This week has been a very long very wet one. It rained here most of the week so it became another busy one full of preserving projects and garden planning. This year we expanded our garden space to 5000 sq feet and I was definitely was not prepared at all. I had no idea where to start, panicked and just planted things with no rhyme or reason. So currently my garden looks like this. It is a hot mess of underutilized space. So I spent a good chunk of time this week planning my 2024 garden layout in order to start prepping beds for over winter crops, like garlic.
As you can see a real mess! You can see my rough plan for 2024 here. I’ll probably update it a few times between now and planting but the row set up is set in stone. Just working on optimal planting and how much of each plant I’ll actually need.
Two years ago my husband and I planted around 200 heads of garlic. The following summer when it was ready to be harvested, I was 8 months pregnant and just unable to get to it. So we left it in the ground and it all went to seed. This year it came back again so I have slowly been digging it out of our clay heavy soil and prepping it all to be planted again, hopefully giving us a great harvest next year.
The kitchen has turned into a maze with stacks of canning jars, tomatoes and peppers laid out to finish ripening, boxes of freezer bags stacked, pots and pans shoved in every available space, and that means we are in peak preserving season. This week we added salsa verde, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, cowboy candy and added to our growing water glassed eggs. All in all another good week on the homestead.
