Candied Squash

I love squash. My favourites are the winter types like Acorn, Butternut, and Buttercup but my overall, hands-down best is Butternut. During the summer, I like to BBQ sliced Zucchini squash brushed with my homemade Italian salad dressing.
I’ve roasted Butternut squash halves in my oven while I cook dinner. I’ve also made a yummy Curried Squash Soup (recipe here) that my DIL Jeanette introduced me to. Lately though, I’ve been craving for squash nearly every day – it’s probably due to my body’s need for more squash-specific nutrition. Afterall, squash is the new Superfood. It contains a huge amount of vitamins A, C, E, B6, B2, B3, K, niacin, thiamin, manganese, copper, potassium, pantothenic acid, folate, omega 3 fats, magnesium, and fiber.

Organic Homegrown Squash

I grow squash in my garden or purchase locally grown produce in the fall – one of the best things about squash is that it’s locally grown and available all winter long. It’s not suprising why North American Natives grew “the three sisters”, corn, squash, and beans as a dietary staple. I store it every fall in my mudroom in a basket on the floor. It’s pretty cool in there all winter and I know squash probably doesn’t like it THAT cool (45F degrees/7C) but they seem to be just fine. It’s easy to cut off a hunk from the neck or half a squash and cook it randomly inside the oven of my wood cookstove.
I decided to add a little zest to my squash and now this has become my favourite! I call it Candied Squash.  It’s not really candy but it might as well be to me!   Here’s the recipe:

 
Candied Squash Recipe

1/2 butternut squash or the neck of a butternut squash
Butter – please, please do NOT use margarine (a bucket of chemicals)
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
cinnamon
Scoop out any seeds inside the squash half you are using. I cover the open end of the other piece with a leftover plastic bag and put it back in storage with the rest.
Slice into one inch pieces. Peel off the outer skin. Cut into one inch cubes.

Butter lightly a baking dish or piece of tin foil. Put in the squash. Add 4-5 small pieces of butter on top. Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Cover or wrap the tinfoil to completely cover it.

Bake for at least an hour at 325F degrees. I left mine in the cookstove yesterday for 4 hours because I forgot about it and it was deliciously ‘well-done’!
I usually simply pour it into a bowl and eat. Sometimes, if I’ve planned ahead, I add it as a side to my dinner meal.
I hope you enjoy this recipe and discover that squash tastes as good as it looks.

Homemade Lasagna

Making my own lasagna has always been a family favourite.  It’s not fancy or anything; pretty basic I’d say.  I find making Lasagna is one of the easiest things to do because you can make it before guests arrive or take it already cooked to a pot-luck supper.  We recently celebrated my son Taylor’s birthday so I made this lasagna at his request.

I usually make meat lasagna with local, lean ground beef from my favourite community grocer, the B & H (click here for their website).  You can always add other ground meat of your choice like chicken, turkey, sausage, or even lamb but I can’t guarantee how this modification would taste since I’ve never tried it.  I have also made vegetable lasagna to suit vegetarian guests.  And I’ve also added finely grated carrots to the meat sauce to discreetly increase the veggie content.  I use my large roasting pan to make the lasagna in because I like it thick.  It’s important to plan ahead.  You need to bake this lasagna for about 50 minutes, remove from the oven, THEN let it ‘sit’ for an hour, covered.  The juices need to absorb into the noodles so it stays together when you cut it.  If you cut it when it’s hot out of the oven it will fall apart.  It’s still tasty anyway.

This lasagna goes nice with a green salad and garlic bread.

 

Meat Lasagna Recipe – serves about 12 people

from my cookbook Mom’s Recipes

• Lasagna noodles, uncooked store bought or homemade
• 1-2 lbs. local, lean ground beef
• 2 cans pasta sauce (680 ml. size) or your own homemade
• 2 containers of 1% cottage cheese (500 ml. size each)
• Mozzarella cheese, grated (I use approximately 300 grams or about 2 cups grated)
• Olive Oil

Steps:

1. Brown ground beef until thoroughly cooked.  Add pasta sauce and mix will.
2. Oil the roasting pan or other deep baking dish.
3. Place a layer of uncooked lasagna noodles in the bottom of the pan.  You might need to break some to fit them in.
4. Place a thick layer of meat sauce (about ¾) over the lasagna noodles. 
5. Top with another layer of noodles.
6. Spread the cottage cheese over this layer of lasagna noodles.  Top with another layer of noodles. 
7. Add another layer of meat sauce, reserving some for the last layer.  Top with another layer of noodles.
8. Spread the remaining meat sauce over the lasagna noodles.  Top with a generous amount of grated mozzarella cheese. 
9. Bake at 350F degrees uncovered for about 50 minutes.

