Dave Bross

How about the old 1960s housewife quick and delicious beef stew/soup trick?

1 - 2 packets of Good Seasons Italian salad dressing mix does wonders for the flavor of a beef soup/stew.

That mix is fairly "clean" of food additives but if your particular about that you could probably simulate the spice mix by looking up the dressing mix on Amazon and finding a seller who has posted the ingredients.

Probably because it's baked in genetically?

My granddad and his brothers had a large nursery, where my mom grew up in the business.

He also taught ghetto kids how to garden/truck farm for one of the social improvement societies of the time.

https://www.russellsage.org/sites/default/files/Livermore_School%20Gardens.pdf

The photos in that were his also.


My mom and dad grew a huge victory garden WW 2 era, and off and on again gardens through the years.
Good basic how to here too:

https://sos.oregon.gov/archives/exhibits/ww2/Documents/services-ag2.pdf


Due to the nature of my dads employment we moved every 4 - 5 years. Long before house flipping was a thing, my parents would buy a fixer upper house and redo it,  selling it at a profit. This include my mom bringing her landscaping skills from the nursery to bear for big time "curb appeal" when selling.

When I was frequently thrown out of school for being a recalcitrant teenager I was put to work on the landscaping of the current house. I didn't mind that a bit.

I was big into the back to the land movement in the 1970s. Much gardening and raising of meat animals.

Looking back, I realized how important gardens were to my well being...physically, spiritually  and mentally.

guess that's why I always managed to have a garden all through the years.

The Japanese turnips like Tokinashi are my favorites for flavor.

Baker Creek has a few varieties on offer.

Trying snowball and white egg cultivars this year to see if they're similar, so we'll see how that goes.

A few thoughts to make gardening easier.

Only grow things you would want to eat.
Not to say don't experiment to see if you might like something.

Know what grows which season.

Beware of some of the advice on google ( AI slop with incorrect info) and some Youtube "influencers."

Papers from universities are usually a safe bet for how to.

Find out what is fairly bulletproof to grow in your area. If you're in the gulf coast/southeast this may help:

https://permies.com/t/273727/starter-seeds-pack-gardeners#2863960

It's a lot of work to get the ground ready. Perhaps consider starting out with a very basic Kratky hydroponic setup.
This can even be done in the city under grow lights or out on a balcony.
There are LED grow lights now which run quite economically.
Best I've found are Barrina brand on Amazon. I like the full spectrum white ones.

Hydroponic is usually not organic (could be but difficult) but much easier to do with positive beginner results more likely.

Lettuce and micro dwarf tomatoes are easily grown indoors.

Buy seed from quality suppliers. A few suggestions:

Johnny's
True Leaf Market
Baker Creek
Tomato Growers Supply
Southern Exposure
Burrell
Harris
Seeds and Such
Individual sellers on Ebay and Etsy with just a few things offered. Avoid the big sellers.
Avoid the seed racks in stores, poor quality seed.
That's the short list, there are other good ones out there.

Seed definitely acclimates to local geography so the closer your source is to you the better.

Read Steve Solomon's Gardening When it Counts. If I had to pick one book for a beginner this would be it.
This also covers less than optimal conditions, drought, etc.  and what to do then.
Also soil prep.

My usual routine on soil prep is to broadfork the bed then a few inches of compost and whatever fertilizer on top. If you dig the compost in here (sand) it disappears too quickly.

I'm experimenting with using transplants into beds that were covered in wood chips and that looks good so far.
I plant into a post hole digger hole with a couple shovel fulls of compost mixed in with the soil and ferts on top and the soil around the hole loosened up with a fork after digging the hole but before planting.  

The idea is to cut down on labor required and being able to prep and plant in increments instead of having to prep an entire bed first. I think in the end I'll plant and lay down wood chips at the same time, gradually moving through the bed.
Keep the wood chips on top of the soil or they'll rob nitrogen decomposing and disappear more quickly.

Microorganisms are a big help.  Compost tea or some of the JADAM simpler liquid ferts like the one with forest mold and a potato ferment are good for this.

Be thinking about ways to make it easier on yourself.

If you're considering fruit trees/shrubs Tree Crops by J. Russel Smith is a good place to start.

https://archive.org/details/TreeCrops-J.RussellSmith

Always check how many chill hours will be required. This was one of my early big mistakes.

Try to find a good nursery close by and take note of what they don't carry or ask for advice.

My classic mistake along these lines was planting a row of pomegranates not knowing they will never bring fruit to ripe here due to a local virus taking them out, no exceptions so far.  A highly skilled nurseryman was kind enough to point this out to me. This saved me years of wondering why no fruit ever making it to being ripe.

I might suggest starting with figs and mulberries. They grow easily and are easy to propagate more from cuttings. There are even midget varieties of both. Look up Mojo Mulberry and Fignominal Fig.

Like the seeds, buy the trees as close to home as possible. Same reason as the seeds, local stuff will grow faster/better. When you're looking at 3 - 5 years until fruit this makes a big difference.

Ask the old timers if you can find them.

Classic examples of that nearly forgotten here are that you're not safe from freeze until after Easter.

And....

