Garden Harvest

Planting a garden is one of the funnest things we do in the spring. We all have a great time getting the garden ready and making sure it is watered and weeded. We all work hard to make sure that the plants are growing and the biggest responsibility is to make sure we pick the vegetables when they are done. Every year we are learning more and more about how to make our garden better. This year we got three new grow boxes to plant in. It helped us get corn, beans, lots of onions, and tomatoes. We made a huge killing on spaghetti squash. Every time we picked peas, I think only a few made it inside to the fridge. Everyone loved eating them right off the vines.  

One thing we did struggle with again this year was squash bugs.  We worked so hard in the beginning killing the adults and picking off the eggs.  We searched every leaf everyday for eggs and bugs.  Then the plants got too big to search.  We also planted a lot of onions and marigolds in hopes that the smell would deter the bugs.  We thought we had won!  But no, the bugs still came, in fact they lived in the marigolds and crawled right over the onions.  The grasshoppers were also a nuisance this year.  We can't win with bugs.  We may just have to spray.  Next year we are going to take a break from squash in hopes that the bugs will go away so we can plant squash again the next year.  Crop rotating is supposed to work in getting rid of them.  

A garden would not be a garden without eating the fruits of our labors and making some really good food with them. A few times we made entire meals from the garden.  One time we had hamburgers and onion rings.  Everything except the bread and hamburger was from the garden.  We had homemade pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, and the onion rings all from the garden.  They were so good!

 

We also made some amazing spaghetti sauce, onion rings, we split the peas and made pea potato soup and pickles. We can a lot of our produce and it is always a lot of work but totally worth it.  The black cauldron has been bubbling for the past month but it is finally done! We put up 13 lbs of tomatoes, 25 lbs of peaches, and about 7lbs of apples in one weekend and that was only the beginning of it. The hard part this year was finding canning lids at the store. It seems like Covid-19 is affecting everything in our lives even canning season.  We had to order some off of Amazon that were way too expense.  Then we finally found some more at Ridley's and took most of their stock.  Crazy times call for crazy measures. 

This is most of the things we canned this year.  We did pasta sauce, salsa, peaches, 3 flavors of peach jam, peach leather, pickles, and multiple flavors of applesauce.  The Lee's had an amazing crop this year with their apple trees and they gladly and willingly shared a lot of apples with us.  Along with the applesauce and dried apples, we tried, for the first time, to make apple juice. It was a lot of work, but we had some great little helpers make it happen. We ended up making about 14 quarts of apple cider.   The juice that came out of our juicer was pretty thick so we call it cider instead.  It is quite good when it is warm because the pulp is mixed up.  When it is cold though it is like drinking applesauce.  If we make it again, we will strain the juice again after it comes out of the juicer to try and get out most of the pulp.  We are happy with our first attempt though.  I look forward to this time of year and putting forth the work to see what comes out of it. I am glad to help pass it on to the kids and give them the understanding of why we work hard to get the food.