Mar 4, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

Those raised beds are fit to grow in

I’ve been a bit lethargic about posting the last few days. The words just weren’t forming any sort of decent sentences is my brain. Everything seemed boring. It didn’t help that I’ve been running around here like a maniac the past few days, trying to cram as much into each available second as I could. Thankfully I did get a lot of things done – unfortunately you had nothing to... read more

Jul 29, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

An update on what’s growing

On Saturday morning, I passed by the thyme plant growing in my herb container garden and saw this! ICK!!!! I don’t know where they came from or how they got to be over an inch so quickly but these little suckers were munching down on my thyme plant. I quickly picked them off and disposed of them and thankfully have not found any more…but why we have so many caterpillars around this year eating... read more

Jul 22, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

What we’re growing right now…

If you read this blog often, you know that we tend to grow some things that some might consider strange. Even for us they can be a bit abnormal, but as we try to become more self-sufficient and look towards a future where food costs just continue to rise, we find ourselves focusing on growing more and more interesting things. For example, we’re now trying to grow ginger root. We were in an Asia store... read more

Jul 17, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Another hour in the garden…

Just spent another bit of time pulling weeds, trimming trees and just trying to get a grip on things in the garden. Overwhelming is certainly one way of describing it! I took some more photos but I barely notice the progress myself…well, actually, I can see the progress in the photos! Woohoo I primarily focused on the right side of the garden today, trying to trim down the grass and cut back the... read more

Jul 16, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

A bit of progress in the garden

Well, we finally did something about the garden. I feel guilty for not going back there the last two days but Monday I was still recovering from working back there 3 hours on Sunday…and today it was just too hot in the morning to get out there. I may squeeze in a bit tomorrow morning but I have errands to run all day so I think Thursday will be my first day back out there…it should be a nice... read more

Mar 14, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

That time of the year again

The gardening fever is striking us again (thankfully since we have a nice big space to utilize back there) and we’ve just starting a ton of seeds….of course we are only writing about it on our self-sufficient / garden blog, Self-Reliant Yuppies, so if you want to see what we’re up to, please go drop by! I’ve also posted a bunch of recipes I recently tried out on there if... read more

Mar 14, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

What we got from Burpee

So I’ve mentioned that we got seeds from Burpee a few times now…and you may be wondering what we ordered…so here goes – it’s a LONG list, I know. But the seeds there cost a fraction of the price here, especially for chili seeds so even with shipping them over here, it’s totally worth it. Plus you can’t find okra seeds here…. We mostly stuck to heirloom... read more

Oct 6, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Cayenne harvesting

We got quite a few nice peppers from our cayenne plants despite not really giving much love or attention to them. We decided to harvest a few of the peppers before we went away last week and hung them up in our kitchen to dry. We tried a little piece of one of them in our chicken penne arrabiata dish the other night but probably could have used a tiny bit more. Stefan tried them once before and they were... read more

Sep 4, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

An excess of tomatoes leads to…Southern Spaghetti Sauce

…me in the kitchen making pasta sauce from fresh crushed tomatoes, a task which sounds more daunting than it is. When I was at the grocery story last week, I picked up some ground beef to make spaghetti sauce. I have been using a Southern-style meat sauce recipe for over a year now that I picked up on allrecipes.com. I started out just following the recipe but now I’ve totally changed it up to... read more

Aug 16, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Eggplants, chilies and tomatoes – oh my!

Once again it’s been a while since our last garden update so here goes… I mentioned once or twice that we are giving our lettuce a try in window boxes along our courtyard and at the front of the house. These are the plants by the courtyard which are really thriving. They apparently get just enough sun during the day and I water them all the time too. We’re looking forward to starting to... read more