gardening Archives - Pea of Sweetness

How to Freeze Green Beans and Wax Beans {Without Fancy Equipment}

September 3, 2016 by Emilee Evans

How do you freeze beans? I actually wasn’t planning on freezing the beans, but sometimes you have to innovate!

A couple weeks ago I was so excited to take home a big harvest from our garden. One of the biggest challenges we have is that our garden is at my dad’s house in a small town just south of ours. So it’s not as easy as just walking outside, harvesting what we need (and what needs to be harvested), and going back out the next day. Because of this, I had to dive into the world of preserving. I have to harvest a bunch of stuff at once and make sure we can still use all of it!
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So, as I was making a few jars of refrigerator pickles, I was also preparing our green bean and wax beans for storage. I was so excited to put the great canning set I got last year for Can-It-Forward Day! I have great memories of canning beans when I was young. Unfortunately, though, I discovered beans should only be canned with a pressure canner. As much as I’d love to have one, I don’t! *Pout*

Freeze Beans

What I could do, though, was freeze beans – without any fancy equipment. The “equipment” I used was a simple dutch oven, a large bowl, a colander, and Ziplock Freezer Bags. That’s it!
So how did I do it? Read on!

Prep the Beans

Wash the beans. First, wash the beans. I washed them with Lemon essential oil.
Cut and/or snap the beans. Then I prepped the beans by cutting off the ends and into 1-2 inch pieces. Of course, they can be snapped as well. (If you have kids, this is a great way to get them involved!) Throw out any that are overripe (tough), or have dark spots.

Blanch the Beans

Boil the water. Fill your dutch oven (or large pot) with water – just enough to make sure it will cover the beans. You can make multiple batches if necessary.
Bring the water to a boil. Once boiling, add the beans to the water for 3 minutes.
Add the beans. Be sure to have a large bowl full of ice water. After boiling for 3 minutes add the beans immediately to the ice water.
Transfer the beans. Because I was doing both green beans and wax beans, I simply used a slotted spoon to scoop the beans out of the boiling water and into the ice water. This way I still had boiling water for the next batch. With the last batch I dumped them into the colander and then into the ice water. Leave them in the ice water for around 3 minutes.

Prep Garden Harvest for Storage — Just a few of our garden goodies

Store the Beans

Then put the beans into the freezer bags. Be sure to remove the air. It can be helpful to run it under hot water (after sealing) to further seal the bag. Many will use vacuum sealing, which is great. Once again, I don’t have it, and I wanted to share a way to do this as easily as possible without fancy equipment!
Be sure to label the bags so you know what date they were frozen. If you freeze beans in this way, they can be stored for up to 3 months.
That’s it! Easy peasy! You can even opt to take out a few beans at a time to thaw and keep the rest frozen to use later!
What are some of your favorite recipes with green beans or wax beans? I can’t wait to make some delicious green bean casserole!

Gardening with the Whole Family

June 25, 2016 by Emilee Evans

Gardening for us is a family activity. Family gardening can be such a rewarding experience. I love getting the kids involved in our garden. They helped us plan our garden and get right into the hard work as well. Gardening can be a great educational experience as well as a family bonding experience.
Here are some great tips for family gardening in this guest post written by HappinessAmbassador.

Family Gardening – Gardening with the Whole Family

Some things are difficult to teach kids at a very young age, such as sustainability, the need to appreciate nature and learning how to care for the environment. But there are a myriad of activities that can help your children gain a better understanding of the great outdoors, starting with your very own garden.
Gardening is a great excuse to get the entire family to spend some quality time together, as well as grow some plants to eventually put food on the table, or simply improve your landscaping.
Earth Easy suggests children are natural gardeners, so if you ever thought that you would have a tough time bringing out their green thumbs, we’ve got you covered with these fun gardening ideas:

1) Work with plants they can easily identify and eat

Your kids may like flowers, but planting fruit and vegetables will increase their dedication to their care and growth, checking on them every day until they’re ready to be picked. Something else to keep in mind is that “children want quick results,” according to an interview on Tootsa with freelance gardener Sophy Lennon from London. So opt for plants that are easy to work with in terms of maintenance and short growth cycle. Herbs, sweet peas, and strawberries are a good place to start.

