Quick and Easy Zucchini

The summer squash harvest is beginning. A really quick and easy way to serve zucchini is just to slice and saute. Slice, sprinkle with salt and let sit for 30 minutes to an hour to draw the water out of it. Rinse well and pat dry. Heat a little bit of olive oil and saute until done. Yum!

Raspberry Season has begun!

Look at what I picked today. Yum, yum, yum!

My raspberries are a tangled mess. I have summer raspberries and fall raspberries all planted together. I have red raspberries and yellow raspberries all planted together. I had black raspberries in there also, but moved them last year.

I like my raspberries all mixed up. I get raspberries from June until frost this way. And I like the flavor variety from growing so many different kinds.

My raspberries spread past their boundaries and I dig up the wandering plants and give them to my neighbors - I think they all look at me strange when I tell them I have no idea what I am giving them - except that it is a raspberry plant. They just have to wait until it bears fruit and be pleasantly surprised.

I'm not planning on making as much raspberry jam this year as I have in past years. I am going to save some of the berries for making syrup for my waffles and for making sorbet. I am going to branch out some. I'll be sure and share my recipes and my successes and failures - I always do.

Where has June gone?

Seriously, can you believe it is almost July? I cannot believe how time keeps slipping away from me.

It has been a strange year for gardening - but don't we say that every year? It is just that the strangeness is different every year. There is never a "perfect" year for gardening - something is always out of whack - that's the way it is with nature. Every year something does great and something doesn't. I don't think I have ever had a garden where everything grew perfectly.

This year the weather has been so variable. We had below average temperatures for much of the spring and early summer and now it is hot - too hot - the garden didn't have time to adjust. We also had very little rain so I haven't been complaining one bit about the last few rainy days.

So, how has my garden been growing since I haven't been updating? Here are a few pics:

The lettuce has been doing great. It loves the cooler weather we were having. It will probably be done pretty soon now that the weather has turned hot.

The potatoes are also doing great. They have started flowering which means there will be new potatoes to dig very soon.

The peppers have just not done well so far this year. They are small and just not growing much. They are heat lovers, so maybe now that it has turned hot, they will start thriving instead of just surviving.

The cauliflower was looking great but the heads have started looking really funky the last couple of days. I suspect it is the sudden heat.

The brocolli is looking really good. It hasn't seemed to mind the heat.

The brussels sprouts are also doing well.

I lost most of my cabbage this spring to the rabbits. The ones that survived (I put a fence around them a little too late) are doing great.

My tomatoes are struggling. They are starting to bounce back. None of my tomatoes look as good as my neighbor's but I'm not too concerned - at least not yet.

The new peach tree is thriving. My son keeps asking when we will have peaches again. Poor impatient child, he just does not understand that this young tree will not produce fruit for some time.

The currant bushes are loaded with berries that are just starting to ripen.

And lastly, Andy's garden. He planted cucumbers, canteloupe and watermelons. The cucumbers and canteloupes are beginning to look really good. His seedless watermelon never came up and the seeded ones just don't seem to be doing much. They are barely growing - I'm not sure if we will see any fruit from them this year. Andy, being the ever hopeful child still thinks the seedless ones might come up yet.

Today's Harvest

The radishes are still small, but I wanted to thin them out - they will taste great in my dinner salad!

These strawberries are quite a bit smaller than the ones from California that are in the grocery stores right now, but wow - they pack some taste! These will be part of my breakfast tomorrow.

How to can rhubarb

I canned 18 pints of rhubarb today. Rhubarb is easy to can. You can do it in a boiling water bath - you don't need a pressure canner. Rhubarb is also easy to freeze - I always freeze some for crisps, but I love stewed rhubarb on my waffles in the morning.

To can -

1. Prepare your rhubarb. Wash and cut into small pieces. Place the rhubarb in a sauce pan or stock pot and add just enough water to the bottom so it doesn't scorch - you don't need much, rhubarb has plenty of water in it. Bring to a boil stirring once in awhile to get the stewed pieces up from the bottom and the still hard pieces from the top down into the liquid. Sweeten to taste with your choice of sweetener.

2. Steralize your jars - either in boiling water or a dishwasher.

3. Fill your jars with rhubarb - use a non metal spatula to release any air bubbles that may be trapped along the side of your jars - wipe the rims of your jars off with a paper towel - put new lids on top and fasten with jar rings.

4. Place in a boiling water bath and process for 15 minutes (from the time that the water returns to a boil) - making sure the jars are all submerged.

5. Remove and cool. When cool, test to make sure they have all sealed.

Easy Peasy.

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Garden Update 4/25/09

April has been a very dry month. April is supposed to be rainy. It is supposed to rain today but so far it is just overcast. The plants need the rain - I think I will get Andy out to do a rain dance later. I think I will even join him. What a crazy sight that will be!

I planted onions yesterday. I ordered extra onion plants this year. I never realized just how many onions we go through. Onions (and carrots) was one of the few vegetables that even though I grow them and get some from my CSA, I still found myself buying more almost every trip to the grocery store. I tried to pay attention to things like that when planning my garden this year. I really want to grow the things that we consume and knock that grocery bill even further down.

So here is a picture of my 6 rows of onions. I watered them really good after planting and they still look good this morning. Hopefully the rain will come.

On Earth Day, we added a grave beside the currant bushes. Just 3 months after we lost our cocker spaniel Molly, we lost our kitty Cricket. She was 16 years old. I wish we could have buried Molly under the currants but the ground was frozen hard in January and we just couldn't afford to pay the extra money to get her ashes back to bury later. This is the end of the animals that I had before I met Dan - I brought both Molly and Cricket with me when I moved here from Arizona in 1994. They lived good lives.

The rhubarb is looking really good this morning. It won't be long until it is tall enough to cut. Yum, yum. I always look forward to rhubarb crisp in the spring. And of course strawberry rhubarb pie and strawberry rhubarb jam and just rhubarb cooked up (my mom always called it pie plant instead of rhubarb).

The lilacs will be blooming soon and sending their wonderful fragrance through the air. I just love the smell of lilacs in the spring - has to be one of my most favorite things of all.

And a couple of brave strawberries have put out some early blossoms. That means there will be strawberries to go with the rhubarb!