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So many seeds – so little space! We have a pretty big garden, considering that there are just two of us at home these days. We do give food away to our daughters and some other relations and neighbors, but the garden is pretty big. And yet, every year some seeds and plants get crowded, or I’ll look up and realize that we’re out of space with a couple of seed packets left over. It seems like an impossible space to fill when we start, and not big enough once the planting is nearly done. By the same token, we can, freeze, and dry food frantically during the harvest season. We don’t pretend to be self-sufficient, but the way things are going these days, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for such a circumstance. Now, with days getting longer, we look at our mostly full shelves and freezer and wonder how in the world we’ll be able to eat it all. Of course, that is a wonderful problem to have. So, how do we go about turning stored food into tasty meals? One idea is soup. Lots of soup. ...

  There are so many quotes about gardens and gardening. Most of them have lots of flowery (pardon the pun) language about being one with nature and such. Here are a few quotes that resonated with me, and I thought you might like them too. “A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.” -- Doug Larson   “A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.” -- D. Elton Trueblood   “Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.”   -- May Sarton   “Weeds are flowers too -- once you get to know them.”   -- A. A. Milne “Gardening is not a rational act.” -- Margaret Atwood “What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.” -- Charles Dudley Warner ...

  The seed displays have been up at Farm and Fleet stores for a few weeks now. Probably at Fleet Farm stores too. Somehow it’s wrong to have Christmas merchandise up in September, but gardening stuff showing up in January is just fine! Seeing the seed display is both funny, because of the snow and ice outside, and nice, because it confirms the optimism that spring will eventually come. By now I have my standby seed choices. In the green bean world, I like either the Slenderette or Tenderette variety. I can never remember, so I get a pack of each. I always buy things to start indoors, like peppers, tomatoes, melons, etc. The truth is that my luck as a seed starter hasn’t been very good, although last year I grew some very impressive umbrella-shaped mushrooms. In the past I’ve made the mistake of buying seeds for some really beautiful flowers without reading that, in some cases, they “will blossom in 320 days.” Since we live in Wisconsin and not Florida, 320 days to blossom is ...

  The Christmas blizzard of 2022 is revving up in Southern Wisconsin. The snow blows across the white landscape, drifting here and there over the rows and beds of the now resting garden. I’m listening to Christmas songs – mostly new takes on old songs. Take Six, Pentatonix, The Bird and the Bee, Home Free, Over the Rhine… groups that didn’t exist when I started gardening. I used to make mix cds for my extended family. I liked doing that. Now nobody has CD players anymore, and parts of the family aren’t really connected anymore. There is a sadness to the Christmas season that comes into focus as the years pass. In fact, many of the songs have a sad side to them. “Through the years we all will be together, if the fates allow.” Not until my dad died did I understand the truth to those lyrics. Now our children have their own growing children. The traditions of Christmas are passed along to them and we feel blessed that we are a part of that passing along. I only hope they will tell...

Hello garden friends!  The link that follows is to my other blog. The post includes photographs from the past few years that I thought you might enjoy. https://peterwallace.wordpress.com/2022/12/14/something-different/  -Peter

  There are plenty of “back to the earth” bloggers out there who do amazing things with their gardens and livestock. As much as I admire them, at this point in my life I either don’t have the energy to do what they do, or I’d rather use that energy for other things. I suppose that if modern society as we know it collapsed, I’d be out there building a greenhouse out of milk jugs and Amazon boxes. That being said, there are a few things we’ve done that fall into the self-sufficiency basket. A few years ago, I started to tap our maple trees and made syrup. We don’t have the “right kind” of maple trees, but it still works, and the end product is really nice. This year I wanted to try making horseradish. We planted our horseradish oh, maybe 15 years ago. Up until last weekend we’d never done anything with it, but after watching a half-dozen YouTube videos it seemed like something easy enough to do. And, other than being a little time consuming, it wasn’t bad. We dug up some root...

  Frankly, I’m glad it’s almost over. There are no more apples, peppers, or tomatoes to deal with. Bumper crops are wonderful, but contending with them takes a lot of time and effort. Fortunately, we have some willing recipients of some of our produce which both makes us feel generous and reduces the canning/freezing/dehydrating workload. Despite several frosts there are still beet greens growing on a comically large, unpicked beet. The Swiss chard (a relative of beets) is also putting out new leaves from the base of the plants. The kale plants stand defiantly, daring us to cut them. Even the raspberries have a few more treats for us if we look carefully. Some spinach is growing from seeds that were left to grow after the plants bolted back in late June. We had a little pea plant growing near where the peas had been. It’s time to put the garden to bed, but we are reluctant to cut down a lot of the dead things because the birds seem to be feasting on flower seeds and such. It’...