Tag: gardening

Podcast - Stories of American History, Podcast - United States History Timeline, Timeline of United States History

Podcast – First Report of European Honeybees in the Colonies

The earliest evidence of the European Honeybee in America comes from a letter drafted by the Council of the Virginia Company, dispatched to Governor and Council in Virginia. The letter noted that the colonists had ordered seeds, apple trees, pigeons, mastiff dogs and beehives. The shipment of bees arrived in Virginia sometime in March 1622 to serve as pollinators for the European crops. The bees would also produce honey and beeswax, which the native bees did not produce. Continue reading Podcast – First Report of European Honeybees in the Colonies

Gardener's Guide Serie, Sample Chapter

Sample Chapter – Gardener’s Guide to Fruit and Vegetable Preservation

People have stored food underground since ancient times. Many times, this practice involved simply placing the food in an urn or barrel and burying it or digging trenches and mounding the earth over the food. The first walk in root cellars didn’t appear in England until the 17th Century. The North American English colonists took the concept along with them and used root cellars extensively to store food. Continue reading Sample Chapter – Gardener’s Guide to Fruit and Vegetable Preservation

Gardener's Guide Serie

Gardener’s Guide to Fruit and Vegetable Preservation

Gardener’s Guide to Fruit and Vegetable Preservation includes the history of many different types of food preservation as well as the modern techniques used to preserve food in the home. Use the guide to preserve your harvest or that purchased during seasonal farmers markets.  Sections in this guide include:

Canning Food        

Freezing Foods        

Pickling and Fermenting Foods        

Root Cellar        

Room Temperature and Refrigerator Storage        

Freeze Drying        

Preserving in Sugar        

Salting Food Preservation        

Immersion in Alcohol        

Vacuum Sealing Continue reading Gardener’s Guide to Fruit and Vegetable Preservation

Abe's Beer Garden

Square Foot Gardening

A gardener named Mel Bartholomew developed the square foot gardening system in 1976. In this system a garden is broken down into four square foot squares and the vegetables planted in square foot blocks, using optimum spacing. I used the system for a year or two, but as I had not begun using raised beds yet, the system did not work well for me. Continue reading Square Foot Gardening

Abe's Beer Garden, Blog

Building a Worm Farm

I recently constructed a worm farm to put kitchen waste in and have the worms reduce it to compost and worm tea. The worm compost can be used as a potting soil ingredient and soil amendment for the garden. Worm tea is a brown liquid that drains out of the tubs and is collected and used to water seedlings or plants in the garden. I used 3 plastic tubs to make the worm farm. Continue reading Building a Worm Farm