Little Susie Homemaker

Tag: quince

  • Garden – June 2026

    So much is growing and I hope it isn’t too far behind.

    Hubby & I took our trailer out for 2 months (April & May) so we weren’t home for the usual planting timeframe for our region. I planted peas and beets before leaving and put chicken wire around it to keep any bunnies out. I also planted 2 potatoes and an onion that had sprouted inside.

    My stepdaughter & her fiancé checked on the house for us while we were gone, and she let me know that there was nothing growing in the side garden. She did say we had a bit of asparagus coming up.

    Just before we got home, a friend messaged asking if I wanted any of her starts as she had more than she could use. I told her yes, I’d love them!

    Once we got home, I walked around the yard to see what was growing. The asparagus was sparse but growing. The side garden had 2 peas that took and they were about 3 feet apart from each other. The beets were all growing, but were only about an inch and a half tall after 2 months (with a lot of weeds!).

    Beets
    A Pea plant

    The parsley and sage from last year were both going gangbusters. I cut the parsley back but left the sage flowering as the bees were all over it. There were 2 volunteer potato plants coming up.

    Parsley, Thyme and Chives
    Sage, Dill and Potato

    I went over and picked up tomato, pepper, calendula, dill and melon starts and got them planted. And then we planted dahlia and ranuncula tubers for the upcoming wedding. Around the area that we planted the tubers, we also planted about 6 packets of flowers.

    Melon
    Tomatoes and Peppers

    Around the flowers, I planted kale, spinach, zucchini, yellow squash, strawberries, carrots, basil and spaghetti squash. Around the flowers, I planted kale, spinach, zucchini, yellow squash, strawberries, carrots, basil and spaghetti squash.

    Asparagus
    Spinach and volunteer potato
    Squash
    Wedding flowers planted

    About a week and a half after planting, things started to pop out of the ground….very slowly!!!

    The rest of the yard is well on its way to a good year! Berries growing everywhere and other fruit is coming up as well!

    Berry Corner
    Berry Blossom
    Blueberries
    Boysonberries
    Currants
    Honey Berry

    The fruit trees are also coming along well!

    Apples
    New Pear Tree (3 kinds)
    Quince

    As I’m writing this, it’s a few weeks after I took the pictures and everything is coming up well! I’m looking forward to seeing how the garden does this year!

  • Fall 2025

    November has started in the PNW in the typical dark and rainy fashion. But that just means, indoor projects and hobbies!

    I have continued to work on getting the free fruit processed. The Liberty apples are applesauce, canned and stored on a shelf in the garage.

    Garage shelf with applesauce as well as freeze dried meats and broth. And cool storage for onions & potatoes

    The cider apples are pending processing. Once I finished that box, I’m done with this batch of fruit. These will get sliced and either freeze-dried or frozen.

    The pears were diced and freeze-dried. And also turned into vanilla pear butter. I have it in the fridge and need to water bath can it so it will store well.

    The hubby & I cleared out the den closet and rearranged and added a couple of new shelves. It’s not finished yet, but so far it has drastically helped the storage ability of that closet! I look forward to filling it with more goodies.

    New shelves in den closet with a lot more room to expand! I have it sorted by fruits, vegetables and ready-to-eat meals. Broths are in the kitchen cupboards and in the garage. And meats are in the garage.

    One great thing about cleaning out that closet was getting all of the freeze-dried food organized. We have quite a bit of fruit and vegetables.

    I was able to see how many pre-made meals we have available. I’ll need to work on getting more ready for next summer’s backpacking adventures!

    If you’ve ever thought about getting a freeze-dryer yourself, Harvest Right is running their Black Friday sale *during the month of November. Check it out! All freezer-dryers are discounted this month!

    old-style Small Harvest Right freeze-dryer.

    One project I’ll be working on after finding some old seat covers from the RV is to repurpose those to make a cover for the freeze-dryer. Since I have it in the garage, we always have to remember to throw a tarp or a towel over it when my husband is doing anything in the garage that will make a lot of dust.

    The jam shelf is also filling up this fall. We don’t eat a ton of jam so I’m finding that if I make small batches every other year, that gives us plenty.

    Apple butter, quince jam, ‘raspbarb’ (raspberry/rhubarb) jam and tayberry jam

    One thing I plan on doing each spring is to turn any leftover frozen berries into jam. Once the berries start coming in, I need room in the freezer for the fresh ones so will clear out the previous seasons.

    And the final piece of news from the last few weeks, I have started listing my embroidered tea towels in an Etsy shop. (https://spfled1016.etsy.com) Go check it out.

    These are customizable and I can make them in a day or less. They make wonderful gifts (holidays, showers, weddings, house warmings, etc.)

    I hope your autumn is going well and you’re looking forward to Thanksgiving! I’m grateful that you’re reading my blog! Thanks!!

    (*this is an affiliate link which means I’ll make a % of any sales that result from you clicking through my link)

  • Fall Harvest

    Fall has arrived and so has the harvest to be put up!

    I posted in a local FB group that if anyone had fruit trees that needed picking, I was available. I got two offers to get fruit FOR FREE!!!

    One lady had apple trees and I came home with 4 boxes! I overestimated my energy level to process all of those apples. (It didn’t help that by the time the weekend was over, I had a pretty nasty cold for a couple of days.) I gave one of the boxes to a family at my church.

