The weather this spring and early summer was a bit weird. It got super hot in the daytime (far too hot for that time of year) and cold at night. This is our best guess as to why things are really not so great in the garden. A lot of things are stunted or just didn’t come up — peas and cucumber are stunted, various beans and our first batch of cucumber didn’t come up.
But berries have been a banner year for us.
Our strawberry harvest is about normal, and we still struggle with blueberries. We also bought some haskap berry bushes last year but they haven’t produced fruit yet.
Our saskatoon bush, however, exploded with berries and the birds haven’t been too interested in devouring them this year. We’ve harvested somewhere north of seven pounds and our bush is still loaded with ripe berries.
The big surprise, however, has been the raspberries. We’ve had them for years and never gotten more than four or five berries in an entire season. But this year the bushes are overloaded with berries and I’m picking bowlfuls every three days.
For strawberries and raspberries, the plan is to freeze them so my husband can put them in his oatmeal. If we get a lot of raspberries, my husband makes a delicious raspberry trifle that would be wonderful with homegrown berries.
For Saskatoons, I’ve been told they don’t freeze all that well — they apparently get kind of woody when thawed — so I’ve got two gallons of saskatoon wine bubbling away in the kitchen.
I made saskatoon wine a few years ago and made the mistake of blindly following the recipe for the length of time for fermentation rather than checking that fermentation had ceased. Thus upon bottling the yeast were still doing their thing and building pressure in the bottle, to the point where the wine gushed out like a geyser upon opening. The first bottle shot wine up about a foot, but the second bottle splashed all the way up to the kitchen ceiling. Here’s hoping this batch works a little better!
Canning season is warming up
While it’s still a little early in the summer for major preservation projects, some of it has begun already, and more will be coming soon.
Earlier this summer I pulled out the banner for the first time this year and whipped up a batch of chive blossom jelly.
Next on the horizon is actually a few non-garden things. I found some discount meat at the grocery store so I’m early August I’ll be canning up some chicken, beef, and ground beef. I’ll have beef and ground beef recipes up here shortly after.
When I first got my pressure canner, which is handy because it allows you to safely can meat, I got into the “meal in a jar” recipes and found a cookbook full of great recipes of this nature.
After a while though, I retreated a bit and now primarily do plain canned meat because then I can easily throw it into a dinner of my choosing and making, rather than eating the premade recipe in the jar.
However, I do miss some of those recipes so I may pull out that recipe book and do a half batch or two of some good ones.
With the ground beef I’d like to try canning ground beef crumbles so they’re dinner ready, but I’m also looking at canning a batch of chili. It’s a lot of work but I know I’ll be thankful I did that when I need a warm and hearty meal on a cold winter day.
Once the meat is out of the way I’ll be looking at canning peas. I didn’t get around to canning them last year and froze them instead, but I find I just don’t like the texture of frozen peas and much prefer the softness of canned peas.
Shortly after that should be pickling season with beets and hot peppers. And if we get lucky and have a bonanza of bell peppers (though I’m not too hopeful), I’ve been dying to try roasted peppers pressure canned in water.
I’ll remember to list out the canning projects in these monthly updates because it truly is a massive undertaking. We have a room packed with jars every fall, and they’re all empty by the time the next summer rolls around.
The garden as of mid July 2025
For those who love to look at pics, here’s a bit of a photo dump of how things look right now.
The beets have quickly grown and are looking like they’ll be nice and big when harvest time comes.
While the corn is stunted from this year’s warm weather, it’s looking good now. The pop bottles are to prevent the squirrel from chopping down the corn stalks, which it has done before!
The onions are coming up too, and looking great!
This was a surprise to me! I thought the tomatoes really weren’t doing well, but when I got closer, I saw they were loaded with green tomatoes. Harvest season for these will start in a few weeks most likely!
And, lastly, grapes are starting to show up on our grapevine. These are some form of red wine grapes, so these get turned into wine when fully ripened.
Everything looks so great, bestie! I’m so impressed with the grapes and those tomatoes, too!
Thank you, bestie! I’m always amazed at what the garden does every year!