My church used to have Wed nite dinners many years ago. I have wanted to get these started again ever since I have been back home. Last night was our first one. The menu was baked chicken, stewed okra, and squash casserole. For dessert, my mom cooked brownies. It was cool picking okra and squash at our community garden on Tuesday night to use in the dinner. I fed about 40 people which is pretty good considering it was mentioned in church Sunday morning for the first time. Our normal attendance is only about 65 people on a Sunday morning. So, one of my new goals is to can or freeze enough produce from the garden to use in Wed nite meals every week. Ideally we will be able to deliver meals every week to our shut-ins. Right now, we are picking about 3 gal of okra and 5 gal of squash every day. Not bad for 4 guys doing this in our spare time.
Once we get a house this time next year i'll be building some garden boxes in the back yard. Produce prices are just too damn high anymore, and at least with me growing the vegetables, I know exactly what we're getting.
Raised beds definitely the way to go. Took me a long time to pay the piper and do it. Garden is much smaller now than it once was but dayum, so much easier. Throw grass clippings in them.
In a perfect world I'd love to have a little acreage and build a hydroponics garden system in an enclosed building. But with it being just the woman and I, and my kid every other weekend, 2-4 decent little garden boxes would be less time consuming and labor intensive. Plus the garden boxes would grow more than enough to feed us.
So Thursday is potato planting day. We cut 200 pounds of Irish Redstone and 50 pounds of Kennebec whites about 3 weeks ago. Time to get the spring garden going.
1/2 of our corn goes in on March 3 I don't know if I mentioned it, but last year we added a couple of bee hives. We also are putting in 1100' of 2" irrigation line this spring. Dragging hoses is for the birds.
i just planted some new fruit trees...nothing special just a couple orient pears and a pineapple pear plus a few thornless blackberry vines for my little girl to pick. Not planting taters this year I do not think. Gonna scale the garden back a good bit only gonna do corn, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, watermelons and okra this year which will all be done early march. My Baldwin pear tree is not doing good must have some kinda disease in it or something but it is in bad shape and that is my favorite pear so gotta find out of those somewhere or at least graft one. My great uncle has a couple I should be able to get some stock off of. Might do a La Conte too they come in a good bit earlier than the rest. Want to get fresh pears going from April though Nov at least.
