This week we’re back to preserving our harvest! This episode we’ll talk about ways to dehydrate your fruits and veggies and how to use them when you’re ready, the basics of cold storage including temperature, light, and humidity requirements, and look a little bit at fermenting your garden goodness and whether or not that’s a viable way to actually store produce or just good for our gut health. I respond to a comment I got on TikTok about pressure canning: spoiler alert, opinions are not backed ...
Sep 27, 2022•48 min•Season 2Ep. 113
Karin's voice is shot! So, instead of talking about preserving our harvest through cold storage, dehydrating and fermenting like promised, this episode will be focusing on something shorter and sweeter: can you safely modify a recipe for preserving fruit in a water-bath canner by using less sugar? We'll also talk about why and how to prune or "top" your tomato and pepper plants as we get closer to first frost or the Persephone period. The goal is to save some energy for those developing fruit to...
Sep 20, 2022•18 min•Season 2Ep. 112
Okay, here we go. The big beast: pressure canning. I know it can seem scary to have a giant pot on your stove that you think could explode at any moment and that fear probably stems from pictures you’ve seen of pressure canners doing just that: lids embedded into ceilings and exploded contents all over the walls. I’m here to tell you pressure canning is perfectly safe if you follow the instructions. And modern pressure canners have all kinds of safety features designed to keep you from destroyin...
Sep 13, 2022•33 min•Season 2Ep. 111
Last week we talked about the basics of freezing your garden harvest or your extra haul from the farmer’s market and that’s definitely an easy way to get started. But, if you’re really serious about preserving your food and hedging your bets against power outages or you just enjoy the texture of canned foods over frozen, the entry-level process for canning is the boiling water bath. This type of canning only requires a few special pieces of equipment that are readily available and relatively ine...
Sep 06, 2022•30 min•Season 2Ep. 110
This time of the gardening season is likely the time you’re seeing a bounty of goodness coming from your garden, especially if you’re in a climate where the summer heat is starting to wane just a little bit. This usually signals to my garden that it’s time to make one last hard push to reproduce, so the tomatoes and peppers and other summer plants start to push out all kinds of fruit. This is also the time when later planted warm-weather crops start to put on their fruit. I planted my Amish Past...
Aug 30, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 109
This is the time of year when most gardeners in the Northern Hemisphere begin preserving their harvest. Summer's bounty is giving one last push and the cooling temperatures mean the fall garden is ramping up. Over the next few weeks, we'll talk about preserving that harvest, and this week is no different. But, instead of talking fruits and veggies for eating we're talking seeds for growing. Saving seeds from our own gardens can have many benefits. Not only are we ensuring we have enough seeds fo...
Aug 23, 2022•35 min•Season 2Ep. 108
On Tuesday we talked all about the benefits of composting with worms and the basics of how to get started. Today, we talk to an expert. Lauren Cain is the founder and owner of Elm Dirt, a local Kansas City area company specializing in worm castings and products derived from those worm castings. Lauren’s company got its start in an unexpected way and, like all things at the beginning of 2020, took a turn she did not expect. From vermicomposting in her home to worm farming in a warehouse, her comp...
Aug 19, 2022•34 min•Season 2Ep. 107
One thing I’ve been interested in starting for quite some time is vermicomposting, or worm farming, or composting with worms. Whatever you want to call it, composting with worms is a fantastic way to get rid of any food scraps out of your kitchen while creating a beautiful soil amendment for your garden. Having a worm bin in the basement where it can be easily accessed is a great way to give those scraps from the kitchen a purpose much more quickly than if we were adding them to a big compost pi...
Aug 16, 2022•28 min•Season 2Ep. 106
The last couple weeks we’ve focused on selecting your fruit tree, preparing the soil and, finally, planting. Now it’s time to talk about maintaining that tree. Just like anything else in the garden, your fruit tree is going to give you a much greater harvest if you give it some attention. I will be the first to admit I am lousy at this. It’s not that I don’t know what to do and how to do it, it’s just that I don’t get around to doing it at the appropriate time. Some of my trees haven’t minded th...
Aug 09, 2022•31 min•Season 2Ep. 105
Last week, we talked all about how to choose the right fruit tree for your garden. We covered things like climate, available space, and the time it takes to maintain a tree. This week, we’ll dig into how to actually plant that tree. This is going to change, of course, based on what you’re planting and where you’re planting it, but the basics of it are pretty similar no matter the tree or the gardening space. Planting your tree the right way and avoiding some common mistakes will put you well on ...
