Goodbye Garden - until next spring.

Just an FYI before I get into my gardening post. Macey's has a 40 pound box of boneless, skinless (fresh, not frozen) chicken breasts for $1.19 a pound. (you have to buy the 40 pound box to get it for that price). It's $47.60 a box. You have to ask for it back in the butcher block. This is the cheapest I have seen it in about a year. We picked ours up today. You do have to put it in individual freezer bags, so make sure you have your Ziploc bags on hand, but this is so worth it. Who knows if chicken will ever be this cheap again.

Okay, so now that that is out of the way, onto my post!

I cleaned out our garden last week. It's sad to see the gardening season come to an end, but I know next spring will be here before I know it. Early spring to late fall is my favorite time of the year. I love to spend time in the garden, and Square Foot Gardening makes it so much more enjoyable. Next year, we will have raspberries and strawberries to eat, which I am so excited about.

We need to remember to get netting to put over the berries to keep the birds away. They ate the majority of our grapes, which was so sad! I thought we were going to have a lot of them this year, but the birds got to them before we did. We still had a few to eat on and give away, but if we can keep the birds out, we should have a lot more next year.
Things to remember for our garden in 2009:
*Plant a lot earlier. We didn't get things in until late this year, so we were a little behind schedule.

*Plant more beets. My kids, especially Ivy loves to eat beets. They are the first thing she eats on her plate, and asks for more before she touches any of her other food. I never ate a fresh beet until I married Mike. Mike's dad planted a bunch one year, and shared them with us. They are so yummy. There is nothing like a fresh beet.

*Only plant pole beans. We planted these really late in the season, but we picked a ton of them. I don't even think we will need bush beans next year if we plant 4 - 6 squares of pole beans in May. They continue to produce as long as you keep picking them.
*Plant at least 4 tomato plants, plus peppers and onions for salsa. (try to keep the kids from picking all of the peppers at once, even the baby ones because they are so cute, and they wanted to use them for their "babies", and take care of them).


Ivy helped me clear it out, and we planted a few beets. I doubt they will grow because it's too late in the year, but I thought I would try anyway. Ivy also dumped a bunch of bean seeds in the garden.


Here are a couple of pictures of our food storage room. This is the most prepared we have ever been with our food storage, and it feels so good. We have worked really hard this year to get it to this point. It's nice to know that if we were not able to go to the store for a while, that we would be alright. We still have a long way to go with our Emergency Preparedness, but we are well on our way.