All of a sudden, our crops are starting to come in. We’ve already eaten a few ripe tomatoes and picked a bunch of Provider green beans to eat with supper and can up. I’ve got a whole lot more out there for me to pick tomorrow. They come on so fast and keep producing all summer long, until it freezes! They’re certainly well named.
I’ve also noticed our chokecherries are getting darker and are about ready to pick. This year, I’m making cherry/jalapeño jelly. I call mine Bronco Cherry and boy is it ever good. All I do is cut up a handful of jalapeños and boil them with the chokecherry syrup, then strain out the jalapenos and ladle the syrup into the jars. Yes, I do use pectin and the chokecherry jelly recipe.
We’ve also got a bunch of big Hansen’s bush cherries on our bushes along the fence. They look like ripe olives! Yum! The birds got last year’s batch before I could pick them. So, this afternoon, I’m going out and getting them. When they’re almost ripe, they’re puckering, like chokecherries. But when they’re very ripe, they’re sweet. They’re a very easy crop to start and grow. Plus, they don’t flower too early, as do the Nanking cherries, so they nearly always set a crop. The blossoms don’t get killed by a late frost.
Our Hopi Pale Grey vines are setting tons of squash. We were out there with a local photographer, doing a photo shoot for Baker Creek today and were amazed at how big some of those squash were already! I can only imagine how huge they’ll be, come October. Wow!
We had our first cucumbers last night. I peeled some Early Fortune cukes and sliced them. I made a sweet/sour brine of vinegar, water, and sugar, mixed to taste before putting it on the cucumbers. After refrigerating them for an hour or two, we ate them with our smoked pork chops and baked potatoes. Yum! I even ate the leftovers for breakfast. Yep, harvest time shines! — Jackie
I’m glad to know what it is.
Wow everyone having a bad year.
Unbelievable.
I’m not quitting. It’s just nothing is coming on.
Seems like forever!
97° Monday and Tuesday.
No wonder nothing is doing right.
Got to finish up chores and then get a small head of cabbage ( hip, hip hooray!) on for supper!
Did you read where the jalapeno peppers at the grocery stores are infected with Samenella ( sp)
Never heard of peppers getting ” sick” :).
All joking aside this is very serious. But at least everyone here put out a garden.
Take care ❤️
No, I didn’t know about jalapenos carrying salmonella. It’s the dirty way commercial crops are grown and packaged. I hope your garden recovers from all this heat as ours did. Fall is around the corner and cooler temperatures.
Here in east central Georgia I’m kind of between spring and fall plantings. The first round of yellow squash/zucchini are done and the next batch is just now flowering. Corn and first round of beans are done and put up. This morning I saw the second round of pole bean and Provider seeds are popping up for October harvest.
Took down the cuke trellis yesterday so they’re done. It was a so-so harvest of those this year. Cow peas are coming though. I’m picking/freezing Mississippi Purple and Piggots while the Red Rippers have just popped up for fall. Jalapenos are pumping out peppers and I’m putting up more pickled slices today.
I’m just starting to seed the first cell packs of cabbage and cauliflower for fall. Next week I’ll start broccoli kale and collards. Will be planting two more rounds of broccoli about 2-3 weeks apart to try to prevent an all-at-once harvest avalanche.
So glad the winds are blowing all that smoke away from most of you!
It’s so cool to hear of your garden’s harvesting going on. I love it that there is such a wide variation in planting/harvesting in different climates! I just picked another basket of Providers that I’ll put up this afternoon. Boy, do they ever provide lots of food!!
Good old Providers! That’s what I have in the ground now. Fortunately we have a break in the upper 90’s because beans won’t germinate if it’s too hot. I have my methods, though. :)
Congratulations on your newfound freedom. ENJOY!
In N.IL/zone 5, it will be a low harvest year for black walnuts. Our trees were brimming last year, not so much this year. Dad has trees in his neighborhood and reports few nuts in his town too. I know black walnut meats are expensive but if you rely on someone from zone 5, likely won’t be a lot of them.
Our walnut tree doesn’t seem to have any nuts on it either, this year. Oh well, we’re happy to get ANY nuts from a Zone 4 tree in Zone 3!
Jackie, Do you can-up nut meats anyway, purchasing them, if your trees don’t work out? I’ve really appreciated your book’s recipe to do that. My trees, pecan, walnut, and almond, have never produced enough, in 20 yrs, to harvest, let alone can-up. So I had to purchase nut meats and can them.
Everything sounds so delicious.
I have the same basket you have full of provider beans! my late mom gifted it to me several years ago. I really treasure mine. You into harvest mode, when it seems only a week or so you were fighting the spring mud and low temps for seeding. Been enjoying cucumbers for a spell. tomatoes are starting to come in All peppers are doing good. Great flavors and good sizes. Onions did very poor this year Garlic ziltch. Potatoes are small but healthy No scab or grub so no complaints. Enjoy your bean picking. Mine is just enough for a meal at a picking. So Bought and canned up15# from the local family farm to store company we are so fortunate to have here in The gorge. Smoke is finally blowing off to the east to the next unfortunate folks. Sure hope firefighters can get a handle soon on the fires. So enjoy your blog Jackie Have a good day.
