The start of canning season

Our garden is finally picking up speed.  Each year, the trees in our yard shade the garden just a bit more which, in turn, slows down the harvest a bit more.  We have generous friends who have shared their beans, dill, cucumbers, and tomatoes with us long before we've gotten a taste of our own so we've been able to enjoy garden fresh treats while waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.

August finally brought us beans from our garden so, with my friend's dill, I was able to make dilly beans.

In fact, my friend shared so much dill with me that I made a couple batches of dilled carrots as well (though not with homegrown carrots-those prepared carrots from the store are a huge time saver).  Our dill will be ready any day now.  Now that I don't need it.

Recently, Julianne took some meat down to the freezer for me and found the door not quite closed.  Thankfully, I only lost the contents of the door.  Almost everything else was still frozen hard-except some of my berry supply.  My blueberries and raspberries still had blocks of frozen berries but they also had some liquid in the bags that isn't normally there.  After I had already dumped a couple bags of strawberries, it dawned on me that I could thaw them the rest of the way and make something, rather than pitching them all.  As a result of that decision, I tried a new recipe for Bumbleberry jam-blueberry, raspberry, and strawberry-perfect!

 I also tried making blueberry syrup, which are the larger jars in back.  The jam is good enough that it might be an addition to my annual "to-can" list

The first of our cucumbers were ready a few days ago.  I didn't think there were enough to do much with, other than eating them fresh.  I weighed them, though, and had exactly enough for a batch of bread and butter pickles.

Honestly, we aren't big pickle eaters here, though you wouldn't know it by looking at what I've canned so far.  The girls love the bread and butter pickles and we use the dill ones here and there.  I like having them on hand for relish trays I may take somewhere and I have some friends who are thrilled to take care of the excess dilly beans in particular. 

Since making all this stuff, I've canned 21 quarts of green beans and am finishing up a dozen more as I type.  And I was worried we weren't going to get many beans this year.

Our tomatoes are just getting started. Hopefully, they will produce well enough to yield a lot of tomato sauce and salsa this year.  It's been a couple years since we've had a really plentiful crop of tomatoes so I'm hoping this year will be abundant.  Michigan peaches are due soon and I have a peach-tomato salsa recipe we all enjoy so we're keeping our fingers crossed that the peaches and tomatoes will be ready at the same time.

Ah, the joys of gardening.  Every year is different and every year I'm so thankful for the growing number of jars filled with organically grown vegetables on my shelves as the plants start producing in quantity.

 

A happy Father's day

They don't look like much, do they?

Clarence thinks they look like magical buckets, though. A couple weeks ago, he spent quite a bit of time talking with the lady who sells them, asking questions and learning. He seemed very interested in getting some, but wasn't sure he wanted to spend the money. I offered to buy him some as a Father's Day gift, if only he would promise to be surprised.

Clarence has long wanted to try hydroponic gardening so yesterday we picked up a starter kit. Clarence agreed to erase the memory of the purchase and be surprised for Father's Day.

He is hoping the romaine he planted yesterday will do well. He was already checking it today to see if it was growing yet. He's just sure he'll see something by tomorrow.

Recycled Potatoes-the results

The vines of our recycled red potatoes died a few weeks ago. We got around to harvesting them over Labor Day weekend.



Allison joined Clarence in searching for hidden treasure.

The lasagna garden technique seemed like it would make for much cleaner potatoes than planting them in the soil. Hmm, not so much.

We ran out of newspapers when making our lasagna layers and started using grocery bags. The bags had red lettering on them which led to a lot of false excitement on my part. I kept thinking I was seeing a bit of red potato, when it was only the ink on the bag.

We did end up with this bucket filled. Not as great a harvest as we hoped for, but from potatoes that were beyond their useful life, it isn't too bad.

We haven't harvested the potatoes planted from seed potatoes yet. They don't look any more promising than these, actually, but we'll enjoy them, however many we find.

Tomatoes

I'm hoping this year to can some tomatoes as, well, tomatoes.

Mostly, I can tomato juice/sauce. It's just so much easier.

Clarence picked all the ripe tomatoes he could one night this week, in anticipation of a coming rain. He wanted to get them before the rain made the skins split. It wasn't a large harvest, but more than we would eat fresh before they spoiled, so he got out our Presto "Food Strainer and Sauce Maker". Dandy sounding name, isn't it?



