Diggin' and Pickin' in June

With everything going on lately, we haven't shown a lot going on in the garden.  I did some work in the garden planting on Saturday.  I planted 3 additional rows of green beans.  The green beans that I planted in early spring didn't do well.  It was the first year in many, many years in which we didn't put up any beans in the freezer for later.  Things don't always work out.  Hopefully in this planting, we will see success.  I also planted another row of sweet corn, a row of black-eyed peas, a row of cantaloupe, watermelon, butternut squash, birdhouse gourds, louffa gourds, and sunflowers. 

But let's back up.  We planted more things, and while we have many things still growing, we are harvesting, too.  Here is a basket full of some of the last of the beets.

We planted Red Mangel Beets for the cows, and chioggia beets and bull's blood beets for us.

We oven-roast most of the beets in the oven.  That's our favorite way of eating them.  Tricia also made a couple batches of beet kvass.  Back in 2014, we showed how we do that in this post:
Making Beet Kvass

We also picked some lima beans.  These limas over-wintered in the garden and are bearing again.  I wait until the pods are brown, but you can't wait too late as they'll pop open and you'll lose the beans. 

Finally, each year in May and June, it is prime blueberry and blackberry season.  Each day we (but mainly Russ before he moved out) go to the bushes with quart-sized containers and pick all the berries that have ripened since the day before.  We eat some while we're picking, of course!  We put the berries in a colander and wash them up.

We put some in the fridge to snack on fresh, but we also like to freeze some to use throughout the year.  An interesting way to freeze them is to lay them out on a single layer on a stoneware tray.  Pop 'em in the freezer and the next morning we pull them out and loosen them from the tray with a spatula. 

When the are all loose, we pour them into a zip loc bag and put them in the freezer for storage.

With the berries individually frozen, it is very easy to pour them into a measuring cup for baking muffins and blueberry pancakes with chocolate chips.  My favorite!

Up next in the garden:  harvesting sweet corn, more cukes, tomatoes (although it is a bad year), squash and zucchini.  In a few days, we'll be planting pumpkins.