Early Harvest

We have been hard at work! Between having two kids, trying to keep the house clean, getting the dog healthy again, getting rid of the fleas and the garden...we have not really had a moment for us!

On Saturday we wanted to harvest our potatoes. We had planted both white and red rather early in the spring. They bloomed a few weeks ago and the tops died off so we knew they were ready.

We ended up with about a half bushel! The darn mice got some of my yummy red ones.
While we were out in the garden we did some additional harvesting and cleaning up. We pulled out dead plants..like our broccoli and lots of weeds.I pulled my Dill and Basil (tylers Basil - i still have my little ones) and hung them to dry. I can not wait to use my Ikea jars when they dry out. Our Bean crop has been harvested! We were able to get enough for another 3 dinners! We would had more but they too were part of the mice's feast.

We checked our Onions but they are not ready yet. Still kinda small!! We did get some cherry peppers already...i can not wait for riggies with them!!

Carrots were another success of 2009! These are just some of them! We have more in the garden still. Also Max has been feed some.....We needed an inspector!! I really likes the carrots tops. Crazy rabbit.

We ran, but we could not hide. We were bitten, bitten by the tomato blight. UGH..We were on track to get a great harvest. Take warning if you think you have it...clip the leaves fast. our plants were destroyed literally overnight.
We were going to pick the fruit that was not affected but decided to wait and see what happened. Well, they all had it a day later. We ripped them out and burned the plants. David is going to treat the soil and rest of the garden.

We did rip out a few cuke plants that were looking funky...since they next to the tomatoes we didnt want to risk it. We have never had such a great cuke crop. I the last few years we were lucky to get maybe 5 cukes, this year we have had over 30. On Friday we tried our hand at making pickles.We made Dill and Bread/Butter pickles. We were just going to start and make just the dill but we had cut so many that we went ahead and did the bread and butter. The problem was we didnt slice the B/B pickles so when they were hot they were very hard to get into the jars. I think next year, we will make them outside...omg did my house smell.

We ended up with Dill: 4 quart size jars and 6 pints; Bread and Butter: 6 Pints.

Since we have a great herb crop this year (another success story for 09!) I trying my hand at Herb Vinegars.
One is Basil and the other is rosemary. I should done the rosemary in white wine vinegar but we will see in 4-6 weeks how this tastes!

Thankfully our Zucchini crop slowed down. I may get caught up!! I baked some more bread this week. We made and jarred 7 pints of Zucchini relish. I will let you know how it is later in the week ....going to test it out at dinner!!

Last week i took the kids (by myself) to Fort Ricky. It was interesting!!! Tyler loved it and Emma slept. I have a lot of photos on webshots. But here some for you....Can you believe Emma is a month old already?