If you are a brand new beginner, here is a fantastic intro to Square Foot Gardening that we filmed last summer with our cousin Emily. We love love love the Square Foot Garden method developed by Mel Bartholemew.
 

How will we help you this year?
1. We will be posting periodic updates on how we are doing in our gardens along with details about what we will be doing next so you can follow along in your own gardens (ok we’ll be honest, JODI will be doing this, Julie hasn’t caught the gardening bug yet).
2. We will be having Emily from http://mysquarefootgarden.net do a series of guest blog posts on some of the more advanced gardening topics (leave a comment below if you have a specific topic you would like to have covered).

Jodi’s To-Do’s This Week
1. Make a garden plan
2. Purchase grow lights (Emily convinced me that these are golden!)
3. Purchase materials needed to start seedlings (soil, plant pots, etc.)
4. Catalog leftover seeds and purchase any I am short on
5. Start appropriate seedlings indoors and plant peas outdoors (yay!)
6. Convince dear husband to help me start prepping my garden beds

Helpful Hint
Are you worried about knowing when to plant the right things? Emily has a fantastic FREE service she offers that provides you with a custom schedule explaining what to plant every week for your specific region. Click here to sign-up for these weekly newsletters that are an invaluable resource for ANYONE planting a garden.

Happy Gardening!!!

While not critical for sustaining life, fruits and vegetables are a welcome addition to any food storage program for the health benefits, variety, and to help you save money on your day to day grocery shopping. Include the Day 9 Tags to complete today’s gift ideas:

Gardening Seeds

Gardening is a great way to become more self reliant. Try giving a few packs of gardening seeds to help motivate people to get going on gardening. If you know the person doesn’t have a lot of space, pick herbs, or things you can grow on kitchen counters.

Canning Supplies

A fun way to start using foods you garden, or buy in season for great prices is by canning them. A lot of people don’t have what you need to start canning and don’t think of buying it for themselves. A small canning kit is a great idea to get started.

Food Dehydrator

Another way to preserve fruits and veggies is through dehydrating. Again, if you’re feeling generous a great idea is a food dehydrator. You might want to be sure this is something the person is open/ready to get going on. You wouldn’t want to intimidate them too much

Back to the 12 Days List

Next up on our list is Legumes! Legumes can be very intimidating to a lot of people so this is a great one to help people realize they aren’t so bad. Here are some ideas to help people use, and understand legumes a little better:

12 Bean Soup

Purchase a 1 lb bag of 12 bean soup mix from the grocery store. Tie a ribbon around it and include the Day 7 Tags. If you want to be really ambitious you can include this 12 Bean Soup Recipe on a cute recipe card too. It’s delicious!

Sprouting Kit

Ever tried sprouting? Well if you know someone who wants to get into the real good stuff, give them this sprouting kit. Sprouting is a great way to use some of your food storage, and it’s super healthy and nutritious! Add your Day 7 Tags and it’s the perfect food storage gift.

Pressure Cooker

Here’s another one of those – if you’re feeling REALLY generous gifts. This pressure cooker is a DREAM come true for cooking dry beans. No pre-soaking, waiting hours, and worrying about your beans turning out ever again! Don’t forget your Day 7 Tags.

Back to the 12 Days List

Drying is the oldest method of preserving food. The early American settlers dried foods such as corn, apple slices, currants, grapes, and meat. Compared with other methods, drying is quite simple. In fact, you may already have most of the equipment on hand. Dried foods keep well because the moisture content is so low that spoilage organisms cannot grow.

Drying will never replace canning and freezing because these methods do a better job of retaining the taste, appearance, and nutritive value of fresh food. But drying is an excellent way to preserve foods that can add variety to meals and provide delicious, nutritious snacks. One of the biggest advantages of dried foods is that they take much less storage space than canned or frozen foods.

Recommended methods for canning and freezing have been determined by research and widespread experience. Home drying, however, does not have firmly established procedures. Food can be dried several ways, for example, by the sun if the air is hot and dry enough, or in an oven or dryer if the climate is humid.

With the renewed interest in gardening and natural foods and because of the high cost of commercially dried products, drying foods at home is becoming popular again. Drying is not difficult, but it does take time and a lot of attention. Although there are different drying methods, the guidelines remain the same.

