Fall garden update

I'm happy to report that my garden is still going strong, despite a couple of frost scares earlier this fall.  In early October, we've been enjoying 80 degree temperatures. Last year at this time, we got our first snow!  My husband and I are taking advantage of these unseasonably warm days by spending a lot of time on the bike trail and lake.  Needless to say, my garden and house aren't as spruced up as they should be, but we figure we've got all winter to work on household chores.

However, I did manage to remember to plant a few lettuce, radish and spinach seeds back in late August for a third-season garden crop.  The warm weather really helped these little seedlings along.  Unfortunately, the weather has also been dry.  We've gone almost two weeks now without rain!  But these little plants are still hanging in there.  The radishes are small, but I think they are ready to pick this weekend.

Please ignore the weeds. I've been too busy biking to spend time in the garden.

I'm really excited to share a little "experiment" I've been trying out in my garden.  At a recent community garden open house in Osceola, I learned about "bag" gardening.  I decided to give it a try.  I had a reuseable shopping bag that had ripped at the handles (the grocery bagger guy told me this happens all the time).  I wanted to find another use for the bag, so I thought why not use it in the garden.  I filled the bag with potting soil, sprinkled lettuce seeds on top, placed it under a shade tree (since lettuce doesn't like the summer heat) and then kept it watered regularly.

 Sure enough, I ended up with "bagged" lettuce!

The annual flowers in my garden are also looking pretty good, despite the cool temperatures at night.  I love these marigolds.  They are from a free seed packet I received in a goodie bag for a 5K race.

Even more surprising, the ever-bearing strawberry plant is doing even better in fall than it did in the spring and summer.  I've got lots of berries forming.  Unfortunately, the bugs have discovered the fruit, so I haven't been able to eat them.  Still trying to decide if I want to try to overwinter my stack-a-pot strawberries, especially now that I'm worried about bringing bugs into the house.

Strawberry Stack-a-Pot

I'm so proud of my little backyard garden.  It produced the best tomato and pepper crop that I've had in years.  And it still looks pretty and is productive in the fall.  I love three-season gardening!  I think I'm also going to start a herb garden in my kitchen this winter.

How are all your gardens growing?  Have you done a lot of canning and freezing with your garden produce?

Wordless Wednesday: Ledges State Park

Canning peaches

In my earlier post, I told you how much I loved the Iowa-grown peaches I discovered at Center Grove Orchard in Cambridge.  Well, I liked them so much that I went back to the orchard the next weekend and bought another bag.  As much as I enjoyed the peach pie I made with them, I knew that these peaches would be perfect for canning.  And I had a great recipe that I wanted to try.

Earlier this summer, I picked up a copy of the Better Homes and Gardens Canning special interest magazine.  It's definitely a collectors' issue.  I want to try every recipe in the magazine!  It features canning recipes for every season -- root crops in the fall, squash in the summer, berries in the spring.  There's even an entire section of peach, nectarine and apricot canning recipes.

I had a difficult time deciding, but eventually I picked the spiced peaches recipe.  I loved the idea of canned peaches with a touch of cinnamon-spice flavor, just like a pie.  This recipe was very easy to follow.  The hardest part was prepping all the tiny peaches!  The Iowa-grown peaches were about half the size of the grocery-store variety, which means you have to pit about twice as many!

The only problem I had was that when I pulled the jars out of the canner, I noticed that some of the syrup had leaked out of a few jars.  I was worried that it meant the jars didn't seal properly, but I looked it up on an Extension canning website and discovered that the jars were sealed as long as the lids were "popped" down and would be safe to eat.  However, I decided not to take any chances, and I placed those leaking jars in the refrigerator and ate the peaches within a few days.

I loved these canned peaches!  Such a great way to enjoy Iowa-grown peaches year round, especially since the season is so short.  My only compliant is that I didn't really taste the spices, so next time I'm going to either add more or let the spices "steep" in the syrup for longer.

It's a rather long recipe to type out, so I hope you don't mind, but I'm sharing a link from another blog for the Better Homes and Gardens spiced peaches. Or if you would me to email you a copy, just leave a comment.