It may be cold......

It may be cold and look like this out side my windows....

 

But it makes me feel a little warmer looking at these and doing some planning for this spring.

 

It's that time of year again when the seed catalogs start showing up in the mail.  I have been going through them and picking out seeds for the garden.  This year I would like to try and save some of my seeds, this will be something new for me.  Doing some research and trying to figure out if it will work for us.  The garden space here is small so I know some of the plants it won't work for them because of cross pollination.

I have been gardening for many years.  The first gardens were planted at my parents farm when we were first married.  Then eventually we were able to move into the country and have the garden at our place.  The gardens were always planted in rows far enough apart to till between them.  This is how I grew up gardening with my mom.  As time has went by and we are now gardening in a smaller yard the gardening style has had to change.  I am learning more about gardening in small places.  It is amazing how much you can get into a smaller garden.  With the rising costs of food I am looking to get even more out of our available space.   I am planning on putting some of the garden plants in with the flower beds this year.  

Gardening with clay soil has also been a real challenge.  The ideal would be to have raised beds, but that is not in the budget again this year.  After reading about Lasagna gardening this is something that we will be trying in part of the garden, along with adding more compost in other areas.

Even with the smaller garden we are able to raise most of our own vegetables and can for the winter months. There is not room to plant corn, squash, or pumpkins.  We have been able to get these from local farmers.   

Over the next few weeks my plan is to decide what we will plant and where.  It won't be long and it will be time to start some seeds.

On Tuesday we got a turkey from an Amish family, that I decided to can.  My first time in canning turkey.  First I cut up the turkey so it would fit in my big soup pot, then cooked it about medium done.  Decided to put the meat in pint jars for us.  The turkey wasn't overly large so I got 6 pints.  

Also took the carcass along with onions, celery, carrots, thyme, parsley and garlic and made some soup stock that I canned today.  Ended up with 6 quarts of stock with meat pieces in it.  

We are expecting a cold weekend with wind chills down to 15 below.  Good time to stay inside and do some baking and sewing along with more garden planning.