Tomato!

Happy Friday!

Here's a picture of some of our tomatoes that are growing!  This tomato plant is an Early Girl variety.  We bought it from a lady at the Farmer's Market who has been selling plants there since 1991.  Very excited about all the different recipes that I will try with tomatoes this summer.

Have a great weekend!

The Kindness of Neighbors

I am loving this gardening community.  I love that I recognize faces and I'm starting to remember names of people that I see around the garden.  I have almost met all of my garden neighbors and I have to say I have some of the sweetest neighbors.  I spent some time talking with one lady and her daughter.  She has been gardening for 15 years at Willie Streeter Garden and she was telling me about all the pros and cons to community gardening.  She even started showing me what certain bugs look like.  (By the way, I hope the potato bug and potato beetle stay as far away from my plot as possible.  They leave some pretty nasty holes.)

We got to talking about plants that grow well in the community garden and which ones don't.  We spent awhile admiring her tomatillo plants and she gave me a whole armload of them when I was leaving.  She said that her absolute favorite part about gardening is sharing her fruits and vegetables with people.  I was so grateful for the time that we had spent talking.  And loved seeing her kindness.  She could have taken those tomatillos home or even given them to a friend instead of some girl that she had just met.

I can't wait to make something with these tomatillos and I will definitely share the recipe with you.  

What are you harvesting out of your garden these days?  

  

Community Garden Potluck

We had a community garden potluck at the beginning of May.  It was nice to share a meal and get to know some people.  I'm finding out that I'm surrounded by some very experience gardeners and I'm so happy that they are willing to share information and help me along the way.  I'm grateful for my garden neighbors that can tell me when my carrots need to be harvested and explain to me what bolting lettuce even means.

What struck me the most was that it was nice to be around people that see the benefit of gardening.  I still don't know a lot about the people that I get to share a community garden with, what I do know is that they see me.  They know that I am a Christian that cares about eating locally and feels like I can do my part to be help the earth.  Even though there are probably a lot of things that they probably don't agree with me on, this might be the first time that they have ever learned that Christians care about the planet and want to do something to repair it.

As the summer months continue it will be nice to see how friendships develop and how even though we all come from different walks of life, we all share a community garden.

Freezing Peas

There is something about freezing vegetables and making jams and jellies that make me feel like I'm storing things up for a harsh winter when food is scarce.  It's completely silly and these thoughts probably stem from reading American Girl and Little House on the Prairie books at an early age.  I froze my first bag of sugar snap peas this week.

I was given this book a few Christmases ago and I'm so excited that this year I will finally get to use it.  This book is amazing and has a wealth of knowledge in it.  If you want to learn how to harvest, can, freeze or dry this is the book for you!

  

If you are working with sugar snap peas you will want to remove the flower part of the pod and pull out the string.

Once you have that done you are ready to blanch the peas.  Put the peas in boiling water and boil for two minutes. 

Immediately, put in ice cold water to stop the blanching process.  Place in freezer bag and stick in the freezer.  The faster the process the better tasting the peas will be.  

Enjoy!

Menu Monday: Lemony Kale Pasta

Menu Monday!

Hope everyone's gardens are doing well in this crazy heat.

Another recipe for everyone that is still reaping a kale harvest!  This was such a simple dish to put together and doesn't take a lot of ingredients.

Lemony Kale Pasta
I got this recipe from this blog

For the Dressing
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
1/2 tsp salt, divided
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, finely grated
6 TBSP extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
Juice of 2 lemons
pepper, to taste

For Pasta
1 lb penne pasta
Large bunch of kale, washed with stems removed


Bring large pot to boil for pasta. Then, make the dressing.  Mince garlic cloves and add 1/4 tsp of salt to garlic.  Use fork and knife to make a paste out of the garlic.  Put garlic paste in small bowl.  Add in Parmesan, olive oil, lemon juice, red pepper flakes and pepper.  Whisk together until combined.

