It's the end of June and the time when gardening is not just hard work, but also satisfaction. This is the time when I get very busy. This year we got lucky as there was no hailing till now, there was no frost during the flowering period and there were no major disasters to set the garden back in evolution, like last year.
Today I'd like to take you on a virtual tour and show you what we have so far.
Fruits
Let's start with the beauty of the garden, the queen of the currants or ribes if you like. As you can see on the photos, almost ready for harvest, which means next week I'm going to be making jam or juice.
I'm more interested in making juice this time as we still have plenty of jams from previous years and don't like to pile up anything unless it's necessary.
White currants are ready as well and must say, beautiful. A few years ago these white ones were looking terrible, but now they are well taken care of as my dad uses an organic fertilizer, which has good results.
Gooseberries are getting ready too and I'm a bit puzzled with them. As I said earlier, I would prefer juice over jam, but with gooseberries, it's a different story. The peel of the fruit is very rich in pectin, which is the thickening agent we use for jams. If I choose juice, all that good pectin is going to waste, so I suppose I'm going to make some jam as well. Especially for my honey cake, which requires a sour jam.
This creature looks strange but trust me, it's not an alien, it's a melon 😃 We grow melons and honeydew because there's nothing better than having a fresh, organic, homegrown melons or honeydew for breakfast. Last year these cuties got smashed by the hail, which left some serious mark on them, one even started to rot. This year we're lucky. These still need a month I think, but so far so good.
Grapes are also looking good. If nothing bad happens, the harvest will be good. At this point I don't think anything bad can happen though, we're over the critical periods.
A couple of months ago it looked like there will be no hazelnuts, but as you can see, we are still going to have some. This is for the family only, so I'm happy if we can share some.
Veggies
Veggies are lagging a bit, or let's say it's not time yet for veggies, but onions can already be eaten. However, the harvest for winter is going to be in July or August. We have white, yellow and red every year.
Garlic is a bit of disappointment this year too and we came to realize the soil must not be suitable for growing garlic. I mean we got some, it wasn't a total waste but we should have had 2 or 3 times more. These are out to dry.
Cucumbers!!! The best veggies after tomatoes, but tomatoes are considered fruits, so ... 😁 Honestly, having fresh cucumbers every morning for a nice salad and for hydrating my skin as well is priceless.
Pickles? Anyone? You may say it's too early for pickles, but you cant time grows, so when we have to many, we make pickles.
Black Cherry Liqueur
This has nothing to do with the garden as we don't have cherries, let alone black ones, but it's a lot of fun. So we got these black cherries at the market last week and thought why not make some delicious liqueur. The process is very easy. You add sugar to the cherries, put it out to the sun for the sugar to melt and after a few days (may be a week even, dunno, my dad is the master) you add alcohol and leave it for a month or two. The more time the cherry stays in the alcohol, the better and we're in no rush. The best thing about it is that you can eat the cherries after, just be careful as you can get drunk 😁
So this is it for now, but I'll be back next week with the juice and/or the jam recipe and process. Let's see how things go first.
