Search

Dog Cookies

Making homemade dog cookies is a useful idea and our dog just loves them. Here is the latest batch I baked.

Homemade Dog Cookies

I used my dog bone treat recipe to make these round cookies. They are a just right size for our dog to take into her mouth without having to break into smaller bits. This makes for less mess and no crumbs. I have been favoring making these smaller cookies rather than the larger dog bones. These round dog cookies are just a little bigger than a quarter coin.

Making your own homemade dog cookies is frugal and much healthier for your dog than some of the store-bought dog treats. Many of those contain added ingredients that are not necessary or healthy for dogs.

0

Recycling Old Christmas Cards

Sharing a useful idea for old Christmas cards. Recycle them into new Christmas ornaments! All you need are some old Christmas cards, glue, yarn, crochet hook and a hole punch. Here are some new Christmas ornaments I just made.

Recycled Old Christmas Cards

A full picture tutorial and directions are found at My Recycled Bags which is my crafting blog.

Here is another photo of more of the Christmas card ornaments I crafted from old cards.
Recycled Christmas Card Ornaments

This is a wonderful way to reuse and recycled your old Christmas cards. I hope you have enjoyed this useful idea.

Merry Christmas!

0

Harvesting and Drying Garlic

I just harvest the garlic that I planted last fall. I stopped watering the garlic recently after about half the leaves dried out as shown in the photo. You want to harvest the garlic when the ground is dry and use a small garden shovel to loosen the dirt around the plant. I was surprised by how tough the plant was to pull out of the ground. I had to dig down and loosen the dirt all around the plant and still had to really tug to get it out.

Harvested Garlic Drying

Some of the garlic was nearly the size of a baseball.
Garlic Drying

After about 4 weeks of drying, I trimmed the tops and roots of the garlic. Here are a few of my final product. Continue Reading →

0

Growing Garlic

I have never grown garlic before. Last Fall I was given some garlic bulbs for planting. They say they winter over well so I thought I’d give garlic a try.
Garlic in the Spring Growing

Here is a helpful link with instructions for planting, growing and harvesting garlic.

I separated the cloves and planted them last Fall in a raised bed. I covered the cloves with some sawdust I had left them to grow. Late this winter after the snow melted, I checked on them. I was excited to see the green tops that had popped out of the dirt.

I’ve been watering them now that the weather has warmed up. The photo above is their progress so far this year. As you can see some of the leaves are starting to turn yellow so I think all is going well with my garlic. They say when about half of the leaves turn yellow or brown, stop watering. So I will watch closely and wait for them to mature before harvesting them later this summer.

I am looking forward to having my own home-grown garlic this year and it’s looking promising thus far.

0

Strange Growing Potatoes

Have you ever had strange growing potatoes? I discovered these mutant looking potatoes when I dug up a patch of potatoes in my back garden this Fall. These were planted later this year and apparently didn’t get enough water.

Strange Shaped Potatoes

I researched what the cause of these strange growing potatoes and found that they were stressed. Stressed potatoes don’t grow properly. The tubers stop growing and don’t spread out causing the potatoes to grow together such as these potatoes did.

Long periods of dry, hot weather without enough rain and lack of watering is mainly the cause. There are also some other reasons that you get can strange growing potatoes as shown in this gardening article. This summer was very hot and we didn’t get much rain so this stressed out my potatoes.

When you get mutant growing potatoes like this, your harvest will be much smaller as I can attest to. While this late planting of potatoes did produce some potatoes, my overall harvest was smaller than last year. I learned a valuable lesson and will share a useful tip, water more to prevent this!

0

Drying Onions

I harvested these onions that had fallen over and were ready to start curing and drying for winter storage.
Drying Onions

Once the onions fall over, you can gently dig them up and put them out to begin to dry. You want them laying out like this for at least one day. You don’t want to leave them out in the sun after that. So you can either find a shady spot or cover them with a sheet as shown.
Onions covered for drying

You want to use a sheet so the curing onions can breathe and have air circulate around them. Do not cover with plastic. After about a week or two, the tops will die off and then you can trim the onion tops.

Next photo is after the tops were cut and I placed them in this shallow box in the shade under a lean-to for them to continue to dry and cure for another month. You can now just brush off the roots as they are dry and dead.
Onions drying for storage

Check on the drying onions to make sure that any damaged onions are used right away. Store the dried onions in Continue Reading →

0