The girls have always loved helping with this job. I'm kind of surprised that their enthusiasm hasn't waned much as they've gotten older. I guess there's just something about throwing tomatoes in the hopper, cranking the handle, and watching the sauce come out while the seeds and skins spit out the end. Or maybe we're just easily entertained.

A few years ago Clarence started lining a mesh colander with cheesecloth to catch the sauce. Some of the excess water drains into the cake pan he sets below the colander. We scoop the tomato sauce into a stock pot, cook it down a little more, and then I can it.

This batch of tomatoes yielded about 6 cups of sauce so we put it in the fridge. We'll add it to the next batch we get and cook it all down at once.

I'm sure Allison can hardly wait since she didn't get to help with this batch.

More harvesting and preserving

We're starting to get a few more tomatoes but so far have only had enough to enjoy fresh. Unfortunately, we'll be racing against the blight that seems to already be started. I'm low on home-canned tomatoes so I'm really hoping for a good harvest before the blight takes over.

The first of our cukes are finally ready to pick. As with the tomatoes, Clarence grows them on fencing so they can climb, rather than spread all over. It's fairly effective, although the tomatoes, in particular, still seem to spread out quite a bit.

This is the strawberry tower, planted with beans this year. Clarence and Allison picked the beans last night and enjoyed picking them while standing.

Last night's harvest wasn't huge, but I was able to can 5 quarts of beans. It's a start.

Yesterday I also made a batch of bread and butter pickles. I'd never made them before but the girls' adopted grandparents shared some with us a few months ago and we all loved them.

Wednesday night they gave us a couple bags of cucumbers so I tried using her refrigerator pickle recipe, but followed the instructions in my Ball Blue Book to process them as I don't have a lot of refrigerator space to store them in. Hopefully, they will still be good. I'm afraid they won't be very crisp after being processed. Anybody know?

Visit Teaching Good Things for more From Seeds to Harvest updates.

Beans and Zucchini

I did my first canning of the season this week.

Usually, by now, we'd have several canners worth of green beans on the shelves in the basement but this year the harvest has been later and, so far, not very plentiful.

With our first picking of beans, I made dilly beans. One jar is different because I ran out of beans and Clarence suggested I try using snow peas.

This is the first year I haven't had to buy dill to make these. I've tried growing it in the past, hoping it would self-seed like it did for my mom when I was young. I've never had any luck, though. When I managed to grow some, it was never ready at the same time as the beans.

Last year, Clarence started some dill on a compost pile. It wasn't ready when I wanted to use it and went to seed later in the season. This spring, he spread the compost out in the hoop house and we had several dill plants come up in unexpected places. I thought it was a particular blessing that it was ready when I needed it. So much more convenient than having to find it for sale, too.



The zucchini has continued to thrive. We've enjoyed Honey Roasted Zucchini several times but a couple got quite big so I shredded them to use in baking.

I tried Blueberry Zucchini bread from Finding Joy in My Kitchen and was able to use up the fresh blueberries I had on hand, as well as the huge zucchini. I highly recommend her recipe and appreciate that she makes changes similar to what I like to do, such as using whole wheat for part of the flour, and applesauce for part of the fat.

The tomatoes are starting to ripen but we don't have enough for canning yet. The pole beans are starting to blossom, so I'm hoping for bigger harvests of beans in the coming weeks. No cucumbers yet. The corn may be ready soon. The potato vines are starting to die so we'll have to see how our lasagna-garden-style experiment worked.

Clarence is gearing up for his fall gardening already. I think he plans on putting in more snow peas, romaine lettuce, and spinach this coming week.

You can follow other gardeners participating in the From Seeds to Harvest challenge by visiting Teaching Good Things.

Peppers and Zucchini

I haven't updated on the garden in forever but am still trying to participate in the From Seeds to Harvest challenge.



Remember Clarence's pepper plants in the two-liter bottles? He planted them in the ground in the hoop house when they had little peppers already forming. He is now thinking it was a mistake to wait so long to transplant them because the peppers haven't been getting very big. He's been picking them as they ripen, hoping the plants will make more (and larger) peppers before the end of the season.

The zucchini is starting to yield like...well...zucchini. We have been enjoying it as Honey Roasted Zucchini, using honey from the neighbors, whose hives are on the far side of our mud-hole pond. The honey isn't my favorite on its own, but it works great for this.

