Utilizing Garden Veggies To Save Money While Meal Prepping
Hello there and happy summer my friends of the internet! The time has come where we are midway through the gardening season in this neck of the woods which means a few things. Canning is upon us, green beans are full speed ahead, and I have more lettuce than I can fit in 3 salad spinners at once. How is your summer panning out? Did you decide on a garden this year? Or are you still in the research and planning stages for the year to come? Let’s talk about meal prepping with garden produce! Balancing Canning, Harvesting, and Garden Upkeep Gardening has always been a passion of mine, but the upkeep is a giant chore in itself. Hence why I huffed and puffed to my husband last week when we were canning because it is SO time consuming!!! I’m typically a few batches in when I start to lose patience on waiting to basically burn my fingers again and heat up the house unnecessarily. HOWEVER. Once the heat of summer and the overflow of veggies is gone for the season, I relish in the canned goods that we’d completed in the summer and am always eager to go to my canning cupboard instead of strolling the aisles at the grocery store. Homegrown goods are so much better for us and also gives us that sense of accomplishment, not to mention the fresh air and peace of mind you get from harvesting, weeding, and just being in the garden to begin with. I loathe weeding, but once I’m in the mix of it, I could literally be there for hours until my hands cramp up. It’s refreshing to not stare at a screen the entire day or to hear birds chirping instead of people talking. Weird, isn’t it? It’s still noise…just different. We talked earlier in the year about how we stuck with more root veggies this time around instead of more tomatoes and peppers, although we’ve had quite the batch of volunteers that I so hate to remove. Seriously, I feel bad about way too many things including plants. It’s a problem. Don’t be like me, thin your seedlings and let those babies breathe!! What’s your favorite thing to plant? Do you prefer harvesting more or maybe you actually enjoy canning (weirdo). I’ve come to realize that gardening overall takes a ton of patience and learning when to lean into what tasks should be spent more time on and what could be let go a little. Let’s talk about that next, shall we? Dive Into Our Autumn Gardening Like a Pile of Scattered Leaves Streamlined Gardening: Meal Prepping with Garden Produce I used to spend SO much time on every task. It would takes hours just to plant, then weed, then tend to, tie up, harvest, wash, can, label, date, organize, and repeat. Then, I realized, why am I doing all these things? Of course it would be different if I spent every day just spending time on my garden, but that’s just not realistic in todays world. We all have other things to accomplish in the day including a full time job, a side gig, a blog all about your journey through life, pets to take care of, a spouse or kids, parents to help, you get my point. Ain’t nobody got time for that. So, nowadays, I simply spend time on the things that matter most (in my opinion of course), and less on those that I deem well, not worthy of my magnificent minutes. Sure, you may disagree and that’s okay. Spending time on things you feel are most important will work for you, just as these things work for me and my family. Some of the things I’ve changed throughout the years include the following: Investing in an electric fence because fixing holes in a normal fence 10x per season gets REALLY old. Letting my tomatoes thrive in their natural state. AKA, foregoing the tying up. Mine are growing beautifully so far and it’s WAY easier to harvest them when I’m not trying to squish my hand in between old tomatoes and 20 inches of vines. I used to spend a lot of money on pretty labels and taking time to write nicely on the jars once canning was finished. This may not seem like that much time but trust me, it adds up. Add your date and move on friends. Thinning. I know it’s proper gardening to thin your plants when they’re small, they grow better, bigger, etc. However I am not trying out for the Guinness World Record so I’m cool with letting them take up more space and harvesting when they’re smaller. When it comes to weeding, we put black plastic down this year and it’s been doing a great job. We also experimented with another section where we just use grass clippings. It takes way longer to weed that tiny section than the rest of the garden. Definitely not doing that again! Next year though, we’d like to try something more natural so that we’re not adding plastic to our garden that doesn’t need to be there. Washing has become easier since dishwashers included a cycle for such, although I don’t have one of those, I do find that a quick rinse with vinegar water has done us just fine. I’ll fill up the sink and dip everything in, instead of washing them individually. Oh, and get yourself a MEGA salad spinner so you don’t spend oodles of time on one veggie. Meal Prepping with Garden Goodies One thing I started doing this year was adding meal prepping into our lives. I’ve attempted a million times but finally it’s starting to stick. Woo! I usually stick to meals that I can use my freshly picked veggies in, so I’m saving doll hairs from shopping at the market. AND guess what. When you’re waiting for eons to water bath those beautiful beans,
Beauty and Beginnings, Rooted in Health: Starting Your Garden With Root Vegetables