Although solar drying is a popular and very inexpensive method, Illinois does not have a suitable climate for it. Dependable solar dehydration of foods requires 3 to 5 consecutive days when the temperature is 95 degrees F. and the humidity is very low. The average relative humidity in central Illinois on days with 95 degrees F. temperatures is usually 86 percent. Solar drying is thus not feasible.

Drying food in the oven of a kitchen range, on the other hand, can be very expensive. In an electric oven, drying food has been found to be nine to twelve times as costly as canning it. Food dehydrators are less expensive to operate but are only useful for a few months of the year. A convection oven can be the most economical investment if the proper model is chosen. A convection oven that has a controllable temperature starting at 120 degrees F. and a continuous operation feature rather than a timer-controlled one will function quite well as a dehydrator during the gardening months. For the rest of the year it can be used as a tabletop oven.

Dehydrating foods is still one of those things that is a little intimidating to us, but we are researching it and getting ready to attempt some things soon. We will post our progress as we learn!

So you can use me as an example, just because I wasn’t able to do what I had hoped I could do, I was still able to have somewhat of a success with my garden, and I will have more than NOTHING. You just can’t give up. If everything feels overwhelming take BabySteps and do it at your own pace. As long as you are progressing you are achieving success! I won’t have lots of tomatoes and cucumbers to can this year, but I am still planning to buy some peaches and apples so at least I can get a little of my canning itch to be satisfied

How is your garden coming along this year? Share your successes and failures in the comments below! And don’t be ashamed, at least your garden can’t look worse than MINE!

p.s. If you can’t get ANY sort of garden this year, all is not lost. You can still achieve success by getting some fresh veggies from friends or family, or even buying it from the corner stands or a farmer’s market. Julie has a story and recipe to share about that that she will be posting soon as well!

Common Types of Sprouts:

• Grains
  • Wheat
  • Rice
  • Oats
  • Corn
  • Barley
• Legumes
  • Peas
  • Lentils
  • Soy Beans, Garbanzo, Mung beans
  • Dried Beans (black, pinto, navy, kidney)
• Nuts + Seeds
  • Almonds
  • Sunflower Seeds, Sesame seeds, Alfalfa
  • Vegetable Seeds esp. pumpkin

Health Benefits of Sprouts:

• Sprouting a seed enhances its already high nutritional value (i.e. Oats when sprouted contain 600% more vitamin C)
• Sprouts are high in antioxidants that prevent DNA destruction and protect from the effects of aging
• Sprouts contain concentrated amounts of phytochemicals which help protect against diseases
• Alfalfa sprouts contain saponins which:
  • Lower bad cholesterol and fat but keep the good hdl fats
  • Stimulate immune system
  • Help prevent cardiovascular disease
• Sprouts are a nutritious, low-fat filler for meats or addition to soups, etc.

How to Grow Sprouts:

1. Prepare the seeds
   • Remove broken and discolored seeds
   • Wash seeds
   • Soak overnight (if necessary)
   • Drain
2. Place seeds in sprouting container and rinse thoroughly.
3. Drain off all excess water.
4. Place in a warm area where temperature will remain even.
5. Rinse 2-3 times per day.
6. Once they reach the desired length, place near sunlight until leaves become green.

For a full tutorial with pictures on how Jodi experimented with growing Lentil sprouts visit her post on How to Grow Sprouts.

Sprouting Resources:

The Complete Sprouting Cookbook – This book is from the 70’s but it has everything you could want to know and more. Jodi’s mom had it hidden in a cupboard and we just raved over it when we found it.
Sprouts: The Miracle Food – More recent book on sprouting.
Sprout Master Sprouter – The kit that Julie uses to grow her sprouts.

Have you had successes or failures with sprouting? Share your experiences in the comments below!

We decided it would be good to revise each BabyStep as part of our Summer Crash Course. So jump in and get started … it’s not too late! This week we are covering the following steps:

BabyStep 8: Fruits and Vegetables (click here to view the full step)
BabyStep 9: Comfort Foods (click here to view the full step)
BabyStep 10: Fruits and Vegetables (click here to view the full step)

    

• Updated each page to reflect the ideas shared in comments
  - Items with an * are new to the list
• Updated the online resources of each page

Homemade Applesauce Recipe & Canning
Best Rice Krispie Squares
Cleaning Supplies Using Food Storage

Stay tuned for some advanced posts on this topic coming later this week.