Remove from the oven and place on top of your stove or on a wire rack for an hour.

Slice into pieces.  The first one you take out should be the end piece, then you can easily lift out all the others.

For vegetarian lasagna, leave out the meat.  Add slightly cooked veggies of your choice:  broccoli, carrots, onions, celery, cauliflower, mushrooms, zucchini, peppers, etc.   Everything else is the same.

You can make half as much of this recipe in a smaller baking dish.  Cut down the baking time by 10 minutes.  You might want to have leftovers as these lasagna pieces re-heat very well for your lunch of another supper.

Bon appetit!

 

 

 

 

Beef Stew

Today was a fine day to make Beef Stew:  it was -20C on my outdoor thermometer when I woke up this morning at 6:30 a.m.

I’d actually planned to make it today anyway.  I’ve been saving my ‘potato water’ (water used to boil potatoes in) for several days now.  And we had a roast beef dinner a few days ago so I already had the leftover gravy, peas, and potatoes which I add.  I also bought some local beef to use, so I was all set this morning to begin.  I usually choose a big pot to make it in because by the time I add all the veggies and meat, it’s full!

 

My wood cookstove was blazing away on this cold morning, so I made this stew on it, beginning at 8:30 a.m.  I find a long, slow cooking stew tastes great.

 

Beef Stew Recipe

Beef, stew beef or steak cut up into chunks or leftover roast beef.  The amount is up to you.

1/2 teaspoon olive oil or vegetable oil

1/2 celery, chopped

1/2 turnip, chopped into 1″ or so squares

2-3+ large carrots

1 onion

6+ potatoes, cut into 3″ chunks

leftover gravy, about 2 cups

Any leftover vegetables in your fridge

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

2+ liters water (or ‘potato water’), as needed

 

Cut up the beef into 2 inch chunks, unless you’re using stewing beef already cut up.  Add the oil to the pot with a little water, just enough to cover the bottom.  Cook the beef until browned.

 

Add the uncooked celery, turnip, onion, and carrots.  Cover with the ‘potato water’ or water.  Add salt and pepper.

Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to barely simmering for 3-5 hours or more.    This is easy to do on my cookstove as I simply move the pot over to the side where it’s less hot.

One and a half hours before you want to eat, add the raw potatoes and any leftover cooked veggies from your fridge.  I find that if you add the potatoes at the beginning, they fall apart by suppertime, after stewing all day.

Fifteen minutes before eating, add the leftover gravy.  Stir well.  Let it heat up until it starts to bubble slightly.  If you find it way too runny, you can mix some flour (1/4 cup) in a jar with 1/2 cup of COLD water, shake really well until it’s mixed completely with no lumps. Then add it to the stew and stir completely, allowing it to come to a boil, stirring often.

It’s ready!  We love to eat our beef stew with lots of whole wheat bread smothered in butter.  Mmmmmm.

 

Leftover stew is even better the next day!  Which is why I always start out with a big pot.  You can eat it for supper again or have it for lunch.  It never goes to waste around here – I think our poor dog Yukon wishes there was more left over for him.

 

 

 

 

Giving Thanks

 

I’m thankful for many things in my life:

Family. I feel so grateful to have a family. There are actually some people in this world who are alone without another soul in their family. I can’t imagine how lonely that must be. My family is huge! Seven grown children, 5 children-in-law/girlfriend, 5 grandchildren, two amazing Sisters and their families, nieces and nephews, Aunts, and cousins galore!

2005 plus new additions to the family

 

Home. I’m grateful to have a roof over my head that I’ve called home since 1981. The walls could tell all those stories over the course of those years! The births, weddings, funeral…..

Food. I love food. I’m grateful that I live in a country like Canada that has so much fresh food. There are local farmers who work extremely hard to grow food for my table and I appreciate their efforts immensely . I am thankful that there is a local store that’s been in business for over 50 years, the B & H Community Grocer, which strives to bring locally produced items in to their store for customers like me. Even those people living in a challenging place right now in their lives have access to food through local food banks and ‘soup kitchens’ across our country.

