Lettuce

I have never had very much luck with lettuce before. something always eats it. This is our first garden at our new place and it seems that lettuce likes it here. Late last season we discs the garden spot. Early this season a neighbor let us get two truck loads of turkey litter. we tilled the garden twice and i started planting with my root vegetables and lettuce.


Of course something started eating it. No telling what so i put up netting around it. Two plants died anyway. I thought it was getting to dry so i added leaves as mulch and them some fish emulsions as fertilizer. it took off. I fixed a nice salad for when my brother came down to visit form the garden. If you have never had garden lettuce and onions you don't know what you are missing. I just pick more yesterday and we had a big salad for supper and enough for another salad in a day or two. lettuce only keeps a little while in my refrigerator before it gets slimy. i am going to invest in a scale so that i can keep track of how much produce i get out of my garden this year.
I think i will make BLT's for supper. My husband will even eat lettuce that way.

Canning part 3

Canning fruits: All fruits may be canned with plain water, with unsweetened fruit juice, or with sirup. Here is the break down on the types of sirup.
Light sirup 1 part sugar to 3 parts water or fruit juice
Medium sirup 1 part sugar to 2 parts water or fruit juice
Heavy sirup 1 part sugar to 1 part water or fruit juice
Extra Heavy sirup 2 parts sugar to 1 part water or fruit juice.

To make the sirup, mix the sugar and water or fruit juice in a sauce pan, boil until sugar dissolves. Keep it hot.

These instructions are for use at altitudes of 1000 feet of less. The times given are for processing quarts, use the same time for pints, or reduce by 5%, the results are practically the same, increase time one-half for half-gallons.
I will list the product, type of sirup, type of pack, water bath process time and in parentheses oven process time at 275 degrees.

APPLES: medium to heavy, hot pack, 15 min (35 min)
APRICOTS: medium to heavy, hot pack , 15min (35 min), or cold pack, 20 min (50 min)
BERRIES: medium to heavy, hot pack, 5 min (25 min), or cold pack, 20 min (50 min)
CHERRIES: medium to heavy, hot pack, 10 min (35 min), or cold pack, 20 min (50 min)
CURRANTS: medium to heavy, hot pack, 5 min (25 min), or cold pack, 20 min (50 min)
FIGS: medium to heavy, hot pack, 30 min (50 min)
GRAPES: light to medium, hot pack, 5 min (25 min), or cold pack, 20 min (50 min)
PEACHES: heavy to extra heavy, hot pack, 10 min (35 min), or cold pack, 30 min (60 min)
PEARS: light to medium, hot pack, 20-25 min (50 min)
PLUMS: medium to heavy, hot pack, 10 min (35 min), or cold pack, 20 min (50 min)
RHUBARB: heavy, hot pack, 5 min (25 min), or cold pack, 20 min (50 min)
STRAWBERRIES: hot pack, 5 min (35 min)
FRUIT JUICES: hot pack, 5 min (25 min)
* If using a pressure cooker for processing fruit: cold pack and process berries, grapes and rhubarb 8 minutes at 5 pounds pressure, and all other fruits 10 minutes at 5 pounds pressure.

Most of the Information about canning that I have came out of Granddaughter's Inglenook Cookbook. The copyright is dated 1942. When I was looking at the timetables for processing, I saw a little footnote that said: All tables in this section are used by permission of Ball Brothers.
So I did a search for Ball brothers canning time tables, and found a web site that had this information and much more. The site is www.kitchenkrafts.com They had everything a person would need in the kitchen including all kinds of different shaped baking pans to all kinds of canning supplies, just everything. The book with the food processing tables in it is called "Ball Blue Book guide to preserving" and the price is $7.95. I have not ordered it yet, but I will. If you are looking for something special for your kitchen that you can't find in a store, you should look at that web site.

My tiny little garden

I don't have much space but I love fresh vegetables from the garden, especially tomatoes, so last year I dug out this small section just behind my house and built a raised bed. My husband got the landscaping rock from Lowe's and my son helped me with the digging out of the old grass and the dirt moving. We used a pallet of top soil and a big bag of peat moss (these were also purchased at Lowe's) to fill it in. I had a pretty good yield and of course planned to do it every year.
Last year we used tomato cages on our tomatoes but it didn't work out for me very good. The tomato vines were so heavy and it can be very windy here in Missouri at times, so the cages kept falling down and I couldn't get them to stay up. That made picking the tomatoes more difficult rather than easier. So this year we put up a small section of stock fence anchored with T-post to attach our tomatoes. As the vines grow, I will just tie them to the fence. I saw my cousin Earl do this in his garden and thought it was a great idea.
Yesterday I read an article in MOTHER EARTH NEWS magazine entitled Grow $700 of food in 100 square feet. It was all about this lady who had a 5' x 20' garden in her back yard and she wanted to see how much food she could produce in it. She kept track of all the expenses and what and how much she produced, along with the price those same vegetables cost at her local supermarket. She figured the total value of her little garden to be $746.52 then she subtracted the price of the plants, seeds, compost, and fertilizers, which came to about $63.09 . That means there was a $683.43 in savings on fresh vegetables for her.

I decided to try to keep track of what I get from my little space too. My space is about 4' x 18', but part of it is under the overhang of my roof and things don't like to grow there. There is also a crawl space thing on one end that takes out some of the usable area. I will get my husband to figure out the exact square footage for me. The other thing I am going to keep track of is the price of the water bill. That, to me, will make a difference in the total benefit also.

I will take pictures as the season progresses. Right now, I have 3 Big Boy tomato plants, Two Jalapeno pepper plants, Bib lettuce, green leaf lettuce (forgot the variety) and red leaf lettuce as well as plenty of onions. I planted black-eye peas this morning, they should be coming up in the next 10 days.

By Kay Longboy