A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

D

Middle DD is experimenting with using tomatoes and the dried tomatoes I gave her to make pasta and pizza sauce--she makes a Mean pizza!
I await her results...

One of the most delicious uses for dried tomatoes I've tried yet. I always served it on hot noodles, with a bit of extra cheese on top. It is sooo good! I need to make this again actually, it's been too long, thank you for the memory refresher!

When Basil Season Is Over, We Eat Red Pesto

When basil isn't in season, try this punchy and sweet sun-dried tomato pesto. It can be used in any way you would serve regular basil pesto, but we love it with pasta, spread on sandwiches, as a dip with veggies, or stirred into soup.

www.simplyrecipes.com

 

[heirloomgal]

I've been shelling for days. Hours every evening; it's both satisfying & tiring at this stage. And it wasn't even a super great bean year, nothing like 2023 was. Feeling extremely grateful though because pests gave me a run for my money, it was a possibility my main garden got wiped out by first cutworms then voles. But I am so ready to be done with the shelling, tonight I started XL Costco leaf bag #4. And there is plenty of Halloween prep needing done so finishing up soon is needed. Then all the tomato seeds need to be scraped off their drying sheets and packed up.

All the jars on the tables filled with colorful beans is feeling pretty great though.

 

[heirloomgal]

Memories of the 'Shirley' poppies this summer....

I had no idea that a single poppy variety could have so much diversity in it and still be a single variety. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed them, and the long blooming time they had (probably because of crowding). In the end I saved some seeds from them, which was somewhat of a miracle considering poppies give you no wiggle room with timing so I missed a ton. I dislike how awful the dead brown stems look as you wait for the heads to dry, but in the end I decided it was worth it.

 

[heirloomgal]

Sky tonight was really gorgeous, impossible to catch on a camera. But this was the vague flavor.

My first cover crop of rye & oats has not turned out quite as I imagined it. It did grow well, and tall. Then we discovered that the guinea pig herd are wild for the fresh grass, as is Tucker. He almost acts like an ungulate when I let him in the bed. So they got to eat a lot of it. DS flipped the bed for me this week, at least what was left in it after the first major cutting for the pigs. I'll be curious to see how much the clods have broken down by next June.

He prefers I not watch while he eats. I guess we're all like that.