This year’s garden was fairly low-key and non-stress, which made for a pleasant break from our normal Summer Crazy.
Stats:
rhubarb daiquiri mix, frozen: 2 batches (three little jars)
strawberries, frozen, sliced: 17 quarts
sour cherries from our trees, frozen: 8½ quarts
red raspberries, frozen: 14 quarts
zucchini relish: 13 pints
sweet pickles: 8 quarts
apricot jam, runny, canned: 6½ pints
wineberries, foraged, frozen: 2½ quarts
green peppers, cooked, frozen: 13 half-pints
blackberries, foraged, frozen: 3 cups
tomatoes, canned: 43 quarts, 3 pints
pesto, walnut-butter, frozen: about 8 half-pints
corn: 29 quarts and 18 pints
roasted tomato and garlic pizza sauce: 35½ pints
peaches, canned: 25 quarts
nectarines, dried: 17 bags (each bag roughly equaled 1½ pints)
pesto torte, 2 recipes, frozen: 16 slices
roasted tomato sauce, canned: 12 pints
sweet potatoes: 1 bushel
Notes:
*Planting an entire row of cucumbers was slightly insane. We gave away bushels.
*Same for seven zucchinis. But they were lovely and the plants refused to die!
*FYI: 45 dozen ears of corn yields about 80 quarts of corn. (We shared with fellow corn processors.)
*The family is crazy about the pesto torte. Make at least two batches every year, please.
*No grapes this year because my husband pruned them too vigorously. Thankfully, we still have jam from 2014.
*The red raspberries weren’t that great. Remember to fertilize (and only chop them back to about one-foot high) them in February.
*We got apricots and pears and cherries! If we remember to spray next year, we’d get a lot more!
*The strawberry crop was underwhelming. Hopefully, that’s because it’s the first year of production.
*Five pepper plants is a good amount.
*For some odd reason, the basil died halfway through the season. Plant them by the rhubarb next year to see if they do better.
*We have no tomato juice and I miss it. Don’t forget to make some next year.
*Besides not doing green beans (oodles still in the freezer or potatoes (so buggy last year that it’s not worth the trouble), we also did not put up applesauce or salsa. We aren’t going through nearly as much applesauce as we used to, and we still had plenty of salsa (which we love) from the year before.
This same time, years previous: chatty time, posing for candy, cheesy broccoli potato soup, why I’m spacey, sweet and sour lentils, Greek yogurt, oatmeal bread, and blessing hearts.
4 Comments
Karen
Do you happen to remember the zucchini variety you planted? Zero harvest this year.. Ye ol' squash bug.
Jennifer Jo
I don't remember, but maybe a black zucchini? Is there even such a thing? It's not black, just the name of it… It's whatever basic packet of zucchini seeds that I found at our local hardware store.
Becky
I started an inventory of what I put up and then realized I didn't really keep good records of what I put up. Then factor in what I gave away and what I sold (I sold quite a few dozen jars of pickles) and I definitely lost track.
I do know I put up a bushel of applesauce and did three half bushels of peaches, one of which was straight up pickled and one was salsa, because we love peach salsa. I had to go blueberry picking three times before I got around to putting any up due to our eating them before I could can or freeze them. I put up cucumber pickles every which way (bread & butter 2x, freezer pickles, fermented dills, canned dill slices), I made tomato jam and pizza sauce while realizing I still had enough tomatoes from last year to get us through, three rounds of watermelon rind pickles, a few rounds of clean out the fridge jam and yesterday, with that batch of apple pie jam that used every last small jar I had left, declared the season done.
melodie davis
You are so smart, and efficient, to keep this inventory. I do learn from it!