The Canning Marathon

After last year's huge success using the Square-Foot gardening techniques, this year has been a big failure! I think the problem was that we didn't compost the raised beds heavily enough before planting and the nutrients just weren't there. I was so disappointed! I ended up making a trip to the State Farmer's Market where I purchased beets, organic carrots, and tomatoes. The result was 26 quarts of carrots, 24 pints of crushed tomatoes, and 10 pints of pickled beets in red wine.

The cucumbers came from my dear friend, Sherry, who had an abundance from her garden! I canned 7 quarts of dill pickles and 14 half pints of dill relish.

The pantry is what was left from last year's harvest plus this year's additions.

I was able to can 15 pints of peas and 2 quarts of green beans from our garden. The beans have just started producing, so hopefully I will be able to get more. If not, I will be making another trip to the market because we are out of dill green beans, and that is not good!

The apple tree is loaded and there should be plenty of pears as well.  It's jelly time!