Cook pasta in boiling water.  Chop kale into 1/2 inch ribbons.  Add kale to large bowl and pour dressing over kale.  Stir to coat the kale.  Pour kale and dressing over cooled pasta.  Serve with added Parmesan cheese over it.

Harvesting Peas

Our sugar snap peas are ready for harvesting.  I found these peas hard to judge when I thought they were ready to pick.  Everything I read told me to pick them before the pod filled all the way out because they would be sweeter that way.  

I asked a fellow gardener what he thought of the peas.  He assured me that they were ready to pick and that if I didn't believe him that I should just pick one and try it myself.  I did.  It was my first experience of picking something right off the vine and eating it.  Yes, I'd been harvesting kale and romaine, but I've been going home and washing it and preparing it before I eat it.  Oh and the peas were wonderful!

Jeff and I haven't been too inventive with eating peas.  We have been putting them in salads and I froze my first batch this morning.  More on that later.

Any recipes that you are trying out with your pea harvest?

Harvesting Romaine

Our Romaine lettuce is beautiful!  It's a pretty green with reddish-brown speckles on it.  I never splurge and buy romaine at the grocery store because iceberg lettuce is always a little cheaper.  I've gotten so use to the taste of plain old iceberg lettuce that it was hard for me to want to eat this romaine.  Now after a couple of harvests, I'm completely obsessed.

Harvesting greens was a hard concept for me to get.  If you talk to people or google how to harvest romaine or kale (or any kind of lettuce really) you get different answers.  Some say that you can cut off the tops of the green, others recommend to harvest a couple of whole leaves off of each plant and some tell you to just pull up the whole plant.

Victoria and I decided to go the route where you pull off the whole outer leaves and leave behind the smaller ones.  It's been working great because I pull off enough greens for a day or so and then I come back and the smaller leaves are ready to eat.  This has really made our romaine go far for the both of us.  Jeff and I enjoy salads every evening with dinner and we are always looking for other ways to eat romaine.    

Watering: An Observation

I am just now getting to the point where I am feeling more confident about watering our garden.  I use to slink in to the community garden and hope that no one was there to witness how little I truly knew about gardening.  I did know that I was suppose to water during the morning or in the evening and to water the roots and not just the green leafy parts.  I was never sure how long to water and I didn't want someone to think that I was drenching my plants or dehydrating them.  I would just turn the hose on the plants to get them a small drink and that was it.

Then, I started watching experienced gardeners water and I was amazed at how much water they would put on their plants.  I'm now more sure of watering my garden and I think my plants are thankful to have more water than they use to. 

Any watering rules that you have heard or practice with your own garden?

Menu Monday: Kale, Red Onion, Pistachio Pizza

If you are growing kale in your garden, I promise you, you will want to try this recipe.  Although, this combination is not one I would have put together myself, I'm so glad I made this for dinner last week.  I found this recipe on yet another wonderful food blog.  This pizza was easy to make and I had all the ingredients on hand.

Kale, Red Onion & Pistachio Pizza
This recipe is from this blog

Pizza Dough (I used this recipe)
1/2 cup crushed tomatoes
3 cloves of garlic, minced
A couple handfuls shredded cheeses (I used mozzarella, colby jack and cheddar)
8 leaves of kale
1/2 red onion
Handful of pistachio nuts
salt
olive oil

Prepare pizza dough according to instructions.  Pre-heat oven to 500 degrees and place pizza stone in oven while pre-heating.

Mince garlic. Chop red onion.  Wash kale leaves and remove stems from leaves.  Roughly chop the leaves.  In a small skillet, put in a some olive oil and the kale leaves.  Cook over med-heat until kale leaves are wilted.  Crush pistachio nuts with a rolling pin.

When oven is ready and pizza stone has been heated for a half an hour, place dough on pizza stone and quickly assemble pizza.

Spread crushed tomatoes over dough and add minced garlic on top of that.  Sprinkle the shredded cheese over the top and top with kale, red onion and pistachio nuts.

