What's Growing in the Garden

We were out of town all last week and came back to find an explosion of growth - so much doubled in size while we were gone. Last night my wife picked a good handful of strawberries. Today we've got some butter lettuce, corn salad, and maybe a little broccoli to harvest. Some weeds to pull. Some squash and cucumbers to train up the trellis.

Before we left we harvested a bowl full of sugar snap and snow peas, which we blanched and froze. We pulled the plants before we left because we wouldn't be here to tend to them, plus needed the space to plant something else.
 
We started out using a few of those in the 70's but the seals became hard to find. They are great for decorating and storage for dried beans and such.
 
Ok, not in our garden, but we did the picking. Today was our annual trip to one of the orchards in Door County to pick cherries. 15 quarts of Balaton Tarts - we like them a little better than Montmorency Tarts.

I'll be busy tonight. Need to pit them all. These will get made into pie filling, maraschino style cherries, and bounce. I'll probably dehydrate a small amount to see if I have any success with that. The pits will become cherry pit syrup. We still have a good supply of cherry jam and cherry bbq sauce on the shelf, so no need to make either this year. If we run out of bbq sauce (the most likely thing we'd run out of), we still have a few smaller packages of cherries from last year vacuum sealed in the freezer.

We also grabbed a couple quarts of yellow sweet cherries. It's the end of sweet cherry season and they've got the lift out and are picking the tops of the trees for what's left. I don't know what specific variety they are, but they are wonderfully sweet and tart. These will be eaten and gone within the next day or two.

And last weekend members of my church made their annual trip to Michigan for blueberries. They are good friends with the people they get them from, so they are always told when to come to get the very best blueberries of the season. They've got 30lbs in their freezer for us, waiting for us to pick them up sometime this week.

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Sprung said:
Ok, not in our garden, but we did the picking. Today was our annual trip to one of the orchards in Door County to pick cherries. 15 quarts of Balaton Tarts - we like them a little better than Montmorency Tarts.

I'll be busy tonight. Need to pit them all. These will get made into pie filling, maraschino style cherries, and bounce. I'll probably dehydrate a small amount to see if I have any success with that. The pits will become cherry pit syrup. We still have a good supply of cherry jam and cherry bbq sauce on the shelf, so no need to make either this year. If we run out of bbq sauce (the most likely thing we'd run out of), we still have a few smaller packages of cherries from last year vacuum sealed in the freezer.

We also grabbed a couple quarts of yellow sweet cherries. It's the end of sweet cherry season and they've got the lift out and are picking the tops of the trees for what's left. I don't know what specific variety they are, but they are wonderfully sweet and tart. These will be eaten and gone within the next day or two.

And last weekend members of my church made their annual trip to Michigan for blueberries. They are good friends with the people they get them from, so they are always told when to come to get the very best blueberries of the season. They've got 30lbs in their freezer for us, waiting for us to pick them up sometime this week.

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Those look delicious!!! Perfect coloring! Wow! Chuck
 
We got all the cherries pitted. We could've paid the orchard to pit them for us, but we wanted the pits for cherry pit syrup - which is now underway in the fridge.

If you're ever in need of a good pitter capable of quickly pitting a lot of cherries, we really like this one. I can do about 15 quarts of cherries in roughly an hour, give or take. My wife does it in about double the time. If the boys get involved, multiply the time by about 5 or 6. But that's ok - the boys are helping and learning. Can't expect them to learn and get up to speed if they don't ever get the chance to start using it.

I got about 2/3 of the pitting done, then my wife and boys took over while I started working on getting things going.

8 pints of cherries in syrup - the boys like maraschino cherries and this will be better than cherries swimming in red #40.

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And got bounce started - about 1 cup cherries, 1/3 cup sugar (we've previously done 1/2 cup, but wanted to cut back the sweetness a bit), and fill up the rest of the quart jar with your booze of choice. We like brandy, bourbon, and rum. Vodka is another option. We did 4 quarts with brandy and 4 quarts with bourbon. Not as much as last year, but we've still got plenty of last year's on the shelf. We did one of each with some lemon peel to see what that does with the flavor.

