Berry Update

Our red raspberries and blueberries are starting to get some color.  The strawberries are still producing too.

Preserving Strawberries

We have harvested about 15 lbs of strawberries already this year, and still have many more ripening on the vine. We had been freezing them, but I had off Friday and decided to preserve a few.

Fresh Picked Strawberries

Stemmed and ready to turn into jam

Crush the strawberries

Add 1 Package Pectin

 

Add Sugar (recipe called for 7 cups, but I only put 4 in) and bring to a boil.

Heat up the lids in boiling water. I heated the jars in the dishwasher.

Fill the jars - The counter became a sticky mess.. Oops.

Load the boiling canner

TA DA! Jam!

For the preserves, I used Sugar in the Raw as an experiment. I think it worked OK, but the sugar did take longer to dissolve. This recipe (from the Ball Canning Book) was the "Heritage Preserve) recipe, so no added pectin, but there was a lot of "sitting" time.

About to go in the canner!

So, all said and done, we have 6 half pints of preserves put up and 7 half pints of jam. Not to mention, I'll have another opportunity to can next weekend!

Garden Update

The progression of the gardens:

Jason and I have been working on expanding the vegetable garden and making it seem a little more put together. This is how it looked about a week ago. We are getting fencing delivered tomorrow to put around the stone paths.

Jason is tilling me a new flower garden in front of the vegetable beds! I have the BEST husband!

I went away to Dallas for a few days for work and I got back and wondered why Jason had planted things around my bean pole tee-pee and then I realized the beans had sprouted and grown this much while I was away!

The strawberries are starting to ripen. We've harvested about 2 lbs already this week and there a bunch more that will be ready soon!

    

2 lbs and counting!

Blueberries are going to start to color soon too!

Blackberries are blooming!

Look at the baby raspberries!

Strawberries and Slugs

We had some slugs going after our lettuce (the iceberg and romaine) in the vegetable beds, and in the flower beds, the hostas.  Little holes in the leaves.  So I set up beer traps, basically the bottom half of a soda can burried in the ground, with some beer in it.  They come out at night, and so the next day, filled with dead slugs.  What a way to go out, drowned in beer.

Luckily, no slugs on our strawberry patch, which is going bonkers.  We've got bird netting over the area this year, so hopefully they won't all disapear the day they get ripe. A few are ready to eat!

Winter Gardens

It was a nice weekend, warm for January. Walked around the gardens a bit...

These beds are right in front of the tree line in our front yard. The left one is half full of garlic (which is starting to sprout up) and the other has a winter cover crop on it (not doing as well as I wanted). We are going to be adding 2 more beds in front of these two for more veggies. We'll add 1 along the side for the Hops and Gourds. I still have to figure out where the pumpkins are going. They may go in one of the front beds where I normally just put annuals...

One of many little garlic sprouts! YAY!

Strawberry and Blueberry bed. I peeked under the straw this weekend, the strawberries look GREAT! Very excited for this spring!

Blueberry bush. This one is the oldest of the 4. Look at those buds!

Horseradish! Looking GOOD!