Lots To Learn About Gardening

There is so much talk these days about eating fresher and better foods and more and more people are growing their own food. When I was young, growing up in Sheboygan Falls, we had a huge garden and, as a child, I remember helping to maintain it. But it doesn't appear that much of what I was taught stuck with me. I do remember my mom canning vegetables in the kitchen with the whole place all steamed up and the noisy rattle of her pressure cooker. We did not have air conditioning and I am wondering how hot was that?

So this year I decided that I try planting a garden and I did learn a few things:

1. Gardening sounds like a lot more fun in April than July.

2. Put your garden close to a water source.

3. Know what you want before you plant the plant, i.e., tomatoes/peppers.

So armed with little knowledge, I went and bought some tomato and pepper plants, got some bean seeds from Target and researched what I needed to do to get healthy raspberry bushes.

My beans started out looking like I was going to have an ABUNDANT crop. I bunny proofed them with cayenne pepper and something else and that seemed to work so well I was starting to wish I had shared some of them with the bunnies. The first and even the second time I picked them, I had beautiful beans. So my friend, Betty, came over and helped me can them.

I haven't tried these guys yet so the jury is still out on how they taste. But so far, so good. But then something started to happen to the beans. The leaves looked terrible and I would get itty bitty beans that stayed itty bitty. So I think lesson #2 would have helped that.

Next, tomatoes. I don't like to eat tomatoes as just tomatoes. I like salsa, I like ketchup, I like to use tomato sauce for various things. So I went to a plant place and told them exactly what I wanted to do with the tomatoes and I could tell they were really just helping at this place and weren't exactly sure what I needed any more than I did. But off I went with my tomato plants and this is what I have:

Seriously, I would need like a million of these to make a couple batches of sauce. And they're yellow. I want red tomato sauce.

For my salsa recipe, I needed some hot green peppers and some sweet green peppers. On my plant I'm getting little red peppers. About one every other week.

The raspberries ..... I'm overwhelmed by all the "advice" I found by googling "care of raspberries." I did get about 16 raspberries this year though, more than last year, and I understand it takes a while for them to really get going so maybe I'm heading in the right direction.

Since I ask people who are more experienced gardeners than me, which is everyone who has a garden, I'm getting some good advice. I learned I should look for "paste" or "beefsteak" tomatoes for my sauce and where to get paste tomatoes. Thanks, Brenda, for your recipes and your good advice on preserving. I'm already planning my garden for next year keeping in mind that August has been a lot cooler than July.