Grape jelly from the fall food forest!

Butternut & Freaky Fall gourds, potato harvest + pickling & jelly making

Fig Harvest Jam, Potato harvest, & photos I took from LGBTQ+ Pride Festival in my town

potato harvest from grow bags

Chicago hardy figs 

Fig jam (figs mixed with apples, boiled with organic sugar, vanilla, & lemon juice)

Honeysuckle jelly + vertical trellis hugelkultur garden & More potatoes in growbags

This past week has been very aromatic outside with the honeysuckles blooming. When the wind blows, the scent is carried all over the yard, especially after a rain it is quite a lovely feeling. Because I have lots of honeysuckle growing all over the yard, I wanted to try making the jelly for the first time. I used a recipe I found at Taylor Made Homesteading which goes as follows: Honeysuckle jelly made with 4 cups of petals without green stem or leafs. First boil 4 cups of water and take off of heat when it begins to boil. Then add the petals to steep for 45 minutes with a lid. After 45 minutes, strain the petals from the liquid. With 2 cups of the remaining liquid, boil with 4 cups of sugar (according to the recipe here) but I only used 2 1/2 cups of sugar with 1/4 cup of lemon juice. Let boil and stir to dissolve the sugar, then add 1 package of liquid pectin and stir for a remaining 2 minutes. Then can the ingredients as you usually would jellies and jams. This recipe made 4 half pints for me. I make sure to sterilize the rings and jars and new lids, then fill a pot with 1 inch of water and put the honeysuckle liquid in the jars and seal the jars with the lids. Boil the jars in the water for 5 minutes, and afterwards let cool on a towel.

Other things I have been working on in the last few days is sewing more potato grow bags. I believe there were 10 bags already sewn that James put together, and with those and 8 that I sewed myself, I end up gluing 18 bags and filling them with compost to plant potatoes. Also, I sewed some carrot seed within the potatoes. The potato grow bags in previous pictures were placed at my grandparents' house, and I figured with these I would place the grow bags at my house so I could distribute the compost around the garden here.

The potatoes at my grandparents' is looking tall and healthy.

With the compost, I spread on two flower beds, in the potato grow bags, around the fruiting blueberry bushes, and spread a thin layer on the squash/zucchini, cucumber, leafy green, and melon/squash hugelkultur mounds.

Additionally, I dug holes for tomato transplants and filled the holes with compost and posted the tomatoes with tobacco sticks.

In another location I dug holes and filled with compost to sew more melon seeds tomorrow.

Also today I put up fencing in three rows of the garden to trellis the cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, and artichoke. 

And of course, I got another radish harvest...

Making jam with foraged berries (& garden harvest photos)

In the last couple of weeks, the berries have been ripening. So, we have been picking dew berries, blackberries, raspberries, and huckleberries, which you may have seen in a recent post (here). After the 4th of July, the berries will be ready to harvest in bulk. 
Another fruit we have harvested is a June apple variety. 

June apples

As we picked blackberries and dew berries the other day, we came across a pink variety. I have been searching a name for these berries. 

With the foraged berries, we are making jams. Last night I made my first jar of jam, and it was exquisite. 

You may have seen some recent photos of the big yellow squash harvest (here). The other day I picked yellow squash, greens, tomatoes, and peppers from the garden.