June 29, 2023

It's a beautiful day out today, and I hope to get out and do some more weeding in the flower gardens. 

We were gone a week and with the rain we got just before we left meant the weeds had taken over, especially the last two rows of corn which were completely hidden. We are getting a few peas now and I pulled all the spinach and lettuce because it was going to bolt soon. What we couldn't eat I put in the freezer. Our lettuce didn't come up very well at all, and the first photo is about a third of the spinach. 

We haven't had very many hot days, and a decent amount of rain, a little over 2" this month, had made weeding easy and everything, including weeds, grow. Our grapes seem to be doing well, we are out of both juice and jam. 

 

August 16, 2020

As much as I love to have home grown, home canned produce put away, it is starting to get the best of me.  This week I've made another 9 qts of pickles of the usual varieties; froze another gallon of beans, grated several qts of summer squash, zuke and yellow; put some tomatoes in the freezer for making soup this winter and forgotten about the okra still in the fridge that I will slice, cover with cornmeal and either eat or freeze.  If I wait another day, we can eat it tomorrow for supper. Over two days we've picked six 3-gallon buckets and two 5-gallon buckets of lovely red apples off our tree and frozen about 17 gallons of peeled and sliced apples, canned about 10 qts of applesauce, plus one small apple crisp. 

I also have a total of 36 qts of peaches in jars, 32 frozen peaches and some chunks from some rather beat up ones for smoothies in the future.  We picked two peaches off our own tree which has a total of 13 this year, because one was pecked and the other so closely attached it was both or none.  I think they are ripe, Jim doesn't. We'll see after a taste test.

September 19, 2019

Here's an update on some canning.  I got 4 lugs of peaches and canned about 30 quarts and put a couple dozen whole ones in the freezer.  We also got 14 peaches off the peach tree we planted last fall and the pie I made from them was sure good. I made three other pies as well. This must have been a good year for peaches, because our neighbor was overwhelmed with peaches and brought me about as much as I had before.  These were windfalls, so I put most of those in the freezer for toppings and smoothies.

Our grape vines also did very well, and I put 6 fat gallon bags of grapes to make into juice at other time.

Today I finished my second batch of tomato soup and I now have 40 pints of the soup.  I give it to both my daughters.  I still have a counter full of tomatoes.  I like to put them cleaned in the freezer to make into juice later, but my freezer is full so I probably just make these into juice in a couple of days.

Jim has been digging potatoes and carrots, we have winter squash yet in the garden and have let the rest go.

August 23, 2018

I sure haven't done a very good job of keeping close track of the garden and it's produce this summer.  I'm running out of canning jars and I'm done with pickles for the year, because I have loads left over that last year. We've put gallons of apples in the freezer from both trees, some for applesauce, some sliced and ready for pies and crisps.  The red apples we've done over the last three weeks, (the yellow ones last month,) but they are too ripe now, and are falling and will have to be picked up, unfit for any to use except for the chickens to eat.  I have about 30 quarts of sauce on the shelves and two pies in the freezer.

I've put four gallons of beans in the freezer and more may be coming. The okra is going great guns, and we're eating them and freezing them and pickling them.  I've put up more peaches.  I got a box of 25 pounds for $22 dollars.  They were beautiful peaches and I wish I could have had more, but surgery intervened. 

Our final count on the corn was 112 quarts.  It's too many just for us, but we will share with the family. 

The tomatoes are just starting up. We've had so much rain this summer.  I think we've had a decent amount every week, enough so we've done no watering since we planted the garden.  Every plant has grown over-sized and over-amounts.  We can hardly get through the tomato plants to pick them.  We are eating the yellow ones and freezing the red ones for soup or juice later.

We are eating our potatoes, carrots and onions. 
Our cantaloupe failed, we can't seem to get that right and we are waiting on winter squash.  The summer squash died early on and I didn't get enough to use or freeze as much as I wanted.

First batch of red apples, we did another batch this size. 

