Garden Update

I haven't posted on the garden's progress since July, as, after that, I had a lot of produce from the garden to preserve. Just to give you an idea, I froze 4 cups of peas, 2 cups of raspberries, 6 cups of rhubarb, 4 cups of zucchini,  20 cups of green beans, 7 cups of pureed pumpkin, 10 cups of tomatoes, 12 cups of broccoli, and 16 cups of carrots.  I canned 2 pints of peas, 24 pints of green beans, 10 quarts of pumpkin, 7 pints of salsa, 16 half-pints of pizza sauce, 3 pints of pasta sauce, 8 half-pints of pumpkin butter, 5 half-pints of grape jelly, and 37 quarts of grape juice.  This was all from my yard.  As you'll recall, I live on less than a tenth of an acre.  I have a tiny, tiny yard.  And this list doesn't even get into all the drying I did.  I dried mostly herbs, and onions, rhubarb, sunflower seeds, and dandelion root.

A lot of the stuff I put up is gone.  We're down to the last bag of carrots and our beans are nearly half-gone, as is our broccoli.  Going to have to start shopping for produce in the grocery store pretty soon.

The garden plans for next year are coming along very well.  I have nearly all the seeds I'll need in May.  I have more specific plans drawn up to best utilize the space in the garden.  My patches of grass are going to be a bit smaller this year than they were last year.

My blueberry bushes should be bearing some fruit, and we've made big improvements in the strawberry patch, so hopefully we'll have a lot of fruit this year.  I'm hoping for a modest five pounds from the blueberry bushes, but we shall see.  I'm hoping the strawberries will hit their stride this year.  I'm considering using some of the grapes to make wine.  I'm also hoping to barter the chestnuts, as we don't much care for them.

I'll be making a list of the annual plants I plan to grow in a later post.

Raspberries in Full Effect

The raspberries have begun to ripen. We have a lot more this year than we did last year because I took care of the canes. I had no idea last year that we even had raspberries until after they had begun producing fruit because the raspberry canes had been buried by weeds and stray grape vines. So far I've been able to get to the raspberries before the birds. Knock on wood I'll continue to get there first! I quite selfishly ate the very first one by myself and didn't tell the girls. I told my husband later and offered him one. As they are just barely beginning to ripen, I've been picking just one berry at a time. My first berry was a little taste of heaven! It was so good...warm from the sun and sweet.

I pulled one kohlrabi so far and shared it with the girls. The kohlrabi also was, of coarse, delicious. Sweet at first, with a slight bite as an aftertaste. If you never have, I would encourage you to try fresh kohlrabi. It is very good! It is widely available across the Midwest right now at farmer's markets. I like to eat them plain, but you can dip them in Ranch or other dips if you prefer. That's also very good.

Speaking of farmer's markets, the only vegetable I've bought so far at my local farmer's market is a bag of spinach for freezing. I had enough spinach this year for fresh eating, but wasn't able to grow enough for preservation- my box on the balcony did not do nearly as well as I had hoped it would. I do plan on buying lots of peaches and apples later for preservation, but meantime I like to go to look at what is available. This year I have considerably cut down on my food budget already, and most of my crops aren't ready for harvesting yet! I say that taking into consideration the amount of money I've spent on garden implements this year, and I can say with full confidence that I've already come out ahead.

Radishes!

I harvested my first bunch of radishes this weekend! I have never grown radishes before this year because nobody in the family likes the taste of raw radishes. I decided to grow them this year to use for cooking. I used them in a stroganough- type dish I made up. The radishes gave the meat sauce a distinct, but not overpowering, flavor. Later this week I'm going to plant more radishes in a different place in my garden.

I finally finished harvesting all the dandelions I'm going to harvest this year. I roasted the dandelion roots and froze some of the leaves for using later. Next year I'll probably use more of the plant altogether, but this year I just used all the roots and saved a few leaves. I had a LOT of dandelions since the summer before we moved here (07) the garden and yard were severely neglected. We don't spray weeds, so we end up pulling a lot of them.

My strawberries are making what seems like millions of berry babies! I think they'll be ready to be picked starting the end of next week, which is exciting. Still waiting on the raspberry blossoms...looks like they might be coming later this week. The grapes are looking way better now than they did this time last year.

My seeds are starting to sprout all over the garden and my perennial herbs are looking great. My sage is flowering and my lemon balm is looking ready for a harvest. I used some lemon balm in lemonade the other day. It was about the best lemonade I ever made!