The berry snacks in this promotional giveaway include apple chips, strawberries, cherries, and blueberries… they’re delicious, nutritious, and low-calorie.

Welcome to Your Home Kitchen Garden. This blog is the sister site of Your Small Kitchen Garden. Your Home Kitchen Garden is about growing food for your own table… regardless of the size of your yard or garden.

Your Home Kitchen Garden is participating in the same promotional giveaway as Your Small Kitchen Garden. We are giving away three cartons of freeze-dried fruit snacks. Each carton contains 12 individually-wrapped servings of berry snacks, and 12 servings of tropical snacks. These were packaged by Sensible Foods under a different label, but otherwise they match the Sensible Foods snacks that often retail for $1.79 per pack.

You might win a carton of 24 snack packets if you do any (or all) of the following:

1. Score one entry by leaving a comment in response to this post. Multiple comments from the same visitor/email address qualify as a single entry. If you also do #2 (below), the comment you leave for that qualifies you for item 1.

2. Score two entries by linking to this post from your own blog or web site. Of course, I’d be happy to see more links, but I’ll count only one link as qualifying for the two entries. (After you link, come back and leave a comment linking to your web page so I can verify the link… otherwise, I won’t know you did it. If you do link from your web site, the comment you leave here to tell me about it qualifies as entry #1 (above). If that’s confusing, don’t worry about it.)

3. Tweet a link to this post that includes my twitter name @cityslipper (so I can keep track). I’d appreciate multiple tweets, but only one will count as an entry.

4. Visit my other two participating blogs, Your Small Kitchen Garden and Food Dryer Home where you’ll find a similar post… each of which can earn up to four more entries: One entry for a comment, two entries for a link, and one entry for a tweet.

While multiple entries may increase your chances of winning a carton, you cannot win more than one carton per email address or visitor.

This promotional giveaway ends on Friday, November 6, 2009. My random number generator will select winners on Saturday, November 7 and I’ll post announcements on all three participating web sites.

Technorati Tags: dried fruit, fruit snacks, giveaway, promotion

Never mind the turtles in Aiken, South Carolina. There wasn’t ice on the ponds! I’ve bounced golf balls on ponds in central Pennsylvania. Every winter I develop an urge to travel south as an appetizer for the coming spring.

As you might learn from many web-based “tips” for beginning gardeners: you should put your home kitchen garden where it will get sunlight. I’ve yet to see the following tip in any of those beginning gardening articles: Make sure you put your gardener where he or she will get sun.

I’ve no objection to winter, but I enjoy it much more when I get at least a week of respite some time before the spring thaw. Every gardener in northern climes—and especially those who manage massive kitchen gardens—should try to head south for a break in January or February.

Winter Escape from a Home Kitchen Garden

Winter has suspended my own home kitchen garden, and it has slowed me down a bit. Most of that has to do with holidays; the rest of my family lives by the school calendar, and it was a particularly lengthy winter break this year. Thankfully, our break included escape from winter.

My in-laws have recently moved to Aiken, South Carolina, and on the Sunday after Christmas, we piled into the minivan and went for a visit. My mother-in-law, you might recall, introduced me to red pepper relish, one of the many fine foods she has fed me in the years since I met her daughter.

Aiken is nearly 700 miles south of Lewisburg. That’s plenty far enough to put winter out of reach. Some days ran more than 60F degrees, and all days but one were sunny. Of course, I Googled attractions in Aiken, and picked up brochures. The nearest public garden was just a few blocks from my in-laws. So, on an unscheduled afternoon, we were off to Hopelands Gardens.

No Home Kitchen Garden

Click the photo above to view photos from Hopelands Gardens in Aiken, South Carolina.

Even in winter, the gardens were green and gorgeous. There were squirrels, ducks, and turtles about, and there were spring flowers in bloom. Many of the plants at Hopelands Gardens were unfamiliar to me; I suspect they’re not common in central Pennsylvania. And, clearly, no one planted the garden with a kitchen in mind. In fact, given the same space and resources, a kitchen gardener could provide fresh vegetables and fruit for at least a hundred families.

Hopelands Gardens is a tragic misappropriation of gardening space, but it made for a very pleasant afternoon. The garden walk helped to recharge me so I’ll hold up through the next two months of Pennsylvania’s winter. If you can find a way, get out of the winter for a week, and find a nice garden to visit. Now I’m anticipating some warm days in March, pruning and grafting in my apple trees.

Technorati Tags: hopelands gardens, vacation, winter