We wouldn't have been able without a very nice peeler/slicer.  

 First results from the apples

Our pullets are laying. So are the older hens, too, of course.  

July 14, 2018

My reminder about getting my gardening, especially my flower gardens, didn't help me get on the ball in the blogging area. 

Our spring was late and cold, and then it rained and rained and rained.  We had snow, enough to mess up a lot more of life than gardening on April 14th.  We got all the usual things planted, onions, pea (which came up poorly), potatoes, beets, okra, corn, lettuce, summer squash, tomaotes and winter squash.  There is a pumpkin plant growing from a free pumpkin we got at the National Arbor Day Foundation place last fall.  I'm putting away squash, I made 7 pints of relish today, we've eaten lots, and last night I made enough flour, egg, cracker covered baked yellow slices to eat for supper and some for the freezer.  We are eating cucumbers and I made 2 quarts of Caddie pickles and 1 quart of dills.  Our beets are in 11 quarts of pickles, and we put a couple gallons of apples in the freezer to make into sauce later, a couple of quarts ready for pies.  I made a pie to eat for Sunday. 

We are starting to get beans.

I planted a gorgeous type of lettuce that made lovely big heads like the green leaf stuff you buy at the store.  However, we don't eat much lettuce so those beautiful heads turned into enormous, leggy, bolting plants.  I save a little to eat this week and the rest went to the chickens.

I paid 89 cents a pound for some peaches, that weren't terribly good, but I hope they make good canned peaches since I got 12 quarts out of them. 

Week of July 11th, 2016

I picked nearly all of the beets.  A small section was hidden in weeds. The tops had been chewed off by rabbits and they were behind anyway. 

 

We've had three pickings of beans.  I put a quart in the freezer and we are eating them. 

I bought an 11# lug of cherries for 18.99. ($1.72 per pound)

The days are long gone to buy them for 99 cents a pound.

They canned up so easily, I canned another lug.  

I bought a bunch of peaches at HyVee, 1.49 a pound. 

The results of my labor. 

Our yellow summer apples were ready this week and my mom came to help.  We did two 5-gallons buckets of apples into sauce.  These are mine.  Mom took 5 pints. 

The tally:

I don't have photos of the pickles.

3 quarts Caddie pickles

1 quart and 1 pint dills (I forgot the garlic in the quart jar.)

16 quarts and 20 pints cherries

13 quarts peaches

4 quarts and 16 pints applesauce

I also put 4 pints of blueberries in the freezer and 3 pints of strawberries.  

Earlier this year I put a gallon of apple slices in the freezer and I haven't been counting the blueberries.  

I use the fruit for smoothies so extra fruit goes in the freezer in chunks for smoothies.  

I've put 5 pints of 'soup base' in the freezer.  That is cooked yellow squash blended and frozen.  Since I eat a lot of soup I use that instead of or for part of the water.  

October 16,2014

 Summer is over, all the produce is harvested, and the garden is mowed.  We had a little frost so that the garden stuff died but flowers by the house are still blooming.  We have more potatoes than we will ever use, about ten 5-gallon buckets worth.  We got about 12 butternut squash and two of those aren't ripe.  I wonder if they will.  That isn't nearly enough since I've discovered pumpkin bars and most of my family love them.  The tomatoes didn't do very well, but I have several gallons in the freezer, not nearly enough to drink juice all winter but enough for cooking.   The grapes came from a friend and I put them in the freezer to make juice and jam later.  We aren't ready to start thinking about next year's garden yet.

 Corn in the flower garden.

Yellow Summer Apples

Red Later Summer Apples,

 too bad we don't remember what they are..

Grapes

August 13, 2014

The garden has been beautiful this year.  The spring was cool, the rain early.  We had no rain in July, but watering and cooler weather kept everything producing abundantly.  We had a big storm August 8th with 3.80" of rain and hail.  The wind from that storm flattened our corn that we were ready to put up the next day.  It didn't ruin the corn, it just made it a little more difficult to gather.  Mom and Dad came that day to help with the corn and we put up 10 1/2 doz into 36 pints.  