The other peppers are starting to produce and the first tomatoes have ripened, which is a bit earlier than we sometimes have tomatoes.

Our green beans are behind the normal schedule. We had some almost ready to pick and the deer visited Allison's garden and had a snack. Thankfully, they just grazed the tops, rather than devouring the whole plants. Clarence put some fence up the next day and we're hopeful we'll have more soon.

We also have beans planted in the strawberry tower that have yet to produce. We're thankful some friends have been supplying us pretty regularly with fresh beans-we've been enjoying them.

The snow peas are still producing pretty well. Usually ours are done by now but it has been cooler and wetter than most summers and the peas apparently have been liking it.

The weeds seem to be doing the best of all. With the amount of time we've been spending at camp, it seems to be a losing battle.

More garden updates can be found by visiting Teaching Good Things.

Strawberries

The girls were out in the garden first thing Friday morning to pick the strawberries before it got hot outside.



They also picked the snow peas, which have just been ready to harvest in the last week or so. We love eating them as a raw vegetable and always anticipate them with eagerness.

Since the strawberry harvest was so plentiful, I tried a couple of new-to-me recipes. I was going to make freezer jam but I bought bulk pectin in Shipshewana and it didn't have instructions for freezer jam, only a processed jam. So, I consulted my old Ball Blue Book-and still ended up making processed jams.

First, I made strawberry-rhubarb jam. Our rhubarb isn't young and tender by the time the strawberries are ready, but it seems to work anyhow.

The second recipe I tried was for Strawberry Butter. I've made peach, pear, and apple butters in the past and have found that they are basically the fruit with a lot less sugar than jam, with very little else added. The strawberry butter has a little lemon juice added.

Between the two recipes, I have a dozen jars of processed jam plus some of each type in the refrigerator to use. My family has voted each recipe a winner.

For more From Seeds to Harvest posts, visit Teaching Good Things.

Garden update

The zucchini are off to a good start. No blossoms yet, but Clarence is keeping an eye on them. We're all getting anxious for some Honey Roasted Zucchini.

The recycled potatoes are starting to bloom. They are way ahead of the seed potatoes we planted.

This is our first picking of strawberries this year. They are from our established rows in the garden, not the strawberry tower. We are thrilled the chipmunks are allowing us to share some of them. Unfortunately, the chipmunks seem to like to take a taste out of several berries, instead of just eating one completely. I'd probably be a little more tolerant of them if they had better manners.

Allison's green beans are up. She's using her favorite hoe, a small stirrup hoe. I think it's her favorite because it reminds her of riding horses, which she loves. On the terrace behind her are the zucchini and some red bell peppers.

We've had a lot of rain the last couple of days. The plants are loving it, as are the weeds.

For more garden updates, visit Teaching Good Things for their From Seeds to Harvest challenge.

The girls' gardens

Last year, we studied Botany and the girls were supposed to plan and implement a butterfly garden. Julianne was excited about it but Allison, not so much.

They couldn't agree on anything. Julianne had extremely elaborate plans and Allison was adamantly opposed to helping her carry them out. She had some ideas of her own, but Julianne didn't really care to hear them. Compromise is good, but I ran out of patience trying to get them to work together.



I ended up telling Allison she had to take ownership of one of the terraces Clarence had constructed in the front yard. She could plant whatever she wanted, but it was going to be her responsibility alone. She grew green peppers and basil and did very well.

This spring, I asked her what she planned to grow this year. She didn't know, so I suggested that she try green beans since she always serves them when it's her night to cook. She got them planted recently and they are just starting to emerge and get their true leaves. She's pretty excited.

The pinks you see are on their third year. Allison went out quite early this spring, spread compost over her terrace and hoed the whole bed. The pinks in her garden are the most spectacular and we're thinking her early care gave them a big boost.

Julianne got the wilderness area we planned to use for the butterfly garden. The propane pig is just an added bonus she's had to consider when she plans.

A few weeks ago, Clarence and I mowed down some of the weeds so he could till it. Once it was cultivated, we added the path. Last year, she gardened in the little area where she's working in this picture. This year, she has a lot more space to experiment.

Clarence and Julianne built this tee-pee last year for her sweet peas. She planted more this spring and they are starting to come up.

