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Year 5 Wrap Up - Year 6 Progress

Year 5 ended with a fizzle, hence the lack of posts.  My one really good tomato plant was ravaged by a mouse.



We killed it for good measure, alas it was too late.

With the tomatoes I did have, I dehydrated them and turned them into tomato powder - which is totally a product people use, I had no idea (see here, here and here).  It's now August 2018, have a used it?  Big fat nope.  Yeah...I suck.  It's still living in my pantry, vacuum-sealed.

So, let's fast forward to this year - Year 6.  I had my second son on June 8th (Yay!).  Doing anything remotely enjoyable with two children under 5 is neigh impossible. Yes, I have planted tomatoes, and I have planted a zucchini, but not much progress in containers or working with our land has happened.  Shocking right?

On top of that, it's been an unusually hot summer here in Colorado, so the tomatoes in my raised beds are not loving life, the tomato plant I put closer to the ground (same spot as the good one last year, that was eaten up by mice), is doing really well.  Who knew, shade is saving this bad boy.  So far, no mouse damage.




Since the tomato powder experiment has gone no where, I really want to get back to the canning idea, specifically crushed tomatoes - those I use all year round.  In the next month or so I will dig up a tutorial and see if I can squeeze in the time to do the work.  This is what grandma's are for after all.  Watching the grandbabies.  :-)

Another development has been our strawberries - they are going to take over the world, one runner at a time.  They have taken over the whole smaller bed and are crawling their hardest to the next one.




My husband transplanted some into the second so that one will get enveloped next year (there goes that tomato spot).  We did pick several small berries in the spring.  How on earth does one get the big strawberries you see at the store?! Probably having actual humidity and frequent moisture. 


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