I’ve gotten a lot of vegetables so far this year. I’m still waiting on my tomatoes to ripen, but they are coming along. I’ve been picking suckers and new flowers left and right, and I can see the tomatoes are starting to get a pinkish tint to them. We’ve had 80-90 degree temps this week, and it’s expected to continue – I think that will help with the ripening.
In the winter we were buying a lot of kale, so I grew a bunch of it, and we haven’t used a whole lot yet. So this weekend I decided to pick as much as I could, and freeze it. I left the plants, with new baby leaves in the centers, so I will still have fresh kale until we have snow (it supposedly can survive frost, and gets better after a frost, so we’ll see how that goes). I ended up with a giant basket of kale:
I took the leaves off the stems, blanched them for 2 minutes, and then froze them up. I ended up with about 10 cups of frozen kale.
This year I decided to grow lemon balm. I picked some to dry for tea. It smells so good!
I have had tons of zucchini and yellow squash, and I have frozen a lot of it. I read online that you can get away with not blanching it first, so I am trying that this year. Last year I blanched it, and it worked fine but it was more labor intensive; Also, since it was wet when I put it in freezer bags, I ended up with blocks of frozen zucchini. I don’t know if the slice/freeze method will still produce this result; I’ll have to wait and see.
I also grew acorn squash for the first time this year. I had four plants; most produced only one fruit – I did have two forming on one plant, but when I went out this weekend I realized that one of the fruits was rotting on the vine. The other four seemed ready to pick. The plants still have flowers so it may produce more, I will have to wait and find out.
My corn is getting close to being ready. The silks are turning brown on the cobs. Last year I read that you wait 10 days after the silks turn brown – I checked a few cobs and I think by this next weekend they may be ready. I noticed today though that I must have raccoons or something attacking the corn. It must be raccoons – they are notorious for getting into corn in this area – I found a half eaten cob in my garden on the ground. I hope they give me time to get at least a few ears before they get them all. I’m not sure how to deter them – they climbed my fence. I’ll have to figure out some kind of raccoon deterrent – maybe putting a lip on the top of the fence so they can’t come over the top of the fence.
My tiny u.p. farm 