Peas and garlic

After a long canning session yesterday, we put up nine cans of saskatoon-berry pie filling as well as eight cups for baking. We still have another 20 litres of berries to go, some of which I may freeze to toss in with raspberries we'll pick later in the summer. But I see another round of canning tonight.

We also harvested our shell peas out back. The two 5x5' frames yielded a 8 cups of peas. Some of these I will blanch and freeze this afternoon (along with some more greens) for use later in the year. Jess would like to have some of these peas for Christmas dinner. We might have been a day or two late harvesting--the pods were huge and full and some of the peas were the size of chickpeas.

We also dug up the garlic we planted this spring. The bottom leaves were dying off so we timed the harvest right. But the heads were small. Still useful and very pungent but a bit small. Perhaps a different spot in the yard would be better next year. These are now curing. You can see the crazy scarlet runner beans that have come up behind Jess--this is at least 8 feet tall.

The apples continue to grow and remind us of upcoming days of apple saucing.

The blackberries are also flowering. Likely too late to get much for berries from them. Given what a weed they have become in the lower mainland of BC (they were everywhere) maybe we're lucky they struggle here?

We went for a walk yesterday and noticed a yard that had converted much of the front to garden. This was quite inspirational with potatoes and tomatoes, beans and sunflowers all in evidence.

This afternoon I'm going to do some more weeding and then make a pizza. I suppose we can also ponder what to sow in the shady cold frame we liberated the garlic from. Maybe swiss chard?