The Apple of My Eye

It has been a while since we have written about our garden because we have taken small vacations to the forest and the coast. However, we are back now to tell you all about our early harvests, preserving ventures and how are garden is growing.


Last Friday morning- August 6, 2010 I brought Adam out to visit the garden and orchard here at my parent's place and we decided to pick apples so that we would be able to make applesauce. The orchard did not do well this year due to our very wet and cold spring and early summer. The only tree that really produced anything was the Transparent Apple tree. Wanting to make the most of what we had, my Dad cut two large branches out of the top of the tree for us to harvest apples off of them and also to prune the tree and let more light in. Adam loved learning how to "polish" and apple on his shirt to clean it before he ate it and also had fun eating a small apple while we picked ours. We ended up picking three large buckets of apples off of one branch! One of the buckets of apples is pictured above. I took those apples home and so far out of one bucket I have made 5 quarts and 2 pints of applesauce! I plan on making more applesauce and some spiced apple butter this week with the rest.


This Tuesday, August 10th, 2010- my Dad Dale's birthday- I came out again to visit, take my parents out to lunch and work in the garden. In the morning we took a tour of the garden to see what progress had been made. It has been fairly cold these past few days- very unusual for August. It has been in the 60's in the mornings which is difficult for our garden plants- especially for the tomatoes and peppers. But, as you can see above, many tomatoes are forming on the vines.


Despite the cooler weather many plants are doing quite well and continue to grow. Our cabbages are starting to form in the centers. They look so pretty with their deep purple color.

Also, many tomatoes are starting to form and most of our tomato plants are very large. There are two or three varieties with tomatoes on them already- a good sign!


Our basil (pictured above) is smelling so good and is growing quite nicely in big bunches. Our lettuce, beets, carrots and kale are also coming along. Everything is a bit smaller than it would be had we been able to plant it earlier in the season and had we had a warmer spring and summer- but all in all things are doing well. Our beans are also flowering- many with pretty purple and red flowers!

The squash are really starting to bloom and look very healthy- so we have high hopes of harvesting many of them in the fall.


Also, our grapes are really starting to get bigger and hopefully later on we'll be able to make some delicious grape juice!


Luckily, even though our orchard only produced one kind of apple this year and no pears, plums or cherries- we will have plenty of wild blackberries. Adam sure had fun picking his own with Grandma's help as you can see in the picture below!


We are so thankful that we'll have plenty of berries to freeze and also we plan on making some juice and syrup from them. We will harvest as many as we can!


Suburban Garden Report:

My little suburban garden is doing quite well! The rhubarb continues to grow very well- I need to harvest some soon to freeze and perhaps make some preserves out of. Also, we are getting a few strawberries to eat almost daily- which is delicious and fun!


Our pumpkins are doing great! There are four large pumpkins on the vines and they are starting to turn yellow/orange! They are so pretty and keep getting bigger. My sweet potato plants in the same raised bed planter have grown a bit but probably don't like the cooler weather we've been having!


In another raised bed where I have some very young blueberry bushes all of the sudden a mystery melon or squash plant came up! It looks very healthy and has been growing a lot. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of it! I'm guessing it grew out of something in some of the compost that we put in that planter. Amazing!

Happy Gardening...a post about baking/food will be coming later on!