Pioneer Woman at Heart

One Flourishing, Frugal and Fun Family!

One family learning to live off the land, cut back on expenses, and to live a simpler and a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Adopted Motto

"Eat it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do,
Or go without."
~A Pioneer Sampler, by Barbara Greenwood~

Thursday, August 9, 2012

More Canning and Garden Bounty


I woke up Tuesday morning with a stuffy nose.  Not good.  I had trouble sleeping on account of congestion.  I was up early to drink my honey/ACV/water mix, hoping to prevent it from getting worse.

I spent the day canning more Queen Anne's Lace Jelly.  I plan to give samples out at the next Farmer's Market day.  I was told that we can give them out, and I several people interested in trying it.  I was disappointed to see the color more yellow than pink this time.  I think it has to do with the amount of purple centers in the flower that I put in.

I canned more sweet pickle relish too.  Long day for sure. In between that, I cooked up 7 pounds of ground beef for homemade sloppy joes.

The weather is much cooler at nights here.  I am yearning to go camping.

All but two of my zucchini plants died - squash bugs!  They are on my heirloom baking pumpkins now.  I spray every day with a natural spray, and even dust with flour/black pepper.  I hope to stay ahead of them.


The heirloom watermelon looks great.
  

The fall planting of green beans and peas looks good too.  We decided to skip on fall lettuce this year.  

Cabbage is doing pretty well, but a few died during our season when rain was lacking. 

I spent most of yesterday working on some crocheted items for the Farmer's Market and decided to let my tomatoes ripen another day. 

However, today thunderstorms are in the forecast.  I will be canning up a one of the two 10 lb. boxes of blueberries I picked up.  I'm lucky to find them this late in the season.  If it's not raining later tonight, I'll be picking pears from my husband's nephew's trees.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

No rin here either. My cabbages have never formed heads (due to the heat?), and they had plenty of water, but I'm still hoping!

SofiaP said...

Not sure how many plants you have being attacked by squash beetles but we found the only way to keep ahead of them is to get rid of the eggs. We go out in the evening and hunt for eggs. We use duct tape to get them off the leaves. We also place a board in the garden and the adults often go under it. So we lift it up, kill them all and put the board back.

Pioneer Woman at Heart said...

Thank you for those tips. Great ideas.

Candy C. said...

I hope you can get ahead of those stupid squash bugs! I'll have to remember SofiaP's tips myself! :)

simplicityinthemaking said...

Try wood ashes on the bugs. Spread it around the plants and on the leaves. It works on my potato bugs and cabbage flies.
Just a though, not positives it works.

Pioneer Woman at Heart said...

We do have wood ashes here too. Thanks for all your tips. These are great!