Gardening and Canning updates.

The garden has been doing really well with all the rains. I've been busy harvesting and storing the vegetables left and right. At one point I had an entire sink full of swiss chard and beet greens that I combined and froze. 

I've also had a summer squash overload. I have yellow crook neck squash, light green zucchini and a dark green zucchini. I had so much that even after giving some away, I still had enough to make 5 pints of squash pickles.

I also harvested more than 60 heads of garlic so I'll be giving some away, pickling some and saving some to plant later this fall. 

 All this rain has really helped the garden and I'm hoping we get quite a few more harvests over the up coming weeks.

Canning

So what do you do when you find AWESOME deals on fresh fruit at the grocery store? I went out and bought 22 lbs of blueberries and 12 lbs of strawberries. The blueberries were the total shocker. I've never seen fresh blueberries that cheap any where here in this state. We don't grow blueberries commercially in this state. They are "imported" from other states. So for the most part blueberries are regularly pretty expensive. I was totally shocked when I walked into the grocery store to see them advertised for $1.00 a lb and in 2 lb packages. We rarely see more than a small pint of blueberries for between $3.00 to 4.00 so Lbs of blueberries so cheap is amazing. That's why I got 22 lbs because I know I'll not see that price again anytime soon.

The strawberries were another story. A refrigerated truck broke down on the interstate and they hauled it into the local mechanic, but they couldn't get it fixed fast enough or something so they sold the strawberries right out of the back of the truck. I only got a case straight off the truck. That equals out to 8 lbs. The local grocery store bought up all that was left after all the local residents got what they thought they wanted and the store was selling them for 75 cents a lb. So I bought 4 more lbs of strawberries.

 Anyway I've been busy since last night fixing up canned and frozen blueberry and strawberry items. 

Blueberry Freezer jam

Frozen Blueberries in snack packs for work and frozen blueberries and strawberries for smoothies.

Canned blueberries look really pretty

I also canned blueberry jam that set up nicely and what was supposed to be strawberry blueberry jam, but it didn't set up. It will make the most awesome syrup though. 

 Then I was also planning on doing some mint jelly with all my mint that's growing like weeds in the garden. But I forgot and used up all the liquid pectin on the other jams and now I don't have any more liquid pectin for the mint jelly. Off to town in the morning to get the liquid pectin and then I'll process up some mint jelly.