Watch the hickory or pecan trees for leafing out if you're trying to beat the clock on putting in frost sensitive stuff. If those trees are beginning to leaf it will be a very rare event that you get frost after that.

Cut and paste from another post:

The only multiplier I've had great success with is one LSU supposedly came up with in the 1930s. They almost got lost and that would have been a shame because they're almost bulletproof here, whereas other onions can be a little tricky. They will grow in the shade or sun, just scratch a trench in the ground, throw them in, bury them and they'll go. One bulb will give 5 - 8 bulbs at harvest. They'll struggle through the summer but better planted any time from Sept. on and harvested in the spring.
Hoss sometimes or Lazy Dog have them and they pop up on Ebay now and again.

https://lazydogfarm.com/products/louisiana-evergreen-shallots

Best guess would be these are short day. I'm in N. FL, zone 9

I have tried all the walking and potato onions with zero success.

I'm trying elephant garlic as a perennial and it's looking like that's going to work. Planted the corms last winter and have large plants looking good this winter. Elephant garlic is actually a leek, which explains why you get one bulb and  no multiple cloves if you pull it in its first year.

Looks like you're in climate zone 9a, like me.

the plums will do well, the cherries will not because they need more chill hours than we get.

always check chill hours on fruit so you don't make a lot of expensive mistakes like I did.

https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/crop-production/fruit-culture-in-alabama-winter-chilling-requirements/

If you don't mind growing a small tree then losing it to frost every year have a look at Muntingia Calabura, which makes a lot of the closest things we'll find to cherries here.
They're so tasty I 'm willing to do this.

When it comes to fruit trees here's one of the best resources -  

https://archive.org/details/TreeCrops-J.RussellSmith

The short version of that is that what does REALLY well here are mulberries, figs, and persimmons.
These three are nearly bulletproof.
there are also midget versions of mulberry and fig if space is an issue.

This will vary a lot depending on where you live and what season so I'll stick with what grows easily here in the SE United States, Florida specifically, by season. This isn't all inclusive, just the stuff I prefer to eat and is pretty easy to grow.


- Winter -

Leaf lettuce

brassicas, - kale (Red Russian a favorite), turnips (the little Japanese ones), collards, mustard greens, broccoli

onions from seed/sets/multipliers - the only multiplier I've had great success with is one LSU supposedly came up with in the 1930s. They almost got lost and that would have been a shame because they're almost bulletproof here whereas other onions can be a little tricky. They will grow in the shade or sun, just scratch a trench in the ground, throw them in, bury them and they'll go. One bulb will give 5 - 8 bulbs at harvest. They'll stuggle through the summer but better planted any time from Sept. on and harvested in the spring.
Hoss sometimes or Lazy Dog have them and they pop up on Ebay now and again.

https://lazydogfarm.com/products/louisiana-evergreen-shallots

Leeks

Elephant Garlic  - takes 2 years but can be left to go perennial. Can eat them end of one growing season but you only get one small bulb instead of the multiple cloves

chard, Fordhook giant being the most productive

radishes,  Daikon in particular

carrots

peas of all kinds


- summer -

cowpeas  Those yard long asian beans are actually a cowpea and quite bulletproof because of that as opposed to regular beans.

Everglades tomato, or other semi wild ones like Matt's Wild Cherry will grow and set fruit the summer heat. Regular tomatoes are usually carefully timed to hit between the bad heat, bugs, and the freezes so maybe too tricky for beginners. Homested 24 has been the best regular tomato for the heat.

okra    

Peppers  Lesya is my favorite because it's tough as nails and a very sweet pepper.

sweet potatoes

seminole pumpkin and Tromboncino Squash are the only easily grown cucurbits. Fungus kills the rest early.

A bit of a side quest here, but I see the shifting of colors is causing you a bit of doubt and annoyance.

Some older books by Faber Birren go pretty deep on this is if you're curious as to why those colors appear to shift when next to each other. You're not imagining this.

Color Perception in Art is a good one to start with.

Creative Color is another good one. This one cleared up how some artists "installed" luminescence and light  in their paintings.  

And I think your painting is excellent. Nice work!

Reading May's post on getting down to very low PH got me thinking...

Last summer I accidentally overdosed some Sunshine Blue dwarf blueberries growing hydroponically (Kratky style hydro) with acid.

That took the PH of the water down to 2, the acid used was sulfuric intended for lead acid battery usage (36%).

I was sure I had killed them, but, no, they started looking way better than ever.

Makes me wonder if the big bag of citric acid I have to clean out my steam water distiller might have some use to acidify soil economically for those plants that are fond of low PH.

Something I like for sharpening whatever edged tool needs it is called a Speedy Sharp.

It looks like a carbide lathe bit soldered into a handle.

WAY quicker than a file, less effort than a grinder, and you can carry it in your pocket, which I do all the time.

Having it right there all the time encourages my lazy self to tune up those edges frequently...and then it's such a pleasure to work with a freshly sharpened tool.

https://speedysharp.com

Easily found on Amazon or Ebay also.

One more...my girlfriends Dad was a stone mason and he had the sand/oil bucket and also a large pipe stood on end and fastened to the wall full of food grade oil to soak the handles in while not in use.