At The Picket Fence with Vanessa Hunt

Where Ideas for your Home Meet Inspiration for your Heart

Blogger Block Party! Fresh from the Garden

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Wow it’s hard to believe we are already on day 5 of the Summer Blogger Block Party! We have seen soooo many fabulous posts and there’s still three days left to link up! A big thank you to all who have participated.  The Block Party is taking the place of Inspiration Friday this week…but we’d love to have y’all come back next week to join us with anything inspiring you’d like to share!

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It’s hard to imagine a country home without a garden! When we moved on to our acreage in Kentucky we knew that at some point we would want to put a garden in.  While we come from a long ancestry of gardeners, neither Bama Boy or I had even had our OWN garden.  Over the last few years and through a lot of trial and error we have become seasoned gardeners in our own right!  We’ve learned how to build garden boxes, grow plants from seeds, how to get rid of pests organically, and how to can, pickle, preserve and otherwise utilize the bounty of produce we have grown!  It’s been a fun learning experience!
Because our soil is mostly lovely Kentucky clay we decided to build gardening boxes, so we could control the quality of the soil. It was no small feat to build all of our garden boxes but it was well worth the effort.

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Using left over lumber from a building project, Bama Boy constructed four large rectangular boxes down on the bottom part of our property.  We filled the bottom with rocks to facilitate good drainage. 

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We had a good quality of garden soil delivered out to our place.  Even though this can be a little pricey, it’s worth it in the long run to have a high quality soil to grow your plants in.  Then Bama Boy prepared the soil by mixing in several other compounds such as peat and lime to achieve the proper ph levels.. 

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Next we determined what we wanted to plant in which box.

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We tried to keep vining plants together such as our cucumbers and squash.

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We planted our trellised plants such as peas and beans together in another box.  These are an early crop, so we were able to rotate some later producing tomatoes and peppers in this bed when the peas were done.

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Like all good Southerners we dedicate an entire bed to tomatoes of all kinds!  With these I like to make tomato sauce and sun dried tomatoes as well as use them for lots of summer pizzas and of course the quintessential Southern sandwich…tomato, mayo and white bread! Winking smile

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After the beds were complete Bama Boy and his dad built a fence around the garden with a nice gate for us to access it.  Needless to say living where we do we have a large deer and rabbit population.  While we love wildlife out here in the country, it was not our intention to keep them fed off our garden all summer.  Along the bottom of the fence we ran a low voltage battery operated electric fence. This has worked well to keep critters…and children for that matter ha! ha!…out of our garden.   We also added a platform with a nice utility box attached to it to store all of our gardening supplies.  This has been so handy! It allows us to keep everything right where we needed it instead of hauling it over several acres down a hill. 
Our garden has given us so much pleasure over the last few years! Bama Boy has taken it over and has enjoyed it as a fun hobby and project. 



So what do you “DO” with all of that bounty once it starts coming in?

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Banana Peppers from our garden

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Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Squash, and Peppers from our Garden

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Okra from our Garden
I step in when it’s time to start harvesting and we spend many summer afternoons canning, preserving, pickling and drying. I have also enjoyed creating and trying different recipes using what we grow! 


The following have been some of our most productive crops from our garden.  
I thought I’d share a few of my recipes for each. Enjoy!



Tomatoes:


Homemade Tomato Basil Simmer Sauce
{Print Recipe}

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Make Your Own Sun Dried Tomatoes
{Print Recipe}

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Chicken Parmigiana with Tomato Basil Simmer Sauce
{Print Recipe}

Chicken parmigiana 1



Okra:


Okra Griddle Cake Sandwiches
{Print Recipe}

Okra skillet cake sandwiches


Okra Fritters
{Print Recipe}

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Peppers:


Homemade Pepper Vinegar
{Print Recipe}

Pepper Vinegar


Pepper Relish
{Print Recipe}



Grilled Stuffed Banana Peppers
{Print Recipe}




*All photographs are my own and from our garden!



Thank you for visiting our garden!  I hope you have a chance to try some of these fabulous recipes!  Even if you don’t have several acres to plant a large garden on, you can still grow wonderful things using containers or building smaller garden boxes.  There is just something special about growing, tending and harvesting your own food! Enjoying the fruits of our labor way into the winter and spring is a wonderful reward for our hard work during the summer!

Since it’s not a party without presents and in honor of all of you fabulous gardeners, our super-duper generous sponsor The Simple Stencil is offering a choice of one of the following stencils:

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You can choose your own color and any size up to a $30 value! A big thank you to The Simple Stencil for providing this giveaway! If you have a chance pay them a visit, you will be amazed at all they offer including custom stencils…

…and it’s just one of the 12 giveaways going on this week for the Blogger Block Party!

 

To be entered into the giveaway you MUST LINK UP (a summer related post) and LINK BACK! We are finding many people are not linking back to the Block Party in some capacity! Thank you to those who take the time to do this…it’s just polite party etiquette!

Here’s a coded button to make linking up super easy!


Now it’s time for YOU to share your garden posts with us?  Do you have a post about gardening? Have you recently put a garden in our built your own garden boxes? Have some great recipes, canning tips, etc to share with us?  If so, than it’s your turn to link up to the Blogger Block Party!