Hello friends from all over! Have you started your garden yet this year? Do you have any plans that you’d like to share? Today we will talk about how our garden differs this year from others and what we’re doing to keep a little more for when everything is done growing. Let’s grow! Shifting to Root Vegetables: Our Decade-Long Garden Evolution and Techniques for a Bountiful Harvest We’ve had a substantial garden now for nearly a decade. Each year it’s been adjusted slightly and reorganized, but mostly it stays the same with the exception of moving around the veggies. This year though, we’re looking to harvest more crops and store more as well, which means we’re trying out some different ways of organizing and growing. Usually, we have a large portion of tomatoes and peppers, (shout out to the nightshades fam!), but this time we’re more into the root veggies and stocking up. Since we have realized that we never tend to use all of the tomatoes or peppers, we’re going to save room in both the garden and storage area for other goodies this time around. Starting us off in the root veggie arena, we have beets, as well as carrots, onions, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes were a challenge (and still are) since the last time we failed to produce anything but tiny inedible potatoes. Boo to that! This year, we started some slips in a container, so that they had some time to produce roots before adding them to their soil. We purchased a bag from a local farmers market, added some soil to a large plastic container, and placed them on top. After a few weeks, roots were forming and leaves were beginning to grow! (The purple ones worked MUCH better than the orange ones for us). Each slip should produce approximately 10 potatoes each! Fingers crossed! Related: How Gardening Is Good For Your Soul Mastering Beets, Carrots, Onions, and Potatoes: Tips and Tricks for a Successful Harvest Beets have been something we’ve grown for years, each time getting a little better. We love to juice these (with their leaves) and store the juice in mason jars in the freezer to add to smoothies! However, this year we’re going to can them so that we can keep that healthy fiber inside! (Make sure to thin your seedlings so that you can grow hearty bulbs!) Carrots have been tricky, but we finally made sure to add some sand this year to the soil! (Adding sand can help to create a better well-drained soil). I’ll keep you in the loop on how they turn out! Red onions are my personal favorite, although sweet are the most popular. We were lucky enough to be gifted some walking onions last year however, so those have been fun to watch grow! Check them out if you’re not sure what a “walking onion” is! If you’ve ever grown regular potatoes, you’ll know that a little can go a long way! We try to keep some of what we grew from last year that have grown eyes to plant again, but if you run out that’s okay! You can grab a bag from your local market just like the sweet potatoes and cut them up before planting in mounded rows. We’ve always had great luck with regular potatoes, I love that they’re more of a “set it and forget it” type of veggie! Why We Are Switching It Up This Year Why are we switching it up this year? Not only are we shying away from more peppers and tomatoes, but we also want to get a higher dose in our diets of additional vitamins that may not be as prevalent in other veggies. Did you know? Root vegetables have….”high nutritional value due to their richness in dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals.” And guess what?! Garlic and onions have great benefits as well when it comes to being anti-inflammatory. (If you’ve been keeping up with these posts, you’ll know that I can use all the anti-inflammatory I can get these days! Not to mention that the Standard American Diet also plays a huge role in causing the inflammation in the first place.) By growing, harvesting and ingesting more root veggies, we’re doing our bodies a solid in dumping in some more vitamins that we would otherwise be missing out on. Related: 5 Steps to Achieving Your 2024 Goals Efficient Garden Organization and Canning We’ve organized our garden a little differently, so that we can keep things separated and have more space to walk around to harvest them. We’ve also created a little screened table next to the garden so that we can easily wash these veggies right away instead of in the tiny kitchen sink. Effective and efficient! Yay for that! Because we don’t have a lot of freezer space like we did in the past, we’ll be canning many more veggies than we ever have before this year. Not only because our lack of space however, but each time the power flickered our freezer would reset and therefore give us anxiety about everything in it getting freezer burn! To lose those veggies that were time consuming to preserve was a huge let down and we’re trying to avoid that happening again. Whether you pressure can or water bath, (I prefer the water bath method like my mother-in-law, but my sister-in-law likes pressure canning instead, both are okay!), I suggest doing them in small batches so you don’t get overwhelmed. I’ve noticed in the past that I would wait too long to can a bigger batch, and then be upset that it would take the entire day. Enlist the help of your significant other and work together to move quickly through small batches so that you can not only can right after harvesting (the sooner, the better!), but also so that you don’t feel stress about it being all on your shoulders. Gardening can be a huge task if you’re in it
