(Blessings from the garden)
 

This has kept hubby and I busy this summer.

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You live in a beautiful area (Broken Wings). Thank you for sharing those photos.

Lovely garden! Do I see a critter fence?

umm-umm good
 

Shuck Beans and dried chili peppers

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Kraut, Pickled Lilly, Pickled Corn

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tomatoes, tomatoe juice, pickles

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green beans
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tomatoes & pickles
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That's for half runner beans. The beans loved it. We also used hay bale string laterally (no in photo). The beans loved to climb on them.

Wowsers! Keeps you busy!

So the deer don't visit you? We get deer now in the city!

Well, we get 'em. We deal with them, be it ever so severly at times. We have problems with black widows, rabbits and turtles too. Keeps you busy.

Turtles! That's a new one!

Just a few more memories to pass along from this year's blessings.

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I'm thankful that I was able to do this, with a lot of help from hubby.

We started our garden back up in 2008. It was painful and difficult and not as big. So I know I'm so much better than last year. I do pace myself and manage by thinking my way through the challenging parts.

I am blessed...

That is one great footie dootie you've got there! LOL

I have socks like that too, only they are not red. ;)

The scale of that garden is enormous. I am very impressed with you. Especially all that canning and putting up of your harvest!

Where we vacation in summer, the locals put up wire fences around their gardens.

We have on the shore, crickets, grasshoppers, slugs, voles, rabbits, and the pesky DEER. Not much is left for us...we are lucky if we have 1/2 of the flowers survive. I put out a natural biological thing from a University that prevents the grasshoppers from reproducing, so that did help some. It took 3 full years to show improvement. The grasshoppers could eat a whole flat of seedlings in one day before. My son and I used to follow them around with a fly swatter and rock. I'd stun them and then bean them with the rock.

Next year I am going to do some herbs. The deer won't bother chives or catnip (which I have so far). I am going to add others to see if that helps some.

I love seeing other peoples' gardens. Thanks for putting up those photos.

They are inspirational. (except for the 'kraut! ) ;)

Hubby loves the kraut and pickled stuff. I worry he eats and overindulges when I'm not around.

I did discover from last year that Sea Salt works well with tomatoes. So that's a trade he likes.

I want to try sea salt for pickling but he wouldn't let me take that chance of losing a batch of pickles or a jar of kraut. He loves that stuff.

The cabbage family and I don't get along. I have a congenital GI defect which is for some reason incompatible with cabbage.
Lately my fave, cauliflower started to get me the same. Only one left now is broccoli, which so far is okay, cooked.
The cramping and pain, from cabbage is really unbearable for me now, sadly.

What is the issue with sea salt? Is it unsafe, because it is not purified, for canning?

Hubby has hypertension. See the problem all this home canning can do. He eats fresh veggies all summer though. using sea salt has lowered his BP a lot.

Sea Salt don't have iodine in it. so don't know what to do about that yet.

It has a robust flavor. We like it. Doesn't take as much as table salt

Didn't know it wasn't purified for canning. Ummm. He'll have to eat his tomatoes fast then.

I'll have to read and inqure more about it for canning purposes. I can tomatoes for my mother without any salt. She's on salt restriction diet. She loves them too, any way she can get them.

Great garden! Mine is tiny, but enough for us. Just a couple tomatoes, cukes and peppers. Didn't get to enjoy this year as dh is gone and I was too, half the summer. But we've been growing for a few years .


We don't can, but froze a ton of tomatoes last year and they were so tasty - I still have two bags left! Gotta love a deep freezer.

:D

Still have dried peppers too.

I think the canning process would kill anything in the sea salt, don't you? Salt is just an ingredient.... I'd try it. Manufacturers use sea salt - Campbell's, etc - and their stuff is just fine.

Can you get canning recipes with sea salt online?