Gardens never get smaller, and the work never decreases.

So me and my DF are working hard this weekend expanding the gardens. He wants to put another flower bed, and I want some more room for my garden. It's not really a struggle as it usually just means we do both, and it just takes a little longer to get them done.

We are adding to my garden so that next year we can have more tomatoes, I canned some spaghetti sauce this year along with pickled beets and chopped tomatoes, but next year I want to expand on that, cut down on what we will have to buy from the store. Food prices never seem to go down they always go up, and if I can help with that cost with my efforts then all the better.

This year we went gangbusters with peppers, we have never had so many! They were huge and delicious! Never have we had any luck with peppers, they always seem so scraggly and small, usually only giving us a handful of peppers. Not so this year! This year every plant gave us at least 10 peppers or more! Even when they had to be pulled they still had dozens of small ones trying to grow, it was a very sad day when we pulled them. Next year I want more plants and hopefully they will do just as well! Yet all those peppers meant a lot of work for us, eating them wasn't so bad it was trying to eat the million and a half ones that were going bad faster then we could eat them. We did freeze them chopped and ready to be put in any number of dishes, but that was a time consuming task, they were laid out on cookie sheets and frozen then bagged and labeled before back into the freezer they went. We still have two baskets to chop and freeze, not to mention the tomatoes that STILL haven't been done! Wow if this is how I feel with a small garden I can't imagine how I will feel when we add to it.

                         
                       Yummy delicious peppers growing in my garden, they were so good to eat!

My DF thinks I am insane for wanting to expand our garden and can more, but he doesn't like the canning, thinks it takes too much work, and would much rather just freeze the food. But when I pointed out the amount of tomatoes in the freezer from the years previous that we have never used it makes my point a little better.

And I don't mind the work honestly, if I was going to make the pizza sauce or soup or whatever anyway why not make more and take 20 minutes and can it? But if I am the only one who wants to do it then that's fine with me.

I would really love to make my own stocks and can those, but that takes a few days of simmering from what I have read and with me working full time I don't see how that will work unless I have a long weekend over a holiday or something.

Does anyone have any good recipes to use green tomatoes with? I have a recipe for green tomato pie that my Grandmother gave me I want to try, but that can only use up so much. I was thinking of canning green tomatoes for frying or making a green tomato relish or something. We are going to have more green tomatoes then I will be able to keep up with this winter when I pull the plants finally.

The point of this is though that no matter how much work my garden is, I love getting out there in the sun and getting my hands dirty, or working up a sweat, because it all becomes meaningless when I go outside and pick that first ripe tomato, or pull that carrot for dinner. It makes me happy to be providing for my family something that I know is good for them and will taste so much better then anything you could buy in a store.