Yep, we still have fires too. Fortunately, the smoke is blowing east, away from us. But I feel bad for folks over there. We had a storm last night, which ignited two new ones. That’s so awful. I feel so bad for the poor firefighters!
I’ve got a bunch of Providers all canned up, in the basement now, to join the ones already down there. My garlic rotted in the tubs I’d planted it in. I don’t know why. It was mulched and well planted in not-soggy soil. Sometimes stuff just happens.
It was a somewhat weird year for garlic. Again, no scapes proper but scape-like small bulbs on some plants. The heat dried up the garlic so fast there was barely any “stalk” left on a lot of plants (which made digging a bit of a challenge).
Upside was the three volunteer Pontiac red potato plants that were in the garlic patch provided a nice haul. The one thing I can say about the Atlantic potatoes is they do brown up quite nicely when boiled then fried. Thanks to a blog poster I have a couple of leads on Pontiac red seed potatoes for next year.
Jackie, Talk about rotting, I think my green bean seeds were too old; 5 yrs old. Two out of a few hundred finally came up. Now I have no seeds of my favorite green bean, and local source hasn’t had them in years; Slenderette green beans. Also, my soil has done poorly for two years; I believe, the result of not rotating crops, though I felt I amended thoroughly. After hubby tilled all soil this spring, it mixed the vinegar/round up I’d used in walking paths, into all soil. So that fouled it for probably a very long time.
I’ve been harvesting tomatoes, bulb onions, and green beans. The potatoes are dyeing off with early maturity. This is a month early for the potatoes. The sweet corn is ready and being enjoyed, no peaches this year, poor raspberry crop. I also note fewer apples. I think the intermittent dry weather has been stressful to my gardening endeavors. The constant smoke haze hasn’t helped. I rolling with the climate punches and will adapt.
That’s all we gardeners can do is to roll with the punches and adapt. Our potatoes are very poor this year, but we have tons of apples. I just mowed the orchard and was shocked at the heavy crop. I know what I’ll be canning in a while. Our sweet corn (3rd planting) is very late but is now getting tall. I expect tassels pretty soon. We won’t have much to eat for at least a month, let alone to can. But it’s better than nothing!
Hi, Everett, Here in zone 9, far north California, our apples produced none, peaches a few. No cherries, no plums, no apricots. Of course, it didn’t help that the whole month of January was spring time, then plunged into winter afterward.
I planted 2 Hopi Grey seeds this year and they are trying to take over the whole place LOL! I grow in raised beds and they are hanging into the aisles and trying to take over the cucumber space and I have to gently redirect them.
I planted my Gold Wonder next to a piece of wire fencing running to the top of an old car port frame I picked up alongside the road for free. They grew all the way to the top and over! I have to use a ladder to pick them up there. Next year I’ll make the fence piece a bit shorter.
The Cherokee Trail of Tears have covered the old swing frame I plant them around. That was another free garden trellis.
Tomatoes are very slow to fruit and ripen; garlic crop was strong but mixed sizes; onions are all medium sized which is fine since it’s just me. The medium hot banana peppers are maybe just a little more hot than medium! Zucchini are not producing heavy, but they are producing. Cucumbers are running late. Melons are not going to have enough time to do anything with the slow rate of growth.
No peaches, no pears, some apples, only a few handfuls of blueberries, good crop of strawberries, modest early crop of red raspberries, and it’s the first year the Hardy Chicago Fig has set fruit.
Each year is different. Preserve what’s plentiful this year because next year it might not be.
Yes, you’re so right. Each year is different. Different challenges, different weather. It’s always something to keep us on our toes for sure. Nope, Hopi Pale Grey squash aren’t raised bed friendly. They are extremely rampant. Ours have climbed out of the garden and right up trees. But boy are they ever good!!
I love it that you’re repurposing found stuff in your garden. I do that all the time. I have bed spring trellises right against my front porch for the Grandpa Ott’s morning glories to climb on. Nobody notices that they’re not “nice”. And, of course, they were free. When I go to the dump with my one kitchen bag a month, I always bring home more than I took. I figure it’s recycling at its best.
I got fungus in my tomatoes 🍅.
I got the bottom leaves off and sprayed with fungal spray and put straw around them. I don’t know.
Nothing is looking very good at all
I think it’s just too hot and humid down here in Southern Illinois.
You sound like you’re going to have a good garden.
A grocery store had bell peppers on sale.89¢ from 1.39 a lb so I got 10 peppers for 8.90
I’m going to cut them up and put in freezer.
I do believe that is how I am going to do it this year.
Not the tomatoes 🍅 though. I’m going to wait and see what happens!
Take care.
If your tomato’s bottom leaves are getting spotted and yellow, dying off, it could likely be Septoria Leaf Spot. We have it here too. Fortunately, although it is ugly, it does not harm the tomatoes and as the leaves die and drop off, it actually hurries the tomatoes up to ripen due to more sunshine. Don’t give up!!! Everyone is experiencing tough growing this year. I know we are. But, by keeping up working with what you have, it’s amazing at how much food you actually will harvest. By quitting, you never get to find out.