Wow, once again this week got away from me!  I have been so busy canning and preserving the garden bounty that I have been neglectful in posting.  Today’s garden update includes a lot of canning and food preservation.

On my way out to the garden I saw this Rose of Sharon in full bloom and swarmed with bees.

Cherry tomatoes are slowly ripening daily…

and the peppers

are going crazy.

Here is what I picked one day to make cucumber pickles and pickled hot peppers.

Hubs was in charge of most of the harvest through the week and though he better not pick too much.  That is how a zucchini will get away from you fast.  This is possibly the world’s largest zucchini.  For scale, those are 4″ wide deck boards, so she’s about 20″ long.  This got shredded in the food processor and jarred up for the freezer.

We are typically picking something like this each day for dinner.  Stuffed banana peppers and a cucumber, pepper salad sprinkled with cherry tomatoes as our side dishes and maybe some grilled zucchini too.

The little tomatoes are just starting to come in and we are waiting patiently for this guy to turn red.

Then there is the remote garden.  More zucchini, tons more cukes, peppers and almost a half bushel of green beans.

Also some exciting things are happening at the remote garden.

The Yellow Transparent early apples are ready.  We had major fruit drop on this tree, so there are only a few.  The deer and rabbit ate well though.  Baby pumpkins are developing nicely.

I froze 18 pints of green beans so far.  I’m just starting to freeze some peppers for winter use.  Pickled 8 pints of cucumbers and 6 pints of hot peppers.  I have also made dandelion jelly, strawberry, gooseberry and raspberry jam 3 or 4 pints of each, depending on the recipe.  Here is a grouping of some of these items here.

A great farm kid August lunch.

Peanut butter and gooseberry jam sandwich, cherry tomatoes and the first handful of husk cherries.  Yummy.