Early Harvests

In the last couple of weeks we have started to harvest a few things in the garden and around it. Last Monday, August 16th Adam and I came out for the day to pick blackberries at my parent's place. Adam had fun with his own bucket full of berries- mostly supplied by me and Grandma!


We found a large grove of blackberries and my Dad mowed around the area and cut back a lot of them so that they were easy to get at. We managed to get a large bucketful. There will be many more ripe ones in the days to come! Below is a picture of our first berry harvest.


I took home this large bucket of berries and saved some for eating and then froze them on a tray to save for winter. I hope to get out to do more picking later on and freeze some more. We also are thinking about making some blackberry syrup and other things with the berries.

Other Garden Harvests:

My mom has been harvesting a few of the wax beans and freezing them so that later she can make a canned three bean salad with a couple of the other beans we planted. Also, she has been harvesting a few cucumbers and making small batches of pickles out of them.


The lettuces are looking lovely in spite of the heat. We are keeping them well watered and using t hem quickly. They have not started to bolt yet! In order to keep the lettuce very fresh we pull it up roots and all and chill it in the fridge until it is ready to eat. It seems to be fresher that way.The deer tongue lettuce and speckled romaine are very tasty and seem to be especially nice. They are part of a mix that we bought from Seed Savers Exchange. They are two that we'd like to grow again.

We have finished up making applesauce from the remaining Transparent apples. My mom made 22 quarts of applesauce the other day! There are other apples that are ready later on that we'll use for making more cider. She decided to can the applesauce outside using the campstoves just as we had done for the apple cider. It makes less of a mess (no sticky counters or floors!) and tends to be cooler than in the kitchen. She even brought her mixer outside to do the pureeing of the sauce.

We'll be back with more gardening news soon!