How To Overwinter Your Garden & Maintain Crops Throughout The Year
Hey guys and gals! So, it’s the end of October already and that means a few things. One…winter is coming!! And two, it’s just about time to overwinter your garden!! Are you ready to learn more about how to do so and maintain some bonus crops throughout the year? I’m hearing yes…let’s go! Finding Balance Through Gardening Overwintering simply means prepping your garden for the cold season ahead. It is also about preparing what you can for the seasons to come. In my neck of the woods, I’m just starting to see the effects of the first frost on the leaves and plants around my property. It’s blissful and beautiful. But also time to start really getting more done outside before it gets too chilly! One of the things that we like to do ahead of the cold season is to pull out any remaining plants that will get frosted over and die. If you can do this before that happens, then great! If you’re like us and have a hectic schedule, try and get out there this weekend and do what you can. Remember life is all about balance my friends! We’ll be tearing up the remainder of the black plastic that we put down in spring for weed control. Then we will look at removing anything that can’t take the cold season. (Basically meaning for us this year, anything besides garlic and spinach!) We will however be leaving the established broccoli plants a while longer to ensure they’ve reached their maximum potential before we pull them out. Cole crops like this one can withstand the cold a little longer, so let’s give them their best chance, shall we?! Some of the plants and crops that can be moved indoors should be done so if you’re able to before the first frost. Obviously this day can come sooner for some people, so make sure to check up on which zone you’re in to ensure you’ve got enough time to do so! Related: Fall Into New Crops For Your Garden Winter is Coming…. A few years back, (well maybe actually a lot of years back)…we built a cute little cold frame next to our house. At this time, it’s definitely seen better days and may need some upgrading next spring, but for now it still works wonderfully to enclose any crops that will be okay through the chilly season and hold off the snow or ice from crushing them! If you’re looking to build a cold frame of your own, check out your local hardware store for some material or try using what you have around the house! You’d be surprised what you may have on hand that would work well for a make-shift cold frame. However, if you’d like to take the quicker route, check out this affordable one I found on Amazon that could be shipped to your door before the winter sets in! Cold Frames and Root Cellars If you don’t have a cold frame and don’t particularly care for one, don’t worry, there are plenty of other options! Something else we’ve done in the past is block up our window under the staircase. This is so that the space under our stairs was no longer just storage, but a canning closet and food storage area! The best rootcellars are underground of course so that they stay nice and cool throughout the years. However, this option has worked great for us to keep things just cool enough to last the time we’ve needed them for. We’ve stored potatoes, carrots, onions, herbs, seeds, garlic, and several other dried crops there for months at a time with no problem. Related: Dive Into Our Autumn Gardening Like a Pile of Scattered Leaves Do you have a storage space going unused that could be repurposed?? If you’re interested in learning more about how to start a root cellar, this Kindle option is on sale for just $4! How to Overwinter Herbs are something we use *all* the time in our home. Cooking, cleaning, medicinal, you name it. We love learning about these wonderful and incredible little plants. We also have acquired a handful of knowledge regarding them over the years. Cooking is something I currently have the most experience in with herbs however, so I tend to keep those nearby the most. My favorite herb of all time has got to be Oregano. It smells fantastic and goes good on basically anything. We also like to keep sage, thyme, basil, parsley, chives, cilantro, dill, chamomile, spearmint and lavender. Some of these will die out over the cold season, so feel free to dig them up (or start them in pots!) and bring them inside over the winter. Challenge yourself to keep them alive until they’re ready to be put back out there in spring! Some of these you can dry, but we’ve found that others are best frozen. For example, we now make room in our freezer for things like basil, dill, and parsley. We dry the rest either by hanging in a dark space for a little while or in our dehydrator. You can even make use of those pesky ice cube trays by freezing some in there for use in soups and cooking! Pruning for Winter Crops Although herbs thrive over most of the year, it’s best to keep in mind that you need to continue to prune them properly so that they don’t die off when the frost comes. If you see a woody stem starting, be sure to leave that on the plant and cut above it! This is the plant’s way of “hunkering down” for the season ahead. Allow the plant to go into its dormant state instead of harvesting too late in the season and encouraging it to work on new growth. What is Your Current Plan to Overwinter? So, what’re your plans to overwinter your garden? Have you done something similar in the past, or is this a new adventure for you?! Let us hear
