Garden Update

 

These last weeks of August have been very busy… between my day to day job and the garden there was not much time or energy left to blog.

In the garden I have been starting to prepare the soil for fall/winter, taking out the beans and peas so far and planning to plant some strawberry plants at some point this week or next. Last year we doubled the garden space, which meant we had a big pile of grass/soil just standing in the garden. The grass has turned into soil now, so I spend my free time to distribute this soil on the land. Once I start with the strawberries, straw and rabbit manure will be added there too. Now I am building a stone pathway with the left over stones that were piled in the garden and hopefully things will look a bit tidier soon.

The garden is still producing lot’s of cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and as of last week radish again. I also planted another load of garden salad and the kale is growing slowly for a fall/winter harvest.

The tomatoes are small but so far I have cooked and canned 12 kilo’s and probably had another 4-5 kilos that went into salad.

My 4 cucumber plants are producing as crazy, and I am having cucumber salad 4-5 days a week. I have given away quite a few cucumbers to my neighbors too and of course pickled some batches.

The fodder crops are being fed to the rabbits already, to avoid having to feed them on dry food but that also means I will have less fodder crops in the winter.

The blackberries are turning from red to back and they taste so sweet. The bush is full and lot’s of them are being frozen.

With the masses of blackberries I decided that I can use some of them for Christmas presents. I have a recipe for Wisconsin Cherry bounce that works well with blackberries too. As it has to sit 4 weeks at least but preferably 3-6 month, this looks good for some presents. So was busy heating up vodka and filling bottles. I have now 2 bottles with cherry and two with blackberries that are now sitting and waiting.

A lot of the blackberries is frozen for later use and I also made some blackberry jam already too.

How does your garden look like this week?