Bake until until crust is a golden brown.  About 8-12 minutes.  Enjoy!

An Ode to Kale

Happy Friday!

Growing up  (and well into college even) I was notorious for being a picky eater.  I'm not just talking about being a picky eater about the weird stuff, but everything.  I hardly ate anything that had meat, vegetables or fruit on it.  The only vegetables I ate were potatoes and corn and the only fruit I would eat were bananas.

I'm pretty sure that 15 year old me or even 19 year old me would not believe that I eat half of the things that I eat now.  Fruit smoothies, salads, onions, garlic, peas, peppers, strawberries, raspberries, sweet potatoes... all things that I never thought I would eat.

This summer is the first time that I've ever tried kale.  I didn't think I was going to do a lot with kale when I planted it in April.  I thought I'd try a dish here and there, but not be crazy about it.  Well, let me tell you I have to say I've grown quite fond of this leafy green.  And to say that it's doing well in our garden would be an understatement.  It's thriving and we have so much of it that I have to keep finding things to make with it.  I even got a compliment from a veteran gardener about how lovely my kale looked.

I've made some delicious things with kale that I can't wait to share with you.  I'm trying to come up with lots of ways to use it because I'm not sure how well it will hold up if I just blanch and freeze it.  Do you have any must try recipes that incorporate kale?  

A Heart That Can Break

I lead a Bible study with some high school senior girls and this past week we met and walked through some verses from Nehemiah together.  I had gotten some of the questions from the Nehemiah study from Kelly Minter.  One of the questions we asked was what breaks your heart?  Each girl shared things that broke her heart and although we had a lot of the same things that our hearts hurt for, it was really cool to see that we also had different things on our lists too.  And those differences revealed so much of who each girl is and what her passions and callings in life are.

One of the things on my list was the mistreatment of land.  It's always been something that weighs on my heart and something that I'm passionate about helping.  I'm not sure if it was early exposure to the book The Lorax or watching Ferngully too many times or learning about the Tropical Rain Forest in 3rd grade, but either way my heart breaks for injustices done to the earth.  I recently watched this video about urban gardening and the cool thing that is going on in Philadelphia where an organization is partnering up with a lab and giving people free soil testing around the city to see if they can reclaim the land and safely grow a garden.     I was crying by the end of this video because it all seems so hopeless.  There is so much work to be done and it feels like very few people care about it.  As Christians, we should be leading the charge to restore our land.

I had stopped blogging because I just didn't think gardening mattered to a lot of people or to anyone.  Who cares if some girl in a small city in Indiana has a plot of land that she gardens?  But I was reminded that I can do my part to keep working toward a better future for the world; even if my garden plot isn't big.  I can advocate local food by eating my food and I can buy plants from my local Farmer's Market.  None of these things are revolutionary acts, but small deeds that just might get other people's attention.

Stay tuned summer is just beginning and there are so many fun adventures ahead.

Farmhouse Cafe & Tea Room

Happy Monday!  So excited to share this post with you...

There is a quaint little restaurant called The Farmhouse Cafe & Tea Room tucked in the hills of Brown County about 35 minutes outside of Bloomington.  It's kinda out of the way, but totally worth the drive.  I treated my mom to a birthday lunch here and we loved everything about this place.

It's a beautiful little tea room and they have great patio space and places to eat on the porch too.  They have wonderful chicken salad sandwiches and seriously the best lemonade I've ever tasted!

They have old barns filled with garden accessories and greenhouses overflowing with plants.  It took a lot of restraint for my mom and me not to buy every cute thing we saw.  The plant selection is great with lots of hanging plants, flowering plants for landscaping, hostas, rose bushes, annuals, perennials, and even fruit trees.

This is a perfect place to bring a group of friends and enjoy a lunch out on the patio and then spend some time walking around the grounds.