Aug 03, 2022•32 min•Season 2Ep. 104
If you’ve ever dreamed of walking out into your yard and picking fresh, ripe fruit whenever you wanted, you’re not alone. Many of us are fruit lovers and wish we could have even just one tree that would produce our favorites. But the thought of whether or not a fruit tree would even fit in your yard, the care involved, whether or not you’d need a pollinator, how long it would take to get your first harvest and all those other questions may have stopped you in your tracks in the past. Let’s demys...
Jul 26, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 103
What’s better than putting a plant out in the garden, tending to it lovingly, and then reaping the reward of a harvest at the end of the season? Planting that plant one time and reaping the rewards year after year after year, of course! That’s the beauty of a perennial fruit, vegetable, or herb. Plop that puppy into the ground one year and give it a little attention each season and it can continue to provide for years or even decades. Today we’re going to talk about the difference between an ann...
Jul 19, 2022•27 min•Season 2Ep. 102
It may be blistering hot where you are, I know it is here, but now’s the time to plan that fall garden. The biggest mistake I see with most fall gardens is they get planted too late. I did that many years in a row when I first started gardening. It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to be planting cool season crops in the heat of the summer and I would wait until September to get them in the ground. But, our first frost here is mid-October, so an early September planting date only gives me 6 wee...
Jul 12, 2022•33 min•Season 2Ep. 101
This is it. 100 episodes! When I first started this podcast back in February of 2021, I did it because I wanted to share the knowledge I had gained while studying for my horticulture degree. Other than helping our farm business, I didn’t really have any plans for utilizing my degree after graduation. And, honestly, using it to help the farm would absolutely have been enough. There were things I learned in school that I hadn’t learned through experience in my own gardens yet, so gaining that know...
Jul 05, 2022•27 min•Season 2Ep. 100
If you grow tomatoes, it’s very likely you’ve had some sort of disease attack your plants. In our area of west Central Missouri, it’s usually some early blight followed by Septoria leaf spot with maybe some powdery mildew thrown in just for fun. We may even experience tomato leaf curl if it’s a bad year for whiteflies. Every area has their own tomato diseases to contend with. On today’s episode we talk about the eight most prevalent tomato plant diseases, how to prevent them, how to spot them, a...
Jun 28, 2022•36 min•Season 2Ep. 99
Just because you live in town or don’t actually want to do all the things doesn’t mean you can’t learn to do just a little bit more for yourself and your family in this modern globally connected world. It doesn’t matter where you live or where you are in life, you can be a little more reliant on yourself and your local community to make yourself a bit more secure in a very uncertain world. My guest today is the perfect example of that. Ashley Constance is a first-generation homesteader who moved...
Jun 24, 2022•51 min•Season 2Ep. 98
When you think of homesteading, what comes to mind? Ma and Pa Ingles out on the prairie trying to build a home and raise a family with their own resources on a large plot of dusty land? Maybe you think of the early pictures of covered wagons crossing dangerous territories on their way to stake a claim out west. Yeah, me too! But, in reality, modern homesteading is nothing like that. Today, homesteading can happen just about anywhere. Because modern homesteading isn’t about relying only on yourse...
Jun 21, 2022•23 min•Season 2Ep. 97
I have a confession. When I was a teenager and young adult, I hated fresh green beans. I was used to eating them out of a can and, to me, fresh green beans were “fuzzy”. I definitely was tuned to the smooth, soft, already cooked texture of a canned green bean. I maintained that I didn’t like fresh green beans even after I started growing my own garden as an adult. It wasn’t until my third year of gardening that I gave it a try and learned to love the flavor and texture and freshness of fresh gre...
Jun 14, 2022•32 min•Season 2Ep. 96
In most places in the U.S. there are multiple agencies that work with other agencies to get excess food into the hands of those who can best use it. Whether they work directly with food banks, social service organizations, shelters, and churches or if they have their own collection and distribution system, these agencies often run into a similar problem. They have a ton in the way of non-perishable, boxed or canned goods and less in the way fresh fruits and vegetables. Sometimes this is because ...
Jun 07, 2022•37 min•Season 2Ep. 95
Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite things to eat and, subsequently, to grow. I can eat sweet potatoes baked, fried, mashed, chipped, like tater tots, as a pie, you name it, I’ll eat them. And it only takes a few plants to give you a really good harvest, so they’re perfectly suited for smaller garden spaces. Despite the name, they actually aren’t potatoes and what we eat isn’t a tuber, it’s a root. They are a tropical crop that needs at least four months of warm weather and warm soil, but ther...
