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Growing Peas – From Planting to Harvest, What You Need to Know

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hand holding ready to harvest peas in garden on pea trellis

Planting and growing peas may not be the most efficient use of space in your garden, but the flavor of home grown garden peas knocks the socks off most commercial peas. If you want more yield per square foot, grow snap peas so you can eat the pod and the peas inside. Pea plants are also great to include in your garden rotation because they can help add nitrogen to the soil. In this post we’ll cover pea growing from planting to harvest, including garden pea companion plants, pea trellis and troubleshooting tips….

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Growing Carrots – From Planting to Harvest – Learn How to Grow Carrots

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Light and dark orange harvested carrots sitting on wooden table, plus text overlay "growing carrots"

Some folks don’t bother growing carrots in the garden because they’re so readily available at the store, but once you’ve tried a homegrown carrot, you’ll be hooked. Like many homegrown vegetables, garden fresh carrots tend to be sweeter and more flavorful than their store bought counterparts. You can also grow carrots in a variety of colors – purple carrots, white carrots, red carrots, yellow carrots and many shades of orange carrots. Growing carrots in containers is possible with the right container and the right carrots. In this post we’ll cover how to grow carrots, from planting to harvest, plus some common carrot questions….

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Easy Cheese Quiche Recipe with Fresh, Frozen or Freeze Dried Veggies

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This easy cheese quiche recipe comes together in minutes for a quick and filling meal. It works well with fresh, frozen or freeze dried veggies.
This easy cheese quiche recipe comes together in minutes for a quick and filling meal. I like to make it in the summer when fresh produce is abundant, but it also works well with frozen or freeze dried veggies. If you want a heartier meal, feel free to add some diced ham or smoked turkey. We often opt for a cheese and broccoli quiche, but you can substitute other vegetables with good results. (More on this in a bit.) Lately, I’ve been using our duck eggs for cooking, and they give egg recipes a great golden color. (The yolks are HUGE, and the duckies love to go out foraging!)

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How to Can Green Beans – Step by Step Instructions for Canning Green Beans

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How to can green beans in a pressure canner. Picking, cleaning, processing, headspace, processing times, and altitude adjustments for safe canning.

How to Can Green Beans

Home canned green beans are one of the boys’ favorite veggies, so I try to process about thirty quarts each season. Our last round of “green” beans actually started out mostly as Purple Podded Pole Beans (which turned green when canned or cooked), but our main crop most years is Emerite pole beans. I prefer pole beans because there is less bending and they produce over a longer season. Here’s our system for cleaning and processing home canned green beans….

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The Parsnip Squid and The Rock That Moves

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parsnip squid

What is it? A creature from the deep? Captain Nemo’s worst nightmare? Nope – just this year’s harvest of parsnips posing as a parsnip squid.

 

Parsnip harvest

What I love best about parsnips is that they are ready to harvest when very little else is available. I always overwinter my parsnips (i.e., leave them in the ground over winter and harvest them in the spring). The freeze/thaw cycle converts more of their starches to sugars and makes them absolutely delicious. Come late March/early April, the boys and I head out to where we’ve buried the plants the previous fall under a thick layer of straw. My stepdad swore up and down that the ground wouldn’t freeze if you covered it in this much straw, but mine surely did, so we had to wait to dig until the frost was gone….

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