2) Give them the appropriate tools

Young gardeners need the right tools, which means child friendly and colorful. These include brightly colored gloves, a set of hand tools, a watering can, and garden markers to differentiate between their plants. Something else that might increase their excitement for this outdoor activity is a costume. Even if all of you are just wearing straw hats or bandanas, they’ll show more interest in playing the part when dressed in the proper gear, states Jennifer Chait from Inhabitots.

3) Let them design the garden

Give the kids some freedom in the garden by not only allowing to pick and plant their seeds, but also by letting them design their own garden path. Begin by handing them a twig or stick draw the layout in the soil. To outline the design, kids may use white play sand, pebbles, gravel or small stones, also allowing for some creativity in the garden.

4) Have them paint rocks that you can decorate the garden with

Ask your kids to help you collect rocks that you can paint and then place in your garden. Have everyone sit around a table with a selection of paints to color the rocks. For a fun little twist, you can tell your kids to paint the rocks according to the seeds they’re going to plant. One family outlined their strawberry garden with strawberry decorated rocks, and as an added benefit, the rocks confused animals and prevented them from eating the fruits.
By following these little tips, gardening may turn into a regular activity for family bonding!
– Written by HappinessAmbassador

How We Planned our Garden Using Apps

June 18, 2016 by Emilee Evans

Although we did have some great harvests last year, we also made many gardening mistakes including using no garden planning at all. This year we wanted to make sure we did things the right way. That’s not to say we won’t make mistakes, of course. We decided to start smart, though, with actually planning. Seems like a “no brainer,” right? It can be a lot more work than you think, though!

So this year I decided we were going to plan the perfect garden, and I would be the perfect planner. If you’ve been around Pea of Sweetness for a while, though, you have probably figured out I am far from the perfect planner. In short, I’d describe myself as a “living in chaos trying to keep my head on straight” kind of person. It’s not that I have to be. I’m sure with some discipline I could actually feel like I have it together for once. Yet just the thought is laughable! Sometimes I am just unapologetically myself – the unorganized, live life day by day (or hour to hour) person. Ah, but I digress.
So we started with tilling up the area really well again. We were going to start from scratch. We weeded more thoroughly before planting as well. Now that those steps were out of the way, it was time to plan the finer details!
The idea was to start with a grid chart so we could measure our garden and go from there. Somewhere there was some miscommunication, though, as I thought my husband was making the chart, and he didn’t realize it was something we needed for the garden ASAP. Needless to say, there is no such grid chart.
So how do you plan when the planning tool you were going to use is non-existent? The best way people addicted to apps know how! You guessed it – search for an app!

When to Plant App

My search for an app actually began while we were purchasing seeds and plants. We had quite the late frost here in Northwest Ohio followed by periods of rain. We had started our garden late last year, but this year we were even later! I needed to know what we could sow by seed and what windows we already missed. I found an app called “When to Plant” (on iOS), and it did cost a little money. It served its purpose, but honestly, I don’t feel I have the full grasp of its design and what it offers.
Because I needed it so last minute, I also didn’t have the opportunity to search the different apps for this particular purpose. For just under $2, though, I figured it was worth a go. I probably could have searched using the browser, but it was definitely nice to have a quick list I could easily choose from!

Of course, the task of actually measuring and planning where those plants and seeds were going to go was still ahead of me. There were a few things I truly wanted to consider this year in our planning – plants in relation to each other. I had been reading up on companion planting and also learning more about what shouldn’t be planted together based on nutrient demand.
There was still one problem, though. We needed to get things planted ASAP, and I didn’t feel like I had equipped myself very well with this information. So when I looked more closely at all the information about each plant type in the “When to Plant” app, I was thrilled to see it had suggested companion plants.

