Recently my doctor gave me the kick in the pants I really needed to lose weight.  Like 50 lbs of weight.  She suggested the South Beach Diet because it is based on the glycemic index.  The diet had worked for me before but I’d just gotten lazy.  So while thinking about what type of garden I wanted to plant this year I decided I should try to center my garden around foods lower on the glycemic index that I can eat.

So here is the list I’ve compiled that you can plant for a low glycemic/South Beach Diet kind of garden:

Veggies

• Artichokes
• Asparagus
• Broccoli
• Bok Choy
• Brussel sprouts
• Cabbage
• Caper
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Chayote
• Chipotle
• Collard Greens
• Cucumbers
• Eggplant
• Green/string beans
• Heart of palm
• Jicama
• Kale
• Leeks
• Lettuce {all varieties}
• Mushrooms {all varieties}
• Mustard greens
• Nopales
• Okra
• Onions
• Parsley
• Peppers {all varieties}
• Radicchio
• Radishes {all varieties}
• Rhubarb
• Sauerkraut
• Scallions
• Snow peas
• Spinach
• Sprouts
• Squash
• Swiss chard
• Tomato
• Turnip greens
• Water chestnut
• Watercress
• Wax beans

Nuts and Proteins

• Almond Tree
• Brazil nuts
• Cashew
• Macadamia
• Peanuts
• Pecans
• Pine nuts
• Pistachios
• Pumpkin seeds
• Sesame seeds
• Sunflower seeds
• Walnuts

Beans

• Adzuki
• Black beans
• Black eye peas
• Broad beans
• Butter beans
• Cannellini beans
• Chickpeas or garbanzos
• Great northern beans
• Italian beans
• Kidney beans
• Lentils
• Lima beans
• Navy beans
• Pinto beans
• Soy beans
• Split peas
• White beans

Lowest Glycemic Fruits

• Cantaloupe
• Rhubarb

Mid Glycemic Fruits

• Apples
• Apricots
• Bananas
• Blackberries
• Cherries
• Cranberries
• Grapefruit
• Guava
• Kiwi
• Lemon
• Lime
• Orange
• Papaya
• Plum
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Tangerines
• Tomatoes

Now obviously you won’t be able to grow all of these depending on your area and climate, but if you can grow some of the healthier foods in your own yard it will definately help your waistline, health and pocket book!  So take the list and figure out which ones will grow where you are.  Now if I could just figure out how to grow a papaya in the hot dry desert I would be in heaven!

Chestnuts are the winter treat celebrated in the classic Christmas song by Nat King Cole, but they are also a treat in the edible landscape too.

If you have enough room, they are a majestic tree that will lend a stately air to your property.  But when I say enough room, I mean, you will need A LOT of room because these trees are HUGE!!  With a mature height of 60 feet, they will spread out across 40 feet.  But not only will they give you the yummy benefits of being able to cook chestnut turkey stuffing at Thanksgiving, their strong and sturdy trunks are wonderful for the coolest treehouses.  Imagine what little kid, {or big kid} wouldn’t want to build a tree house to rival Tarzan’s or Swiss Family Robinsons.  This is the kind of tree to do it in.

So hang a swing, enjoy the cool shade in the summer {plant it so that it will shade your house to help reduce your cooling costs} and enjoy the sweet little nut and the gorgeous stature it will offer your yard.

You can get a Chinese Chestnut Tree that is supposed to be pretty hardy and resistant to blight and that supposedly will give you 75-100 pounds of chestnuts each season through Gurney’s if you’re interested.

This may seem like a silly post for the blazing hot days of August, but I thought this picture was an interesting photo of a pinecone getting ready for fall.  It isn’t fully opened yet and the colors look greener and newer than the typical pinecone brown we think of.

Can pine nuts be far behind?    Raise your hand if you are going to try to harvest any this year!  {I’m raising mine ~ if I can find someone with a tree since I don’t have one of my own!}

For a refresher on pine nuts, click here.

Did you think I had forgotten all about you?

No!  Never!

But I did forget to water  some of my plants lately.  But really, I forgot  my password ~~ oops!  In my defense I did get rather busy in my real life too.

But I’m back!  So stay tuned!