May 31, 2022•27 min•Season 2Ep. 94
On Tuesday, we talked all about preserving our culture and our heritage through our food, which includes the plants we grow. Today, I’m joined by Marion Whitehead who is just as passionate about plants and their stories as a I am, maybe even more. I mean, I’ve not been known to write poetry about my plants, but Marion has! And she is uniquely qualified to do so, since she is immersed in plants, both native and exotic, in her work at the Blue Mountain Botanic Garden in New South Wales, Australia....
May 27, 2022•34 min•Season 2Ep. 93
Do you have a favorite food from childhood? Do you have a favorite recipe your grandmother passed down to you from her grandmother? The history of our food is important to preserving our cultures and our heritage. Many times, the ingredients that go into those foods are very regional. But, what if the knowledge of those ingredients was lost somewhere along the way? What if nobody remembered how to grow or forage for the main parts of some of our traditional family and cultural dishes? Today we’r...
May 24, 2022•19 min•Season 2Ep. 92
I know many of you have already been planting your gardens and many more have transitioned from spring plants into warmer weather summer crops. But I also know there are plenty of you that haven’t started planting yet at all, whether your climate conditions aren’t right, or your garden space isn’t ready or whatever. And, honestly, planting is a season-long activity. We start with cold crops in spring, move into summer crops, then right back to cold crops and the stuff we want to overwinter. And ...
May 17, 2022•23 min•Season 2Ep. 91
The whole idea behind starting this podcast was to give you the information you need to grow your own food, no matter how much space you have. Most of what I’ve covered on this show has been toward in-ground gardens and containers, only briefly touching on growing indoors. That’s about to change. Whether you have no access to an outdoor growing space, you want to expand on what space you do have by growing more inside, or you want to extend your season by using your indoor space for gardening, I...
May 10, 2022•22 min•Season 2Ep. 90
One of the crops I really thought would be easy to grow that turned out not to be for me was peppers, specifically bell peppers. Turns out not only do peppers really prefer a lot of heat, they also prefer more water than I typically use in my gardens and in my fields. And peppers are one of those plants that I get asked about all the time in messages and at the farm stand. Because once you get the hang of it, you can grow boatloads and we bring lots of beautiful peppers to market and it gets peo...
May 03, 2022•32 min•Season 2Ep. 89
On Tuesday we talked about expanding your gardens and today I’m talking with my new friend, Katelyn Duban from the Rural Woman Podcast. Katelyn had never gardened before moving to her husband’s family farm in rural Alberta and she had never intended to garden even after moving. But after embracing the rural lifestyle, Katelyn dove into growing her own food beginning with a few pots of lettuce on her front steps and ending with a spaghetti squash monster and a new love for gardening. Katelyn expa...
Apr 29, 2022•35 min•Season 2Ep. 88
If your garden went really well last season, then you might be thinking of expanding your space this season. Even if you didn’t have a fantastic yield last year you may still be thinking of increasing your gardening area because you’ve seen food prices going up in the store recently, or you want certain heirloom varieties, or you just like a challenge! I am the first one to support relying more on yourself for your food needs and less on the grocery store. So, let’s talk a little bit today about...
Apr 26, 2022•23 min•Season 2Ep. 87
When you’re planning your garden, do you have trouble determining how many plants you should grow? It’s very easy to overdo it, especially in the first few years because you don’t know how many plants you need in order to get the volume you want your garden to produce. I was guilty of not planting enough greens the first few years but way overplanting the cucumbers. So we ended up with too few salads and way too many cucumbers. I was giving them away weekly and we canned enough pickles to provid...
Apr 19, 2022•21 min•Season 2Ep. 86
I’ve done plenty of garden myth episodes before on this podcast so when the subject of molasses in the garden was brought to my attention, it piqued my interest. I do know that molasses as a food has a good amount of nutritional value for us as humans and it stands to reason that those same nutrients would be good for the soil microbes and for our plants. But does it make sense to use molasses as a treatment for your garden soil or for your compost pile or are there better alternatives out there...
Apr 12, 2022•12 min•Season 2Ep. 85
A few years back I began to pay more attention to the ingredients in my tea. And I discovered that many of the tea blends I was using contained artificial flavorings. Even the organic teas used so-called “natural flavorings” without indicating the source of that ingredient. So, I started making my own tea blends from herbs I grow in my own garden. I sell many of these herbs as plants at our farm stand and help folks put together their own tea gardens every season. So, this episode we’re going to...
Apr 05, 2022•24 min•Season 2Ep. 84
