Beth's Vegetable Garden

I have my vegetable garden to sustain my physical life and my flower garden for my psychological life.

I am growing tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, and sweet banana peppers this year. The plants I bought at Lowe's already had tomatoes and peppers on them. They obviously were last year's plants. So far they are thriving with regular watering and feeding with MiracleGro. I have moved back to Florida and gardening here can be a real challenge. We are behind on rainfall all ready this year and it's only March.

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I try to plant flowers that are red, orange, yellow, and purple. These colors attract hummingbirds and some butterflies. This year I have only seen 1 hummingbirds. They are so adorable, but if you're not paying attention, you could miss them.

I am hoping more come soon. I have a hummingbird feeder that I keep filled with sugar water. I change it every week so it's fresh. I use a 4:1 ration of water to sugar for the nectar.

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So what do you do with all those vegetables you just harvested from your garden. You have three choices. You can eat them. Usually there are too many to eat all of them. You can freeze them or you can can them. I have done freezing, but I prefer canning. I didn't really get into it much until about 3 years ago when the garden produced so well. I had to do something. I couldn't let them go to waste. So I canned. I thought it would be hard, but it really wasn't. It takes time and is hot work, but not hard. Up until 3 years ago, I mainly put up jams and jellies.