Oh, it is that time of year! Yay! We have officially finished our first real season from our apricot trees. We have three apricot trees and they were all very full!
While I was dealing with our sick little baby the boys helped their father clean and pit 3 buckets of apricots. They were then put in 4 gallon freezer bags and put in the deep freezer ready for me whenever I get the time to get them canned.
Don't these look delicious!
So then last week I got the last bucket of apricots and they were just heavenly. Even some of my friends had some on the 4th of July, they could not believe the deep sweet flavor of these. Neither could I. I mean I could believe it but boy were they YUMMY! So since we could not eat them fast enough I made a dozen jars of freezer jam. Two tips....make sure you leave them out for the 24 hours to set but make sure they are in a well ventilated area so that the heat doesn't spoil them. Secondly, make sure that it is only 24 hours and not 36 hours. I think that might have spoiled one or two. So I ended up with 9 I believe.
One more tip for you. When it gets close to the season make sure that you keep an eye on the tree, both for disease and birds. This was our first ripe tree and the birds had a field day. But one side was diseased and I just let it go so that is part of these bad ones. I wish I could have caught this earlier and sprayed it then to avoid all the drama.
Our strawberry patch is cranking it out right now. This was last weeks and I know I have three times this much on the vines right now even with the gophers digging their way around. I believe we will probably have some delicious strawberry pie tonight!
Now for the most current ripe fruit. Nectarines. These are doing great! We just picked the first handful a couple days ago. I will probably go out today and check for more. Unfortunately I did not thin these out and the branches overloaded and the two main branches broke off. Luckily I will just have them ripen on the branch since they would be getting ready this week anyhow. It is canning time at my house!
Don't they look good enought to eat right now?
I believe our next thing to be picked will be our plums. We found a few on the ground but they were already purple and obviously were premature. The rest look like these here. I will give it another week or so.
Okay, this is one of the funniest things. This is a plum on our flowering plum tree. We didn't expect this. Tony tried it and said it was very sweet just not much meat on it. Who would have known that you could get fruit off a flowering plum?
Now we know it will be a while before these get ripe but here is our last fruit of the season. Our apples! Oh, my. We have quite a bit on one of our trees. Oh, and our peach trees will come around the same time. I forgot to get a picture of them.
Blackberries! Yummy! Yes, for our tummies! They might be ready to pick now. This was taken last week. We only have two bushes that are really producing but they are good.
And yes, we have figs too. No not brown ucky figs......the white centered Italian figs. They are so sweet! The boys go crazy over these! They are not even close to being ready but the boys keep asking.
Okay, I did not even think that the cucumbers would do good but look. I have another one that needs to be picked. I am thinking a nice cold cuc and tomato salad would be really good tonight. Oh, yeah!
Peppers. Yes, peppers. These ones here are actually a brazillian sweet pepper not a hot pepper. But I did plant jalapenos. They are ready too. Maybe today is also a good day for fresh salsa? My cilantro isn't really leafy but very fragrant so we will see?
Here is another sweet bell. This is small but I do not know how to get these big. Anyone know?
Summer squash is one of my favorite veggies. I love to grill them with salt and pepper. Oh, making my mouth water!
Of course, what would be a garden without your tomatoes? Romas are our favorite even though they are hybrids. They are so fleshy and wonderful. They are perfect for our fresh salsa.
Then there are the rest of the tomatoes. You maybe can't see them but they are there. Tons of tomatoes ready to get red.
Now surprisingly these are my watermelon. They are baby watermelon so they are actually getting ready already. Wowzers!
And zucchini! Of course! We have already gotten a bunch. I have two in the house that were too big to grill so I will be grating them and either freezing for bread or just making bread but it is too hot for the oven at the moment.
Here is something you would not really expect. Yes, corn. I just checked and I can see the ears forming. I am so excited!
Last and certainly not least here are our grapes. We planted 30 0f these and they are all looking about like this one here. We are looking forward to getting these ripened.