Before they came Jim brought in these buckets of cucumbers and I made pickles again using the same formula I did last time.  However, after preparing a bunch of big ones for cinnamon pickles I threw out one bucket to the compost pile.  Sadly, in the busyness with the 38 qt. of pickles I did, I did something wrong with the cinnamon pickles and they had to be thrown out.  I'm sorry, because it would have been nice to have them, and because the ingredients are so expensive, and it was all thrown away.  

More bread and butters.

More dills.

It is so hard to keep up with picking squash even when we determine to pick them small.  They get huge SO fast.  The big ones went to the compost pile.  I grated some, chopped some and sliced some for future meals. 

Without this mixer/kitchen center I would not get pickles and other canning done nearly so quickly.  It has a food processor that grates and slices two thicknesses, a grinder, a small processor that chops, and a blender. I have a host of attachments and would need three or four separate appliances to replace it.  It is a standard in my kitchen and I can't do without it.  

I bought the first one soon after we were married.  Since nothing like this is made anymore, when one wears out, I go to eBay and buy another one.  This is the fourth one, and this time I bought the stand and the mixer arm separately and without the extra attachments which was nice for a change. 

Wind damage.

Hail damage.

Ready for the second batch of corn, 36 dozen.

Ready to cook.

The rest.

We got 95 1/2 pints out of that 36 dozen.  

Below is our stats.

I was tired after two days of work, and then Mom decided to stay one more day and do applesauce.  So, we did.  We processed 5 of these buckets into 35 qts. of applesauce, saved 1/2 bucket for eating, and mom took the rest home. We took on one bucket too many and we were ready to be done long before we were.  Mom was sure ready to be heading home and within a half hour of finishing, they were gone.  

We gave five more buckets to some friends of our, (two different ones) after Lynette and friend Anthony picked more after dark on the tractor loader.  

I have a little over a bucket left that was supposed to go to someone else, but I guess they don't really want them.  I need to start preparing them for freezing.  Ugh. I'm tired of it. 

Tuesday, the 12th, I picked cucumbers and made some more bread and butters and dills, I also pulled up 10 of our 12 hills of cucumbers.  I just can't do any more and we don't need them.  My few bean plants are just enough this year, and I put another quart in the freezer and grated a big zucchini.  

It was getting to be sort of a game to see how much I could get put up.  I've filled nearly all my jars and some of mom's.  

I think I'm looking forward to fall.  

The okra is just starting to produce.  

July 25, 2014

Jim brought in another big haul last night and I've been spending most of the day getting it all put up.  We had a 5 gallon bucket of cukes (plus a little bucket more) from too big to finger sized, that I love to make dill pickles from.  I used the smallest for dills, 3 qts; next size for bread and butter's, 3 qts.; next size, chunked for Caddie Pickles, named for a friend of Aunt Inez', 3qts., and I started a batch of cinnamon pickles with the very biggiest ones.  I saved a dozen or more just for eating.  I also put up 4 qts. of beet pickles and had enough for lunch.  My kitchen isn't in nearly as big of a mess as it could be.  I tried to clean up a bit and rest after every batch.  I made lunch in the middle of all this pickling, too.  We had a "homegrown lunch".  We had egg salad with avocado served with tomato on a lettuce leaf, beets, zucchini patties, and cucumber salad. There were three of us.

I have a gallon of beans to snip that I would like to do yet tonight, but I am saving the rest of the squash for tomorrow.
I made 4 qts. of applesauce a couple days ago.  I was making applesauce the way I learned how from my mother.  Wash and quarter the apples taking out any bad spots, worm holes or bug bites, cook them and run them through a sieve.  I poured the sauce back in my dutch oven to sweeten it, when it hit me--I can't taste how sweet it is!!  I could tell the salt I put in made a difference in the tartness, and luckily Lynette was home so I could use her as my tester.
So, for future reference.  I had my dutch oven nearly full of apple sauce, and I put in five 1/4 cup scoops of sugar that were just a bit more than level and a teaspoon of salt.  I should measure more definitely, but sadly, so much depends on the kind of apples that are used.  Sigh.  I guess I will just have to make it when someone else is around to taste it for me.

