Garlic!

This, so far, has been a successful experiment. We had been talking about growing garlic for a while, but never tried. Early last month, I had an old head of garlic that was no longer appetizing, so we planted the cloves in a flower box on our kitchen floor (it was still really cold outside). This is what grew... and pretty quickly. We've read that, like potatoes, when the green leaves die off it's ready to be pulled up. From each clove, a new head of garlic will grow.

I've also been reading up on preserving garlic, because while I like the stuff, I'm not sure what to do with 10-12 heads of it at a time. Apparently it freezes really well.  Good to know! I also read that to mince it and preserve it in oil is super dangerous. Even companies that sell it that way have a lot of extra measures they have to go through to do it properly. Bacteria grows in oil pretty quickly. I'll stick to freezing it.

We'll let you know what happens when we pull them up!

Signs of Spring

Here are a few quick ways to tell spring is getting close in our house. Jeff is itching to get things in the ground. Sadly, our frost date is still a month and a half away, but there are a few things we can do in the meantime and a few plants that we can get in the ground earlier.

We've started broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage seeds in cups. We never have much luck sprouting the spring veggies, but we always try.  We love starting seeds in party cups from Dollar Tree.

We also start them in the peat pellets in a mini-greenhouse with a heating pad underneath. I lose half of my kitchen this time of year.

And when that doesn't work, we go out and buy the plants. Only trouble with this is they all mature at the same time! It's pretty tough to eat 70 lbs of cabbage in a week, but we'll talk about preserving food later. Above is romaine lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.