Canada. I’m a proud Canadian. I have the privilege of living in a country where I’m free to be a person, a woman, a citizen.

My grown children and granddaughters who will be filling my woodshed today. I’ve moved aside the dry firewood left over from last winter in my woodshed so I can burn it first. My sons Darin, Taylor, and Melvin as well as my two granddaughters almost 11 year old Kalia and 9 year old Livi are coming today to fill my woodshed and stack the other 8 cords beside the garage, for the next few years.

 

I’m thankful that my winter chores list is getting shorter. The hardest thing was catching that last goldfish in the pond to put in their winter home in my coldroom. I must have walked ten miles around that pond trying to catch the little escape artist! I have to dig my canna lily bulbs tomorrow but a few other things will have to wait, like getting my winter snow tires on.

Today, after the wood is stacked, we will celebrate this season of giving thanks with a roast turkey dinner and all the trimmings like mashed potatoes, homemade gravy, carrots, turnip, dressing like my Mom used to make, Nellie’s cabbage salad, and my pasta/tuna salad (without onions for my granddaughters). And Sarah’s pumpkin pie for dessert.

 

Barbequed Pizza

 

Recently one hot summer afternoon, I had a craving for homemade pizza.  It all started when I spotted the pizza crust dough in the freezer that my daughter-in-law Jeanette had left.  I took it out and let it sit until it was room temperature.   I also took out a small jar of pasta sauce from the freezer.

I dusted flour on a piece of wax paper on my center island and proceeded to roll it out to fit my cookie sheet.  It was easy to pick up the wax paper with the dough on it and lay it on the oiled cookie sheet.  I then fired up the barbeque to fully heat up.  I cut up some onions, a red pepper, a tomato, and grated some mozzarella cheese.

Pizza ready for BBQ

 

I spread on some pasta sauce then sprinkled the cut up veggies and sliced olives from the fridge then topped the whole thing with mozzarella cheese.  By this time the BBQ was hot (around 550F degrees).  I brought the pizza outside and placed it on the upper shelf inside the barbeque.  Then I turned all the burners down to their lowest setting and set my timer for 15 minutes.

Ready to eat

After it was cooked, I let it sit for 5 minutes.  Wow, what a delicious pizza!  I ate several square pieces and let the rest cool to put in the fridge for later – actually it lasted for 3 lunches.

Here’s Jeanette’s Pizza Dough recipe:

Mix together:

2 teaspoons dry yeast

¾ cup lukewarm water

2.3 cup flour (white)

Let sit for 30 minutes, then add:

1 cup of flour

1 cup of cold water

Let sit for another 30 minutes.

Add:

4 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup olive oil

Add  flour ½ cup at a time until dough pulls from the side of the bowl.  Knead for 10 minutes and let rise until doubled in size.   Freezes well in large baseball size pieces.

 

 

 

 

Harvesting Time

Yesterday, I was busy in my litttle gardens harvesting various crops.  This year, I planted a new heritage winter squash called Pink Banana.  They were advertised on the package as growing up to 3 feet long!  Thank goodness they only grew to around a foot long.  However, I was dismayed that only one squash per plant grew which took up alot of space for the meandering vegetable.  I also harvested a few butternut squash and left a few that were still maturing.  I didn’t plant any acorn squash this year, which I now regret.  So my squash harvest for 2013 is smaller.   Next year I’m going back to my old standard Butternut and Acorn Squash.

Potatoes and Winter Squash

I planted 3 kinds of potatoes in my raised beds near the house:  sweet potatoes, red potatoes, and white potatoes.   The sweet potatoes were my experiment of the year.  They took a lot to get going in the spring:  First I had to sprout them (cut in half, upside down on soil) which took over a month for anything to happen.  Then, once the sprouts were about 4 inches tall, I had to break them off the sweet potato and root them in water.  Once rooted and the weather was warm ( > June 1st) I planted them in a raised bed covered with black plastic to keep the roots warm.  What a lot of fuss!  In the end, I only got some fingerling tubers – not enough results for all the effort.  My other potatoes needed to be planted twice since the squirrels kept digging them up!  They were more productive although too few.