Our garden is looking pretty good for this time of the year.  You will notice the weedlessness.  Of course, we never take pictures when the weeds are hiding the plants like they have for most of the years we've had a garden.

July 12, 2014

I wasn't going to put this picture on the blog.  I have lots of photos of the flower garden.  But it looked so nice ready for graduation.

We didn't plant much before the graduation except for these deck rail boxes.

Then it was time to get the garden planted. 

These roses are doing really well this year.  They are gorgeous in early June when they are growing and blooming like crazy. 

I planted spinach right outside the front door.  Our first harvest. 

I accidentally cut this clematis way down this spring.  I cut off some green stems, but that didn't seem to hinder it any.  There is more purple in the blossoms this year that usual.  I wonder why.

My lovely oldest daughter gave me these lilies, with the boy's hand-prints on the pot.  After they stopped blooming I planted them in the flower garden to enjoy them next year.

Our garden is beautiful this year. We've had little rains often, and all the damaging winds and hail that have pummeled surrounding areas have missed us.  We shorted the garden by about 40 feet so we have less area to plant, but also less area to weed, so Jim is doing a good job with it.

We are now eating summer squash and I expect we soon will be overrun.  We heard that planting radishes under the squash will keep the squash bugs away, but since we heard that just this week and planted the radishes accordingly, we haven't much hope that they will come up and do their job under the shade of the squash bushes.  

Cucumbers are thriving as well.  My first dill pickles that I have made with my very own hands in two years.

I have discovered that I like certain fruits on my cooked cereal in the morning.  They provide some interest since I can taste nothing sweet.  I've been buying strawberries whenever I can get them under $2 a pint and freezing them.  Blueberries and peaches are also going in the freezer when I can get them cheap-er. I've discovered that rhubarb sauce also works well on my cereal, but I have to depend on other people for that one since rhubarb with not grow on our property. 

I have tried and tried and tried again.  I think I am done trying. 

May 25, 2014

Time to start up a new growing season. We've had a slow start this year for several reasons, one of them being cold weather.  We had snow April 14th as this photo of table and chairs shows.  With the high school graduation of our last child, the only gardening we did was cleaning up the flower garden that we didn't get finished last year.  We planted onions and potatoes in April.  We planted a package each of yellow and white onions, and about 5# each of Yukon gold and red potatoes.  

We haven't planted anything else for fear of frost. 

I did put some flowers in the deck boxes the week before graduation, and covered them a couple of nights that we saw 32 degrees before morning. 

The old pond hadn't been working for several years and essentially turned into a bog, with the reeds and cattails taking over.  The grass and dandelions were also moving in so we tore it out and put a pre-form pond in.  We will likely put filter and waterfall in later.  

Here are some pictures of the finished project, as finished before graduation.  The chips are hiding some weeds and grass and more planting will be done as time allows.  We are thinking of making big changes to some of the beds to allow for larger paths so the rider mower can be maneuvered through there. We like the idea of more grass and less weeding.  

These photos do not show a bunch of other landscaping places by the house and shop.

This beauty was a birthday present, and since most of my house plants die within months of being subjected to my neglect, it is permanently enshrined in a photo.

I went to a miniature garden/succulent garden class to get some ideas and plants to replace the one from last year, which died.  

We'll see.

Finishing up last years fruit I made a bunch of jam, peach with a little strawberry and plain\ strawberry.

The next day I took the frozen tomatoes and made juice, and the frozen grapes and made a batch of jam and some grape juice concentrate. 

And even though we don't plant our chickens, they do provide us home-grown eggs.

Six of our 11 hens.  

 We bought six new chicks, who are obviously shy.

Too bad one of them turned out to be a rooster.