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Measured out what I need to make and can pie filling and have that in the fridge. I will do that tomorrow. Have a few cups of cherries in the dehydrator to see how that goes for us. And have a small sheet tray of cherries in the freezer that I will put in a foodsaver bag and vacuum seal - a little extra on hand in case I need to make more bbq sauce or if I want to toss some in with a batch of mead.
 
So far, I'm extatic with the change from using the grow light. Instead of becomeing a six inch long thread, the plants are producing true leaves and a stouter stem and quickly.

This is one of the Romaine Lettuce that got pummelled by the rain but managed to survive. First pic is as it was when I put it under the light on Friday night. Each pic following is roughly 24 hours later.


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JerseyHighlander said:
I always thought those cherries were that color from some kind of dye. Never imagined they actually grew that color.
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Depends on the variety. Montmorency Tarts, which is what many commonly use and is what we've picked a lot of the last two years, lose their color pretty easily, so there's a lot of food coloring or dye used. I've seen plenty of canning recipes that use tart cherries call for food coloring as an optional ingredient. And certainly it's used a lot in commercial applications - otherwise you won't get that "cherry color" that most want, when it's really mostly red #40. Even the fancy jarred cherries that don't use food coloring often use something like beet juice concentrate to color their cherries.

This year we only picked Balaton Tarts, which are darker and deeper in color and hold their color nicely. We like the Balatons not just because they hold their color better, but they are a touch sweeter than the Montmorencys and we like the flavor a little better. But, really, both are good cherries. Balatons don't seem to be so common - only a few orchards around us growing a smaller amount. Montmorencys abound everywhere.
 
I didn't get a chance to can pie filling last night, but will do so tonight. We still have one or two jars left from last year and it'll be interesting to see how the color compares - last year I used Montmorencys in the pie filling and this year I'm using Balatons. I'll post a comparison pic.
 
Did a little work in the beds this morning - especially trying to get some squash and cucumbers up on their trellises - and had a little bit to harvest. Some garlic scapes, broccoli, and strawberries. For as much space as the broccoli plants took up, we didn't get a whole lot of broccoli from them. But we'll enjoy what we got. Going to make pesto with the garlic scapes - got basil growing too and more scapes to come.

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And here's a view of our garden beds from my office window the other night. Pic was taken after it had finished raining and the sky was absolutely beautiful that night. Between that evening rainfall and more during the night, we got about 2.5" of very welcome rain. While we have overall had less rain than normal, we are very fortunate to at least be getting some rain.

Please don't mind the grass... Someone (not me) sprayed our lawn and the church lawn for weeds in early June. And they accidentally sprayed glyphosate instead. Yeah... They started to reseed it, but it's been so hot and dry. What we've got growing now is all weeds and weedy grass. In late August or early September they plan to address the lawn situation, when it's not so hot and we hopefully are getting more rain.

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14 pints of cherry pie filling last night. The jar on the left is from this year's batch. The right is last years. I used a different recipe this year. Last year I used this recipe from Ball. This year I used this recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. You can see the color difference in the pic, but it's even more noticeable in person. Last year I used Montmorencys and this year I used Balatons - and this year's has a lot more color, even with using water as the liquid instead of the cherry juice the Ball recipe calls for. I used no food coloring in either of them.

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Speaking of the NCHFP, I've had great results from the recipes I've done from them. Last year, so that I don't have to look canning recipes up on the website all the time, I bought the USDA Canning Guide, which is the canning portion of the website in print form. It has been well worth the money spent.

Also, this morning we picked our very first beans of the year, plus our first two peppers - a couple Shishito peppers, which is our favorite pepper. Checking other things in the garden, we have some tomatoes just starting to form, some cucumbers just starting as well, and the brussel sprout seeds I planted are starting to pop up - really hoping I got the brussel spout seeds in the ground in time for a harvest this fall.

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My peas are done. I could have gotten a few more but I'm sick of picking and shelling. We have what we want in the freezer so I gave them one last picking and pulled the vines, except for a small section that I left to ripen for seed. String beans are ready and looking good. Last year we had enough but no extra. My wife likes a bumper crop so she can get them canned in a couple of big batches. Hopefully enough for some dilly beans too. Going to plant some sugar snap peas in a day or two in hopes of a September crop.
 