Julianne used to love winter. She loved the snow, building snowmen, sledding. Not this year. This year she tolerated winter by looking through seed catalogs and asking her dad how much she could order. She has become a gardener.

This is my post for the From Seeds to Harvest garden challenge being held at Teaching Good Things.

Garden update

For the From Seeds to Harvest challenge this week, I thought I'd update on a couple things other than the potatoes.



Clarence started romaine, spinach, and some Asian greens quite early and we've been enjoying them for a few weeks now.

We've had a couple nice surprises in the garden this spring. The radishes and the light green lettuce in the bowl are self-seeded bonuses Clarence found when weeding the parsnip patch. (Yes, Mom, I do still hate parsnips. Clarence grows them for his dad. Last year I think the total harvest was four parsnips. You'd think I'd been out there weeding them, wouldn't you?)

Clarence transplanted his "bottled" orange pepper plants into the ground in the hoop house about a week ago. The cold weather we've been having convinced him to plant them inside, since they already had peppers forming.

We've been worried that they'd go through major transplant shock since they were so far along but, so far, so good. I'm really hoping they continue to thrive.

Clarence topped off the strawberry tower with compost and planted green beans in it this week. The winter seems to have killed all the strawberries that were in it (although they cover the ground around it) so we're going to find out how beans work in it. If they grow well, it will be much nicer picking!

The girls each have their own garden areas, too, but I don't have any pictures of them yet. Hopefully, I'll get some pictures soon and be able to update on those, too.

For other gardens participating in the challenge, visit Teaching Good Things.

Potato (Lasagna gardening) update

As part of the From Seeds to Harvest gardening challenge, I've been posting about our potatoes, among other things.



Our recycled potatoes, planted lasagna garden style, appear to be growing well. Two weeks ago we only had a couple plants up. Now they all seem to be growing and we're ready to add more straw to them.

We've since added another section using seed potatoes we purchased, which are under the fresh straw but not up yet. My best friend gave us her leftover seed potatoes the other day so we are adding a third section of potatoes. I really hope this method works well.

Last night, this is what the first plant to pop up through the straw looked like. Quite a difference in two weeks!

You can follow other gardening adventures at Teaching Good Things.

My favorite gardening tool

Can you see the grin on her face?

Of course she's happy. She's been dying to use my flame thrower...er...weed burner...for ages.

I like to wilt all the leaves when I torch. Following her dad's instructions, she pointed at the base of the plant before squeezing the handle to blast it.

The idea is to heat the water in the plant so hot that it damages the cells. It's not only fairly effective, it's lots of fun!

A lot of things aren't killed with the first try. I'm currently trying to eradicate some daylilies and tall phlox. I've torched them 4 or 5 times this spring and they just. won't. die. I'm not giving up, though. I have too much fun trying.

Signs of progress

Remember our recycled potato experiment? This is an update for the From Seeds to Harvest Gardening Challenge going on at Teaching Good Things.



Clarence read a book called Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza earlier this spring. He used that method to plant the leftovers of last fall's harvest of potatoes that had sprouted.

It's been almost three weeks since then and last night I counted two different plants poking up through the straw. (That's just one in the pic.) It's looking promising!

He tried to get the tiller started last night and it seems to be having major problems. We may be doing more lasagna gardening that we originally planned if we can't till.


Clarence is also giving me almost daily reports on his orange pepper plants. He has a little pepper on one that seems to grow noticeably each day. He's very excited about them! I'll try to get updated pics of them for next week.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
We are leaving for the state homeschool convention. I'll see you all Sunday or Monday!

Orange Pepper Plants

This is a planter Clarence made out of a 2 liter pop bottle.



He read about them somewhere but couldn't find any pictures so he had to figure it out for himself. He cut the bottle in half, using the top to plant and the bottom to water. You probably can't see it, but there is an opening for putting water into the reservoir cut into the side.

This is an orange pepper plant he started from seed I ordered from ebay. It's starting to flower already.

He keeps the bottle planters in boxes because the plants don't like the sun shining on their roots. Until today, these have been growing in a south-facing window, not the greenhouse.

I'm excited that these plants are doing so well. I can't wait to have fresh peppers early in the season.

This post is linked to the From Seeds to Harvest Gardening Challenge at Teaching Good Things.