Canning Update

2008 Year to Date Totals:

• 6 jars bread & butter pickles 1 pint size
• 5 jars banana peppers 1/2 pint size
• 3 jars mixed peppers (anaheim & banana) 1/2 pint size
• 8 jars sauerkraut 1 pint size

Felted Nest Swap

Despite the number of gardening posts the last month, this is still a knitting blog. A little while back I joined the Felted Nest Swap as part of the Knitalong Campaign Group on Ravelry. The objective of the swap was to knit for your partner a Felted Nest and mail it off with a few goodies inside. Today my nest arrived in the mail. Oh joy! Inside was a beautiful embroidered nest. It was stuffed with some of my favorite things - fiber, tea, and chocolate. As you can see from the picture, Syd approves. I think she wanted to get a closer look at the brown fleece. Thank you so much to my generous swap partner!

I have a few finishing touches to put on nest I am making. It will be in the mail this week for sure. Details to be revealed soon...

Canning Update

2008 Year to Date Totals:

• 6 jars bread & butter pickles 1 pint size
• 3 jars banana peppers 1/2 pint size

Canning Update

2008 Year to Date Totals:

• 3 jars banana peppers 1/2 pint size

Chicken of the Month - July

State of the Garden - flowers

State of the Garden - fruits and vegetables

Roma tomato

Elderberry Bush

Red tomato

Hot peppers

Cucumber

This morning we picked our first red full sized tomato. Earlier in the week we harvested a small number of cherry tomatoes. We also picked one of our three cabbage heads for the purpose of making cabbage salad to take to a BBQ. Canning is just around the corner...

Fourth of July Garden Update

Happy Fourth of July! I hope everyone has a lovely holiday weekend. We are spending the weekend close to home. The weekend festivities include going to the ballpark, cleaning the basement/garage, grilling hot dogs, and attending a wedding. Pretty typical stuff.

Last year during the Fourth of July weekend we canned our first pickles of the year. I checked this morning and not a single cucumber is ready for harvest. It could be the weather we've had, or it could be because we planted a different variety, but the cucumbers are definitely later than last year.

In Iowa, they say that the goal for tomatoes is to harvest your first red tomato on the Fourth of July. In my experience, I've found this to be a little early. Again, I checked this morning and no tomato was ready. There were a lot of green ones though! Twenty plants this year should yield plenty of tomatoes for canning.

One thing that we do have right now is banana peppers.

And the lilies are in full bloom. Pink, orange, and white lilies. The white ones are my favorite so far.