Today's Pickings

[Logan]

Picked another 8 lb of rhubarb, 40 lbs altogether, I cook it with honey in the oven and then freeze it for the winter.

 

[Meadowlark]

Getting overwhelmed now with cucumbers. We made some dill pickles today from "Grandma's Dill Pickles" recipe which was recommended by a friend. Time will tell.

 

[Logan]

The first cucumber of the season, they don't grow very long but they grow wider.

 

[Meadowlark]

Just about every day now the garden yields peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes...and this will continue for a few weeks.

But the highlite today has to be the bingo beans.

After experimenting last year with these big, creamy, red streaked beans, they graduated past experimental to production this year. So easy to pick since its a climber and also easy to shell with the large sized pods.

The taste is delicious as a main dish or in soups and Italian recipes. Rather than let them completely dry for storage , pick them while still streaked with color and freeze them. This way the tremendous flavor is retained and the cooking time cut in about half from a dried bean. I get my seeds from Territorial Seeds and the Bingo is now a regular in my garden.

 

[Logan]

Cooked a lot of rhubarb put it in containers and in freezer. Just got them out to slightly thaw so i can take them out of the container and put them in a freezer bag to go back in the freezer.

 

[zigs]

Mange tout are coming in fast now Tetters has been freezing them down.

 

[Meadowlark]

Corn and tomatoes, a daily picking now...two of my garden favorites. Three successive plantings of corn spaced about a month apart insure that we will be eating fresh corn from now through August.

 

[Meadowlark]

Peppers galore picked today:

 

[Logan]

First of the raspberries 4 ounces

 

[Meadowlark]

In addition to the daily picking of tomatoes, cucumbers, corn etc. , I noticed that the mockers had waged a war on the new ripening peaches....so I did a preemptive strike and picked what we wanted.

These are the Florida Prince. They are clearly a very low chill variety to be able to produce anything after the mild winter we had. It is difficult to raise good peaches here in our hot, humid East Texas climate with very mild winters.

These will go into the freezer, peach jam, and a fresh cobbler...small, but very tasty.

 

[Logan]

Picked some blackcurrants, I've put them in the freezer to use later.

 

[Logan]

Blackcurrants

Logan berries

 

[Meadowlark]

Blackcurrants
….

What do they taste like? Like a grape? Maybe a cranberry? I can't grow either those or Logan berries here, unfortunately.

 

[Logan]

@Meadowlark
When fresh they taste like a tart passionfruit with dark berry flavour.
Not unlike raspberries but it's distinctly earthy.

 

[Logan]

Just picked some pink currants, had to pick them before they were properly ripe because the black birds were eating them.