pear trees

the luscious pear tree is doing fabulous


the parker pear tree started to lean, and has been staked


the leaves on both trees look great


however the bark on the trunk of the parker pear tree appears to have split


some guys came around the neighborhood and offered to grind up my tree stump for cheap


the summercrisp pear tree is doing good


but whatever is on some of the leaves has not improved despite the spray i bought


the undersides of the leaves look even worse


the patten pear tree isnt doing so hot


the lower part of the tree is practically bare


and nearly all of the leaves look like this






i think another visit to the garden center might be a good idea, as well as removing all the infected leaves.

canning cherries and cherry jam, from july 3rd

saturday july 3 i canned cherries and made cherry jam from juice with my mom.

start with a sink full of cherries


a hand held cherry pitter helps things along


wear gloves or else you get purple hands for a few days


try to keep the pits in the sink


end up with 2 cups of pits


cherry splatter gets everywhere


stove setup: sterilized lids in back, syrup on left, canner on right


for the jam we used cherry juice my mom picked up i think at trader joes


the smudge in the dish was where we checked that it was the right consistancy, the funnel is a huge help


end up with this:


4 bags of cherries from rainbow made 11 pints.
syrup was 8 cups water, 1 and 1/2 cups sugar.

jam was 32 oz of cherry juice, 1 package low/no sugar pectin, 1 1/2 cups sugar, made 3 1/2 jelly jars.

picture of last years cherry canning:

garden update - mid june

i got a little behind in my updating, so here is the first of a few updates!

the garden early-mid june


potatoes before two weeks of solid rain


potatoes after




potato flowers




corn and pole beans


sugar snap peas


amaranth


amaranth close up


fuzzy bumble bee on clover in my garden

garden update

potatoes are really coming along, i've already completely filled in the trench they were planted in


watermelon, cantelope, and zucchini have sprouted


brussels sprouts and celery are coming along


one of these is edamame (soybeans) and one is black eyed peas



corn sprout


radishes and carrots


something ate the heads of my sunflowers


peas seem to have stopped growing tall and are putting out flowers, they're maybe 2 feet shorter than normal.


garlic is getting huge


strawberries are coming in


but caterpillars are eating the strawberry leaves!