Pear picking, apple picking, corn, tomatoes and orchard care

Elderberry & peach leather

Elderberries are starting to slow down but there are still plenty to pick and process.  I decided to make some peach-elderberry leather!    I had to boil it down a bit more than for the strawberry leather and I had to add more honey - elderberries aren't very good without some sweet!

B-day outing with family

Tom and Julie were up to see mom and asked if I wanted to go out somewhere with them for lunch!  We went to the King Buffet in Bedford.  It has the best Chinese food around the area.

Asian Pears

Picked a bunch of the "top of the hill" variety of my asian pears.  They taste pretty good!  There is a big-ass yellow bee that seems to like them too.  Looks like a yellow jacket but 4-5 times the size.  They actually consume a good portion of the pears!  After I saw the condition of the remaining pears, I decided to pick all of this variety of pears.

Bee damage!  This is not all of the damaged pears - some were completely cleaned off!

This is the last of this variety of pears - I picked all of the rest to save them from the bees!

Apples

I picked more of the apples this weekend too.  Picked all of the crab apples.  I don't know what to do with the crab apples.  Katherine says she's going to make pie filling with them.  I guess we could try applesauce too.  We will see.  They are a bit unripe yet, so we have time to decide.  The pain in the butt thing about them is they are so small that prepping them for any use takes a bit of effort.

All of the crab apple crop this year.

First real picking of the Royal gala and some yellow delicious apples.

Mulching and caging the orchard trees

I put in a significant effort to get cages around all of the trees in the orchard.  I have seen a couple of deer now with antlers!  So its just a matter of time before they start scraping the velvet off.  I hope the decide to use some forest trees rather than my fruit trees this year.

I mulched a bunch of the orchard trees too.  They are easier to mulch before putting up the cages.

I just sat the cages on top of the mulch for now.  I will come back later and stake them in

I ran out of fencing so I couldn't do these last three trees.  I will probably scrounge some fencing from some of the dead cherry trees for them.

Some veg harvest

I checked the corn and found that it was getting about ripe.  We picked a dozen or so for eating.  We will probably pick most of it next weekend.  Also, the cold nights have made many of the tomatoes rot on the vine before ripening, but I did manage to get a few usable ones. 

As usual, I picked a couple quarts of strawberries

Also got some of the eggplant and cabbage in there!  

I managed to get enough tomatoes for a modest skillet of fried tomato gravy!

With corn on the cob.  Was excellent "first eating" ceremony

Eclipse

Well, it wasn't total eclipse here - only 80%.  20% of the sun is still pretty damn bright!  

Fruit harvest continues!

Elderberries continue

They keep ripening!  Gathered more.  Canned the juice.  Repeat.

BTW:  Here is the canning "recipe" and info:

• Expected juice yield: 2 Gallons of fresh berries should produce about 2.5 to 3 quarts of juice. This corresponds to the 4 lb or berries per gallon number I found last year.  About 3 lbs of juice and 1 lb of pulp per gallon of fresh berries.  The juiciness of the berry is a function of how ripe it is (and the variety of berry - mine are mixed variety evidently).  Note that when I freeze dried a gallon of elderberries produced about 4-5 pints of water.  This would suggest that 1 gallon of berries should produce 4-5 lbs of juice, which is about what i get.  

• So, bottom line: 1 gallon of berries = 4-5 lbs juice = 4-5 pints juice

• Best method of juicing:  Slowly, on low heat, bring fresh (de-stemmed) berries to boil.  You can use a potato masher to help a little, but don't overdo it!  Once boiling, cook berries for 10-15 mins.  I stir about every 5 mins to make sure there is no burning going on.  Watch the heat! The berries are then strained through a muslin bag or sheet.  Compress the ball of skins and seeds in the bag as best you can - its hot so be careful!  Measure the amount of juice that you extract, then remove the seed/skin ball from the bag and place it back in cookpot.  Measure the amount of juice you got and add that amount of water into the cookpot with the seeds/skins.  Now bring this to a boil as before.   After reaching boil and cooking for 10-15 mins, strain through muslin again.  Take the juice from the second straining and add to the juice from the first straining.   Throw the seeds/skins out. 

• DO NOT run elderberries through a squeezo or similar device!  The "meat" around the seeds contains a very sticky and hard to clean substance that will gum up everything!  However, there is literature that suggests that the "sticky goo" is the stuff that contains the anti-viral substance! I just hope that the regular juice I extract had enough of the substance to help me!  That goo is too damn hard to deal with.

The juice-count continues.  

Fruit leather 

Faced with a certain amount of damaged fruit that made canning impractical, I considered fruit leather.  I took the peaches and strawberries from this weekends harvest and simply cleaned, cooked, and pureed them in my vitamix.  I sweetened to taste (tricky for dried foods - don't over sweeten!) and then poured onto the silicone dryer mats.  I placed in the big dryer at 135F for 23hrs.  Turned out very nicely!

Seriously considering getting more of these mats.  perfect for fruit leather.

Grapes

The grapes are looking good so far!  I keep spraying with the myclobutanil fungicide.  The stuff really seems to work.  Unfortunately, the rains come so often and washes the sprays off!  I am also applying sevin to counter the japanese beatles.  I am spraying all of the fruit with sevin.  I am occasionally using the fungicides on all the fruit and nuts too because some are looking diseased.  This is especially true of the sour cherries.

Peaches

Besides the damaged peaches that I made into fruit leather, I also harvested some nice peaches for canning.  These are the Raritan Rose peaches (I think).  They are a white peach.  They taste milder than most yellow peaches.  I only canned 9 pints of these.  A lot of these were given away at work and in the neighborhood to friends.

Canned white peaches

UGH! more rain?

Enough already!

I mean really?  We need rain, of course - but can we keep it under 2 inches per week?  Nice steady rains are preferred - these downpours are rough on the garden!

Water is RUNNING through the bean patch

Washed alot of dirt down in the front patch too

Washed a gully in the corn!

corn gully

Pris

tine apples need support!

I didn't think these apples (or any of the fruit this year) so they are in danger of breaking down the tree!  Pristine are a very early apple - ready in mid-July.   I placed some boards up to support the tree.  I am hoping that the critters don't use the board as a ramp to get at them!

Peach tree status - "June drop" not so bad! (so far)

Normally in June the peach trees will drop a good amount of fruit and leaves - this is known as  "June drop".  This year, so far, the drop has been relatively light.

Big widow-maker came down

I was walking the perimeter and came across a big widow maker near the sheep field.  Glad I wasn't mowing when this thing came down!  I had to go get the tractor to move this thing.

Hay field 

My neighbor got around to making hay this weekend.  He did the part below the locusts this year.  Very nice!  Saves me having to flail mow so much.

Grapes and spraying

I got my new sprayer working and hit the grapes and the orchard trees with sevin and myclobutanil.  I saw some Japanese beetles out so I wanted to be sure my grapes were protected.