Last time I posted some lists that had dwarf and genetic dwarf varieties listed.   As we get into more of the edible landscape elements, some of these will become more and more important.

The terms really confused me when I first ran into them.  And I wondered what the differences were, and did they really matter? If I needed a genetic dwarf cherry, could I get away with planting a regular ol’ cherry?  {Um, the answer to that would be  no!}

So what are the differences?

Well obviously as the names imply they are shorter than a regular version of the same tree.   The differences lay however in their rootstocks.  A dwarf tree is a tree that is grafted onto a dwarfing rootstock which restricts the trees growth while a genetic dwarf was simply born to be short and doesn’t need to be grafted onto a rootstock to make it that way.

Dwarf and genetic dwarf trees can come in a range of sizes from some small enough to live in pots, clear up to semi-dwarfs that can end up being about 2/3 the size of a regular sized tree.  So getting one that is the right size for what you need will be important.  Even though dwarf trees are smaller, they still will give you regular sized fruits just not as many as on a full sized tree.

Now if you want to get really technical, you can learn about the different types of dwarf rootstocks which for me, just started making my head spin.   So if you are curious, just let me know and I will try to wrap my head around these a little more and post about them.  For now, I will just trust that the nurseries will know what I’m talking about and be able to help me find the right one.  I hope to have a nice little list of places that sell dwarf and genetic dwarfs for you soon!

With the encouragement of a lot of people, I have decided to move my blog over to my very own domain. It’s exciting and since I’m not very technical, it took me a while to figure out.

I will still be going over what is going on in my own little humble garden, but people close to me have also been encouraging me to share more of my ideas {because I’m always coming up with them, or running across new ideas}, resources and things that I come across so that others can benefit from the knowledge too. And since food production is very important to me, I thought that was a very good idea!

Since I’m not too technical though I don’t think very many of my previous posts will be transferred over to the new blog. I will just keep going from where we were at instead of loading all my old posts over there. But I will still keep this one here in case you ever want to refer back to any of them.

So come on over and check out my new blog at ThePotagerGarden.com .

Things have been quiet around here. We’re working on eating all the canned goodies I worked on last summer. And I should have been planning this years garden but I haven’t. I have vague ideas of what I want to do, but nothing specifically planned out yet.

By the way, I figured out why my potatoes were getting all shrivelly and sprouty. I had to re-read my Root Cellaring book in depth to figure out what my problem was. Not enough moisture and people leaving the light on in my storage room. So next year should be better now that I know that!

I should have ordered seeds and now we’re in the middle of February and if I was going the seed route I think I should be starting my spring crops but . . . . I’ve been super busy with some other things. So hang in there with me! I should hopefully be back in full force soon!

My current “root cellar” isn’t totally perfected yet. My potatoes are starting to get a little soft and shrivel-ly, and some are even trying to sprout.

I don’t think I got them into their nice “cool” spot soon enough after I got them. They stayed in my semi-heated basement {and not my cold storage room} through the end of fall while the temperatures outside were still warm, thus keeping my basement a little warmer too.

I borrowed my nephews outdoor thermometer he made at school to see how cold the basement is currently, and the cold storage room surrounded by cement walls read 32 degrees. I think it might be wrong. I mean, my pipes would be frozen if it was really that cold down there wouldn’t they? Maybe the rest of my basement, which is larger and isn’t completely surrounded by cement is warmer which is maybe why I don’t have frozen pipes? I should test the other rooms maybe.

However, potatoes do like a nice cold 32-40 degrees. So maybe I’m good now. Maybe I’ve halted their demise.

But I feel like I need to do something with them. I’m trying to decide if I should dehydrate a bunch, or can a bunch of them in my new pressure canner. Probably both. I need to go get my pressure canner tested by my local extension agency first though.

Hmm, what to do, what to do . . . .

Safely Gathered In is doing Food Storage Resolutions {and a giveaway!} so I thought I should make some.

Let’s see:

1. Build shelves in the root cellar
2. Get hand grain grinder
3. Cook more with my beans and oatmeal
4. Start my compost pile so my garden will be AWESOME!
5. Learn to use my new pressure canner I got for Christmas!
6. Put up LOTS more garden goodness than last year
7. Figure out a workable inventory system
8. Replace food and clothing in 72 hr kits
9. Finalize garden plans and get some fruit trees planted

How’s that for starters?