Earth Day

Earth Day is coming up in a couple of days.  Ever since I can remember, Earth Day was a favorite of mine.  My mom can tell stories about how my activism for the Earth started at a very young age.  I was obsessed with making sure no one on ever littered and I would cry about the trees in the Rainforest that were being cut down.  I would even on occasion make all of my neighborhood friends pick up trash on any given Saturday.  I would drag bags of trash into our driveway and my mom would have to figure out what to do with all of it.

It's no surprise that taking care of the planet is still important to me now.  As I've gotten older and run a household, I'm finding out that taking care of the planet is harder than just reduce, reuse, recycle.  We live in a society that is built around consumption and all this consumption is doing harmful things to the planet.  Here are some small things that you can do in your everyday life to help out.

Reusable Grocery Bags

Reusable grocery bags are how I really started getting into running a greener household.  They are relatively cheap and once you start using them, you will never go back.  I can fit SO much more groceries in one of those sacks then I can in five of those tiny, flimsy plastic ones.  If you are like me and you have a tendency to forget your grocery bags at home, keep a few in the trunk of your car.  I have a few different types of reusable bags, but these are my favorite!

Drinking Tap Water

Where do I start with this one?  Bottled water is an industry filled with craziness.  We have water (which Americans already have access to) shipped across the country just so we can have it in bottles and have the chance to prefer a certain brand over another.  The amount of money in oil spent to make these bottles and to ship them is insane.  Next time instead of reaching for the convenience of a plastic bottle that will be thrown away, grab your own water bottle and fill it up yourself.

Making Food From Scratch

While making food from scratch has several great benefits, cutting back on artificial ingredients, tastes better,  costs less, and cuts back on plastic packaging.

Biking

My husband and I recently purchased bicycles.  We love them!  We are fortunate enough to live in a bike-friendly town and we can't wait to ride bikes more often in place of driving cars around town.  This takes a little more forethought, like finding bike routes, leaving enough time arrive at places and thinking about the weather.


This is a few years old, but a nice little Earth Day gem.  The Story of Stuff!

A Little Planting

Yesterday Victoria and I spent a couple hours putting in our first seeds in our little slice of earth.  We drastically  overestimated how much space we would have and decided to not plant cauliflower and beans because we were running out of room.

We loved there was a garden expert there and she was helpful with some things we weren't so sure of. She gave us the advice of putting compost in each row that we dug instead of spreading it all over the plot.  Speaking of compost, I learned yesterday that compost is not always just ready to put on the bed.  You have to wait until its far along in the decomposing process.  You can still use it (which we did!) but you have to sift it before it's ready to use. Lesson learned: sifting compost is hard work.  I kept getting the sifter too compacted and then nothing would sift through the bottom of it.

I was kinda dreading the first plant because sometimes it's hard to get into the swing of things and unnerving when we weren't always sure of what we should be doing, but we had a quite a refreshing morning in the garden.

Cutest thing that we saw while we were there was a dad riding bikes with his three little kids to the garden.  The little kids were so excited to be there and couldn't wait to help pick some lettuce.  It gives me hope that there really are families out there that still care about creation and think it's important to get kids excited and involved early.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Our gardening adventure begin on Sunday!  We have been waiting for this day for weeks now.  It will be here soon and the bad news is... it's suppose to rain.  And of course, not just a little rain, but a lot of rain.

Victoria broke the weather news to me on Tuesday and told me not to get my hopes up for planting on Sunday.  There is a 30% chance of rain.  I'm crossing my fingers that the percentage will diminish as we get closer to Sunday.  

I'm not as nervous about getting a late start to planting because of how cold, in true Indiana fashion, these last couple of days have been.  So, when the weather cooperates hopefully we will be ready to do our tilling and planting.

I hope by early next week, I will have a post filled to the brim with pictures of our first work day in our garden.

Happy Friday!