How to Make Your Own Plant Pots – Video

How to Make Your Own Plant Pots – Instructions

1. Take a single full sheet of black and white newspaper (color paper can have chemicals that may leach into your soil so it’s best to avoid it).
2. Fold the paper on its seam. Fold in half one more time. If your paper is larger in size you may have to fold it once more. Make a good crease on folds.
3. Take a glass and place it on its edge halfway onto the newspaper. Wrap the newspaper tightly around the glass and then shove all the edges down inside the glass.
4. Pull the newspaper off of the glass. Take the inside edges that you had previously folded into the glass and unfold them a bit to make the base of the pot. Press them down hard (you can use the base of your glass to really get it sealed down in there.
5. Transplant (or plant) your seeding into the newspaper pot with some good potting soil and place it in a tray and put it into direct sunlight. I use a little indoor greenhouse I found online.
6. When ready to move the plants into your garden simply remove the newspaper and place the plant in your garden.

p.s. The author of our sister site EverydayFoodStorage.NET just announced an awesome giveaway for her new book “I Can’t Believe It’s Food Storage”. Who doesn’t like more free stuff? We are so excited for her new book and think it’s a great companion to our Food Storage Made Easy Binders as she can give you even more ways to use your food storage once you start actually going through our BabySteps.
CHECK OUT HER GIVEAWAY TODAY!!!

• Installing my irrigation system (ok my husband is doing this part, he must really love me). Last fall we installed sprinklers in our whole yard but just left one pipe open for my gardens. So we need to install a drip system that will run all through my vegetable gardens. Hitting Home Depot on Saturday!

  

• Refilling my garden beds with compost. If we can get our truck working I will buy a whole truck bed full. This is only about $40 at our landfill. If the truck is out of commission I will probably just buy a few bags from WalMart. Look how empty and sad my garden beds are!

  

• Purchasing my potting materials. My favorite method of starting seeds indoors is to just use the little jiffy pots and put a few seeds in each pot and make as many pots as I want to have plants. It works great and is super cheap and easy. Once the roots start poking through I transfer them into bigger containers filled with potting soil.

  

• Make my Garden Plan. Every year I move plants around, change up what I plant depending on what we actually ate and canned the previous year. So this week I’ve been obsessing over my plans for this year. I think it will be a GREAT gardening year. I’m really excited to plan my garden based on what I need/want for food storage.
• Replenish my seed supplies. Ok this is the funnest part. I love picking new seeds! My only problem is I very rarely use up all of the seeds in a packet in one year. So I typically only have to buy a few refills and the rest I reuse from year to year. They might not get QUITE as high a germination rate but they still work well for me.

  

• Start some of my seeds indoors! I’ve been following the website of my cousin Emily at mysquarefootgarden.net and she has come up with a GREAT color system for knowing the right time to start planting things based on where you live. I am going through her charts this week and figuring out the things that I’m able to start planting indoors already based on my area’s last frost date. It looks like I can start broccoli, parsley, celery, and hot peppers already! I’m so excited to get cracking. I have this cool little indoor greenhouse I love to use to get my plants going inside. I’ll be bringing it up this week to help out with the new seedlings!

  

How are you all doing on your gardens? Don’t forget to head over to our Food Storage Forum if you want to have lots of great conversation about gardens this year

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my mom (affectionately known as GrandmaLori around here) about sprouting as I can remember doing alfalfa sprouts with her when I was little. She just happened to have an old sprouting container that she inherited from her grandmother that she doesn’t ever use and she let me “borrow” it for my adventures.

This sprouting container is pretty neat but the holes are too big to do tiny seeds like alfalfa, so I decided to start with lentils which I have on hand from my long term food storage legumes supply.

Day 1

First I rinsed the lentils and picked out any gross looking pieces, discolored ones, or things that did NOT look like lentils (see picture). Then I soaked the lentils overnight as that is what my sprouting book recommended. There are a few types of items you would NOT need to soak so just make sure you follow the directions for whatever you are sprouting.

Day 2

In the morning, I poured my soaked lentils into the sprouting container and rinsed them off again. I set them on the counter beside my stove as it seemed to be one of the warmer spots in my kitchen but out of direct sunlight. I also set a paper towel over the container because it seemed weird to just leave them sitting out with no covering. That evening I rinsed the lentils again. Each time I rinsed I made sure to really let all the excess water drain out before setting it back in the little tray.

