The wonder that is Cutting Celery and other perennials in the garden ......

I love to cook with celery, I always have. It adds that little something to almost everything. It is also considered a negative calorie food, meaning you burn more calories eating it than it contains. What is not to love about that? The downside of conventional celery is two fold for me. First, back when I bought store bought celery I almost always had to freeze the better part of what I had purchased because I rarely managed to use it all before it went bad. The second downside is geographic. I live in Florida which is not the most conducive climate for growing conventional large stalk celery.  A few years back I was introduced to Cutting Celery Apium graveolens var. secalinum. In our area Cutting Celery grows as a perennial year around. The stalks are not as large as conventional celery but work wonderfully in cooking. If you are looking for celery to smear with peanut butter, stick with traditional.

As the Garden Grows........ May 5th 2014

Welcome back to another installment of "As the Garden Grows" as we share the evolution of a new garden. It has been a VERY wet spring here in north Florida thankfully our raised beds have kept us growing and healthy through many inches of rain :)

I can attest to raised beds making a garden much more manageable when life is crazy busy. Having been in nursing school since this garden was started (I just graduated last Friday) there really hasn't been much time put into maintaining the garden.

Just Ask..............

How many times do you do this? You see, pass, think of something that you could really use that either appears to be being thrown out or will probably be discarded but you don't stop and ask. We all do it. Why is it so hard to stop and ask? The worst that can happen is they say no. All you have lost is a few minutes of your time.

Symbiosis around the homestead....... part 1

Websters dictionary defines symbiosis as, "the living together in more or less intimate association or close union of two dissimilar organisms, a cooperative relationship." We are finding that the more symbiotic relationships that we can build between the different components of our homestead the more harmony we have, the healthier the livestock/garden/system is and the more money we save.

As I loaded old hay in the back of the truck this week I started thinking about all the ways we are integrating and building symbiotic relationships and thought "what a great idea for a blog series" so here we are.

Our first hatch of the spring.... Ducklings!

We started raising Pekin ducks last year with the purchase of 11 ducklings. We are blessed with 5 ladies who lay eggs daily so we decided to hatch some out. Our first batch started hatching last weekend, what fun!

As The Garden Grows ....... 2/17/2014

So much to catch up on! Despite some pretty cold weather (for north Florida) the garden is doing really well! With the addition of two 4 foot by 12 foot beds made from tin roofing we are up to a total of eight 4 foot by 12 foot beds giving us 384 sq feet of intensive gardening space in the big beds. We added 5 smaller beds ranging from aprox 2x2 to 3x2 plus 7 24 gallon pots. Plus two large  herb beds. Our current estimated total garden space is 500 square feet of intensive garden capacity.

Captain.... there be duck eggs here!

Sorry, bad Star Trek reference.............

So last year we bought an incubator and hatched chicks from our Delawares, gooslings from our Buff geese and some turkey eggs from a fiend. I was HOOKED!

Last year I purchased 11 Pekin ducklings with the intention of keeping a few breeders and harvesting the rest. Fast forward almost a year and the ducks are laying eggs and we are seeing mating behavior. Last week we started saving duck eggs.