Good Friday

Today we remember Jesus' death on the cross.  I've been reflecting on this passage all day:

"But He was pierced for our transgressions.  He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed." -Isaiah 53:5-

It is a day in our liturgical calendar that is marked with sorrow and pain.  It's hard to leave a Good Friday service feeling good or hopeful about anything, but the sacrifice on the cross had to happen so mankind could be healed, reconciled and made whole.

I'm so grateful that this isn't the end of the story.  It gets better...

Wednesday Wants

Happy Wednesday!  Here are some products that I am loving at the moment!

Beautiful watering can 

Perfect basket for produce from the Farmer's Market

Love these vegetable napkins

One of a kind garden hose

Garden Layout

During my junior year of college, I took a class on edible plants.  We spent most of the semester forging through the woods and identifying plants that we could eat.  Our final project was to create a presentation about nature that was interesting and entertaining... these ranged from someone making persimmon pudding to playing edible flower BINGO.  My project was about butterfly gardens and the benefit of them.  I basically did it because I thought flowers were pretty and I wasn't all that interested in edible plants.

There was a student in the class that was very intrigued by edible plants and the benefit that they could have in feeding communities.  Her project is one that I will never forget.  She drew a huge tree in the center of the poster board and starting with the closest to the tree she drew plants that would do well in all shade and the row after that she drew plants that worked well in shade and were compatible with the plants in the previous row.  The whole poster board was filled with mushrooms, vegetables, fruit and flowers that all were interconnected.  All these plants had these characteristics that made them great planting buddies.  I remember after she was done presenting our professor told her how beautiful and harmonious of a project it was.  I didn't get it at the time how important it was to have a mindset like hers.  I understand it a little better now.

So when I think of garden layout, my mind goes to that poster board in front of the class with plants drawn in pencil.  We are going to be planting our peas on one end of the garden (to give them room for staking), tomatoes will have their own little area with cages around them.  Carrots and lettuce will be planted next to each other in rows.  There are still some that we haven't figured out where we want to put them yet.

How about you, any method to where you plant your vegetables in your garden?

Menu Monday: Red Pepper & Garlic Pita Chips

As I expressed last week, my hopes for Menu Monday is for it to become a post that will help all of us think creatively when it comes to feeding ourselves and our families with in season food.  Since, I don't have any garden loot to cook with yet, I thought I would post a fun healthy snack that is in season year round.

These pita chips are a snack food regular at our house.  They are quick, easy to make and delicious.  I use this pita bread recipe to make the actual bread.  When I don't have time or the ingredients, I just use pita bread from the store.

I use to think that there was no sense in making bread from scratch.  It looked daunting and quite honestly, I didn't think I had the time for it.  So, I kept buying loaves of bread from the store.  Then one day, this wonderful blog came into my life and showed me that making bread didn't have to be so scary.  If bread making still seems difficult, start with quick breads and work your way up.  Homemade bread tastes better and they don't have all the chemical preservatives that store bought bread has in it.  

Red Pepper & Garlic Pita Chips

Ingredients:

Pita Bread 

Extra Virgin Olive Oil, for brushing the pita chips

2 Tbsp Red Pepper Flakes

1 Tbsp Dried Italian Seasoning

1 Tbsp Garlic Salt 

1 tsp Cumin

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Cut pita bread into triangles.  Spread them out in a single layer on a baking sheet.  Use a pastry brush to coat each chip with extra virgin olive oil.  Sprinkle spices over each chip.  These chips can be on the spicy side, so feel free to adjust the seasoning to your liking.  Bake for 7 minutes or until crispy.  

  

Waiting

I have to confess that I am anxious today.  It's the end of March, it's beautiful outside and we haven't planted anything.  Our community garden doesn't open for spring planting until April 15th.  I'm a dreamer by nature and sometimes it's easier for me to dream instead of do.  I'm afraid that by the time April 15th rolls around I'm not going to be motivated to actually do any of the planting.  I hope that planting with Victoria will help keep both of us accountable to our little garden.  And until then we will plan and wait...

Looking forward to sharing some thoughts on garden layout with you tomorrow.