Hops on the vine

Yesterday was beautiful and sunny with a temperature of around 12 degrees Celsius (53 F) so in a short sleeve T-shirt,  I spent several hours painstakingly cutting off individual hops ‘flowers’.   The smell of the hops brought back memories from a decade ago when I used to help my late husband make beer.  Big 25 litre glass Carboy bottles used to sit on our kitchen counters for weeks while the beer was ‘fermenting’ or whatever it does.  The whole house smelled like a still!  I don’t even like the taste of beer or even the smell of it either!   My job was to help rinse out the small storage bottles then assist with the filling of them.  Today, I managed to harvest about 10 cups of hops which are now in my dehydrator in the garage.  I didn’t realize how much my forearms were getting scratched by the prickly vines until later that night!  Ouch!   When the hops are ready, I’ll send them to my son to use.

Apple

After harvesting, I cleaned the chimney and the inside of the pellet stove.  I figured that since I had my ‘outside’ clothes on already I may as well get really dirty and get this necessary job done.  Now it’s ready to burn.   Next week I’ll get around to cleaning out the cookstove upstairs.

Then I cooked a roast chicken, carrots, potatoes, corn, and a garden squash for supper.  That’s enough for one day……

Farmers Market

This weekend, I went to my local Farmers Market. What a fabulous place to buy fresh products ! There were a lot of people there because of a Celebrity Cook-off:   cars were lined up on both sides of the road because the grassy parking area was all filled up. I was actually just there to buy my local lean ground beef from Flood Road Farms. But I was in for a treat.
Walking around the Farmers Market is a rhapsody for the senses! The sights and sounds swirling about are so sweet. On this day, I was greeted with a very talented singer playing tunes on an acoustic guitar and singing (very well I might add) familiar country tunes – but alas, I don’t know his name.

Inside the big barn, I made my first stop at Flood Road Farms for my local, naturally raised beef. I chatted with Sue for a while then moved on to look for some friends I often see there. I passed tables of fresh eggs, crocheted items and hand-made wooden toys in the former animal stall areas which had long been converted to accommodate the Farmers Market.
I followed my nose past the canteen – which was extremely difficult to bypass. Then I made my way around, looking at the beautiful artwork, smelling the delicious baked goods (from bread to butter tarts), stopping to chat with the woman selling the gorgeous cutting boards that her husband makes……..

Then I visited the local Berry Blossoms Honey stand.

I continued around the barn to one of my favourite products: the NoGo Coffee Company. Now this is the strangest tale because I don’t even like the taste of coffee. But I’m crazy about the smell of coffee! I just love it when my son Marty, the coffee connoisseur / baristas of the family, comes to visit. The house ALWAYS smells like coffee! Last Christmastime when my grown kids were here, we found this NoGo Coffee in our small local grocery store – locally roasted, organic, fair-trade coffee, who woulda thunk!?
Outside there were covered stands with all sorts of fresh, local produce. It was just great seeing all this fantastic food just waiting to be sold. One vendor, Rideau Pines Farm, has been around for decades. In fact, some of my kids went to school with the kids from that farm. They grow just about everything from Raspberries to Pumpkins and sell it here and at their farm with a welcoming smile always on their face.
If I’ve missed Saturday morning’s Farmers Market in the town 10 minutes north, I can always go to the Farmers Market on Sunday afternoon in the town 10 minutes south of me! They have everything you could desire from local meat to candles to clothes.
You don’t have to live in the country to benefit from a Farmers Market. One of the first Markets I ever went to was in the city of Hamilton, Ontario where I grew up. I loved walking through the market on Saturdays during my lunch break when I worked at the Zellers store downtown. I can still remember the smell of the smoked meats melted with the smell of fresh flowers. A few years ago when I was visiting my sister Faye, we went back to that Market just for old time sake.
When I was a young adult going to university and living in Kitchener, we would often go to the old Farmers Market in downtown Kitchener. I frequented it less often when they rebuilt it and many of the Mennonite vendors left to start another farmers market in Waterloo – and so did I.
Farmers Markets are a unique, traditional way of bringing food from the field to the table. I feel very lucky that there are markets like this all over the country.