    With the apples, I have made a double batch of apple butter, 4 quarts of applesauce (so far) and freeze-dried 2 trays (so far) of apple slices.

    I have another batch of applesauce started and will finish the box of the red (Liberty) apples making those into sauce. When I cook them down, I run them through an old-fashioned sieve and end up with a lovely pink sauce because of the red skin. My husband has been enjoying eating what’s leftover in the sieve.

    My applesauce is literally just cooked down apples. I don’t add anything to it. I prefer unsweetened and these apples are so sweet, I definitely don’t need to add anything to them.

    Another lady had an Asian pear tree that was ripe. Unfortunately, that one ended up being too tall to get much, but I did come home with 3/4 of a box of pears.

    When I got home that afternoon, I made some ginger pear muffins from the Trim Healthy Mama membership site. They’re delicious!

    I plan on making a batch of pear jam and then freeze-drying the rest of them. I like pears as snacks when we’re hiking but then can easily rehydrate them for baking.

    We also harvested the quince from the quince tree. My husband planted the tree as a novelty in the backyard last year and there was 1 quince. This year, we picked 13 for just under 9 lbs. of fruit.

    I’ve had to look up quite a bit on quince to know what to do with them. These are Portugal Quince, and they look like a large pear. They can be eaten raw but are quite hard and very tart. But when they are cooked, they sweeten up and have an almost tropical scent.

    Unfortunately, when I cut the first one open (and each one so far since) they’re brown on the inside. I have a message to the nursery we bought it from to see what they think.

    UPDATE: I heard back from the nursery and they confirmed they were overripe. Next year, we’ll pick them as soon as we can smell them while on the tree.

    But, we did bake the first one and my husband ate it. I don’t think it had been cooked quite long enough as it was still pretty hard. And today, I’m cooking down 3 of them to try quince jam.

    The best way I can describe what quince tastes like is a peach/pineapple cross. It’s good, just unusual. I believe I cooked down enough for 1 jar of jam. We’ll see what happens!

    UPDATE: The finished jam has a delightful flavor that I think is a peach/pineapple mix, my future SIL said he thought it tasted like pear. My husband and stepdaughter both said mango. So, pick your fruit flavor, but it’s a really bright flavor for a fall fruit. I like it!

    The weekend will tell how much of this processing gets finished. Happy Fall!

  • Garden – June 2025

    My garden is growing!

    I wasn’t sure how things would work with being gone at the wrong times this year, but thankfully things seem to be chugging along.

    Some things are just plain slow, and I need to do some education to figure out why (beets – yeah, you!!). And some things are plugging along as expected and should be ready to harvest on time soon (peas – way to go babies!!)

    Asparagus, Cauliflower and Volunteer Potato
    Peas, Kale, Black Beans, Cucumber, Spinach, Lettuce
    Beans, Beets

    In the main garden, I have a couple of volunteer potatoes. I didn’t buy seed potatoes this year. I had a couple of potatoes from last year that had sprouted. There was also a leftover store-bought organic russet that I used as well. Time will tell how any of those turn out.

    I’ve tried planting things more interspersed to not waste space, but also to hopefully have things that help one another. Since beets prefer cooler weather, I’ve planted bush beans in between the row of beets.

    (Maybe I should take a gardening class – its all one big experiment)

    The berries that line one side of the main garden are all doing well. The Logan Berries skipped last year but appear to be a bumper crop this year. Tayberries are already ripening. And the Boysenberry has a lot of blossoms.

    First Tayberry harvest
    Boysenberry
    Logan Berry
    Tayberry

    The side garden is doing well. We added a hog panel as a trellis. The tubers, squash and cucumbers all need something to climb. I planted zucchini, yellow summer squash as well as spaghetti squash and delicata squash. Thankfully, at least 1 of each one has come up.

    Cucumbers are planted along both sides of the trellis.

    My hubby planted about 4x more tubers this year. Now to figure out how to cook them properly to eat them!

    The side yard also has most of the rhubarb, raspberries and the biggest, more prolific blueberry bushes. The raspberries are beginning to ripen, and I picked the first one last night.

    Blueberries and Rhubarb
    Squash(es), Cucumbers and Tubers
    Raspberry

    A couple other random things that are coming along – the black currants and honey berries are almost ready to harvest.

    The main potatoes are in a pot and doing really well! I can’t wait for the blossoms! Have you ever smelled a potato blossom? Seriously, why has no one ever come up with using that scent??

    Goji berries are going crazy and starting to ripen. The quince tree has lots of little quince growing. And the tomatoes are in the ground. (I have basil and parsley planted nearby. These were from seed so they’re VERY behind)

    Black Currants
    Goji Berries
    Honey Berries
    Pepper and Potato
    Quince
    Tomatoes

    The flowers throughout the yard are beautiful and doing well. The peonies are just about finished up. The allium look gorgeous. And the sedum I planted in the fall from the neighbor are all doing well.

    Alpine strawberries are ripening. I took a couple of shoots last year and managed to keep two of them alive over winter. I’ve planted those near the asparagus as they’re supposed to be great companion plants.

    Allium
    Alpine Strawberries
    Sedum

    For missing April and getting things started, I’m pretty happy with how things are going. I’m gearing up for the July harvest as the blueberries ripen up.

    I’m hoping to harvest 100 lbs. If I get that much, great. If I don’t, that’s great too!