Strawberry Freezer Jam

I made a short trip to Crossroads yesterday with my dad to buy strawberries from Merlin Blackwoods farm.  I bought 3 gallons of strawberries for $9.00 each. They are yummy!! I made 6 pints, 14 half pints and 11-4 oz jars of strawberry freezer jam. This is my mother-in-laws recipe

Strawberry Freezer Jam

1 Quart strawberries ( 2 cup crushed)
4 cups sugar
1 box SureJel

Mix berries and sugar well
Separately combine 3/4 cup water, 1 box Surejel and bring to boil, boil 1 min stirring constantly
Stir the Surejel/water mixture into the strawberries and stir for 3 min.
Ladle into jars
Leave at room temperature for 24 hours. Put in freezer.

Raindrops are falling on my head...

Yes I picked blackberries and green beans in the rain at 7 am this morning! Mosquitos eat me alive!! They have been pretty bad. We needed the rain.
I counted 6 gallons of blackberries in my freezer; I'm so over the blackberries. We have been overly blessed with more than we  need.

Clean up and re-plant

My husband and I decided to clean up the garden at the hottest part of the day today. The squash was dying and all the raised beds needed weeding. It doesn't take long to weed them; which is one of the wonderful things about a raised bed. We also have straw covering in all the beds to help cut down on weeds but you can't keep out all of them.
Since we cleared our potato and onion beds we have two empty bed which my husband tilled up. We planted more green beans in the tater bed. We still have green beans on the vine!!!  We ordered Kennebec white potatoes, white onion sets, broccoli seeds and garlic sets from Burgess.com.
The tomato vines have went crazy! I tied the vines to their cages with some old panty hose.  I somehow ended up with a cherry tomato plant and it has gone wild!  We can't eat them fast enough so what I may do is freeze them and make juice later.  We are getting lots of tomatoes and I am going to make vegetable soup using what I can from our garden.  The Japanese eggplant and okra are both coming on good. I picked a lot of okra yesterday; had to wear long sleeves because it makes me itch. Looking forward to tomorrow's harvest!

Lots of goodies from the garden

I was pleasantly surprised to see so many good looking tomatoes! This has been a good year to be a gardener despite the pests.  There is also some Okra in the bottom and I fried most of it for supper then breaded and flash froze the rest.

Blackberries Gone Wild

My blackberries are currently at different stages. It won't be long and I will be making jam! This is what my blackberries looked like today.

Strawberries

I picked one and a half quarts of strawberries. We have them in a raised bed that is 4x8.  We planted almost 45 plants last spring and they have probably doubled. The result is some of the berries are not ripening good and down in the bottom some have  molded. Also snails have invaded because of the dew and  rain. I thought about snipping the leaves off the top so sun can filter down but I'm afraid it will ruin the plants.  We will have to transplant them this fall into a bigger bed.

Mini Vacation

My husbands parents watched the kids and garden while we were at my husbands work conference in Orlando, Florida for a week.  We visited Epcot and they were having a Garden Festival presented by HGTV.  I was overwhelmed and inspired by all the different flowers and the way they were displayed  throughout Disney. I could not imagine having flowers year round.

When we got back we only stayed home for a few hours then we drove to Kentucky to go fishing. While we were gone to Orlando our seeds sprouted and other plants are blooming.

My mother-in-law has raised beds and also a variety of  herbs. She dug me up some Yarrow and also a vine (I can't remember the name). I have no idea where to plant it! Both plants will spread if not kept in check.  We also marked several different colored Irises for me to dig this fall. Her Peonies were gorgeous as is her garden!
Glad to be home.
P.S. Parsley is still alive!