Harvest

Printer-friendly versionI love harvest time. It gives me satisfaction to can, dry or freeze food, putting all away for the long, dark winter days. Thanks to other gardeners’ plenty (Friedel, Jürgen, the Torgersons) Kate and I produced 11 jars white beets, 12 jars red beets, 6 big jars of pears, 5 jars pear and red plum jelly (every batch of jelly turned out different – it was an experiment) and 3 bottles of grape juice. The pickled green tomatoes are still a work in progress. According to a recipe in my old German cookbook, the tomatoes were cooked in a vinegar/sugar/spice solution, were boiled again today and after 2 weeks will be boiled once more and then canned. I am curious what the result will be. The apples are still waiting to be made into apple cakes or apple sauce. No time for that today. With the approaching rainy weather, the garden needed immediate attention. Today after work I spent a couple of hours in the garden, picking the tomatoes (with vines and all), so that they won’t split from the rain. Hopefully, a lot of them will still ripen in the netting we installed on the ceiling of our storage room. I also took down the beans – lots of leaves and greenery, very few beans. I’ll definitely plant tomatoes again next year, but I’ll think about the beans. They looked pretty with their foliage, but also used valuable space.