Around our house our daughter Alex is in charge of planting the Nasturtium. The seeds are large enough for her little fingers to handle- plus they look like little brains! Some people start these seeds indoors, but Alex prefers to start them directly in the garden using her favorite tool- a stick. The rule of thumb around our house is when we start seeing Nasturtium popping up in the garden (from last year’s seeds), it’s warm enough for us to plant the seeds. Since Alex is too young to play with knives or nail clippers, she uses a large finger nail file for scarification. She takes each seed and just drags it one way along the file one time, then moves on to the next one. We then put all of the seeds in a bowl of warm water and wait until the next day to go plant them in the garden. If you're looking for other scarification methods, you should check out Fern's website since she's doing a little nifty experiment right now!
Having a toddler has required me to really chill out in the garden. She’s going to plant things where she wants to plant them- in the crack of a sidewalk, in random pots, or in the middle of an existing shrub. If I give her too much direction, she’ll get frustrated and not want to participate. I don’t mind nasturtium everywhere in the yard because they’re fun, colorful AND edible- so they’re the perfect seed for her to have freedom with!
Last weekend we had way too much rain to be out in the garden, but we will finally get to plant our seeds this weekend! In addition to the various seeds we harvested last year, Alex and I are participating in the GROW project, sponsored by Renee’s Garden. We are very excited to add Nasturtium ‘Spitfire’ to our garden this year- as we’re both little spitfires ourselves! If you've never tried growing nasturtium before- I highly recommend it! They add a nice nutty flavor to summer salads!
I’m growing Nasturtium “Spitfire” for the GROW project. Thanks, to Renee’s Garden for the seeds.
I planted the artichokes right on the front corner of our lot- next to the street. Whenever I’m out working in the yard I have people ask me what those funky looking blue plants are. They look at me funny when I say they are artichokes. Some folks seem to like them, but my more vocal neighbors do not (oh too bad- guess you’re not getting any). Up until now my husband has HATED where they are at. He thinks they look like weeds. Perhaps if I was a better “designer” I could have designed that section a little better so they don’t look like weeds, but oh well, right now they will have to mingle with some Loropetalum and California Poppies until I can figure out a better place for them. Now my husband is excited about them, mostly because he wants to eat them. And I do too!
Or maybe I'll stick some of these lovely tomato cages in there? I had thought I would have at least a small section of the front yard ready for vegetables, so I kind of committed my other raised beds in the backyard to garlic and shallots, and now I left no room for my 25 tomato plants. Guess they'll have to go in the front, whether it's ready or not.
In the meantime, I think my garden could look a lot worse. And for now, I like it just the way it is.
With this amount of lemons, I fill up my ice cube trays really fast, and shove them in the freezer. The next day I can pop them out of their trays and move to a ziploc bag and put back into the freezer for long term storage. After I used up my trays I was still left with about 2 gallons of lemon juice (anyone need highlights?!). At this point I start measuring into ziploc bags, 2 cups at a time. I label the bags with what it is and the date.
As I fill up the bags, I try to get rid of as much air as possible, and lay them all on a baking sheet. I use four bags per baking sheet, and stack the baking sheets on top of each other in the freezer. Once they freeze like this, take the baking sheets out, and stack the frozen bags in the freezer nicely. Viola! You'll now have a nice supply of lemon juice to use through out the year. 
But wait! You still have a bunch of lemon carcasses! What are you going to do with those?!
Throw them away! It's late, you're tired, you've done enough for today! Seriously, you should not put these in the compost bin, and you definitely should not put these in your worm bins (unless you WANT to melt the little dudes). The best place for these is now in your trash can, you've used and abused them enough. 
The star of Part One will be…..lemons. Shocker, right? There are soooo many different kinds to choose from. I personally grow Meyers lemons, cuz’, well, they are like the best lemon. Ever. Interesting factoid: a Meyer is not a true lemon; it’s actually a hybrid of a lemon and a mandarin. Did ya know that? Pretend that you didn’t and I just taught you something new. If I’m armed with 1.75 vodka, and 750ml of Everclear- I would then grab about 40 lemons. When I say lemons, I mean organic, homegrown- not the wax covered things you get at the grocery store. For this recipe you want the outside of lemons. Most pesticides that are applied to commercially grown citrus reside on the outside of the lemons. You want the oils off that lemon, so wax will be an unnecessary obstacle. Sure, you can use vegetable wash to remove that wax, but you’d also be removing some of those oils that you WANT. Even places like Whole Foods have started waxing their citrus, so if you can’t get them from someone’s garden, the farmers market will be your best option.
Another important item is your storage container. You want a LARGE glass container that you can seal. You need to think beyond the amount of liquor and lemon peels you’re going to add because in a few months you’re going to add more liquid, about 7 cups worth. The cheapest option is a large glass ice tea jug that doesn’t have a spout on it. You can usually find these pretty inexpensive towards the end of summer. If you can't find one that can be sealed, you'll have to MacGyver it with duct tape.
After washing and drying your lemons, use a potato peeler to remove the peels off the lemons. A nicer potato peeler works best, especially one with a decent handle (I use an OXO brand one), because you’re going to be peeling for quite some time. The most important information I can give you is to watch out for pith! Pith is the white part under the peel, and it can ruin an entire batch of limoncello. Pith is not your friend. For this reason alone I do not zest the peel, you are far more likely to get pith if you zest than if you do a peel-then-scrape method. The first few times I made limoncello I was lucky, but then bam, my last batch of the season last year I had too much in my limoncello and I basically wasted about 50 dollars in liquor, and 3 months of work. That’s why I now made the process even more difficult and scrape the pith off the back of each and every peel. That’s why I also enlist the help of friends to assist me in peeling and scraping because otherwise it would take me ALL. FRICKIN’. DAY. The peel on the left in the picture below is what you're going for, the peel on the right is not.
