Best food ever

voted number one from the family. Spaghetti sauce, homemade of course. Its wonderful on cold days. The sauce recipe comes from the Blue ball book. And its a winner!!!

August update

With everything going on on our bit of soil we are taking time and praying for all those that are in SoCal that are in danger of losing their homes due to the fires that are still burning.
The gardens are starting to wind down and we were blessed with a lot of veggies for our pantry. The pantry is full and the pears are just now ripening. We have had some rather cool weather here, feeling more like October then Sept.
Now for August our garden totals are awesome, 424 pounds and 12 oz for the month!!! With 311 pounds just in tomatoes. Of course they are not all done yet but We have surpassed our goal of 600 pounds for the year.
The above poundage came from watermelon, cantaloupe, petris squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, peppers, acorn squash, sweet dumpling squash, app;es, and tomatillos.
So far our grand total is 794 pounds.

Our tomatoes per pound selling at the farmers market for 99 cents per pound has saved us $307.89
Our watermelons have saved us $5.99.
our peppers have saved us $4. 78

Saving our family well over $300 dollars just this month. Of course the whole year is not done and I am working on totals for the year to see how much has been saved. But with everything I have ever grown it was always worth the effort instead of buying it. It's always better for you and tastes 100 times better then processed foods.

July was wonderful

for harvest. Still have yet to find out where the heat went to but the produce is really growing. As in the recent post explaining we harvested 258 pounds of harvest from our gardens. Also I wanted to give you a run down on our harvest for dollars total expense for the year so far.
Growing our own corn has saved us $80.00 on an average of 3.50 per dozen
Blackberries saved us $5.00 on average of 2.50 for and 8 oz package
Potatoes saved us 22.90 on average 2.99 per 5 pounds at the store
green beans saved us $18.00 on average of the store price of 2.00 per pound
carrots saved us 9.03
cabbage saved us 1.45
pickles saved us 30.69 minus the vinegar I had to buy so the total saved was 26.69
onions saved us $5.97
Zucchini saved us $21.78 from an average of $1.00 per pound
Brussel sprouts saved us 1.29

With a total saving of $196.11 for one month
With $196.11 subtracted from our garden start expenses of 175.78 that means we have MADE $20.33. Woohoo we are no longer in the red!!! With more then 3 more months still yet to harvest I can breathe easy!! Gardening is easy, healthier, and profitable even if its just for your own family.

July update

We have really been busy around here to say the least. I know there is still 2 days left in the month but being it was raining I thought this maybe my only break from the gardening chores that have been keeping me on my toes for the whole month. So with that said our poundage for July is 258. Yes 258 pounds harvested from our gardens for this month!
Also with a rouge estimate saving us $187.38. Still calculating the rest of the produce so I am sure that amount will continue to grow.
Our tomatoes are having a rough go. With the rainy weather they have been introduced to a bout of blossom rot but are coming out of it. They are heavy and we have been having to tie them up over and over again. They are tall and I am pleased with the looks of them already, although I have one problem. I forgot where I planted the ripe green tomatoes. Hope to find them soon.

4 days in

and already we are having a bumper crop. With the tomatoes still yet to ripen we are experiencing tremendous yields. Vegetables are in my home laying everywhere, the pantry filling quickly and still have yet to pressure can anything. But the water bath canner has been getting quiet a workout. I find myself trying to figure out where I can place more shelves in our walk in pantry.
Oh yeah sorry for rambling but Happy 4Th of July. this July our family is celebrating our freedom of grocery stores. Looks like we will have little or no grocery store time. Thus this is more time spent with the family having fun weather it be just chillin or maybe a free time like fishing.
Okay back to the vegetables, in 4 days we have harvested 38 pounds 11oz these pounds are coming from onions, cabbage, zucchini, cucumbers, potatoes, beans and herbs. This is also done completely organic. Absolutely no pesticides what so ever.
Today we planted some fall broccoli and some more tomatoes bringing the total of tomato plants to 156 give or take one or two. I'm still hoping to can 1500 jars of food for this year. Hoping that will get us through till the next harvest.
Happy 4 Th of July!

Worthy of another year

So when we were planting the potato seeds earlier this year we were hoping for the best and just praying that we would grow enough potatoes to pay for the seeds that we bought. We purchased 3 different varieties small red ( shown in photo), Yukon gold, and russet Burbank. We spend around $20 dollars for our seeds and got 6 rows planted. Last night we grabbed the produce basket and up the hill we went to gather the red potatoes. The kids were having a blast - one trying to find the biggest potato in there hole and the other trying to find the most potatoes in theirs.
After clearing out the row, I came in to the house to weigh our treasures, 13 pounds of wonderful potatoes. That with the potatoes we have already harvested pays for the seeds and some seeds to save for planting next year. With 5 rows of potatoes still in the ground it looks to be a wonderful potato year.

April, May, June Dollars

In March I posted Jan., Feb., March dollars which showed how much money we have used to start our garden and a bit of that money was also used for supplies like, dirt, fruit trees, tools etc. So then we have spent a Total of - $244
With the produce we have harvested thus far from April until June this is how it reads

At the grocery yesterday, after butter and milk, I seen that "FRESH GREEN BEANS" maybe fresh but might not be organic, were $2.49 a pound that said we have harvested 3 pounds from our garden saving us $7.47

Also cabbage, again probably not organic seeing how no sign advised that of it was $0.49 per pound after cutting just a couple heads we managed to get 5 pounds thus far saving us $2.45

The onions were $1.99 per bag which looked like approx. 5-6 onions in each bag we have harvested 5 pounds so far as my onions have been equalling around 4-5 per pound by my calculations we have saved $7.96

Next come carrots with one pound package carrots at $1.99 and again not organic at the store , we have harvested 2 pounds of carrots thus far saving $3.98

New potatoes at the store for the red ones we have harvested are 3.99 per 4 pound bag. Again our potatoes have saved us $3.99 with many more plants in the garden still.

Leaf lettuce in a one pound BAG at the store are selling for $2.49, on sale!! But I got my organic lettuce in the back yard for free with 5 pounds harvested we have saved $12.45

I have no idea how to calculate the peas seeings how they don't sell them in the store fresh around here. Zukes are not being sold in the store yet either but I have 2 pounds ready to make into bread.

For a grand total these three months of saving are $38.30 bringing our total for supplies out of pocket down from $244 to $205.70

How much are you saving? I would love to know!! Happy gardening

EDIT: Cucumbers were priced for 0.68 cents a pound at a store we were at last night. As we have harvested 44 pounds it comes to a savings of $29.92

Bringing the new total of savings to - $68.22 thus bringing our out of pocket expence to $175.78 and its just July!!