Jelly Making

I was having a great debate with myself as to whether to title this post 'The Fruits of my Labor' or 'Plum Tired'. As you can see, I ended up choosing neither one. Just too big a decision for this time of night. 'Why are you so tired?' one might ask. Well, even if you didn't ask that, let me tell you. I've been making jelly. Lots of it. After twenty four pints of plum jelly from the plums off of the trees in our yard, ten pints of blueberry (my sad little plants didn't yield this year, so we went to a pick your own blueberry farm), and twenty seven pints of wild plum jelly made from plums my husband picked in West Texas last weekend, I'm tired of the whole thing. The good news is that I learned how to can and am willing to share what I've learned with you!

According to my mother-in-law, you can make any type of jelly you want without the aid of fruit pectin (more commonly known as Sure-Jell). After boiling the fruit long enough to get it soft, smash it up to get the juice and pulp out. Combine two cups of juice with two cups of sugar and boil it for ten minutes. To that mixture, add two more cups of juice and two more cups of sugar. Boil it for another ten minutes. Pour this syrup into your prepared jars, apply hot lids and relax. Each batch yields about two pints of jelly.

She says that starting with three or fours cups to make the process go faster just won't work. For whatever reason, you have to stick with two. I don't know the validity of that argument yet. I got tired standing over the stove stirring tonight, and started adding an extra cup of juice and sugar now and then. My figuring was that if you added a little extra, it would boil down a little slower, so you should add a couple of minutes to the boil time. I don't know how it will jell, as I just poured it into the jars and sealed them, but the liquid consistency looked about right.

If you want to make pectin free jelly with a tested and approved recipe, stick with the one above. I've sampled and tested plenty of it this week and definitely approve! Tonight's experiments may or may not prove successful, but I'll have fun finding out.

Jenny - A Word on Hay

Hi y'all. Jenny here. I see that a lot of us have large melons cooking in our gardens, so it's a good time to talk about hay. Keeping our gardens well watered is essential for tasty fruit and veg, but the moist soil can sometimes cause rot spots in our large melons, strawberries and other things that lay or touch directly on it. It'll break your heart to see a gorgeous melon ready for the picking, turn it over, and... an icky, depressed soft spot. I've heard some tell me that they just try to turn the melons a bit to keep any one side from taking too much of the weight, but this seems like a good way to snap the thing right off the vine to me. I like hay for this job.
You get yourself a small, square bale of hay. You don't need a lot. If you have horse-loving friends or ranchers, perhaps they'll sell you a small portion of what they buy by the truckload. You lay down a couple inches of hay underneath your fruit, and voila, that should help reduce or flat out eliminate the rot spots. It lifts the fruit up off the soil and keeps it from getting too wet under there. The hay can even act as a mulch, keeping the soil underneath it from losing too much moisture in our burning hot, Texoma sun. That reminds me, don't substitute with your flower garden cedar mulch here. It's too strong.

Happy gardening!

Hot, Dry Days

Summer time is finally here and the days are now long and hot. If you're from East Texas, you know what I mean. Unfortunately there are more things to water in our yard than I have time or inclination to take care of. The vegetable garden is suffering, the flowers are wilted and the fruit trees and vines are begging for relief. I'm thinking about looking into some better sprinklers than the ones we have now.

We did finally get the garden tilled up. I say 'we', but what I mean is 'my husband'. It looks good! If only I watered as well as he weeded we'd be in great shape. I have several empty rows now where early spring vegetables used to be. I have my great charts from the extension office that offer suggestions as to what to plant this time of year. It's time to quit the whining about the heat and just get out there and do it. My husband would love a few more rows of okra, so maybe I'll surprise him and put a little more in.

And just for the record, a momma rabbit has seen fit to have her litter of babies in one of our raised beds. Three little rabbits can now be seen hopping merrily around in our struggling blueberry patch. The kids think they're great and I'm not sure what I think. Since I'm not ready for hasenpfeffer dinner yet, I guess they get to stay a little while longer.

Stay cool and happy gardening!

Organic Rose Gardening Seminar

Sweetwater Farm Greenhouse will be hosting a seminar on caring for roses organically this coming Saturday, June 12th from 10AM to 11AM. Sue Zanne Petersen will be speaking. Admission for this seminar is free. Click here for Sweetwater's website.

Michele - Gardening seminar

The folks at Sweetwater Farm Greenhouse put on a great seminar last week. The topic was year round gardening and the speaker, Ed, was full of good information. Among other things, he pointed out that in our climate, you really can have a garden all year long. He showed charts and gave examples of vegetables that would survive cool Texas winters and well as ones that could cope with the heat of our summers. These charts are all available at the local extension offices, so if you haven't been there yet, you might want to check it out.

Another bit of information that I found to be very helpful was that you need good soil to grow good plants. Although that may sound obvious, I doubt that the soil in my garden would win any awards for proper nutrient balance. There are test kits available at most local garden centers that will do basic tests on your soil. Kits are also available at the extension office, and for a mere $10 they will send it off to be tested. You get a report back detailing what is good and bad about the soil, along with suggestions on how to get it up to par.

Natural pest control was discussed, as well as fertilizer, planting techniques, and the benefits of gardening. I always thought the main benefit of gardening was the food, but Ed pointed out that along with providing beauty and food, gardening is great exercise. It will get you outside on these beautiful spring days and get you moving.

Overall, it was a very well spent hour and I would recommend attending similar talks if you get the chance!

Announcement: Vegetable Growing Seminar

Sweetwater Farm Greenhouse in Denison will be hosting a Year Round Vegetable Growing Seminar this coming Wednesday in their greenhouse between 11AM and noon. Master Gardener Ed Supina will be hosting. Click here for details!

Michele - Patience

It's hard to be patient when there are so many tasty, homegrown treats just waiting to be eaten. Since these pictures were taken, some of the strawberries and mulberries have ripened. The kids have been having a great time running out there every morning and raiding the mulberry tree. They announced today, after picking a bowl full, that they wanted to make mulberry ice cream. Hey, I'm game to try!

The blackberries and squash lack a few weeks and the plums and peaches at least a month. That's ok, it gives us something to look forward to, as well as adds incentive to keep up the work in the gardens. So far my little helpers seem more interested in eating than weeding. No surprise there I guess, but I did find that given the choice between cleaning the house or pulling weeds, every one of them will choose the weeds. I may be onto something!

Happy gardening.