Sautéed Garden Bush Beans

Today I was walking past my vegetable garden after I finished cutting the grass and noticed something purple. It was the Royal Burgundy purple bush beans that I planted (actually I had to replant them three times) ! Finally SOMETHING was ready in my garden besides lettuce.
It’s been a pretty wet spring and summer so far, including some pretty nasty torrential downpours and a tornado warning, with a few extremely hot and humid heat waves (45C/113F degrees) thrown in for good measure. The weeds have overtaken my vegetable garden ~sigh~ but if they’re green and a alive, it’s okay with me! After the browns of last summer’s drought, I’m happy to see green this year. I can still see the heritage ‘Pink Banana’ winter squash wandering about and the drying bulbs of the poppies stretching above the dill. So it’s all good……. I’ll get outdoors one of these days and savagely pull out the weeds. You see there is a ‘method to my madness’ as the weeds are SO much easier to pull right after a rain storm (I’m waiting…..and waiting…..) when they are so big and I can grab them by the handful. Well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!!
Anyway, I picked a handful purple beans – that’s one of the reasons that I plant colourful veggies like purple beans and yellow zucchini: they’re easier to find……..among the weeds.
After I rinsed off the purple beans, I sautéed them in olive oil and added some chopped garlic and a pinch of salt. They started out bright purple and quickly turned typically green when they heated up – like magic! A lunch feast fit for a queen! I have to thank Jeanette for showing me that beans cooked this way are absolutely heavenly.

Sautéed garden bush Beans
Garden beans (yellow, green, purple) – whole or pieces
1 Tablespoon Extra virgin Olive Oil
1+ Teaspoons of minced Garlic (I like LOTS of garlic)
Pinch of Salt (optional)
Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the beans and garlic and sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle with salt, if desired. Eat and enjoy! Thanks Jeanette!

Ready to eat – Yum!

Chicken Vegetable Soup

I promised my cousin Bruce that I would post more recipes – maybe a recipe from my own cookbook, Mom’s Recipes, once a week. Well, now it’s the last week of January and I haven’t posted one single recipe! Sorry Bruce…… So today’s post is dedicated to you.
It’s been bitterly cold this week with temperatures dipping down to -41C (-42F) with windchill. I made cold weather comfort foods like soup, roasted Chicken, and Goulash. Soup is one of those amazing things to eat with so many variables that each time I make it, the taste and composition is different.

Bundle of Herbs

Today’s soup recipe is a variation of my Chicken Noodle Soup on page 20 of my cookbook, Mom’s Recipes. It’s kind of a Chicken-Vegetable Soup a.k.a. using up all the week’s leftovers by making a soup. I’ll list the entire ingredients at the bottom of the page. First off, earlier in the week, we had roasted chicken thighs with roast carrots and onions thrown in the pan. In addition, I baked a butternut squash (organic from my summer garden) along side on a tray – cut in half with the seeds scooped out (and saved for starting more squash plants for this summer’s garden) then placed inside up with a bit of water inside the scoop, then covered. Of course, we also had mashed potatoes and homemade gravy. I save the ‘potato water’ in a glass bottle in the fridge from all the potatoes I boiled all week long. After dinner, I put the chicken bones in pot of water with about a tablespoon or less of white vinegar (this helps bring out the marrow, I’m told) and boiled them for at least an hour. After this chicken broth cooled down, I added it to the bottle of potato water. All week, after supper, I saved leftovers in a glass container (I dislike plastic) so by today I had a 7 cup dish of cooked veggies like corn, mashed potatoes, carrots, onions, squash, and chicken as well as a liter of chicken broth/potato water.

Broth and Leftovers

Thanks to my daughter-in-law Jeanette, I discovered the secret to really tasty soup: fresh herbs especially Thyme. I tie up a bundle of thyme, rosemary, and a sprig of parsley with some thread and add it to the soup liquid plus more water to fill up the pot and then add all the rest of the leftovers, making sure I mash up the squash and potatoes. Add some freshly ground pepper and salt and just let this amazing smelling soup simmer on the stove all afternoon. This is an easy recipe for busy families with young children as it can be made in spits and spurts of time over the course of several hours. Of course, I ‘taste test’ it every once in a while ……….. yummmm. After it’s done, I take out the bundle of herbs and compost them. Remember, this ingredients list is fluid (pun intended lol) and can change. Last week I didn’t have any leftover potatoes or squash or even chicken so I just added some rice. My soup can be stored in a glass bottle to be eaten later during next week.

Soup simmering on my wood Cookstove

Today’s soup was simmered on my wood cookstove because it was already heating up the house not because the flavour was any better (except in my imagination). Thanks to my daughter-in-law Jeanette, I’ve learned not to be afraid of making soup! And the most important ingredient she introduced me to was Thyme – it gives soup that delicious ‘soup taste’.

