August Already?

It is the 10th of August and we are beginning to harvest some of our garden produce. The garden is almost three weeks behind the normal schedule but at least we are now beginning to harvest our crops.  The last rain we had was nine days ago and we have been watering the garden from the rain barrels. One barrel is empty but the second barrel has enough water for at least a week.  We do need rain.

Terry picked some tomatoes and zucchini along with one poor little cucumber. After the cucumbers fight with the wildlife it looks as if we won't get many cucumbers before the time comes for the plants to die off.  We now have seven containers of cucumber salad frozen for the winter but normally have twice that much. Hopefully the second cucumber planting will give us the needed cucumbers.

This morning we pulled out the green bean plants from the first planting and above are the beans we picked. I pack the green beans in seven ounce packets and so far we have thirty packets in the freezer.  One pack is a vegetable with our meal and two packs is enough for two people to have beans for ham and green beans.The second planting of green bean plants will not produce any beans for at least two weeks.

We also harvested half of our carrot crop.  I wish I had planted more carrots this spring.  This afternoon will be spent blanching and freezing the green beans and tomorrow I will do the carrots.  I no longer buy bags of ice for blanching the  vegetables but freeze water in containers for that purpose. After finishing the beans, I will freeze more water for the carrots tomorrow. 

This afternoon the tomatoes will be chopped and frozen for recipes.  I cut them in half and remove the seeds before chopping. If we get enough tomatoes, I would like to can some tomato sauce or juice.  Terry likes spiced tomato juice to drink as a snack.