Produce

With an increase in awareness of the damage of many medicated commercial feeds and genetically modified food sources, some backyard chicken owners are trying their hand at growing their own chicken feed.

Getting your child to eat healthy foods doesn’t have to be boring or an unpleasant experience. Here are a few tasty ideas to turn snack time into a fun, hands-on experience for your child. Your toddler or preschool-age child will enjoy these quick and easy-to-prepare snacks that include plenty of fruits and vegetables. And the best part is that they’re good for you, too!

Tomatoes are a fast-multiplying garden vegetable and can be used in a variety of ways. When your tomatoes are ripening faster than you can eat them, take an afternoon to blanch and peel them for future use. This way, when recipes call for crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce, you’ll always have some on hand!

When it comes time to pick tomatoes from your garden, take an afternoon and make some homemade freezer salsa. This is a great how-to for those who are beginners at making and freezing food. This salsa recipe is great for dipping or for use in other recipes. It is easy to make and oh so tasty!

Harvested at full maturity and dried for storage, beans are a very high source of protein. Learn tips for growing beans in your own home garden, and how to harvest as dried beans.

There is nothing like fresh, succulent berries to jazz up a smoothie or dessert during the summer months. But what do you do when you long for that flavor come January? The produce aisles have an abundance of berries during the summer months, why not take advantage of the fresh fruit at a great price and freeze them to use for later? Freezing berries is extremely simple and leaves you with a supply of summer’s goodness to get you through a long winter.

The Backyard Homestead, edited by Carleen Madigan, is published by Storey Publishing (2009) and claims to teach readers how to "produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre of land." How useful is this book for beginning urban farmers wanting to get back to basics and increase their self-sufficiency?

Asparagus is a perennial vegetable that is rather expensive to purchase in the grocery store, but very easy to grow for yourself in a victory garden. And if you are the type of person who likes to maximize their time, energy, and money, you'll be pleased to find out that asparagus is a perennial vegetable. This means you will only have to plant asparagus once, but you'll have a harvest year after year.