Don’t have a gardening post?  That’s okay!  There are three other FABULOUS themes today! Alison over at Stuff and Nonsense is hosting everything Summer “Sale-ing” Related! If you are a thrifty shopper and you’ve posted about your finds, head over and visit Alison and share your sale-ing posts with us!  Items like this:

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My fabulous Goodwill find that I turned into a Dining Caddy!

If you are a lover of all things Shabby Summer Cottage you will want to pay a visit to the lovely Courtney at French Country Cottage where she is sharing how she decks her cottage out for the summer! And of course we could never leave out our Vintage crowd! The fabulous Debra from Common Ground will be sharing how she celebrates summer in Vintage Style! See we told ya the Blogger Block Party would have a little something for everyone! And you’ve all probably figured this out by now but just in case…your link will show up on all 12 BLOGS participating as soon as you link up! Isn’t that cool? So read the rules, have fun at the party and link em on up!
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  • Link Up any post past or present related to this parties theme
  • Be sure to link back to your original post and not just your url (main blog address)
  • Please post the Blogger Block Party button (code located above and in sidebar) in your post so others can join in the fun! (MANDATORY)
  • Visit another guest. We love it when you party with our other guests!  Please take a moment and visit some of the other posts and leave some comment love!  This is what makes a party so much fun!
  • We’d love it if you’d share the Blogger Block Party on your Facebook Pages and Twitter (use #BloggerBlockParty in your tweet) (Not mandatory but we’d appreciate it!

And we always love getting new friends at the fence! We’d love to see your pretty face in our Google Friends list or send you free email updates.  You can join either in our sidebar! 

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Comments

  2. I’m so jealous of your garden! We have so much shade and only a couple of spaces where we get sun. My tomatoes plants are finally producing and should be ready in a few days! Our potatoes should be ready soon, as well 🙂

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  3. WOW – those peppers look amazing! I cant believe how much you have already…I have nothing but, then again, I just redid the whole layout again!! We switched to raised beds and are trying out square foot gardening. ALL next week will be devoted to our new garden. Check in for progress pics! 🙂

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  7. oh my goodness heather, your property is gorgeous. your garden is thriving beautifully. nothing better than fruit and veggies fresh from the garden.

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  8. Oh, I would love to try sun dried tomatoes. on Pizza! I grew up in KY and had lots on tomato sandwiches! My husband from IL had not! LOL Thanks for the great party. Will spend some of the weekend cruising the posts.
    Sherry

    Reply

  9. Your garden is certainly full of goodies!

    Looks like your party is a roaring success! I’ve been somewhat out of pocket this week and unable to particiate much.

    Reply

  10. Heather, your post is simply wonderful! I love. love. love. your raised garden beds! And, every recipe you posted looks divine! You make my farmer’s daughter roots yearn for some soil to til myself. =( I’ll enjoy looking at yours and wishing! blessings ~ Tanna

    Reply

  11. I have only been through Kentucky once, well and barely tipped my toes in a second time, but love the cave tours! The scenery from the highway was a treat.

    Your raised garden beds sounds like the best way to go but you went far above and beyond the basics.

    Reply

  12. Heather, we don’t have a garden. We really should do some of those boxes. My husband’s dad was an avid gardner, but him, no! I love fresh veggies and especially a good ole drippy tomato sandwich. My neighbor brought over a couple of tomatoes from their garden and we had a sandwich. Love them. You pictures are great. I thought they were from the web until you said they were yours.

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  13. Heather, your garden is amazing and so inspiring. We grew some herbs in hanging baskets last year and it was so much fun. I never thought it would work with hanging baskets but they grew pretty quickly (which is almost impossible down here in South Florida) and we were able to use them for pesto and for our Thanksgiving turkey.

    I must admit; however, that my favorite part of your post is that ADORABLE dining caddy. So cute.

    Thanks for hosting.

    Reply

  15. Your garden looks great. We also have raised beds. I linked up my post about our new compost bin and I’m not sure that quite fits your Fresh from the Garden theme. Sorry if it doesn’t. I’m just most excited about that right now.

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  20. I love your raised bed planters… we have similar ones to keep animals away but yours look just awesome. I love how you made those trellis for your peas and beans and fenced in the area with the cute gate… lovely idea! Thanks for sharing these yummy recipes and the fresh veggies look so tempting especially those okras. Have a lovely evening!~Poppy

    https://withadashofcolor.blogspot.com/

    Reply

  24. You make me want a garden, beautiful delicious food! I am going to bookmark this incredible party, there are so many talented bloggers out there and here they are in one spot! Thanks for the party!
    Debbie

    Reply

  25. I can see in my absence from blogland that your block party was a smashing success!

    We made raised beds here as well. The Georgia clay on our lot isn’t the best for gardens.

    I plan to try your recipes for pepper vinegar and sun dried tomatoes. The husband will be thrilled to try that.

    Reply

  30. Wow, I absolutely love your garden. Chock full of veggies I would actually eat. You both are so inspirational. Now to get my husband to build a fence for the back yard so I can get started. ;-).

    Paula

    Reply

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