Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Calm Before The Storm



I am taking this time inside to prepare for the upcoming canning season. Here in a very short time I know that my canning chores will start.  My days will be consumed by hours of picking, peeling and canning one harvest or the other. Crop after crop, week after week if we are lucky. So I take this time to prepare extra food for the freezer. Meals that can be put in the slow cooker and consumed without using the full stove top. Casseroles frozen to simply thaw and pop in the oven.  Extra bread frozen for sandwiches while the kitchen is occupied.

Also stockpiling extra sugar for those peaches, apples, grapes and blackberry crops. Jar lids, vinegar for pickling, canning salt for pickles and kraut, and we can't forget those spices not only for pickling but salsa, spaghetti sauces and tomato products. Bags for the vacuum sealer were ordered last month. 

My first crop as you can see above should be the beets to be pickled. We eat these in salads all through the year. 
 

 The next crop will be these Jade snap beans ready within the week. We have two additional crops coming on in various stages of growth. One will be earmarked for seeds.
 

The Cabbage is starting to head and if it makes it through this heat wave should be the next crop ready. If not then we have fall seeds already planted to replace them. I hope to put this up as freezer slaw. We absolutely loved our freezer slaw last winter.  
 

The Broccoli is also starting to produce small heads and again if it makes it through this heat wave should be the next crop to finish out the spring lineup that struggled through snow storms and horrible rainy weather which put them about a month behind their normal maturity time.  




 We still have two different corn crops coming on!



 Both the red beans and horticulture beans are loaded. We have been watering them along through this heat to help them fill out. Right now it looks to be a bumper crop! With red beans and horticulture beans which are both shell beans and green beans to snap along with a couple rows of purple hull peas I am going to be shelling beans alot.


Cucumber vines are loaded with blooms and small cucumbers and I should have cukes within a week or two. 


 And just look what I have found. Tomatoes.....


 And Bell Peppers!



Can't forget the young zucchini and squash. 


And those purple hulls are blooming


Not to mention the watermelon, cantaloupe, okra, onions, carrots and potatoes. We've been slow to get started due to some really challenging weather conditions early on but we are coming out the gate running.


And that is not even counting the apples, grapes, plums and peaches.
And look at these blackberries!

Gosh I am already tired and haven't even really begun. 
I think I need an assistant...or two  : )

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

17 comments:

  1. I envy your beans. We had a nice bed full of snap beans till a groundhog took most of them out. Just when they started to come back and the new ones I planted started to open their second set of leaves, he comes back and eats them all again. Thankfully he hasn't noticed my pole beans or any other veggie we have out there. I still wish we could stop him from coming around. Traps don't seem to work and we can't use our .22 to get him. We are too close to other homes.

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    1. I so understand! I had a groundhog pass through earlier in the spring and he really did some damage. He seemed to move on though because we have not seen him lately. I think my two large puppies finally got big enough to deter hm somewhat!

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  2. I just posted a garden update on my blog too! (www.zeahrenaissance.blogspot.com)

    I have often tried to comment on your blog but for some reason, it never publishes my comments. I don't know why. Maybe this time?! I don't want to give up because I really want to tell you how much I love and enjoy and glean important information from your blog! Just a suggestion- that you make an email account for the blog so that people can reach you in case commenting is impossible.

    As a young mom of four children and my husband is the sole breadwinner, gardening and canning is something I do with vigor...but I wasn't raised to do these things so you have helped me SO MUCH. Thank you for sharing all you do and how and when. I appreciate it so much.

    I was just lamenting on my blog how my cabbages and broccoli and cauliflower did poorly this year due (I think) in part to the torrents of rain we had and very hot heat. I never thought about a fall crop! When would you plant yours? (I live in PA but we are surprisingly near schedule with one another!)

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    1. So sorry you have had problems posting. I checked and your messages are not going to my spam filter. I do appreciate your kind words and just per your request look up in the far right corner of my sideboard and I have posted an email address. While I cannot always answer every email because I receive lots these days I do read them.

      Hugs from The Holler

      CQ

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    2. Thank you so much! It was so frustrating, wanting to thank you for your blog but not being able to! Or wondering about something, and not knowing how to find out! Thanks too for the fall planting post you just posted! So excited to read that!

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  3. Oh my GOODNESS! IT WORKED! YAY!

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  4. Your beans look good! In all of the years of us having a garden, we have never had deer eat our garden, until this year! They have ate our daylilies and started onto our beans. Hubby had enough and put up stakes and string all around the garden. I think that we have salvaged a couple of rows by him doing this. Now if we could just have some sunshine!!!!

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    1. Wow if we could just have some rain! We battle deer regularly and once they find a good location we find that they come back regularly.

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  5. Garden looks great, hope canning and freezing all that still leaves a little room for blog tims.

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    1. Sometimes it is hard to juggle both but I manage usually. Occasionally I will take a day or two off to catch up : )

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  6. I absolutely love shelling beans & peas. If I was closer I would take a couple of vacation days & help you (learning a lot from you along the way!).

    The garden looks beautiful & so weed free!

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    1. Honey I would sure let you pull up a rocking chair and help !

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  7. On your recommendation, I planted Jade beans this year and we canned our first 9 quarts yesterday. We have been eating them steamed with new potatoes and they are a rich, flavorful bean. We are getting desperate for rain this year. It may be our third year of draught. We pump water from our pond, but that's not like a good rain.

    You make me tired, too, talking about all the work coming. Our cabbage is ready and I have several batches of freezer slaw done. I've made it for several years and it's always a favorite with company.

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    1. Ya know I have gotten quite a few emails here lately from satisfied gardeners who have tried Jade on my recommendation. It's a great variety for my area and I have been more than pleased with it's performance. We are pretty dry here as well! July is usually a dry month for us anyway and up until about 2 weeks ago we were getting showers regularly. Then one day it just quit. The good thing is that the temperatures have been staying in the low 90's which is a normal summer weather pattern other than the last day or two. I notice that once this front moves through it is supposed to cool back off though.

      We love that freezer slaw too.

      I like to make kraut with my cabbage and freezer slaw.

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    2. I have my m-i-l's big old stone crock and make kraut in it. Last year was a bumper crop of cabbage -this year, too- so I'm just doing freezer slaw and no kraut. I often need something to take families after a death or illness and a couple of the containers makes a welcome contribution. It can always be stuck in their freezer until needed.

      I always feel like I'm chatting with a fellow bayou gal when I write to you.... LOL!!!

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    3. What a great dish for taking to people thanks for the idea. And honey you are chatting with a fellow bayou girl!

      Hugs from The Holler

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  8. My red beans were so beautiful, but now after 3 weeks of rain ( 6 inches in 24 hours)
    all my beans look like they were scalded. No beans this year. I canned 13 pints of pickled
    beets using your recipe, can't wait to taste them. I will try the jade beans next year.
    Love your blog!!
    Sue

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Feel free to challenge me, disagree with me, or tell me I’m completely nuts in the comments section of each blog entry, but I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason whatsoever (abusive, profane, rude, or anonymous comments) – so keep it polite, please. Also I am not a free advertisement board if you want to push a product on my comments I will delete you fast !!!

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