If I say squash, you might say butternut, acorn, spaghetti ; perhaps even delicata or carnival if you're an avid stuffer of squash. How about Sunshine, Thunder, Australian Butter, Jarrahdale to name a few? These lovely beauties not only look festive but taste good too. Fall is a great time to find...
How About Visiting Your Local Pumpkin Patch!! We have a new pumpkin patch in our area - Sheffer Farms Pumpkin Patch. They are open Thursday through Sunday, this fall. The Patch has over 75 varieties of pumpkins, squash and gourds, a corn maze and activities including a pumpkin carving and...
We've all been there, there at the garden center toward the end of the season when there are tons of unclaimed plants and the growing season is coming to a close. What happens to the poor unclaimed annual plants? Well, they go home with people for really, really cheap depending on where you do your...
This past week, I got to enjoy what I think is one of the best ways to experience the goodness of home garden - the Caprese Salad. In case you do not know what a Caprese Salad is, it is the wonderful combination of sliced ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, sliced fresh mozzarella cheese and olive oil....
I really burst my husband's bubble last week when he proudly told me how he gave some of the 'Indigo Blue' tomatoes I've been growing away to someone we know. He said they were beautiful and "totally blue and ripe". When I told him that not a single one was even close to being ripe, and the blue...
For the ninth year in a row, Macon County Master Gardeners, Green Thumb community gardeners and I have planted a selection of tomato cultivars for our annual Tomato Taste Panel. During this event, community members to join us in tasting 30-40 different heirloom and hybrid tomato cultivars. The goal...
If you've been following the Bucket, Bales & Bushels blog for long, you know we're trying our hand at Straw Bale Gardening for the first time this year. Despite a seemly slow start,
This was the name of a 4-H Special Interest club that gave children the opportunity to visit several local farms to see: greenhouse (high tunnel) vegetables, dairy cows, beef cows, chickens and fruit orchards. All these farms were within a 20 minute drive of our office. Take a look at the pictures...
The peas are producing and the broccoli is generating small florets for snacking. The bush beans & pole beans have both germinated. Moss rose was planted to replace the lettuce in the gutter garden which will tolerate the heat of summer without any trouble. The impatiens are flourishing in...
Our bucket gardens have attracted a lot of attention to the Piatt County Extension office. There were some doubters, even in our own office, who said we would never harvest anything fit to eat from them. Today we proved them wrong and served a delicious lunch of...