Wednesday Wants

Hope you are enjoying this beautiful day!

How charming is this honey jar?  You can find it here.

Love this little flower pot.

Would love to do all of my gardening wearing this hat.

Book Review: Make Your Place Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills

This is another small, but mighty book up for review.  Make Your Place is a book written and illustrated by Raleigh Briggs.  This book was a birthday gift from my husband shortly after we were married.  I cherish it and have read it over and over again because it is filled with so many hands-on recipes and daily information.

Make Your Place is divided up into three sections: Health & First Aid, Non-Toxic Cleaning & Body Care, and Gardening.  Each page is filled with darling illustrations and easy to read verbiage.  It is very clear that Raleigh Briggs knows what she is talking about.  In her introduction she mentions that she has spent time trying different cleaning, gardening and first aid methods to make sure that she has presented only the best results in this book.  

Before I dive into her section on Gardening (which is wonderful), I'd love to give you my favorite of her recipes in the Non-Toxic Cleaning & Body Care sections.  This is the best drain opener that I have ever used and the best part is that you have all of these things probably in your kitchen right now.  I use this recipe for our shower drains and it works like magic every time!

"DIY Drain Opener (Raleigh Briggs, pg 54)

Pour 1 cup each salt and baking soda, plus 1/2 cup vinegar down the drain.

Let it sit for 15 minutes, and then flush the drain with 2-3 quarts of boiling water."

I am so excited to be able to use the Gardening chapter over and over again this spring and summer.  You will find everything in this section from plant anatomy, when to plant, making raised beds, improving the soil, compost for beginners, staking and trellising, pest control and garden layout.  Garden layout has my favorite chart in it called Buddy System.  This has a chart of common grown fruits and vegetables with information on what grows well next to each other and what plants to keep far away from each other.  Who knew that carrots and lettuce like to be planted side-by-side?

Check out Make Your Place Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills for more great information.  You can buy your own copy here.

Menu Monday

I'm very excited to introduce you to my first weekly reoccurring blog post... Menu Mondays.  During harvest time I will be sharing a recipe with you using food from our garden.  I hope that these blog posts become a creative way to help everyone (myself included) with cooking in season.

Since getting married I have fallen in love with baking and cooking.  At first, I loved to do it because my husband, Jeff loved to eat.  Then, I started becoming interested in making and eating healthy food.  Food that isn't over-processed or full of preservatives.  I also became alarmingly aware that I was the one responsible for stocking our cabinets and filling our stomachs.  If I brought junk food home from the grocery store, then that is what we would eat.  Once that thought was in my head, I put forth more effort to buy better food and make more of our food.  It was difficult to make food from scratch because it was time consuming and foreign to me, but over the last three years it's gotten easier, as I've begun to learn the art form of making food.

I've started gathering some recipes that I can't wait to share with you as local vegetables become in season.  I also have some made from scratch breads, pastas and snacks that I hope you will love too.  Looking forward to sharing a great book review with you tomorrow.

The Earth is Yours- Gungor

Happy Friday! Hope you enjoy this video from the amazing Gungor band.  This song is from their album Beautiful Things.  Enjoy the weekend!

Book Review: Farming as a Spiritual Discipline

This little book written by Ragan Sutterfield, a farmer and writer from Little Rock, Arkansas, is, in my opinion, a must read for those who care about the earth and about the God who created it.  My husband and I have had the privilege of hearing Ragan speak a couple times at conferences at Englewood Christian Church, and each time we gained a wealth of knowledge.

I love this book because Ragan mixes theological ideas alongside practical applications for your life.  He shares early in the book "in our fallen state we have forgotten our place, both within God's will and love and also in our love and care for creation.  We need to be reminded of who we are and what we are about (pg 5)."  He suggests the practice of farming as a way to remind us.

