Squirrels

Squirrels and other animals are frequent visitors to the garden. We deal with this annoyance the best we can by trying to deter them with age tested remedies but this year they have been very persistent.

 

We are processing our first tomatoes today and tomorrow looks like canning pepper jelly and dill pickles.

Tomato, corn and cucumber time

After spending the weekend visiting with our son in Asheville, we returned today to a busy picking time.
We picked over 45 ears of corn.

15 cucumbers and 30 tomatoes

Tomato Time

In actuality it's only the beginning of tomato time but it's always nice when you pick 5-6 and one is ready for the bread!

Step 1- Cut with a sharp knife

Step 2- Admire the tomato

Step 3- Place tomato on bread, white bread recommended ( you can be healthy with whole wheat later in the season.)

Step 4- Spread the mayo

Step 5- ENJOY!!

 

Garden Pizza

Nothing better than a garden pizza for supper.
It starts with pizza dough made with chopped rosemary from the garden and pesto sauce made from basil from the garden. Toppings include sweet banana peppers, hot banana peppers and green bell peppers all picked today.
Another example of going from the backyard garden to the table!!

Pepper time

Today despite the rainy weather, the garden yielded  30 hot and sweet banana peppers, 30 jalapenos. 22 Bell peppers, 3 cucumbers and 2 zucchini.
We used the day inside to process 4 jars of mint jelly and 14 jars of pepper jelly.

Plus the corn is almost ready to harvest. I know this for a number of reasons:

1- We always plant the first week of April and that puts the harvest towards the end of June.
2- According to farmers, corn is ready when the silks turn brown.
But the real reason I know it's close to picking corn is- 
I chased a squirrel out of corn patch today and he was chowing down on one of the ears of corn.

Time to pick it before they get more than we do!!!

More Pickles

It was an excellent picking and processing day today. The school garden yielded banana peppers both hot and sweet, eggplant and Bell peppers.
In the backyard, we picked enough cucumbers to process 5 more quart jars of pickles. Tomorrow is jelly day, both mint and pepper jelly.

Early Bird Figs

We have 2 large fig trees which we have propagated increasing our fig tree population to 9 trees in different parts of the yard. We grow an abundance of figs, in fact, the strawberry fig jelly we make and sell:) is one of our favorites.
Figs are usually ready to be picked the end of July so we  were surprised Friday morning when we were treated to 4 early bird figs. They were larger and sweeter than normal too. Whets the appetite for later in the summer for sure.

We also picked green beans, eggplant, hot and sweet banana peppers and cucumbers.
Tomatoes are on the way and I can't wait for that first tomato sandwich!!