Plant Society App

After creating a document with everything we were planting, their suggested neighbors, and the amount of sunlight needed, I was ready to move to the next step. It was time to plot it all out. This time I did a little more comparison for just the right app. There were so many options, and many of these apps cost more than just a couple of dollars. I noticed something weird, though. They all basically looked the same, and they all had pretty bad ratings. I was not paying over $10 for an app that has a bad rating.
The good news is I didn’t have to pay anything at all. I found an amazing app for free! I figured it’s worth a shot, right? I’d give it more credit than that. I think it is amazing! The Plant Society App is a free iOS app with tons of features.
On it I was able to:

Create a Garden Layout with the size of our garden. You can even create multiple gardens, but we only have one. It is presented in a square foot grid format.
Map the garden and make notes where there is full sun, partial shade and full shade.
Add herbs and veggies to your plot.
Get an alert if I am trying to plant something where it shouldn’t go.
See the number of approximate plants that will fit in each area.
Print out a PDF of the garden.

Although it’s easy enough to see on my phone, I actually like having the PDF printout because I can see it all at once. On my phone, I obviously have to scroll to see each area.

Garden Planning

I really feel like this garden planning combination was a much better option for us rather than planning it all out on paper. The app didn’t have all of the veggies we were planting, but it allows you to fill information in and even add a picture.
I did make one key mistake, though. I knew when I tried to place a plant where it shouldn’t go in regards to sunlight I would get an exclamation point. I thought it would do the same for plants that are high demanding and shouldn’t be next to each other. To see that, though, I actually needed to click on the icon of the veggies holding hands.
I discovered it too late, and I do have a handful of plants that are high demanding next to each other. It also shows me the very good neighbor choices I made as well. Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good, but I still figure it can’t be nearly as bad as last year when things were extremely overcrowded. We shall see!
Obviously, I would recommend adding this step as well to make sure you don’t have many high demanding plants next to each other. Ideally, I would also fill in the entire plan before actually planting anything, but the guys (my dad and husband) really wanted to get everything planted right then and there, so I was kind of adding and adjusting the plan as we went!

Although it wasn’t perfect, our garden planning was thought out much better this time. The apps really made it easy, and I only had to spend a couple of bucks! I’m definitely going to be sticking with this plan again next year (and use the resources correctly)! How was your garden planning?

Five Gardening Mistakes to Avoid

September 12, 2015 by Emilee Evans

Our family didn’t have much success with gardening in Texas (OK, we didn’t have any success), so we were excited to give it a go here in Ohio. Because we rent we couldn’t just dig up the ground, but the good news is my dad let us use his yard and we planted a garden right where I used to do it growing up!
It hadn’t been a garden for quite some time, so we had to till the ground and create our garden space. Unfortunately, that act was just the start of many mistakes. Here are 5 gardening mistakes not to make (and ones we won’t make again!).

Not Planning in Advance
When we were getting our seeds and plants, we basically just bought things we thought we would use. This eventually caused problems because we had way more left than we anticipated. We successfully got it all planted, but it was a crowded mess! Next year, I will be mapping the garden and planting things intentionally where they fit in the plan.
Not Planting Immediately
Because my dad lives about a 15-20 minute drive we couldn’t always go out there every day. This was crucial during the first week. We still had plants we hadn’t yet put in the garden for a couple of weeks! Not to mention it was doing nothing but raining during that time! We definitely lost a few!

Not Planting in the Right Season
Since this is our first time gardening in Ohio we weren’t quite sure of the best time to plant. My dad and the gentleman at the garden shop were definitely helpful but we still ended up planting some outside of their key times. This can go back to planning as well because a good plan would have avoided this mistake.
Not Removing Weeds Before Planting Anything
This probably seems like an obvious mistake, but because my husband and I both have physical disorder, weeding was definitely one of the hardest things for us to do. Of course, this caused major problems as the weeds grew along with the plants. Trying to remove them while your garden is already thriving, it is so much harder and very tedious. Next year we will definitely weed after we till!

Not Knowing When to Harvest
I was constantly looking up information on when to harvest certain plants. This lead to multiple trips to harvest. Thankfully, my dad was harvesting things here and there that he noticed they were done. We had no idea when some of them were ready! Again, I think planning would be key.
Because we made so many mistakes, we decided to call this our “test year” meaning now we have a much better idea how to garden well in Ohio. We have definitely learned that planning is one of the most important parts in gardening. The good news is, it wasn’t all for naught. We still harvested some great veggies and have really enjoyed them! (This is one of our good harvests.)

Did you garden this year? What were some of your highlights?