 

 

Chicken Vegetable Soup Recipe
Chicken broth
Potato/vegetable ‘water’
Leftover Vegetables and meat, amounts don’t really matter
Herbs: Thyme, Rosemary, Parsley
Additional water, if needed
Salt (1 tsp or whatever) and pepper

Chicken Vegetable Soup

*Last year at this time, I blogged about “My Technology Timeline”  and “Home Sweet Home“.

Saving Seeds

Black Eyed Susan

When I was a little 5 yr. old girl, I was so interested in seeds that I planted an apple seed (after I finished eating an apple) and grew an apple tree right beside our front porch.  My parents and neighbours came to love the shade of my apple tree, during their summer ‘porch gatherings’ every evening.  My interest in saving seeds has grown throughout the years – in fact, I still have seeds saved from almost 2 decades ago.

This summer, my garden has been extremely dry so the seeds on the plants are drying quite nicely.  Yesterday I began harvesting seeds from my garden for use next year.

Poppy ‘Bulb’ Bursting with Seeds

The poppies in my veggie garden seem to grown just about everywhere.  I’m not really sure where they came from originally, but those micro-sized poppy seeds drop or blow all over.  The beautiful red, carnation-looking  poppy flowers have finished blooming about 3 weeks ago and now the large bulb in the centre is completely dried out, brown, and full of poppy seeds.   I simply snip off the bulbous heads directly into a paper bag and leave it in the garage with the bag open, until October.  I love the look of the stray poppies in my vegetable garden, surprising me with their new locale every summer.  By saving the seeds every August, I can at least try to direct where I want them to grow around the property next year.  In the fall, I just sprinkle the seeds all around the gardens and wait until next summer……..  Poppy seeds are also good in baking – muffins, cakes, bread.

 

 

Dill Seeds

Next I began to harvest dill  that had gone to seed.   I never actually plant dill in my garden – it just comes up all over the place from seeds that dropped off of last years plants.   Fresh dill, that has not gone to seed yet, is used in salads and dill pickles.  I just harvest the seeds to have on had for “future reference” – again, I just cut the entire seed ‘umbrella’ into a paper bag and let it continue to dry out in the garage.  The seeds will fall to the bottom of the bag and then I can just compost the heads and save the seeds in a container.  I think dill is a beautiful lacy plant which looks lovely mixed in with the perennial flowers, too.

I’ve been watching some of my early (read:  My Spring Garden Tour) April  lettuce ‘bolt’,  then flower since the end of June.  I purposely left some of the leaf lettuce ‘go to seed’ so I could collect the seeds for fall planting.  I carefully cut off the fluffy tops into another paper bag, then transferred them onto newspaper laid out on the garage counter.  It can dry more right there in front of the window until most of the seed just drops off onto the newspaper by the time I’m ready to plant it in a few weeks…..

Leaf Lettuce Seeds drying on Newspaper

Other seeds I save include old fashioned annuals like Cosmos, Marigolds, and Zinnias, but they won’t be ready to begin harvesting until September.  Now that the Lupin seeds are all dried on the plant, I can simply cut off the branch with all the seed pod “fingers” and spread them right away where I like around the property.  Lupins come up the next year but often don’t flower for another couple of years.  Others seeds like Purple Coneflowers and Black Eyed Susans just stay on the plants for the birds to enjoy throughout the winter.  In the spring, I’ll cut off any leftover seedheads and just let them drop to continue to cycle of more plants.

Other seeds that I save come from inside the actual vegetables, like winter Acorn Squash or heritage Brandywine Tomatoes.   I also replant garlic cloves in October to grow an entire new garlic plant by the next July.  From one garlic bulb, I can use its 8 or so cloves to replant 8 new garlic plants.

 

Paper Bags of Seeds

 

Canna Lily

I also dig up my Canna Lily bulbs in the fall and store them in my cold room (single layer in a cardboard box) after letting them dry out a bit for a few weeks in the garage.  During this drought summer, the Canna Lillies have stayed alive without any watering – I’m amazed at how their huge leaves efficiently capture the morning dew and must use it to almost water themselves!  Their large, solid leaves and brilliant red flowers are tropical looking and a real show-stopper!

Right now, onions seeds are drying on the plant as well.  Of course, small potatoes become their own ‘seed potato’ the following summer when I simply plant one for each potato plant I want.  What could be simpler!

Old fashion or ‘Heritage’ plants are required if you want to save seeds.  Hybrid plant seeds don’t grow like the parent plant.

Saving seeds has added another dimension to my gardening experience.