Dive Into Our Autumn Gardening Like a Pile of Scattered Leaves
Hey all! As we turn over some leaves heading into Fall, (both literally and physically!), we’ve been spending a lot of time doing some Autumn gardening again as you may have heard from our previous October posts! It’s starting to really cool down during the days and especially during the nights. That means it’s that time again to start turning over our garden for the season! This personally is one of my favorite times of the year, so I can’t complain! Let me tell you why! What Autumn Gardening in Western PA looks like First of all, I can’t stand the heat, so I really prefer that sweater weather any day with jeans and boots. Especially over a tank top and shorts sticking to me with sweat. Ick! So I genuinely look forward to the best season of the year so that I can sweat less. I also encounter fewer nagging bugs and enjoy being outdoors with the cooler, crisp air. Whether or not you’re familiar with turning over your garden, one thing is for sure, and that is that it’s going to look different for everyone, based on your location or climate. We’re located in western PA, so we have a pretty steady 4-season kind of year. I like it. What’s yours? That means we start to experience the Fall weather during the last bit of September and the full month of October…maybe even a little in November if it gets that far. But my favorite remains October, and that’s because it’s before the snow flies but after the leaves turn. It’s a beautiful and refreshing site to see. During this month, we typically spend a lot of it doing clean up work in the garden, and usually a little tidying up in the yard as well, such as splitting wood, gathering leaves, or putting things away for the winter that shouldn’t sit out in the elements. (Lawn mowers, patio furniture, etc). Over the weekend we spent a good bit of time doing a bit of all of those things! Allow me to elaborate. Related: How Gardening is Good For Your Soul Gardening as a Team We split the tasks this time to ensure efficiency, meaning that the hubs took on the woodpile and yours truly headed towards the garden. I left my best gloves outside too long by mistake which was a total bummer, meaning I was going to have to pull out the slimy and rotting plants with bare hands! Don’t get me wrong, I love digging in the dirt but I don’t get all that excited about getting rotting plants and veggies on me. (Don’t lose your gloves, friends! Speaking of which, here are some super cute and durable ones on sale right now!) To Root or Not to Root It was a blast though, time flew by as I moved from row to row picking out which crops were okay to leave for now and which needed to be uprooted. This is what we choose to do just to ensure the rotting roots don’t collect any unwanted bacteria over the years, but a lot of folks like to leave the roots in the ground as well for those nice little worms that do a good job. The choice is yours! Deciding to leave the kale, broccoli, beets and swiss chard, I headed towards the sunflowers first. They’re super giant which means their stalks are very thick. I prefer using clippers for these and cut them above the ground. They’re the only thing I leave the root in the ground on, since they’re so hard to pull out! After that I decided to try my hand at preserving more seeds than usual this year. Which meant taking a little more time to move through everything. I snipped off the tops of the lettuce and radishes and tossed a few decent looking green beans into the bucket. Once the seeds were collected, (which we’ll take into the garage to dry before harvesting!), I started pulling out each plant by its roots to ensure everything was cleaned up and taken down to the burnpile. We’ll wait a little longer before burning since they’ll need to dry out some first. (Hooray for Fall bonfires!) Tending to Peppers and Tomatoes Before Cold Sets In The last bit of cleanup involved removing the stakes and twine from the tomatoes. Then pulling out those plants as well. My boots got squishy quickly after stomping on the rotting tomatoes underneath! (We’ll likely run a rake over the top of the black plastic before picking it up for the season…or we may leave it down to plant some spinach! Stay tuned for an update next week!) Once the tomatoes were handled, I moved onto the pepper plants. They were still flowering! Crazy, but they likely won’t produce much longer with the cold setting in. I picked off all of the non-worm eaten peppers and left the plants to try for additional peppers for another week or two. If they don’t follow through I’ll remove them before the frost sets in. Related: Fall Into New Crops for Your Garden Prepping for Winter Gardening Taking care of a garden can be tricky! I’m still learning but am hopeful that providing my journey along the way will invoke a sense excitement in taking care of (or starting!) one of your own! With each year comes a little more knowledge and a little more experience. Thus leading to increasingly better crops and better care systems. We do our best to work as a team with all chores, but have learned to lean into what each one of us is best at and let the other take care of their favorite tasks. It’s going well! Soon we’ll begin to plant some crops that will grow over the winter, so make sure to subscribe to follow along with what we’re up to! We’d love to hear about your journey as well if you’re up for sharing! Happy Fall! Thank you
