I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!! As always, ours was a wonderful time spent enjoying some much needed family time and playing lots of games.
This is a quiet time for the homestead. The winter months are a time of rest for much of the homestead…the garden is at rest until spring, the geese and ducks are in their “off” season for producing eggs, projects are at a temporary stand still. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still busy. I’d rather be outside working…but winter is the time when I get to give my back a break, and start planning for the next warm season. I plan for the upcoming garden season and all my crop rotations, I research things…like how to naturally add nutrients into the soil, best way to use duck and chicken manure, what plants do better started indoors vs direct sew…I also make a project list to help keep me on track for what I hope to get accomplished in the coming year.
I titled this blog post “A New Year For Trying New Things”, because I’m doing just that. I’m sure if you are on Facebook or Instagram, you may have come across reels or posts about how to reuse your kitchen scraps. Well, I am trying a couple of them out… I had done the whole avocado pit hovered over water until roots sprout, and then planting in soil… But in the end, I ended up with a 12″ stick. That’s it. I saw a few of these “use your kitchen scraps to grow more produce”, and I decided to give them a try. And so far…they are not failures…not yet, anyway.
During fall and winter, there are a few family members who like to declare this “Soup Season”… I’m more of a “Sweater Weather” person. Anyway, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we had several soup days, and I ended up with the bottom root-bulb of celery. I fully intended to just throw it in the compost, but I had seen a reel that said you can grow more celery from the root-bulb. So I tried it. I stuck 4 toothpicks around the celery bulb, and hovered the bottom of it in water until it started growing roots. Once roots sprouted, I planted it in a pot. And this is what I have so far:
I did a similar thing with some tomatoes I had on the counter. One evening I had made tacos for supper, and when I went to dice up a tomato, I cut into it and the seeds had sprouted inside the tomato. So….I carefully dug out all the “seed guts” and put them in a pot. Now, full disclosure, for the amount of seeds that I put in the pot, I should have ended up with a LOT of tomato plants…but that did not end up being the case. But I still have a sprout or two that seem to be trying:
And the last “Trash to Treasure” produce experiment….blueberries! Blueberries happen to be a favorite of mine. I like pretty much all berries, but I REALLY like blueberries…so how in the world a whole pint of blueberries got lost in my fridge is beyond me! But sometime around October/November, I found a pint of blueberries buried in the bottom of the crisper drawer. They had already started to get squishy, and I remembered one of those reels again… So I got out a seed starter tray, and got to work. I moistened my soil, filled my little pods, and then I squished several blueberries and put them in the pods, until my tray was full. I put the clear lid on and set it in the window. It took a LONG time….but now, I have sprouts!!! The last I counted, I had 82 little sprouts! Getting them all to survive til I plant them outside, and then staying alive once outside….that will be a whole different hurdle. But for now, I take in the joy of new life from these seeds. (Sorry for the bad picture…just know there is a lot of sprouts in this tray).
It will soon be time for me to get the rest of my seed starter trays out and plant seeds under my grow lights. Then that means spring will be right around the corner….YAY!!!!!
Take care, and God bless!!!
For anyone who utilizes our produce stand, leave me a comment of what veggies you would like to see out there in the coming season? I’m looking to expand the vegetable options, and want to know what you would like.