on finishing planting the garden, the herbs, and assorted other plant projects. Not quite as fast as I’d like, but getting there.

Rhubarb bed: I have wanted one ever since my Dad & Carol gave us some strawberry-rhubarb jam. mmmm…. Last fall Dad made the mention that his plants had grown so much they needed to be separated. ! This past spring I asked about bringing some down when he came for Fyah’s wedding. Uh-oh. It might be an 80F day wedding March 1st but northern Illinois was still under snow…a lot of snow…adding more at regular intervals.

When it came time to plan Nikos graduation I asked again…and several weeks later again…and its possible there was even a third time. I forget, afterall we were running just as fast as we could at that time. Then I heard an exasperated (but loving) dad say if it were him, he’d just go to Walmart and buy some. So I did. 6 plants. And Dad brought down 2. Definitely have a rhubarb bed to plant don’t I? Not complaining though. (For the record, he had accidentally tilled his and wasn’t sure there was any rhubarb.)

Herb bed: We have some favorites for cooking and tea. Instead of planting another flower bed why not plant herbs…cause we don’t have anything to do anyway, right? Unknown to loving dh, he needs to till again. (a story for another day). Next to the house this time. The mint is going under the hose spigot.

Garlic Bed too.

An older couple at church offered some strawberry starts to transplant in the fall. At least that is a few weeks away.

With all this planting there needs to be some harvesting too. The plan is to can and enter the best in the county & regional fair. (Our librarian earned over $1200 last summer - is that incentive or what?) I have some books at home and of course some links.

Some low tech suggestions are offered at Countryside magazine. We have a basement and a breezeway. Temperatures below zero are rare here, so some planning and arranging the breezeway would make a good cold storage area. We use it for milk in winter it should work for veggies too.

Some canning recipes with step-by-step directions and pictures are here. I want to try canning watermelon jelly. Wouldn’t that be a nice change of pace next winter? Also ketchup, not to mention the freezer recipes or dehydrating. (hmm… need to find plans for building one)

And if that wasn’t enough to plant & plan for I found Plants For a Future

 ” Just twenty plants provide the majority of food eaten, yet there are thousands of other useful plants which have not reached mainstream attention. You can find details of many of them here.”

And “with a data base of 7300 edible useful and medicinal plants” well I might find something else to plant.

That’s my list of sites. Anyone have any suggestions?