Fall Into New Crops For Your Garden
Hey ladies and gents! If you’re wondering how to implement more in-season veggies into your life, I’d like to give you a hand! As we move into Fall and out of the Summer heat here in the Northeast, fewer things become available to harvest. There is still a lot of options for you though! Let’s check some of them out, shall we? What Are Cole Crops Again? We talked a little bit about “cole crops” in the last post, but I’ll provide a quick refresher if you missed it! Cole crops are perfect to plant when the Summer growing season is winding down and the cool, crisp air is picking up. They provide a great option to keep your gardening hands busy and to embrace some serious sweater weather! Cole crop are those which are in the Cruciferous family, such as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, brussel sprouts, kolhrabi, and kale. When I first started gardening several years ago, I didn’t like most of these. I “icked” at them as a teen and a child, and definitely didn’t feel like going anywhere near them as an adult. But then as I found out how fun they were to grow, (especially during my favorite time of year!), and how little work they required unlike other crops, I began to fall in love with tending to them and with finding new recipes to make them delicious. Even though I’ve gone through a ton of recipes over the years however with adjusting tastes and trying new cooking methods with these veggies, one thing has stuck true. They’re best, in my opinion, with plain old extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper, baked in the oven. Try it sometime! It’s super easy to throw them in a baking dish, toss some oil on them and pop them in. Less is more, people! Related: How Gardening Is Good For Your Soul What Garden Zone Do You Fall In? Of course your location will play a big part in knowing when is best to plant these crops. Check out which Zone you’re in to determine a best date! This website will let you simply plug in your zip code and find out within seconds! Hooray for the internet! Once you find out which Zone you’re in, you can then determine which seeds or seedlings, or starter plants to invest in. I recommend going to local farmer markets to find some quality ones or if you’d like to stay home and enjoy your newest crocheted sweater indoors, then check out this top list of 2023 online to have them shipped to your door! After you have what you need from shopping online or locally, you can dig in. Literally! You can head outdoors with your gardening tools and your new plants or seeds and get ready. From our experience, we’ve had the best luck with rototilling in the Fall again, before planting our new cold season crops. This allows the ground to be broken up a little more after pulling all of the old crops out, and also gets anything leftover mixed into the soil again. (Here’s where we find our free tomatoes the year after! From mixing up the garden, many seeds that dropped along the way will find their way back upwards next season. Replant those suckers! Save their little plant lives and save some moolah at the same time! Related: Working Through Self Expectations & Limitations How to Plant and Grow Garlic In-Season Another popular crop to plant in the Fall, and particularly one of my favorites, happens to be garlic from the Allium family. Garlic is one of the simplest crops to grow as a “set it and forget it” type plant. This is something we’ll be working on quite soon since our best time is to plant in the September/October time frame! If you have garlic bulbs leftover from the year before, simply break those bulbs into cloves. Someone long ago taught me that using the bottom of the palm of your hand on the head of garlic can crush it just enough to make the cloves come off way easier. I still use that trick and highly recommend it! Keep the papery covering on the garlic cloves and then follow these instructions! Make sure your cloves are planted approximately 3-4″ deep. Always ensure that the pointy end is facing upwards! You’ll want to water just enough to let the soil settle around the cloves, then simply cover them up with 4-6″ of leftover Fall leaves or straw from your Halloween haybales! There are lots of ways people go about caring for and harvesting garlic, but we like to keep it simple and usually come out on top with a pretty hefty harvest. After planting, we just wait. When the garlic is ready, it’ll tell you! Side Note! Snip of the heads when they get curly, use these as garlic as well for an extra helping! After it’s wilted and died down, feel free to bust out your shovel again to dig those new beautiful bulbs! Related: Introducing Habitual Balance Implement More In-Season Veggies This Fall Between pulling old crops, rototilling, and planting new ones again, we know we’ll have a busy next few weeks! How do you plan your Fall planting? Do you prefer to end after Summer and look forward to next year? Or do you prefer to maximize your growing season with cole crops?! Let us hear about your gardening journey in the comments below! Happy planting! Thank you for reading “Fall Into New Crops For Your Garden – Implement More In-Season Veggies”! Thank you for reading today’s post about how to implement more in-season veggies! Let me know what resonates with you or if you have a suggestions for our next post by commenting below. Don’t forget to check out our sister site Rooted Drawers.
