Zinnias are the best garden flowers, usually grown from seed, and preferably in fertile, humus-rich, and well-drained soil, in an area with full sun. 

Zinnias attract many beneficial insects to your garden.  The little Trichogramma wasp that lays its eggs on the Horn worms that eat the tomatoes.  The little wasps will take care of all the Horn worms for you.  The secret of the Zinnia is the tiny, tiny flowers inside the center for the tiny insects.

Zinnias also attract hundreds of Butterflies to your garden.  It is amazing.  My garden is filled with Butterflies all summer long.

You can save the Zinnia spent flowers for seeds and Zinnias also re-seed everywhere in our garden.  You have to be careful when weeding to not pull up the little seedlings everywhere.

Freezing Tomatoes

We always grow a lot of tomatoes.  We love to share them and also sell organic tomatoes.  I freeze tomatoes all summer long.  I do not can them anymore as I do not have a cool dark place to store the canned goods.  We do not have air conditioning in our farm house so freezing works well for us.

My favorite tomato is Early Girl both for taste and ease of skinning.  We grow the orange low acid tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes, Tommy Toes, Beefsteak and just about any other kind we get our hands on.

I have a Tomato Juicer I use when I want to make juice and sauce.  It is great for Cherry tomatoes too.  I pour the tomato sauce into plastic bottles to freeze.  Plastic bottles of all sizes work well for storing in the freezers.  Some tomatoes I freeze chunky, some as sauce.

I also love to cook up stewed tomatoes in the crock pot with Bell Peppers and Banana Peppers and freeze these too in plastic bottles.  I do not add onions.  You can sauté your onions fresh and add to stewed tomatoes when you are ready to use them.

 

We fill up the rows and boxes with mulched pony manure.  We just pile it high up.  We layer fresh grass clippings and manure.  We keep the top covered with grass clippings to keep the soil cool for the worms.

Tomatoes and Peppers will come up on their own also because of the heavy mulch thru the winter.  We usually have hundreds of volunteer plants.

 

 

Zinnia

 

Black Eyed Susans
 

 

 

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