Japanese Beetles

They're here.  They've actually been around for a while now; they usually show up around Memorial Day, plus or minus a week or so.  This is the time of year when they begin to wane, typically.

When I first moved into my suburban house, I had a serious problem with them.  They swarmed and ravaged anything they were attracted to.  The picture below shows an old rugosa rose that I had that they would inundate.

I think the problem might have been that they were in the sod that was laid in the front yard (and everyone else's front yards) when the subdivision was built.  They live first as grubs; eggs laid this year will spend the next several months or so as larvae in the soil, chewing on roots, before pupating, then emerging as adults next spring.

Rain matters, too.  North Georgia had a serious drought a number of years ago, which made a big impact on the Japanese beetle numbers the next year.  It also knocked down the number of fireflies considerably, for the same reason.  Then last year was a serious drought year, but it has been a number of years since I had large numbers of beetles.

Last year I had more than this year, however--they seem most interested in my apple trees currently; they also go for peach and cherry tree leaves, and will nibble on crepe myrtle blossoms.  Roses are their BAE, but the rugosa is now gone.

Peach Preserves

I've written about dehydrating peaches and making peach butter, but there are a few other things I do with peaches:  can them (as-is, with syrup), pickle them, and make peach preserves.  The latter is actually one of the most common.  As I have noted before, I do make things other than sugar-laden treats with fruit, but peach preserves are easy, and a little bit of peaches go a long way.  I get twice as much preserves as butter for the same amount of peaches, at least partly because the extra sugar in preserves (twice as much) increases the bulk.

Making peach preserves is pretty easy and I have (so far) not screwed it up so it must also be nearly fool-proof.  I start off doing something that is recommended against:  I double the recipe in the Ball Blue Book (BBB).  Pickyourown.org has a recipe, too, that is heavier on the fruit, lighter on the sugar--but I still use more peaches than they recommend.

I use eight cups (actually more like nine) of chopped, peeled peaches.   To peel, float them in simmering (not boiling) water for a few minutes; then the skins come off pretty easily.  You can just pull them off and don't need to cut, except in a few places.  Then I quarter them and chop them into relatively small pieces.  I probably divide each peach into 160 small chunks, which is not as slow as it sounds.  I can peel and chop a peach in about two minutes (or less).  According to the weight/volume on pickyourown.org, nine cups should come to a little more than five pounds fresh (you may need more if you need to cut around plum curculio larvae or other things).  The full recipe is:

8-9 cups chopped peaches
4 tablespoons lemon juice
14 cups sugar
2 packages of pectin.

I add the peaches to the pot and dump a proportionate amount of lemon juice in as I'm filling it; I don't treat separately to prevent browning.  Once the peaches are in the pot, I mash them up with the potato masher, much as I noted with the blueberry preserves.

 I then add the pectin--so everything is in the pot except for the sugar--and start heating it on low/medium heat.  When it boils, I dump in the sugar, mix it up, and turn the heat up a bit to boil it again.  Once it boils for the second time (which can take 15 minutes or so), I let it go for about a minute--during which it will be starting to foam a lot--then turn the heat off.  After that, it's just a matter of filling the jars and canning them.  I use pint jars and get about eight pints from the nine cups of peaches (I usually have a little left over that I just refrigerate).  These steps are straight from the BBB.

The jars seal quickly and I have never had any trouble with them setting up, but once I think it was somewhat thin; tilting a jar would make the contents shift a bit, albeit stiffly.

As you can see in the picture below, the jam is brightly colored and doesn't have any issues with turning brown.  After a couple of years the jam will be darker in color, but still is good.  I've used preserves up to about four years old and they are still fine.

This is an easy and very tasty way to preserve fruit. It probably shouldn't be a mainstay for obvious reasons; each jar has about one cup of fruit and almost two cups of sugar in it.  However, in small increments it's fine.  I go through maybe five or six jars per year.

Although Whey Low says that its product can be used 1:1 in place of sugar for preserves, I haven't tried it.  That'd be very expensive (although I use almost as much in my annual cranberry canner load, that yields seven or eight quarts vs. eight pints).

Although I'm somewhat less than fully objective, I like my peach preserves better than any I've ever tried--even ones made with sugar and Belle of Georgia peaches, which are what I have usually used (off my trees in the back yard, which now have expired).  I don't know what it is about them that makes them better, but they really do have a good flavor.  Making them is well worth the time.

Dehydrating Blueberries, 2017

I've written before about dehydrating blueberries.  I haven't dehydrated any of my home-grown berries yet, but I do get a few two-pound clamshells during peak blueberry season (which is now).  This year prices are up a little; as noted previously, south Georgia got hit by the same freeze that impacted my blueberries.  Many commercial rabbiteye farmers lost their whole harvest.

Commercially-bought blueberries can be sketchy.  I always pick through them carefully and usually find a few that are moldy or otherwise a mess.  Interestingly, even when I keep my home-picked ones in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks, they don't mold--which makes me wonder what the delay between picking and purchasing is normal for commercial berries.

As I sort them, I dump them into a colander, then rinse them off.  Various sites indicate that conventionally-grown blueberries usually have a variety of pesticide residues on them.  I'm not sure why: I don't have to spray mine for anything, bugs or plant diseases.  They are a truly zero-maintenance crop.

This year, I got six pounds at a warehouse club.  In late June, they were coming from New Jersey.  The origin of spring and summer blueberries shifts around, from Georgia to North Carolina, then New Jersey.  In August, they usually seem to come from Michigan.

Drying them is easy.  As I mentioned before, I don't try to prick them with a toothpick.  I do too many at once for that to be viable, and it's unnecessary.  I let them dry for a couple of days at 135 and they're dry enough to store long-term without molding.

The final result is shown below:  contained in the half-gallon mason jar is what's left of six pounds of fresh blueberries after dehydrating (there's room for another couple of pounds' worth).  They could be vacuum-packed to extend their shelf life, but even as-is, should be good for a couple of years.

End of the Blueberry Harvest

As noted previously, this was a lighter than normal blueberry season.  In terms of duration it was also shorter than normal, at about two weeks.  Last year I picked for nearly a month.  This year, toward the end of June, I pulled off what will probably be the last berries I pick.

As the pictures show, there are some berries that aren't even close to ripe yet; that's how my blueberry bushes are.  However, most of what's left is over-ripe (meaning I didn't spend enough time picking while they were at peak), and they're getting infested with ants at this point, making it necessary to carefully check almost every berry to be sure it's not frass-bedecked and hollowed out.

I ended up with about eight pounds, or 40% of what I got last year.  That's pretty decent.  I could've gotten ten pounds if I'd picked more frequently (but last year when I got 20, I could've probably gotten 22 or 23).  All in all, I'm happy with the way things turned out.