Looking for a homemade version of those canned diced green chiles that you buy in the store? Here’s how you make them! You can also use these same directions to can any type of pepper – whether they are hot or sweet. Near the end of late summer, we always have more peppers than we…
Learn how to harvest sunflower seeds from your garden, plus how to save them for snacking, birdseed, or replanting in next year’s garden! When to Harvest Unlike many flowers, you don’t want your sunflower blooms to dry all the way up before collecting your seeds. Brown, dead, dry sunflowers have likely either dropped all their…
Learn how to pressure can fresh pinto beans picked right from your garden, or found seasonally at your local farmer’s market! A common way of canning pinto beans involves soaking and rehydrating store-bought dried beans. As a gardener who grows your own beans, you can just pick FRESH pinto beans out of your garden, shell…
Learn how to can fresh black beans, using a pressure canner and shell-out beans from your garden! Black beans are very easy to grow at home. In fact, we grow ours using nothing more than a bag of store bought dried black beans as seeds, and a few tilled rows in the garden. While you…
Learn how to can fresh kidney beans when they’re in the shelling stage! Homegrown canned beans have an amazing taste and texture. It’s easy to grow your own kidney beans in a home garden. They’re not fussy, and provide loads of beans for the small price of seed. (Yes, you can even plant inexpensive store-bought…
Learn how to forage, identify, and harvest black walnuts (Juglans nigra) plus how to dry and cure the nuts, and use the hulls and leaves for remedies! ID Tips for Black Walnuts (Photo Identification) Black walnut is a native tree, for those of us who live in Eastern North America. It’s a tall beautiful tree,…
Got a bumper crop of sweet or bell peppers, and can’t possibly eat them all fresh before they start to go bad? Do you wish you could eat your lovely homegrown peppers all year ’round, not just when they’re in season? Do you have spare room in your freezer? If so, you might want to…
Learn how to turn the beautiful roses in your garden into a tasty and gorgeous rose petal jelly! It’s made with reduced sugar pectin, fresh rose petals, sugar, lemon juice, and water. That’s all you need to make this pretty floral treat. Rose petal jelly tastes very good too – somewhat like a mild grape-like…
Learn when and how to harvest both new potatoes and storage potatoes, plus how to store them for a longer shelf life! You’ve sprouted your potatoes, planted them in the ground, hilled them up, and now they’re growing- but how do you tell when it’s time to harvest them? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!…
You’ve got a glut of gorgeous broccoli heads, or the prettiest harvest of cauliflower: but the problem is, you can’t eat this many brassicas before they go bad! Luckily, it’s easy to freeze broccoli and cauliflower right at home. All you need is a few pots, a strainer, a cookie sheet, and a freezer, then…
Learn how to turn ripe cayenne peppers from your garden into cayenne powder and red pepper flakes. It’s super easy to make your own healthy and wholesome kitchen spices! Related articles: Grow & Make Your Own Paprika Powder and How to Make Celery Salt When to harvest your cayenne peppers: Harvest cayenne peppers when they’re…
Learn how to make traditional corn cob jelly, with a naturally colorful twist! This stunning scarlet jelly features Double Red, an heirloom sweet corn that’s loaded with anthocyanins – antioxidant rich plant pigments, similar to the ones found in blueberries. This year we grew a small test patch of Double Red heirloom sweet corn and…