Not much work done (garden-wise) last weekend

written by Yvonne

Although it was good weather to be outside, this past weekend was spent working on indoor projects (sewing and cartooning). Only thing that managed to get done in the garden was to pull the last head of cabbage (which was used in our fish tacos for dinner Saturday night), and to harvest the remaining collards.

This is a collard flower. Pretty yes, but the distinct sign that the collards are done for the season. Time to pull 'em up and make room for something else.

Last year, we were overrun with spinach - this year, it's collards. Readers may recall that I froze a lot of spinach last year and it got me thinking... why not freeze collards? (It's been SO great grabbing a bundle of our freshly grown, pre-measured, 10oz bundles of spinach from the freezer when needed.)

I played hooky from taking Yoga class today and got to work on the collards.  I de-stemed them and cut them up,

and dunked them in boiling water for 2 minutes,

 then into an ice bath for another minute or so.

 They were drained,

 and weighed to 5oz,

and placed in piles, ready for the freezer.

On another note, something caught my eye as I dove up the driveway yesterday.  Was that a flower on the berry bushes I saw?  Nah, it was probably a spot of bird poop or something.  After finishing up the collards this morning, I decide to take time to investigate... Show 'nuf, it's a flower!

And the berry bushes are FULL of them!  Every flower will turn into a beautiful, yummy black or raspberry.  Here is a single clump that has six!

All the white spots seen here are flowers on the verge of opening.

Holy cow!  I've almost forgotten about the blueberries (probably because they are right next to the bee hives and well, I just view at them from afar.)  Berries are forming even as we speak! Tom says we just have to make sure we get to them before the birds do.

Tomatoes, peppers, onions, some herbs and a few other items are still coming along in pots.

The four squash plants have definitely taken root (they should be ready when you get here Rebecca).

Batch one of radishes (upper right) and batch one of buttercrunch lettuce (lower right) have taken root. You can see the difference in maturity between batch one of radishes and batch two - batch two is to the left of batch one.

Peas and carrots.

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