End of Summer

How SAD - I think I might actually like fall if it didn't mean two things:  1) Back to work which means a lot less free time for the gardens and 2) WINTER is an inevitability.  Yuck, I just hate saying that word - winter.  I really should live in a different state but I wonder if tolerating this winter is part of what makes the summer so sweet.

The cucumbers have slowed considerably thanks to the cold weather we've had the past few days.  It's gotten down to the upper 30's at night, which makes me nervous as I have a garden full of green Romas still!  Twenty-two quarts of pickles - AND a bag of cucs donated to a good friend - all, in all, the cucumbers were a success!

Now on to tomatoes - I picked three boxes of romas that were "almost" ready so I could monitor them more closely in my window sill now that I'm headed back to work.  I have big plans for spaghetti sauce, salsa, and just plain tomato sauce and hope that the weather cooperates!

We've been eating potatoes for at least 6 weeks now.  I've harvested half of the reds, and just a few of the Norkota plants.  I found a website that gave advice for freezing potatoes, so I thought I'd give french fries a shot.  I peeled, sliced into "fries" and boiled the potatoes before freezing them on a pan and then transferring to freezer bags.  The site said that when ready to cook, toss the frozen fries in a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil and bake at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes.  Hopefully that works!

When Joey (my four year old) saw me taking the pans of fries out of the freezer, he said "Where did you get those?"  I told them they were from the garden.  He said "WHAT?!  Rita grows french fries in her garden?  That's silly!"

Pickles Galore

As of today I've canned 17 quarts of pickles and one quart of refrigerator dills.  And we're just getting started!
  Here's an easy pickle recipe that I've used in the past and love:

(recipe is for one jar, and you can make several jars at once, of course):

2 clumps/heads of dill
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp canning salt
dash (less than 1/8 tsp) alum
1/2 c. cider vinegar
water to cover pickles
Cucumbers to fill jar

In sterilized 1 quart jar, put one clump of dill, 1 clove of sliced garlic, and cucumbers. Add sugar, canning salt, alum, and cider vinegar. Add water to cover the pickles. Add another head of dill and one more clove of garlic (cut up). Boil in a hot water bath canner for five minutes. Wait six weeks to eat.

Cucumbers!

I wish I had taken a picture of the cucumber we harvested and ate from the garden today!  Joseph has inspected the cucumber daily since we noticed it growing a few days ago, and today we decided that it was time to pick it.  Mmmmm.... nothing better!  I planted two plants here in my kitchen garden in June and we have several little cucs on the vines.  Then we planted both slicing and pickling cucumbers from seed at Rita's down the road and those just aren't doing as well.  I think they're in a spot that's a little too shady so next year the cucumbers will trade spots with the squash and we'll see if they do better there!

We harvested more potatoes, broccoli, peas, and thinned the carrots resulting in some sweet little baby carrots to eat on July 23rd.  Can't wait until the beans are ready - any day now!

On a flower note, the kids helped me carry rock to the shade garden yesterday to expand it!  They had so much fun - I totally let them design the shape of the shade garden, complete with stepping stones that were repurposed old cement pavers that were hiding in a pile behind the garage.  The bonus is that it cleared it out a little behind there.  I've also decided that our old river rock from around the house will be spread behind the garage since it's so shady there nothing will grow.  But one thing at a time - there's a lot of work to do out there in the shade garden (sod removal, haul in topsoil and composted manure, plant plants... whew!).