Sugared Cranberries and
Cranberry Spice Syrup
Makes 3 cups cranberries

Sweet and tangy sugared cranberries make a surprising addition to candy bowls, your favorite apple pie recipe, cheesecake,baked brie, pancake or ice cream topping.

Ingredients
3 cups sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
6 whole cloves
3 cups water
3 cups fresh cranberries, rinsed
1 cup superfine sugar

Mix sugar, cinnamon sticks and cloves with water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Simmer for 1 minute, stirring until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl. Stir in cranberries. Cover and refrigerate for about 8 hours. Drain cranberries. Reserve liquid, strain out cinnamon sticks and cloves and use as a simple syrup to add a holiday touch.

Place superfine sugar in a bowl and gently toss in cranberries, coating evenly. Place cranberries on a baking sheet to dry, about 1 to 2 hours.

Store in an airtight container.

Fill jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace and boil in water bath canner for 20 minutes. When serving, if you’d like a thicker syrup, simply add a little cornstarch before heating it up.

It all started with Blast From The Past. The scene where the mom is shopping in the bomb shelter with a grocery cart, like 30 years later! How cool is that? Yeah, I want my own grocery store too!

So I was trying to find some peach crates for my root cellar and came a cross a whole bunch of fun produce department products to make my own little grocery store even cuter!

Washable baskets

Cute deep baskets

Even a real produce stand!

Cute hanging baskets to put on the walls.

Even something like this would be cool!

Or these if you don’t have shelf space anymore.

Just put these out nearby on the floor.

Or a real decorative produce cart if you have room!

Or even stands built to hold lots of baskets!

Yeah, there are a lot of products out there to help me design my own cute lil’ grocery store!

{via avisbag and Hubert}

Remember my big box of green tomatoes? Well, we’re still eating them! But we’re down to the very last ones to ripen. They’ve kept quite nicely in the garage all this time!

• Pumpkins–canned or fresh
• Sweet potatoes/Yams–fresh from the farmer stand if possible for the root cellar, or canned
• Potatoes–fresh from the farmer stand if possible for the root cellar
• Turkey–grab extras if you have room in your freezer, or if you have a pressure canner
• Baking supplies–flour, sugar, chocolate, etc
• Cranberries–fresh to dry them for trail mixes, to throw in salads, and for baked goodies
• Other root veggies like parnsips, turnips, rutabagas etc–fresh from the farmer stand if possible

I know I officially declared my canning season over with the last grape juice fiasco, but I looked out my window this weekend and noticed all the leaves had fallen off the grapevine but there were still lots of grape clusters hanging on.

So I trudged out and lo and behold, they were still good grapes! So I picked a box, brought them in and canned more juice!

This time everthing went ok {mostly}–no burnt pan or burnt stove top. This time only a burnt finger which I iced for six hours before going to bed then put a frozen gel pack wrapped around it while I slept and worried if I was going to wake up to a frostbitten finger.

What was I thinking??? Did I mention how awesome I am at canning? Oh how soon I forget!

Growing up, my mother-in-law tells about her single, widowed mom who had a goal every year to can at least 200 bottles of each crop she had access to. And she knew if she had 200 bottles of peaches, 200 bottles of applesauce and so on, that she would have enough to feed her family through the winter.

{via Country Living UK, Nov 2003}

You can purchase an apple rack like that at R. K. Alliston from the UK but hubby says if you’re handy it really doesn’t look that hard to build.

Or this Gorm clip-on basket {only $4!} could also work in some instances.

Apples need to be stored in shallow layers so that they don’t bruise each other plus it makes it easier to check on them this way. That’s why I like the above two options, but half bushel baskets and slatted crates work well too.

They like nice cold temperatures, as low as 32 degrees, but can also be kept a little warmer, they just won’t last quite as long. So depending on the temperature they’re kept at you could possibly have fresh apples clear til spring. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

But if they become softer than you’d like for fresh eating you can always serve them as baked apples or applesauce. Mmmm!

