Silvercook...there are plenty of recipes on this forum! Just do a search, on pickles, let's say and many links will come up. Many of us 'newbies' have learned a lot from the wisdom of these folks in addition to using certified, SAFE, recipes as well. We also have many that teach canning, involved in canning research, or are way advanced in the world of canning on this forum. You are in good hands! You can also do a search on the names of the foods that I won ribbons on. They are all here. We do use the BALL BLUE BOOK and the NCHFP, see link below. They even have an online class to learn about canning! I took a refresher class a few months back at the local cooperative extension as I had never worked with a pressure canner before, just boiling water bath. I'm sure KY has coop. extensions as well. Call your local extension and you can find out a LOT!! Welcome to Kentucky! I am in NC but was born in Lexington, KY and really miss it. And welcome to the Harvest Forum! I'd love to know where in KY you are. Click on my name, and you can send me an email. Good Luck and Happy Canning! Here is a link that might be useful: Nat'l Center for Home Food Preservation

You can grow all the stone fruit (peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines and even almonds which are a stone fruit harvested for their seed) and, if you're not in an area heavily wooded with cedar, you can grow apples. You will not necessarily get fruit from the stone fruit trees every year because sometimes they bloom too early and either the blooms or the young fruit are knocked off the trees by late frosts, but in the years when they do produce, they produce really well. I don't grow apples because our property is surrounded on four sides, or at least 3.5 sides, by property heavily wooded with cedar, making the risk of cedar apple rust high on our property. (One day I may break down and plant apple trees just to see if I could do it.) Because it takes both cedar trees and apple trees for cedar apple rust to complete its life cycle, you'd likely have to spray your trees with Immunox or something similar if you try to grow apples within a mile or two of cedars. Cherries have a tendency to bloom early as peaches do, but you'll get a crop some years. You do have to net the trees to keep the birds out. Figs grow very well here. Sometimes they'll freeze back to the ground but they come back pretty quickly and generally produce every year. If you choose your tree varieties carefully and select a mix of early, mid-season and late-season fruit varieties, you can harvest fruit for a long period of time. There are peaches, for example, that produce ripe fruit as early as early- to mid-June in my part of Oklahoma (southcentral OK) and as late as late July or early August. Not many folks here grow the really late ones that produce in August or September and probably that's because of the problems with drought and high temperatures and more pests later in the season. It does seem like the better quality fruit comes from the varieties that ripen in June and July. Pests are a bigger issue on those that ripen later but I don't have a pest problem at all on those that ripen earlier. Don't forget the other kinds of fruits---the berries! Blackberries are easy to grow and produce well, and strawberries produce well if you give them fertile soil, and can keep the pests under control. I don't have issues with strawberry diseases here in southcentral OK because we're usually hot and dry, but folks in more humid areas might have more disease issues for which fungicides would need to be used. For years I didn't bother with strawberries because the sow bugs and pill bugs would destroy the fruit before it ripened. However, now that we have Slug-Go Plus and similar organic pesticides, I can keep the sow bugs and pill bugs from bothering the strawberries. You might have success with raspberries if you're in NE OK and have good soil. If you have or can create acidic soil, blueberries grow and produce well here. Don't forget some of the less well-know fruit like fruiting mulberries, bush cherries and bush plums, elderberries, etc. You can grow banana trees here but it is rare to get ripened bananas from in-ground trees here because our growing season isn't quite long enough. I had a friend who got ripe bananas in Fort Worth in a year when the last spring frost was really early and the first fall frost was really late, but I don't know if you could do that here. We have native persimmons on our property but we have to fight the coyotes for every single fruit (they eat them green) and the persimmons are too astringent until after they've been frosted a time or too. You also could grow some of the annual fruits. Check the website of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for seeds of some annual fruits. If you have a greenhouse or a place inside to overwinter citrus trees in pots, you can grow lemon, lime and a few other citrus fruits in large containers that are carried inside in winter. Grapes are high-maintenance and proper pruning is essential in order to avoid disease and get a good crop, but they grow well here. I've linked a fact sheet from OSU on growing peaches for you. If you look at the list of peach varieties, you'll see how planting different varieties can lengthen the harvest season substantially, but sometimes it is hard to find some of those varieties. Even though I removed approximately 95% of the young fruit from my fruit trees last year at the proper fruit thinning time, they still over-produced and we harvested about 340 lbs. of fruit from 2 plum trees and 1 peach tree. (That broke down to about 260 lbs or so of plums and about 80 lbs. of peaches).) So, you do need to have a plan for what you'll do with all that fruit in a good year because you cannot eat it all fresh. In our case, we made jam, jelly, juice, flavored syrups, and fruit butters; we froze fruit;, we dried fruit; we gave fruit away; and we ate as much fresh fruit a day as we could. Without a plan to preserve the harvest, a lot of your fruit will be wasted, so have a good plan as the years go by and the trees grow and mature and reach their maximum productive capacity. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Apple and Peach Varieties for Oklahoma

Oh Yeeeeaaaahhhh!! @12:30 today, the 20-team FCS Playoff brackets were announced. For the 2nd yr.-in-a-row, NDSU enters as #1!! * We get a bye on Sat. Nov. 24th. * On Sat. Dec. 1, we play the winner of SDSU Jackrabbits v. E. Illinois...IN THE Fargodome!! * It's gonna be LOUD! Jeez I'm pumped!!!!!! Faron

Hey Greenthumbfish! I did stumble on that site before but missed that testimonial. I was unsure because of the sizes. I think, if I remember right, 24" was too wide visually but if I were to use the paint I could get the white 12". I didn't order anything yet and have been still debating what to do. That would be simple and inexpensive! Thanks for thinking of me! :)