My garden has out grown it's beds.

 Please ignore the weeds we were gone for a week . My girls were great about watering but as they say: Weeds are not in they vocabulary.

 My one Cantaloup  plant is really getting big. I have 6 cantaloup from the one plant. I also have one watermelon plant in the box. It did have three watermelons till a racoons stole  my biggest one. 

 Strawberries are  starting to slow down. We had to put netting over the box not just for the birds,but to try to keep them in the box.

 My pickle plant is getting out of hand. I am getting so many pickles that I am now giving them away.

 My poor tomato plant got so big that it broke its stakes and fell over.

 It still has plenty of tomatoes on it. Can't wait for them to ripen.

This is my Purple Kirn Tomato plant. As you can see it is also having problems standing up. The medal stakes seem to work better then the wood ones. Next year  I don't think I will be using wood stakes. 

 

 My Zucchini plant is gigantic. We are getting a great harvest off it.

This is what happens when the Zucchini decides to hide from you. We weighed it and it weighed 4 and 1/2 pounds. I will be using it for the seeds for next year. All three of my gardens did great this year. I hope they do as good next year.

This week in my Kitchen

Time to get back to work.

We came home from our trip to a lot of pickling cucumber that were ready to be picked and canned.
You know you got the gardening bug bad when you make pickle before you make breakfast. And I don't even like dill pickles!
The recipe came from  www.newhousenewhomenewlife.com/2014/08/fresh-garden-recipes-dill-pickles.html I did process mine in a hot water bath for 15 minutes just to be safe.

 More beans and corn ready to be caned.

 This is what happens when you leave zucchini to it's own devices for three days.  One was 20 inches long.

I was also able to get two batches of goats milk soap done.  Tomorrow I will be making relish out of my over grown Zucchini.  Then its on the the corn, beans, and tomatoes.

Homemade Dish Soap that works great with lots of bubbles.

 UPDATE: The glycerin was recently added to this recipe to make the bubbles last longer.  It works great .

WARNING: This is not totally homemade .

I found a homemade dish soap that worked great, only problem was no bubbles. I am a big bubbles girl. I know they don't do anything to help  clean the dishes.  But on those cold days,there is nothing better then sticking your hands into a hot sink full of bubbles.

I tested this dish soap for a week before posting it. I wanted to make sure it would work as well as the store bought. I am happy to say it does. ( I have now been using this recipe for two years.) Recipe originally posted  in 2012.

                                           My own bubbling dish soap

2 cups water

2 tablespoons of moisturizing shampoo ( I used VO5 that I got at the dollar store )

1 tablespoon Borax

1 tablespoon Baking Soda

1 tablespoon Vinegar

   6 to8 tablespoon Dawn dish soap.

 2 to3  squirt of glycerin

Mix all ingredients in a bowl with a spoon. Using a funnel  pour into a large empty dish soap bottle .
 The original recipe  calls for clear shampoo. I used moisturizing shampoo since I like the way it makes my hands feel. I added Dawn and glycerin to the recipe for my bubbles. You could probably use just 6 tablespoon of Dawn since it makes so many  bubbles.

Using 6 tables spoons of Dawn add 18.4 cents a bottle. Using 8 tablespoon adds 25 cents. Without the Dawn your dish soap will run about 10 cents a bottle.