I did end up taking a vacation. And it was refreshing. But now I need to get back into the swing of things. Just because we are getting deeper into autumn doesn’t mean that gardening and preserving is over yet.

I still have beds to clean out, leaves to rake, and hopefully I can still get my fruit trees in, then I still have shelves to build in the root cellar and containers to get for some of my food. Then comes the planning for next year and the managing of this years food.

But the brisk autumn air feels exhilirating so I don’t mind squirreling around, cleaning and cozying up the place.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m really cut out for this. My husband keeps telling me for all my time and effort {and stress} that it would just be easier to go buy the food from the grocery store. But it really makes me sad to see fruit trees go unpicked, or garden produce going to waste. Especially since Mother Earth is so generous.

But then I take a good hard look at myself and I’ve let produce go to waste before I could get it preserved somehow, and I’ve burnt the lid of the dehydrator {long story, don’t ask!}, and I’ve let the water burn out of the juicer not once but three times, ruined the pan and have probably poisoned the juice with burnt pan chemicals that will poison my family with botulism or something worse! {I should probably throw those bottles down the drain!}

The kitchen carnage of that poor ol’ juice pan is what has me throwing in the towel of surrender this year. I’m officially declaring my canning season over!

But then I also realize it has been a HUGE experimental year filled with learning all sorts of new things.

I have finally figured out how to manage lots of hot bottles for the canner. I’ve learned that juicing is easy if you pay attention to the water level in the steamer section. Making sauces {like apple or pear sauce} is easy also. So is dehydration. I can handle those.

I’ve also learned that prep work is time consuming as is the actual processing time and that it requires my full attention. I can’t be trying to do three or four things at once which ends up ruining a perfectly good juicer pan. I’ve also learned that if I’m not careful it can overtake my life while other important things are ignored or forgotten.

I’ve learned a lot about gardening too. I learned a ton about my property and its quirks and where the sun hits. I’ve learned about soils, compost and pruning.

So in the end, I’m grateful for the Independence Days challenge, it taught me a lot, but I did have a lot of troubles along the way. Someone please tell me it will get easier someday and that all my problems will be but distant memories come next year when we’re ready to try this again!

And now, I need a good vacation!

• Get and plant new fruit trees {and decide final locations}
• Clean out the rest of the beds
• Fortify the raised planters so that dirt and water don’t escape next year through the cracks
• Clean out cold storage room
• Put in new shelves for root cellar
• Get baskets or containers for root cellar and buckets for food storage
• Pick the rosehips and dry them for winter vitamin C drinks
• Order seeds for next year
• Figure out how to make my basement not smell like onions and potatoes from the root cellar

Snow flurries are in the forecast this weekend so I picked the remaining green tomatoes. Look how pretty they are! I was going to hang them up but then I read Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables by Mike and Nancy Bubel and it said they didn’t need to be hung necessarily, so I just went ahead a picked a whole box.

We’re working on getting our “root cellar” set up this weekend. I bought 100 pounds of potatoes, 50 pounds of onions and some pumpkins from my local farmer. Plus I have a bunch of apples that need a home down there too. It’s very exciting!

I went to the nursery today to buy my peach tree. I was going to plant it where my other tree died. But while I was at the nursery I saw other fruit trees that I’d love to have too~~like an apricot and a plum! So then I started thinking about the restoration garden again and creating my own sort of courtyard with a bunch of fruit trees.

It was overcast today so I went out to try and get a better shot of the restoration garden without the shadows in the way. You can see the design a little better now.

Here is a picture of my house where I was thinking about creating a courtyard sort of effect to plant more fruit trees.

Problems I see are:

1. My space isn’t as large as the restoration garden.
2. I would have to convince my neighbor to create a courtyard on their property too so that it would be balanced.
3. They just planted a tree, a nut tree of some sort, that I have a feeling will grow humungo.
4. There are tons of electrical wires that run to the house in this area.
5. I’m sure there are other things I’m not thinking about

So I don’t really know if this is feasible but it would be fun if it were. Maybe I should just keep thinking of other places to plant my fruit trees. Which then made me think of some other fun ideas I’ve run across . . . .

. . . . so stay tuned for the next installment in my fruit tree dilemma!