How Gardening Is Good For Your Soul
Hello friends of the online realm! Today we’re starting out a new month in Fall and a new topic for the next few weeks! October will be all about gardening. How we got started, what we do to maintain, resources that we hold near and dear, and finally anything that you may (or may not!) need to get started! Which leaves us today to talk all about how we first got into gardening in the first place, and how far we’ve come thus far. Yay for growth! The Gardening Girl Ten years ago (or so), I met my husband. That’s when I really started taking this whole “gardening” concept seriously. Before that though, I grew up gardening and didn’t even realize it. Until of course I recently reflected on it all while writing this post for you! Back in the day, I was a hardcore bug-smooshing, garden growing teeny bopper. Today, I’m still a hardcore garden growing lady, with much less of the bug-smooshing, since any harm to mother nature now pulls those good ol’ heart strings. When I was little, I used to garden quite frequently with both of my grandfathers. They had pretty decent sized gardens, and I got to be a big *little* part of it. I picked tomatoes, weeded around them, watered what I could, and watched and learned whatever it was that my tiny brain could absorb. Funny isn’t it? How much we learn as young children that we don’t even coherently remember. We take it all in, learn each new intricacy, but never fully embrace it until one day as a thirty-something year old it hits us just how exactly it is best to tie those darned old tomatoes up properly. An “Aha” moment, if you will. Weird. Being human, is weird. Related: Developing Routines & What is Sleep Hygiene Down on the Farm In the last decade though, I’ve actually had the honor of working on a farm nearby my home. It was such a beautiful time in my life. Right before my last big job, but right after the first “green light” of my working career. I had just quit a different day job (none of them ever felt quite right), and had been dreaming of being outdoors more often and in the bright sunshine and in the not so bright office light much less. I welcomed new feelings of freedom once I stepped out onto the gravel into dirt driveways that I would drive the old trucks on and felt right back at home when getting my hands in the good smelling fresh soil. At first, it was blissful. I could do this every day, all day, I thought. But then it sank in after the second season that I wasn’t cut out to do this as a full-time job. I hated the cold, hated the hot, and needed that Goldilocks kind of “just right” feeling. So, yet another job bit the dust. Starting Gardening at Home Once I had my home that we still reside in today, it was clear to me that gardening was going to be a big part of it. I loved it and still do. We rototill when necessary, put black plastic down instead of weed til the cows come home, and have learned oodles of tips and tricks that we will dive more into as the month goes on! Before working on the farm however, I never knew that “cole crops” were a thing. Did you?! Here’s a tidbit on its meaning if you’re still unsure: “Broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower are known as cole crops. Several other vegetables belong to this group, including Brussels sprouts, Chinese cabbage, and kohlrabi, but these are considered minor vegetables. Cole crops are cool season vegetables that grow best at temperatures between 60 F and 68F.” This is what we’ll be diving into soon enough during the month of October, since planting these bad boys will soon be in season for us here in western PA. They’re the coolest. See what I did there…They give you a second chance of sorts to continue eating in season, even during the Fall and Winter months of the year when the frost hits and the snow flies! What a wonderful opportunity! The best part about it all (in my opinion) is that there is SIGNIFICANTLY less bugs, heat, and little annoyances of such. I’m more comfortable in a sweatshirt and muck boots, not sweating buckets while breaking my back! Speaking of which, instead of bending over, I highly recommend investing in a nice kneeling mat. Don’t bother with knee pads. Those are MUCH more uncomfortable than you’d think after needing to bend up and down a zillion times in jeans. Related: Why I Chose Courage & It’s Endless Reservations What are Cole Crops? Do you know anything about cole crops? How has your summer been? Did you harvest a lot or just a little? This year we did great in the start of the season, but as life happened we began to slack off some. Our lettuce is now seeding along with most of our herbs, and the kale has basically taken over whatever it could by now. Our sunflowers are drooping and the broccoli looks more like broccolini these days. The good news is is that we’re coming to the change of season. Soon, it’ll be time to harvest the seeds and pull out the old plants to make space for new crops. The garden is ever-changing once you get the hang of it, kind of like life itself. We’re always going to go through changes and seasons in our lives, learning each day what is best to hold on to and what can be thrown to the outside of the fence. As we grow, we learn which battles are worth fighting and which tomato plants should just be pulled out before they cause a disease to travel to the rest of the plants. Keep working toward your goals and add just