Ragan spends some time talking about the Agrarian Mind as a practical way we can live every day with the virtues of humility and frugality (two virtues that he states become more apparent in us when we farm).  He gives practical examples of things that we can do like reduce our dependency in oil by biking or walking to places, learning to make food from scratch instead of buying it from the store and raise our own chickens.  Simple ways that we can make a difference in our homes and communities.

I'd like to share one more quote from the book "As we become more productive, we also become more aware of the labors of others.  We begin to respect chefs more as we learn to cook and farmers more as we begin to garden.  After growing a tomato yourself it becomes almost disrespectful to throw away a tomato grown well by someone else.  It is said that Ghandi would use a pencil until it was a tiny stub out of respect for the person who made it.  Such frugality almost seems absurd in our age when pencils are made fast and cheap in a factory (35)."

I share this with you in hopes that you can see the humor in the situation I almost got caught in today.  I was cleaning up our kitchen after lunch today, when I saw two over ripe bananas in our fruit bowl.  I picked them up and walked over to the trashcan to throw them out.  No one was going to eat those bananas around here.  Then, I remembered the imagery of Ghandi using a pencil until it was a little stub and I put them back in the fruit bowl.  I'd never made banana bread before, but I thought I had heard that you use over ripe bananas for that.  I found a fabulous recipe for them and spent my afternoon baking banana crumb muffins.  The redemption process is at work even in old, brown bananas.

You can order Farming as a Spiritual Discipline here.

Willie Streeter Community Garden

There are many ways that you can garden. We often fall into a trap that tells us that you have to own a home and have a lot of land to garden, and that just isn't the case. My husband and I rent a duplex in a neighborhood in a suburban university town (Go IU!). Our yard floods every time it rains, so even if we owned our yard, it wouldn't be ideal for a vegetable garden... (maybe a nice rice field though).  My friend Victoria also lives in a rented apartment so for us the best option was to rent a community garden plot.

In Bloomington, there are several options for garden plots and we picked the community garden that was closest to Victoria called Willie Streeter Garden. There are some benefits of this specific garden, they have bigger plots and provide tools, water and tomato cages. They also have garden experts that are there during certain times each week. This community garden is run by the city of Bloomington. These plots are $62 for the rental of April-the end of October. The only other community garden that I am familiar with is Hilltop Garden through Indiana University. They also have tools, water, and tomato cages available for all gardens. Those plots can be rented for $50 from April-end of October, but they are smaller. Both places are great to work with and well maintained.

Another benefit to gardening in a community garden is all the people you meet. Victoria and I aren't very experienced gardeners and there will be days when we might need to talk with people who know more than us. We are excited to get to know people that are passionate about growing food. I know we will learn a lot this year.

If you live in an apartment and the idea of having a garden plot scares you, why not try container gardening first?  Start some herbs in your kitchen that you always use in cooking. Learn how to dry or freeze them. Take note of how much work goes into just a few potted plants and think about what it would be like to tend an acre of land or hundreds of acres.

Excited to share a book review with you tomorrow.

Pinterest Project: Garden Row Markers

Happy First Day of Spring!

I found this cute picture on Pinterest and couldn't wait to start this project for our garden.  I've only finished a few of these, but will definitely paint the rest of them before all the planting is done.  These are perfect for row markers. I love that these won't fade in the summer sun or blow away with any thunderstorms, and they look great! And the best part... these are free to make! All you need are flat rocks and some acrylic paint.

I had a great time making these (and that's saying a lot since I'm not artistic at all). This would be a wonderful project for children to help with and allow them to get involved in the gardening process.

These row markers are sure to be a great addition for any garden.  Check back tomorrow for a post on community gardens.

Planning for Planting

The weather in Bloomington has been so wonderful, and it feels like spring has finally sprung.  The trees are starting to show their leaves, and signs of rebirth are everywhere.  The yellow daffodils and pink magnolia trees are blooming in yards and along the roads all over town.  I have to keep reminding myself that it's only the middle of March.

