Canning

Since the grasshoppers attacked our garden, we didn't get to can as much stuff as we had originally hoped. As I mentioned earlier, we were able to get a small crop of red Norland potatoes (which were so creamy and delicious) with one plant still alive and hopefully producing more. We love eating green beans and hoped to get a bunch of green beans canned. However, those pesky grasshoppers took them out in one blow, along with our pole beans that were just starting to grow. Even though they took out most of our garden, we were still able to harvest a lot of vegetables and fruit.

We've had a TON of zucchini and a good amount of squash:

This is one week's worth of vegetables

17.5 inches and 10 pounds!

We've had a lot of pickling cucumbers that we canned and divided up amongst James' family and us:

These are a small sampling of our pickles

We've grown basil, thyme, sage, and parsley on our balcony and been able to use it not only in our everyday meals, but dry it as well to use later:

We've also been able to harvest about 65 or 70 tomatoes so far and James' mom was able to can whole tomatoes with the first round, and then we all canned diced tomatoes last week with half of what we picked that day. The other half was still a little unripe, so James' mom will be canning those into diced tomatoes once they ripen:

And James' mom also made us some strawberry jam as a surprise. It was a very welcome gift as we both love homemade strawberry jam:

Look at all that strawberry jam in front

I think I have about 35 bags of shredded zucchini and squash in my freezer, which makes me happy because I can use it throughout the winter for soups, stews, spaghetti sauce, meatloaf, breads, brownies, muffins, and cookies. Yummy!! So, even though the grasshoppers took out a good part of our garden, it makes me very happy that we were able to harvest so much out of the few remaining crops.