Preserving the Garden's Bounty

We've been busy freezing, canning, dehydrating, and curing what we've harvested from our garden and blueberry patch. I thought I'd share a few photos from recent harvests.

There have been LOTS of potatoes, and this latest harvest had the largest of them!

After canning several jars of beets, I later discovered a donor beet plant growing out at the far edge of the garden. It was the most lush of all the beets I grew, with an enormous root. Often, it's the donor plants that are the hardiest.

The zucchini has been coming in like crazy. I've made 12 jars of zucchini relish, and at least 6 loaves of zucchini bread so far. Plus, we eat steamed zucchini several nights a week. I'll be making zucchini lasagna and zoodles with our next few batches.

I was able to grow one giant head of cabbage. It was beautiful all the way through to the middle. We also grew four or five small heads of cauliflower - below is one of the most recent that we brought in.

We canned several batches of red currant jam. I use Pomona's Pectin so that the jam can be lower sugar.

Below are some of the peas we gathered, along with broccoli and cauliflower. We had pea harvests like this one almost every day through June and July.

In mid-July, I dug up half of the garlic (below) and brought it inside to cure. I ended up spreading it out on a flat piece of cardboard so air could get to it better. By late July, I had dug up the rest. Well, actually, there is probably more out there...it tends to hide under other plants. Likely, I'll find the remaining garlic in late fall and early winter, when it starts growing again. Letting it re-sprout saves me from having to plant it again - I just take advantage of its ability to resprout and spread on its own.

This is just a small sampling of our harvests. We've been harvesting blueberries like crazy, and I canned blueberry pie filling. I also canned cherry pie filling and made bing cherry jam. Coming up, I'll be canning green beans and maybe tomatoes. The freezer is stuffed full of vegetables that I blanched.