good problem to have

good problem to have :) how to preserve all that.

 stashing, freezing.

 sorting table.

some kinds have this lack tip problem. this one is peculiar.

and some heirlooms.

Cooking corner: Preserves :)

Russia, summer, preserves. That just went together period. Always did it.
And here we go. Moscow. Preserves festival.

They did not do it just easy little thing , they went big. Big city, big festival. 3000 stores 1000 restaurants participated... News say 10+ ton of preserves were sold... From the usual raspberry to something quite unusual... in one of popular cartoons (the plot is the kid is messing up bear's preserves making and no berry, so she uses vegetables and pine cones too)

so pine cones, you thought that would not exist right. wrong :) it made the biggest queue of customers there according to news

It exists :). pine cones are soft, helps with cold and stuff. What do you know....

To deal with cold we used raspberry for that, wild from the forest, use  1/1 with sugar by weight aka 1kg raspberry (white is best) and 1kg sugar, mix, let sit, mash it, do not need to bold it, just put in jars it stores in room temperature, at least we did. jars we did pasterize as usual fora any preserves of any kind over boiling water for at least 20 min. I hear folk use washing machine with sanitize option here to do the same.

So what do they sy about pine cones preserves... They use young green cones of Russian pine, May-June.
this guy has even video of pine cone honey making

Понадобится:
1 кг шишек,
1 кг сахару,
2 литра воды.

Сосновые шишки залить холодной водой и оставить на сутки для вымачивания. Слить воду с шишек и сварить сахарный сироп, погрузить в него шишки и варить до тех пор, пока все шишки не раскроются.


1лп зшту сщтуыб пкуутПонадобится:
1 кг шишек,
1 кг сахару,
2 литра воды.

Сосновые шишки залить холодной водой и оставить на сутки для вымачивания. Слить воду с шишек и сварить сахарный сироп, погрузить в него шишки и варить до тех пор, пока все шишки не раскроются.

2liters of water

1kg sugar (Russian use beat sugar)

1kg pine cones, green. like these

Cover pine cones with cold water, let soak for a day, room temperature. Discard water. Make simple syrup from sugar, pit pine ones in there nd simmer till they open and the liquid turns pink-red. takes 1.5- 2h

Other method of simmering is classic Russian 3-trep: simmer for 30 min, take aside, cool down, repeat 3 times and put into jars hot after the last (3-rd) simmering session.

Do they sell this kind of stuff outside of festivals? Yep. One of the markets

PS: good forest picking practice: we never collect any food in the forest next to auto roads. Pollution etc, heavy metals...

harvest some more

roof view :)... yeah,bushes...

now I need some ideas what to do whi those :) because that's 20+ pounds of food right there and over 10 tomatoes

it counts for a very good harvest for 1-st year garden. I'm very thankful

Heat and rain equals...

Heat and rain equals water savings in our climate.
It also equals not too much trouble in the garden if all is covered and a of of trouble with weeds where they come. and they come size of a human or taller. Bundweed is especially plentiful, bugs that eat it are the desert bugs, they do not like to be rained on. Rain once a week this time of the year is a lot for us. And whatever the weather is or whatever it is the reason for that rain we are thankful. We did not get a lot of hail so far.
Thankful for the flowers

 Thankful for the tomatoes jungle (yeah, I just tied them to frames... yeah. new branches... with tomatoes, so not getting rid of those)

 

 Thankful for these artichokes... they are taller than a human now, no flowers so. I wonder what's unde the dirt

 This is heat + cucumbers. then rain will get them right up anf night cools them down so they grow

 Squash

 These are interesting. Never has chickpeas before

 Possibly will have some watermelon, well maybe, these were planted more than 1 month late.

 These are growing nicely, 10+ of these a week. basically 75-100 pounds of food right there.

 Found out what my volunteer is... got taht right out of the compost pile. Figured that plant is so deserving no to be turned.

 Armenian cucumber. Neighbors are puzzled by that thing. They thing it';s a squash. But tastes like cucumber, size of a squash so and almost looks like one.

 Acorns are hiding as usual

 Peppers are doing something. Not expecting a lot from them Thankful to get something (and yeah.. no more jiffy pellets, these so do not dissolve...)

 May even have some melons. also was planted month late.

 These are different cabbage family plants. Green brocoflower

 I keep them like so

 in our heat they become this if not covered. Which is ok by me to eat

 Purple heirloom is interesting. It does turn purple in sun. It it's covered it's pale green.

 And same deal is true for the orange kind

 Oh bushes...

 

 Celery.

 Green beans of different kinds. Tossed the mix hopins some will be more tolerant to my not the best first year dirt.

 Going to seed ":)

 That box is a summer experiment. It does get hot

 and it does not get any cucumbers in the reach of wild and domestic pests aka dogs

 Strawberry

 Oh, that volunteered... Well do not want it here.. because these turn into

 that... and yes they get taller than the house

 This is another volunteer. It tastes and looks like hyssop, but it does have different leaves compared to the kind I have... what ever it is it's welcome

 and I'll putt the weeds around it. This is another 'baby' plant volunteer from the last year. Red sorrel. And it does live in not the best dirt aka pure clay.

 More ground cover. Pine... that is good for me because of high alkalinity. Anyu acid is so welcome

 Compost piles. new. old ones already oin prep to be used by autumn planting nd they do shrink quite a lot

 Tat pile I have a trouble to 'convince' to compost. It has hay in it and that turned out to be tough to compost even one has good amount of nitrogen there

some crops. before that were several tubs of other heirlooms stuff

Whatever it is, heat and rain, I'm thankful