Victoria and I started dreaming up what our garden will look like and what we are going to plant in it.  We both had vegetables that were must-haves on our lists (peppers, green beans and broccoli for me, tomatoes, kale and cilantro for Victoria) and others that we have waited to see if we will have enough room in our plot.  We ended up with a great selection that we are both going to be happy with.

We will be sowing all of our colder weather vegetables from seed. The hotter weather ones we are going to buy as plants from the Bloomington's Farmer's Market.  We will be planting lettuce, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, carrots and kale from seed.  We will be buying tomatoes, peppers, basil, thyme, cilantro, sage and dill from plants.

I'm so excited to share with you the seed company that we are proud to support.  We bought all of our seeds from a local Bloomington seed company called Nature's Crossroads.  This company is a great place for Mid-West gardeners to purchase seeds from.  Nature's Crossroads was started by two gardeners that were frustrated in the spring when the only places to buy seeds from were either out on the West or East coast or mega-corporations that relied heavily on chemical products.  Nature's Crossroads seeds are a little more pricey ($2.49) than the ones you will find at Kroger or Lowe's, but they are worth the price to support a local company.  We purchased our seeds at Bloomingfoods.  Look at Nature's Crossroads website to see if there are any stores near you that sell their seeds, if not, you can always order them directly through them.  They are doing some pretty cool things, so check them out.

We are excited to be starting our gardening adventure!  Hope you follow us along the way.  I can't wait to share a garden inspired Pinterest project with you tomorrow.

What are you planting in your garden this spring?

Blessing of a Garden

God of the Universe,
you made the heavens and the earth,
so we do not call our home merely "planet earth."
We call it your creation, a divine mystery,
a gift from your most blessed hand.
The world itself is your miracle.
Bread and vegetables from earth are thus also from heaven.
Help us to see in our daily bread your presence.

Upon this garden
may your stars rain down their blessed dust.
May you send rain and sunshine upon our garden and us.
Grant us the humility to touch the humus,
that we might become more human,
that we might mend our rift from your creation,
that we might then know the sacredness of the gift of life,
that we might truly experience life from your hand.
For you planted humanity in a garden
and began our resurrection in a garden.
Our blessed memory and home lie in a garden.

Thanks be to God,
who made the world teeming with variety,
of things on the earth, above the earth, and under the earth.
Thanks be to God
for the many kinds of plants, trees and fruits
that we celebrate.
For the centipedes, ants, and worms,
for the mice, marmots, and bats,
for the cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers,
we rejoice
that we find ourselves eclipsed by the magnitude
of generosity and mystery.
Thanks be to God.

*From Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove & Enuma Okoro
You can find an online version of the book here

The Backstory

 Having a garden plot was never high on my priority list until my husband Jeff and I stared attending a church in Indianapolis called Englewood Christian Church (check them out here  http://www.englewoodcc.com/ ) This congregation has a flourishing garden that they all spend hours tending to through the spring and summer months.  They even hold agriculture conferences and feed the attendees with the food from this plot.  It was during this time that Jeff and I started realizing that growing our own food was important on so many spiritual levels.  It was crucial in taking care of the world that God had given us, gardening helps us stay connected with nature and the things that He has created.  We also realized that we live in a fast food culture where we expect everything (including food) to be immediate and available when we want it.  We started to see the beauty of cultivating the land, working hard and waiting patiently for the food to ripen.  We began to read books about gardening and Christianity and it all started to fall into place.  The only problem was that we were all talk, but had not really spent any time doing these things that we found so valuable.  

A year later we moved to Bloomington, Indiana and actually rented a little community garden plot.  And we finally put our words into action.  But unfortunately, for many reasons (including a very hot, dry summer, vacations, and busyness) this little plot was a disaster.  It has been two summers since then and my friend Victoria and I have decided to try our hand at co-owning a community garden plot this spring and summer.  

Neither one of us knows much about gardening, but we are anticipating the fun journey together.  We will face many obstacles (I'm sure of it) and we will learn a lot along the way and hopefully we will even get to eat some of the food that we grow in our garden.