Saturday, July 28, 2012

Gardening = no time to blog

Okay, so keeping up with the garden and house this time of year doesn't leave me a whole lot of time for blogging. This is definitely one of the first things I cut from my "to do" list.

Three months does A LOT for the garden! We have watched the season of spring vegetables come and go. We've gone through most of the early summer season, and I'm so happy to say that we have bit into our first ripe heirloom tomatoes!! The corn will be ready soon, too. And believe it or not, we have some pumpkins that are turning orange already as well.

One of the most exciting things this year is that we were able to invest in an Asian pear tree. That little sucker came from the nursery drenched in tiny growing pears! We will have a delicious pear party in a few weeks. The local raspberries and blueberries have also been wonderful. We don't have too many raspberry bushes on our own property (yet), but the woods in the back of our neighborhood are lined with wild ones. I took the children on a walk the other day and we ate our way home--stopping every few feet to pick another handful of berries warm and ripe from the sun.

I love watching our grocery budget dramatically drop this time of year. It also means our compost bucket fills up more quickly as we peel, chop, and otherwise prepare our way through baskets full of produce. I've already put up strawberry jam for the next year, as well as green beans, pickles, blueberries, raspberries, and shredded zucchini. It will be nice to have a taste of summer in a few months.

That being said, I really do love the fall vegetables as well. I never really get sick of the winter squashes, potatoes, carrots, onions, hearty greens and such that make up the majority of our winter eating. I actually just got a great cookbook from the library called Recipes from the Root Cellar  from the same author of Serving up the Harvest (a great book for cook/gardeners). I figured it is never too early to start finding new recipes to get us through the stretch of about October/November to April/May. I'm hoping that with the addition of a green house or two in the future we will be able to extend our harvest a month or so each direction. It would sure make winter local eating a little more colorful.

Have I rambled enough? Perhaps. Until next time--hopefully NOT three months from now:)

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