Garden Update 2025

 

Our little garden is producing!  We didn't plant most of it until Father's Day weekend due to weather and crazy schedules but it is on now!   When we moved to this home, we left a large garden plot and a slightly warmer climate.  Gardening really helped us feed our large family on a budget.  I remember several years canning close to 100 quarts of green beans, freezing 50-75 3 cup packages of corn, canning several quarts of tomatoes and up to 30 quarts of salsa in a year.  Whew!  I had several children at home so along with many mouths to feed, we had many hands to help!   The garden at our current home has a small garden plot with several raised beds on the side.  This is enough for just a few of us and I don't miss the busy days of canning until the wee hours of the morning when the house was cooler.  

We had a fabulous red raspberry crop this year.  I have no idea how many we ate fresh (as we picked), but we weighed one picking of our harvest and it was over 8 pounds.  We had that much several pickings in a row.  LOVELY!   We ate raspberries with sugar and cream, made raspberry freezer jam, triple berry freezer jam using raspberries for our base and adding strawberries and blackberries from the garden.  We planted the strawberries but I think some birds planted the blackberry bush.  It came up in a random spot amongst the volunteer raspberries around the house and though the berries were quite small, it was enough for adding to jam!  Thank you little birds!  We froze whole raspberries, and measured amounts of mashed raspberries to make more jam later, but my favorite treat this year was fresh raspberry ice cream churned in our electric ice cream freezer at home.  SO GOOD!  We made this several years ago. You'll find the recipe under Homemade Raspberry Ice Cream!  Sadly most of the raspberry harvest is done.  If they continue as they have the last few years, they will continue to produce a few berries here and there until the frost comes in the fall.

Zucchini season is always fun, right?  One day that little squash is almost big enough to pick and the next day it's as big as your forearm!  My number one favorite way to cook zucchini is like my Mom made when I was a child...  slice zucchini in about 1/4 inch slices, fry in butter until they're soft.  Very best if you don't turn them too quick at first and let that bottom layer get nice and brown... not burned, but very dark.  So flavorful!  Just a little salt and pepper.   I do like Zucchini Brownies, Zucchini Bread, and Zucchini Frittata and if I have eggplant and tomatoes Ratatouille is so so delicious! (though I am the only one in my family that will eat very much of it.)  I have been cutting fresh zucchini in small sticks and drying in my dehydrator.  I'm hoping they will hydrate well and be a nice substitute for spaghetti once in a while during the winter.  I dehydrate slices as well to use in soups and spaghetti sauce.  I'd love to hear your favorite use of that prolific zucchini!

Green beans have been lighter than usual in our raised bed, but we planted a row in a new spot and they are coming along nicely.  I wasn't sure of the new spot and I used seed that was several years old so I planted it heavy.  You guessed it!  I think every single seed came up!   It's a little crowded but it looks like the harvest will be nice and heavy.  This year we are freezing our beans to preserve them. I usually pressure can them, but we have freezer space and a friend told me they love them this way.  So far we have about 18 pints frozen of green beans and 8 pints of Dragon Tongue beans. (these are so much fun!  We ordered ours from Baker Heirloom Seeds.  They are a yellow, flat bean with bold purple stripes that fade away when they're cooked!  They are easy to grow in raised beds and cook up tender even if I forget to pick and they grow too big.  We have a few feet of pole beans planted that will come on later in the fall that we will just use fresh.  When we had our children all at home, I canned Dilly Beans every year.  Now I just need a few jars on hand for holidays and family reunions.  Our favorite recipe for fresh green beans came from Dave's cousin Angie at a family reunion several years ago.  Garlic Green Beans is a delicious side dish!

Dave recently fenced off our little corn patch.  It appears that we've been having little night visitors raiding the patch even though the corn won't be ready for a few weeks!   Beets are a good size for freezing and for canning Pickled Beets though I always leave that for later in the fall.  Potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, and more to use in our nightly meals.  I just love wandering through the garden and picking dinner!

I hope you are enjoying the fresh garden vegetables and fruits available in your area this time of year whether they are from your own garden or a farmers market!  

Fenced off garden area includes the cucumbers by default and a good crop of purslane which I haven't kept pulled this summer. I'd be happy if a little night raider enjoyed every bit of that!