The Garden

It has been a productive year...not quite as much as last year, but I am still grateful. We had a raspberry bumper crop, and now the cucumbers, tomatoes, and green beans have been steadily flowing from the garden, to my counter, and into glass jars for canning. I have been canning pretty much anything I can get my hands on. So far, I have pickled beets, dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, three-bean salad, canned whole tomatoes, and peaches. I also froze a lot of rhubarb and green beans. Today I have been trying to strain the juice from these bags of chokecherries that Ethan and the two oldest kids picked in North Dakota. The juice takes a long time to strain in the jelly bag because it is very pulpy. I finally finished this evening and have about a gallon of juice that I placed into the freezer until I can pick up some Sure-Jell and sugar to make jelly and syrup.

The carrots do not seem to be growing, so I am not sure if any will come out of the ground this year. Much to my children's delight, one of the zucchini plants died. The other one sort of died, but then revived, and has since produced one zucchini. Another zucchini is growing, so we will see what we can squeeze out of that sick plant. The tomatoes have spotted leaf fungus again, but according to my neighbor, Harley, this fungus gets into the soil and will never go away. The only way to get rid of it is to rotate crops, but because I have a smallish garden, there is not room to move the tomatoes to another location. I still have gotten many, many roma tomatoes and beefsteak tomatoes, despite the dead leaves. Praise the LORD for that. God is good, and He will provide.