Day 3

When I took the paper towel off on day three I had a pleasant surprise. SPROUTS!!! I was so excited. All I did on day 3 was rinse and repeat the instructions from day 2.

Days 4-7

Each day from 4-7 I rinsed the lentils at morning and at night and took a photo of the progress if I remembered to. It’s really so easy, just takes about 30 seconds each time and they just grow on their own!

Day 8

After rinsing on the morning of day 8, I lifted off the paper towel and let the sprouts sit in the sunlight all day. They turned a very nice green and grew even longer!

Day 9

I think I let my sprouts get a little bit too long but I was really busy the last few days of my experiment and didn’t pay very close attention to them. So on the final day I pulled them all out of the sprouting container and put them into a large canning jar and stuck them in the fridge.

And now for my confession. I tasted the lentil sprouts and they tasted like fresh peas. I don’t really like fresh peas all that much so I’m afraid I don’t really want to eat these just plain. I’ll have to try making a yummy salad and sprinkling a few on top. Or I might try them in a meatloaf to use as filler. I have to say my first experiment was a success in that they GREW, but kind of a failure in that I didn’t really grow something that my family will use on a regular basis. Back to the drawing board

Since Julie didn’t “inherit” a sprouter she recently bought this Sprout Master Sprouter at Kitchen Kneads. She hasn’t tried it out yet but it looks like it would work about the same as mine.

Homemade Applesauce Recipe and Canning Instructions

Step 1: Get your pot ready

I used my biggest pot and put a little water in the bottom to keep the apples from sticking. As I peeled the apples I just started throwing them in to start cooking.

Step 2: Peel a TON of apples

I used my handy dandy apple peeler which the kids thought was WAY fun to help with. If you don’t have one of these peelers, you can always try the method which Kaila’s husband came up with. Check out this video, it’s hilarious. Just as a reference, I used about 14 pounds of apples (before coring/peeling) and it netted 5 quarts of applesauce.

Step 3: Cook up those apples

By the time we were done peeling all the apples the first ones were really well cooked. I just let the whole thing cook for about 10 more minutes to make sure they were all soft.

Step 4: Prepare your canner and jars

While the apples were cooking I ran my bottles in the dishwasher to sterilize them. I also filled up my canner and started to boil the water. Lastly, I started some small pots of water boiling to sterilize my lids and rings. If you are new to canning, I would HIGHLY recommend getting a Home-Canning Kit to get all the tools you need to do proper canning. If you don’t have a canner or jars yet you can buy an all-in-one kit which will include EVERYTHING you need to get started!

Step 5: Make the applesauce!

Once the apples were all soft, I used my hand-me-down 1970’s-style baymix to puree them. I’m not sure why I call it a baymix but that is what my mom always called it when I was growing up. I couldn’t find the exact one online to show you, but I absolutely LOVE mine. Some of these hand blenders look similar but I can’t vouch for them. You could also use a food processor or even a blender to do the pureeing. But the baymix was SO easy because I could do it straight in the pan. At this point you can add any seasonings you want. I added 2 cups of sugar but could have gotten away with just one. Ours turned out really sweet and delicious. Some people like to add cinnamon or other things but I prefer to just add those when we eat it.

Step 6: Pour the applesauce into jars and seal ‘em up

Use a funnel as this can get really messy. I ladled the applesauce in leaving about 1/2 an inch of space at the top of the jars. Then I used my tongs to pull out a lid and ring for each jar. Try not to touch these things with bare hands as you don’t want them to get unsterilized. Screw the ring on tight once the lid is on.

Step 7: Put your jars into your canner and boil (make sure the water goes ABOVE the jars. I added more after this picture.

As I filled each jar I would put it into the canner. As you put more jars in the water level rises, so you don’t need to start with the canner all the way full. Once I had all 5 jars in I filled up to the neck level of my jars with hot water. You have to wait until the water is boiling before you start timing. Let it boil for 20 minutes and then remove the jars. Way easy huh?

Step 8: ENJOY! (my kids sure did)

For more canning recipes and ideas we recommend the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. I got it from my mother-in-law for a gift and I use it a TON!

Sneak preview: Watch for a post later this week showing how Jodi has been working on step 8!