Sprung said:
14 pints of cherry pie filling last night. The jar on the left is from this year's batch. The right is last years. I used a different recipe this year. Last year I used this recipe from Ball. This year I used this recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. You can see the color difference in the pic, but it's even more noticeable in person. Last year I used Montmorencys and this year I used Balatons - and this year's has a lot more color, even with using water as the liquid instead of the cherry juice the Ball recipe calls for. I used no food coloring in either of them.

View attachment 229609

Speaking of the NCHFP, I've had great results from the recipes I've done from them. Last year, so that I don't have to look canning recipes up on the website all the time, I bought the USDA Canning Guide, which is the canning portion of the website in print form. It has been well worth the money spent.

Also, this morning we picked our very first beans of the year, plus our first two peppers - a couple Shishito peppers, which is our favorite pepper. Checking other things in the garden, we have some tomatoes just starting to form, some cucumbers just starting as well, and the brussel sprout seeds I planted are starting to pop up - really hoping I got the brussel spout seeds in the ground in time for a harvest this fall.

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Please provide a side-by-side comparison of the 2 different batches of canned cherries, when able. Thanks! Chuck
 
Sprung said:
Did a little work in the beds this morning - especially trying to get some squash and cucumbers up on their trellises - and had a little bit to harvest. Some garlic scapes, broccoli, and strawberries. For as much space as the broccoli plants took up, we didn't get a whole lot of broccoli from them. But we'll enjoy what we got. Going to make pesto with the garlic scapes - got basil growing too and more scapes to come.

View attachment 229575

And here's a view of our garden beds from my office window the other night. Pic was taken after it had finished raining and the sky was absolutely beautiful that night. Between that evening rainfall and more during the night, we got about 2.5" of very welcome rain. While we have overall had less rain than normal, we are very fortunate to at least be getting some rain.

Please don't mind the grass... Someone (not me) sprayed our lawn and the church lawn for weeds in early June. And they accidentally sprayed glyphosate instead. Yeah... They started to reseed it, but it's been so hot and dry. What we've got growing now is all weeds and weedy grass. In late August or early September they plan to address the lawn situation, when it's not so hot and we hopefully are getting more rain.

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Click to expand...
I've recently discovered a few things about broccoli that have had a significant impact for me. A proffesional market gardener who is fortunate to live near the ocean where he gets seaweed for fertlizer, said he was told long ago, try to kill your broccoli with salt... you'll get the best broccoli ever. Epsom salt, being part magnesium which broccoli requires substantial amounts of is a great choice but the other is Borax. Borax is a salt of boron, another nutrient broccoli and beets require increased amounts of. Huge difference.
 
JerseyHighlander said:
I've recently discovered a few things about broccoli that have had a significant impact for me. A proffesional market gardener who is fortunate to live near the ocean where he gets seaweed for fertlizer, said he was told long ago, try to kill your broccoli with salt... you'll get the best broccoli ever. Epsom salt, being part magnesium which broccoli requires substantial amounts of is a great choice but the other is Borax. Borax is a salt of boron, another nutrient broccoli and beets require increased amounts of. Huge difference.
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Very interesting! Might have to give that a try!

Nature Man said:
Please provide a side-by-side comparison of the 2 different batches of canned cherries, when able. Thanks! Chuck
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Already did - comparison of the pie filling was in my post. This is the first year I've canned cherries in syrup, so no previous years to compare with.
 
Sprung said:
Very interesting! Might have to give that a try!



Already did - comparison of the pie filling was in my post. This is the first year I've canned cherries in syrup, so no previous years to compare with.
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Sorry, I meant taste, not looks…. Chuck
 
Those Balaton Tarts fascinate me! The only tarts we have ever gotten were from up in Horse Cave, KY. Friends of ours, now too old to care for the trees, would invite us up when their "sour cherries" were ripe. No idea what variety, but definitely not Balaton Tarts. They only had 4 or 5 trees, but boy they were good. He also had some pretty good peaches, but more often than not, we were too late in the season when we got there. She would have already made some peach preserves and we'd go back home with a consolation prize!!!
 
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